Through the Cracks (25 page)

A
couple of days later Nathan remembered the poster he’d stashed under the car seat. With everything that had happened it had slipped his mind. Tamara was outside stacking firewood, dressed in a grey jumper and bright pink pyjama bottoms, slippers on her feet. She’d been allowed the day off school, but had a list of jobs to do instead. Morning sun covered the ground. It hadn’t warmed the air. Tamara stopped stacking when Nathan appeared outside and walked across to the car.

Nathan felt under the seat. Took the poster out. He put it under the flap of his duffel coat. The sound of a helicopter drifted in. Tamara didn’t look up. Nathan didn’t either. They craned to see down the driveway towards the gates. If the choppers were up it meant the media vans weren’t far away. Sure enough, Channel 7 was parking by the letterbox.

Nathan ducked inside, walked fast into the kitchen.

His dad was on the phone to Sarina. ‘Hasn’t the university got security? Ask for their names . . .’

Nathan veered down the hallway, a light jog into his room.

He shut the door.

A problem. The only place for January was on the back of the door. Where else? She had to be up. It was like the photo of Billy on the corkboard; Nathan’s room needed colour, spark and energy. January had as much life in her as Billy. The difficulty being, though, that Nathan’s mum came in and closed the door when she vacuumed. If not for that, he’d be the only one who ever saw the back of his bedroom door.

Nathan took the roll of sticky tape from his desk drawer. Regardless, he had to see what she looked like up there, even if she had to come back down.

Nathan took the time to get her straight. A faint scent of Scotty’s house permeated the glossy paper. He noticed that the detailing on the car
was
creative. Easy to see why Scotty liked it. January was – no need to say it really – beautiful. Nathan backed up and stood looking at her from the best distance. He resolved to leave her up until tomorrow. His mum was busy with everything, unlikely to give the place a clean for a little while.

Tamara had come in from stacking wood. She’d tracked in dirt. Nathan’s dad hung up the phone.

‘Tamara, wipe your bloody feet.’

‘You’re honestly yelling at me right now?’

‘William’s mum is on the TV,’ Nathan’s mum called from the lounge room.

They went through.

The media called her Mrs Benson. She was out the front of her house. It was a weatherboard place, with a steep driveway. The green car was parked under the carport. Lace curtains, a tidy garden, but not too neat. The lawn needed a mow. Gerard was standing by Mrs Benson’s shoulder. Billy’s little brother was in a pram. He had a blue bonnet on. The footage showed the crowd of reporters on the nature strip. Gerard singled out which reporter could ask the first question. Mrs Benson’s hair had been blow-waved. She was wearing high heels. She touched the corners of her mouth, checking her fingers for lipstick. Nathan’s mum raised her eyebrows at Nathan’s dad. He gave her a little frown and a small shake of his head. Mrs Benson did seem to be taking it all very well, though. She used the words
I
and
me
and
my
a lot. She talked about the threats
she’d
received, the suspicions
she’d
always held, the trust they’d broken in
her
.

‘My son was betrayed. He suffered at the hands of those men. I sent my son in good faith to the Mission. My faith is absolutely shattered.’

Nathan wondered if Gerard had told Mrs Benson to deliberately avoid using Billy’s name. Maybe all she was doing was shifting attention from him. She was better able to cope with it. Nathan sensed that Billy was in the house, not watching, turned away.

Since seeing him again, Nathan felt as though he could feel his friend, able to tap into Billy’s heart and mind. Maybe it was because they’d been in the house together, or because of the week of escape they’d shared, or because Nathan could imagine the dark compressed memories in Billy’s head, the squeeze of confusion and pain in his chest. Whatever it was, Nathan knew he had access to his friend despite their physical distance. What Nathan felt was that Billy had gone quiet. Motionless inside. Years of being strong, being fierce, had come about through winding the cogs inside him, up and up, faster and faster, tighter and tighter, louder . . . Now Billy had wound down. No one could do what he’d done forever. No one could fight that hard and that long and not reach a point of stopping. He’d wind back up eventually. It was perhaps not even up to Billy how much time that would take. For now, he was hushed. In Nathan’s mind Billy was the tiger, resting on his side, tail winding, head up, watching, out of the glare of the sun and in the cool shade of a tree.

The news report switched to footage of a church. The doors were closed. A notice taped to them.

Nathan’s mum turned the sound down.

Above the house a helicopter circled.

‘They’re not allowed that close.’

‘I’ll ring Gerard.’

‘Why are they even here? Why can’t they leave us alone?’

Tamara pointed at Nathan’s shoes. ‘It’s his fault; it’s him.’

Nathan looked down at his feet. The soles of his sneakers were dirty.

‘Don’t say that, Tamara, please. The floor doesn’t matter.’

