The Girl in the Yellow Vest (34 page)

He found her name on the shelf easily enough and there was a small selection of titles there. None of the books were very thick. But he figured this was just her style. He could easily picture her writing intelligent, concise little handbooks on coping with life. He ran his fingers casually over the slim spines, reading the titles one by one.

Dealing with the Loss of a Loved One.

Tips for the Single Parent
.

Life after Rape
.

He nearly broke his finger on the last one.

What the?!

He snatched the book off the shelf, a pain throbbing in his temple as he flicked through the pages. Chapter headings jumping out at him like sharp spikes.

The Psychological Effects.

Self Blame.

Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS).

The Reorganisation Phase.

Distrust of Men.

Flashbacks.

Depression.

Guilt.

Panic Attacks.

He slammed the book shut and went to the counter to pay for it. Adrenaline was pumping so fast through his veins he almost felt sick with it. Emily had said Charlotte wrote about her own experiences . . . Now he had to see her.

Urgently.

The morning after Zara confessed to sending a letter to Dennis Mayer, Charlotte got on the phone to Woodford Correctional Centre. At least she had the benefit of actually knowing which maximum-security prison Dennis had been sent to. The other letters Zara had sent didn’t matter. They had probably been binned or returned to the post office. Zara said she had put no return address on the envelopes for fear that Charlotte would receive mail that bounced back. The most important thing was to discover what had happened to the one letter that had gone to the right place. It was a long shot phoning them but she knew she had to try.

The woman who answered the phone sounded surprisingly normal. Charlotte had no idea what she’d been expecting. Just not the cheerful unconcern of the person on the other end of the line. For some reason she thought people who worked in prisons must be quiet and subdued so as not to provoke the inmates.

You’re just being silly. She’s probably not anywhere near any of the prisoners.

‘Er, hi,’ she began cautiously to the woman’s chirpy offer of assistance. ‘I was just wondering . . . this is going to sound like a really stupid question, but do your prisoners often receive mail?’

‘All the time,’ the operator responded. ‘Did you wish to send something through?’

‘No, actually, I already have. I just wanted to know if he got it.’ She paused. ‘Would you know if Dennis Mayer has received any mail within the last two weeks?’

The woman laughed. ‘We have over a thousand inmates here. I wouldn’t know who received what. I’d have to ask his prison guard to find out for you.’

Charlotte chewed on her lower lip. ‘You see, I don’t want him to mention to Mr Mayer that anyone’s asking.’

This time the woman sounded stern. ‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t understand. The letter never should have been sent in the first place.’

She heard the clicking of a tongue on the other end of the phone. ‘Actually, I’ve logged into our system and looked up Dennis Mayer. Apparently he’s been released.’

‘What?’ Charlotte nearly dropped the phone. ‘When?’

‘Two years ago,’ the woman informed her. ‘So he wouldn’t have received your letter, unless someone forwarded it.’

She was still trying to grasp the woman’s first sentence. ‘Two years ago? He’s been out of prison for two years?’ This was more shocking than all the rest.

‘Yes. I have a forwarding address here, if you’d like it. It’s for an apartment block in Brisbane. Our mail clerk might have taken the trouble to forward the letter.’

Oh shit!

Her head was spinning but she said quickly, ‘Er, yes, yes. I’ll take that down.’ The woman narrated it to her as she scribbled with pen and paper. She put the phone down and stared at the address as goose bumps puckered all over her body.

All this time
.

He’d been out and they’d been none the wiser. How irresponsible of them not to check! And how naïve of her to assume that because he’d been convicted for three counts of rape he’d be jailed for life. She snorted as she mentally calculated the time he’d actually spent in prison.

Twelve years.

What was the world coming to?

On the other hand, in those two years he’d been free, they had heard nothing about him. Not from those friends of their mother who had known him. No one in the surrounding community had warned them that he’d been in town again. This meant that, unless Zara’s letter had reached him, he wasn’t interested in coming back to Sarina. Not that she thought anyone would welcome him. Few people knew he was Zara’s father, other than some of her mother’s closest friends, who had guessed at the time. But everyone knew he was a rapist. When he was convicted, the friends he had stayed with in Mackay had been shocked and had told everyone how betrayed
they’d
felt, as though harbouring him for that short period had been their own personal horror story. If Dennis had been back to Sarina she would have heard about it. So it was clear he wasn’t interested in their mother any more. He must have made a new life for himself in Brisbane, where he had come from originally. With trembling fingers, she turned back to her computer and typed in the name of the apartment block to get a number for the strata manager.

Three seconds later she was on the phone again.

‘Hi, would you be able to tell me if Dennis Mayer is still one of your tenants? He was in number 305.’

She heard the flutter of paperwork and then to her relief good news came back.

‘No, he is no longer here.’

‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

‘No.’

Good!

