Sydney, 1997
It must have rained all night. Isla stands on the deck with her coffee. A breeze blows in from the ocean, sending a shiver through next door’s eucalyptus. The sun is low behind the tea trees. Winter’s coming. It’s beautiful, she realizes. Despite the drab remains of the party, the damp bunting, and the upturned ice bucket, it’s a beautiful day.
“Coffee?”
Isla turns to see her dad holding the coffee jug, offering it up to her. He looks like death. His blue eyes are ghostly pale against his gray skin.
“Thanks.” She stands at the door and takes a mug from him. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Might as well get to work.”
He puts the radio on and sips his coffee. His singlet hangs loosely from his collarbones. She wants to ask him when he started to look so ill. If he’s scared since the police called to see him. If he’s told her everything.
“I’ll make some breakfast,” she says instead.
Joe nods, distracted by the radio. “Not for me, thanks, love. I’ll get something later.”
She steps into the kitchen. A government minister is being interviewed on the radio. It’s the same story she’s been hearing since she arrived: Prime Minister John Howard won’t apologize to Aboriginal people for the forced removal of their children. People back then thought they were doing the right thing, the minister says. It was a different time.
“Bet this didn’t make the news in England,” Joe says.
“No. You wouldn’t know any of this was going on.”
“Typical.”
“There’s been an election in the UK, to be fair. A new government.”
“That’s right.” He snorts. “Cool Britannia. Not so cool from where I’m standing.”
They sip their coffee and listen. It wouldn’t hurt to say sorry, the interviewer says.
“Tell Tony Blair to come here and apologize.” Joe glares at the radio. “Tell him we’re the bloody great continent with the kangaroos and the boomerangs.”
It would be healing, says the interviewer.
“It all comes back to the British.” He points a finger at nothing in particular. “Everywhere you look, in this country and in most of the world. If there’s a conflict, you can bet it dates back to a time when the British charged in and put their flag in it.”
Isla knows better than to defend the British from her British father. He’s never come to terms with her moving to England, the country he left. She finds some eggs and cracks them into a bowl.
“Sooner we become a republic, the better,” Joe says.
It was a long time ago, the minister says, repeating himself. Most Australians were unaware this was going on.
Joe puts his coffee down and lights a cigarette. “Wasn’t that long ago,” he says. “I remember it.”
“Do you?”
“That bastard next door was up to his neck in it.”
Isla pours the eggs into a pan. She looks up at her dad, who is staring out at next door’s yard. “Dave Taylor? He’s an architect, isn’t he?”
Joe keeps his voice low. “Steve Mallory,” he says.
She lifts the edges of the omelet with a spatula. Her movements feel slow and heavy. “Mandy’s husband?”
He nods.
A sweat springs up on her forehead. She flips the omelet, although her appetite is gone.
“He was a policeman,” Joe says.
“Did he drive a truck? A dark green truck. Always dirty.”
“That’s right. You remember that?”
The sweat spreads across her body. “I was scared of him.”
“Kids can tell when someone’s no good.” Joe rests his cigarette in the ashtray and drains his coffee. “He put on a good show, mind you. People liked him ’round here.”
“Did you?”
“No. Can’t say I did.”
“How did you stand by and let it happen?”
He frowns. “What d’you mean?”
“If you knew what he was doing. Taking kids away. Couldn’t you have done something?”
Joe stops with his cigarette halfway to his mouth. He takes a while to reply. “It wasn’t that easy.”
“Did you try?”
“I did,” he says. “It didn’t go anywhere. I should have pushed it harder, in hindsight.”
Isla slides her omelet onto a plate and sits down. Steve Mallory is a throb behind her eyes, threatening to surface. She can see the clean, orderly rooms that he lived in next door. The smell of ironing and carbolic soap. Mandy standing at the window, watching him park his truck, her shoulders tense.
She picks up her fork. “So nobody did anything. You let it go on right under your noses, for years.”
“Steve was a copper, love. He was on the right side of the law.”
“All those families lost their kids.”
He is staring intently at his cigarette. “I didn’t know how bad it was at the time.”
“What did Mandy think of it?”
“I don’t know.” He turns from her and looks out at the yard. “If she talked about it, I don’t remember. Long time ago.”
Isla pushes her plate aside and stands beside him at the back door. The sun has risen over the tips of the tea trees, brightening the grass.
“How can someone be missing for thirty years and no one notice?”
“We thought she’d moved away,” he says, after a pause. “Her and Steve. They sold the house and moved away, down to Victoria, as I recall. Didn’t see any reason to question it.”
She can’t catch his eye. “Wouldn’t that mean Steve was the last one to see her?”
“I’d have thought so.”
“Why do the police think it was you, then?”
He is perfectly still beside her, holding smoke in his mouth. “I guess Steve has a different take on it,” he says, eventually. He puts his cigarette out. The radio is playing music now, something upbeat, and he crosses the room to turn it off.
“Why did nobody report her missing?” Isla stands in the doorframe with the sun at her back. “What about Steve? He was a cop. Why didn’t he organize a search?”
“I don’t know, love. You’d need to ask Steve that question.”
“What about her family?”
“I think she’d lost touch with them.”
“Her dad left her his estate. He must have loved her.”
“I’m sure he did.” Joe’s hands tremble as he pours more coffee from the jug. “Families are complicated, Isla.”
“That’s true.”
Isla turns away so she doesn’t have to watch him mop up the spilled coffee from the counter. The sun has gone in. The wind lifts the bunting around the trestle table.
“You must be counting the days till you can get out of here.”
“No.” She turns back to face him. “I’m glad I’m here, Dad.”
“I’ll be all right, you know.” He rubs at a spot on his singlet where he has dripped coffee. “This will all blow over.”
He finds his cigarettes and puts them in his pocket. Isla hears him move around the house, from the bathroom to the bedroom, and then the room that was Scott’s when he lived at home. Her dad keeps his vodka in there; she found it on her second morning, looking for Scott’s CDs. Three large bottles at the back of a filing cabinet. There will be more, dotted around the house. It’s always been this way, but she is stupidly surprised at how it’s taken its toll on him. She has only just realized this is why he looks unwell, why he trembles and stumbles, why he no longer drives the car. Why he seems defeated.
She tips the last of the coffee into her mug, puts the radio back on, and scrapes her breakfast into the bin.