‘Not now it doesn’t matter. If it’s his shoes it’s fine. It’s all the way down the hallway. I got yelled at, it wasn’t even me.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘And it wouldn’t be if I’d done it.’

‘We’ll leave it to dry,’ Nathan’s mum said, ‘it’ll vacuum up.’

Vacuum. Nathan could hardly believe it. Fate, something like that, was telling him to take the poster down, telling him he should have never put it up.

‘I don’t get you two,’ Tamara said.

‘We struggle to get you.’

‘I think it’s wrong the way you —’

‘We don’t care what you think.’

‘Oh my god.’

‘That’s enough. Your mother didn’t mean it. It’s hard when the media is here.’

The carpet was cream coloured. Nathan took off his shoes and carried them to his room. Dirty footprints led all the way to his door, continued as scuffs within his room.

Down in the lounge room the arguing got worse. His mum’s voice was rising. Tamara began to shout.

‘Someone has to explain things to him! Someone has to tell him he has to say
something
sometimes
! You have to tell him when he’s doing something wrong. Sarina thinks the same thing. You two are turning him into a mental case because of the way you treat him like a mental.’

‘Don’t say that!’ Nathan’s mum screamed.

Nathan’s father came into his bedroom. He shut the door.

The one time Nathan needed for him not to do that. January was right there. Naked. On a car. Spanner between her breasts.

‘That was always going to happen,’ Nathan’s dad said. He motioned behind him. Thankfully didn’t look behind him. ‘It’s not you. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just everything.’

Nathan nodded. He felt himself sway back and forth with the action. Dared not blink. Tears would spill.

‘Are you okay?’

No matter what Nathan said or did, his father was going to see the poster. If he asked his dad to go, he’d turn around and see it, if he didn’t ask him to go, he’d eventually turn around and see it anyway. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. It shouldn’t feel scary. But it did. Nathan’s pulse was racing, fear was building, terror nipping, no amount of deep breathing was slowing it . . . His head knew his father wasn’t going to hit him. His body wasn’t listening.

The door swung open and his mum came in, Tamara too. The door flung back, hit the wall, swung forward again. Halfway closed. January was there again.

‘Pauline, no, not now.’

‘Apologise to your brother.’

‘What for?’

‘Tamara, apologise.’

‘No!’

‘Mitch, I can’t deal with her.’

‘Tamara, go to your room.’

‘You guys went mental at
me
!’

‘Stop saying that word. Say it again and I swear I’ll hit you!’

‘
Pauline!
’

She covered her mouth. Tamara spun around and reached for the door, grabbed the handle, saw the poster, halted.

She straightened her shoulders, leaned her head to the side. Tamara looked over her shoulder, clamped her teeth on her bottom lip. She grinned at Nathan. He held his sister’s gaze, saw her amusement. She strolled out of the room, pulling the door partway closed behind her as she went.

‘I bet he’s allowed to keep
that
too,’ she said from the hallway.

His mum and dad saw January.

They stood there in silence, staring at her.

‘This is what you took from Scotty’s?’ his father said.

Crouch, a part of Nathan was shouting, cover your head, protect your face, curl into a ball. Another part of him, a different voice, screamed hit, fight, stop this, punch it away. Nathan was caught between those impulses. He felt like a flattened piece of nothing in between them. He barely managed to whisper, ‘Yes.’

Nathan’s parents were smiling. His dad was crying, happy tears.

‘All I ever wanted was you home walking mud through the house, putting up posters in your bedroom, annoying your sisters. I didn’t dare believe it would happen. But look at you. You take my breath away, son. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of you. You don’t know how happy you make me, how happy you make us.’

It was then for Nathan, months after leaving, days in the sun, safe night after safe night, good meal after good meal, baths, warm clothes, shoes on his feet, trips in cars, phones ringing, doors unlocked, paddocks, sky, clean air, kindness, but only then, right then, that Nathan felt free enough to let go. It wasn’t until he was free that he could let himself feel how frightened he had been. Banked up, the feelings released as a torrent. They flooded over him. He heard himself cry out. The water came and came, no time to brace for it, no warning of its strength. It pushed him. He had to reach out. He had to take hold of something, to stop from being swept away. He felt his mother’s hands, felt his father pull him in. The river water wouldn’t stop. Nathan couldn’t breathe in it. It was like drowning. He could feel himself going under. His parents had him, though. They’d waded in, long ago; they’d been there since that day at the market, never left the stream, there for when he surfaced. They weren’t going to let him go. They held him up.

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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2014

Text copyright © Honey Brown, 2014

The moral right of the author has been asserted

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Cover photograph by Mohamad Itani / Trevillion Images

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ISBN: 978-1-74253-834-1

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