With any luck, if the letter had been forwarded here, it had also been lost. She put down the phone still shaking but with relief. Hopefully, it was languishing in a bin somewhere at the post office. It seemed horribly unfair that Dennis Mayer had slotted right back into society as easy as a hook through a fish’s mouth. She clicked off her computer, stood up and walked out of reception and back into her house. Her mother was seated in front of the television sipping a cup of tea, her face wan and unreadable.

If she could remember anything, anything at all, what would she say now?

It didn’t matter. She certainly had no intention of asking her. Why bring back the horror when it would all blow over soon enough? In the meantime, she had other things to worry about . . . like starting her new job that day. Mark Crawford certainly hadn’t given her much time to prepare herself. At the very least she would have liked to brush up on what she knew about alcoholism. But her professional capacity was the least of her problems.

What of the kiss they had shared? The confidences he’d trusted her with? The horrible words he’d overheard her say to Will?

She felt terrible after the way they’d left things.

Too much had passed between them to just ignore it. They needed to talk about it all. Should she bring it up at the office? Wait till after work? It would be awkward being around him with all that hanging over her head. Inwardly, she groaned. If she hadn’t been so distracted by Zara’s revelations last night she might have called him this morning.

She needn’t have worried, however, because when she turned up at four pm at Barnes Inc he wasn’t there. The receptionist Ann took her to see Will, who apparently had been briefed on what to do with her.

‘Hey!’ His greeting was friendly enough and much less confrontational than anything from Mark would have been. It was unfathomable that she should feel pique instead of relief.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Er . . . good.’ She must have been frowning because he grinned knowingly.

‘Wondering why Caesar isn’t here to greet you?’

Is it that obvious?

‘The truth is,’ Will broke her thoughts, ‘he doesn’t talk to new recruits for a few weeks.’

Of course.

‘Let me guess,’ she demanded, ‘because he doesn’t want to answer silly questions.’

‘Sort of.’

She couldn’t stop the rebellious retort. ‘What if I demand to see him?’

‘You can’t.’ Will sighed. ‘He’s out of town. Won’t be back for a week.’

She stared in amazement. ‘What? When did he leave?’

‘This morning.’

Wow. That was a slap in the face if ever there was one. After everything they’d been through together yesterday, gone without so much as a goodbye. Was she making too much of it? Or did she just get snubbed?

‘He did leave strict instructions on how you were to be received, though,’ Will informed her.

‘How kind of him.’

Turned out they
were
rather strict instructions. Her office was located in a different donga from the main office. It was open plan but at one end there was an enclosed meeting room. Apparently, this was to be her working space. Here, she would be able to have some privacy if she was in a meeting with one of the men. They had given her a computer and a filing cabinet. Will told her that the HR manager would come to see her shortly about PPE and an induction.

‘You probably won’t need to go onto the wharf. But we thought we’d give you one just in case,’ Will explained.

Caesar wanted her to work Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from four to six o’clock. And for most of that she’d be just talking to the men. In fact, he wanted her to screen everyone on the job as a first pass. All employees had been instructed to book an appointment with her. She was going to have a rather busy couple of months building a file for everyone in the office. None of this was disagreeable to her. It just might have been nice if he’d told her all this himself.

She went home that evening feeling strangely bereft.

Why do I even care? It’s not like we’re friends. It’s not like he’s ever used common courtesy with me before. Why should it be different just because we’ve kissed?

In the days that followed she began to worry less about him and more about the men in her care. She had seen only three of them so far but there was a lot there when you dug deep. Alcohol abuse for a lot of these workers was only a symptom that hid so much more.

One man felt so helpless being away from his family. He had a son with autism and it was killing him not being able to be there to help his wife on a daily basis. Another man had a teenage daughter who he felt had gone off the rails. Apparently, she was doing drugs and he blamed his own absence for that.

There was a lot she could do here and she even began to feel some gratitude towards Mark for having given her the job. In fact, the more she thought about her absent boss, the more she thought of him as ‘Caesar’. They had a business relationship and she shouldn’t have built it up to be something more. She should just stick to being his landlady and his employee rather than trying to get emotionally involved. Especially when she should be focusing more on her sister right now.

Zara’s confession about the letter had really rocked the ground under her feet. For the first time, she realised how little she knew about what actually went on in her sister’s head. She really should be paying more attention to her.

Emily caught her reflecting guiltily on it when she dropped by her office close to knock-off time on Wednesday.

‘Hey, you, everything all right?’

‘Sure.’ Charlotte sat up straight, ironing out the creases on her face. Emily wasn’t fooled.

‘You’ve been rather quiet lately.’

‘Have I?’

‘Guess it kind of sucks when the only counsellor in town is yourself,’ Emily remarked shrewdly.

‘Very funny,’ Charlotte threw at her. ‘If you must know, I’m just worried about Zara.’

‘Still mad about the party?’

Charlotte sighed. ‘If only.’ That particular issue seemed light years in the past. ‘A little more serious than that, actually. She’s recently made contact with her biological father.’

‘The guy you don’t like.’

‘To honest, I’ve never met him,’ she admitted. ‘But I just don’t want him in our lives. He’s a criminal.’