As the tiny person on the horizon faded from view Vic’s thoughts returned to what to do about his discovery of this person, Jane. His gut reaction said she was Susan but his logical mind just did not know. And, even if it was her, he had a whole lot of conflicting things to resolve.
He did not feel he had the right to drag her back into the awful situation she had been in before she vanished. She had fought so hard to hide the other side of Mark to protect her children and also to protect her own sanity which had started to come apart at the seams as it all unfolded. In one of their nights of loving she had told him she was but seconds away from ending it all when he had arrived in court.
This thought had chilled him to the bone then, and it scared him even more now that he had seen her and her children again. He thought this new apparent demeanour of calm vacancy was not real. It was like that thin layer of ice which forms on frozen water in an Alice Springs winter dawn, but where one knock shatters it into fragments which never reform.
It was not her fault that she had ended up in that impossible situation but the thought that it had almost driven her to take her own life and, but for an almost miraculous intervention, she would have succeeded, was horrific to him. He did not think anyone else knew just how close it had come, she may have told Anne. But fate, or God, or something had intervened to keep her alive then. If it had intervened, yet again, to bring her to safety in this place he would allow nothing to threaten that.
And yet her vanishing had torn a hole through the lives of a whole lot of other people, they all had a raw vein of grief running through them too. It was particularly her family and Anne, but others who knew her too were also in that place, particularly Alan and Sandy who had a great sense of guilt for their own role in bringing her to this. So they deserved some light to come from this, if light there was.
His initial inclination, as her saw her face fade from view, was to just find a way to come back here to work, day after day, month after month. As he saw her time after time he would slowly befriend her and then he would win her confidence, maybe even win her heart anew.
He needed so much to have her back in his life and the thought of trying to woo her and win her, when she knew him not, was hugely appealing. He felt he had been given a chance to start all over again with her, as if they were each discovering the other for the first time. In this vision she was for him alone to know and find.
But now, as these thoughts rolled around, he realized that it was too unfair to deny others the knowledge he held if it could ease their own pain. Still, balanced against that, and even more important, was the imperative of protecting her from the hostile outside world which had almost destroyed her once before. Even if that meant he could see her no more, he would choose that so as not let something bad like that happen again. In the end he just did not know what to do.
As these thoughts kept circling around and around inside his head he realized he was approaching Normanton where he had to fuel up for his next leg. He decided to would ring Buck and seek his wise counsel; he was the best friend he had left. He should be at home today at lunch time, it was Sunday after all. So, once he had fuelled up, he pulled out his mobile phone. It had reception at the airport.
Julie, Buck’s wife, picked up on the third ring. He heard her holler for Buck to come to the phone after exchanging a few pleasantries. At first Buck was his usual blunt self, “Why are you ringing me on a Sunday at lunch, just when I have gone for a siesta, barely shut my eyes, can’t it wait till you see me next week?”
Vic gave him back, “Now you are turning into a pussy, a big fat pussycat who needs a midday sleep in the sun. Some boss you!”
Then it all came bubbling out in a rush. “Buck, I think I have found her, Susan, up at a blackfella place on Cape York. It looks like her, it sounds like her, but she does not know who I am and I feel like I am just imagining it. But it fits; she had two kids the right age, named David and Anne. She has taken the name Jane Bennet. I could have sworn it was her until I saw the blank look in her eyes and now I really don’t know.”
Buck said, “Whoa there, slow down, too much information all at once. Start again from the beginning.”
So slowly and carefully he told the full story and this time all Buck could say was “Jesus, Well I be fucked.”
Then Buck’s rational brain took over. “Where are you and what are your movements? I think you and I need to get to Darwin pronto and talk to Alan and Sandy. I know they won’t spill the beans and we’ll all need our thinking caps on for this one.”
Vic filled him in on the rest of the details. Buck told him to stand by in Normanton while he sorted out arrangements. Soon Buck had it organized, cover for Vic’s job tomorrow at Anthony’s Lagoon Station. As he organized this he had Julie on the computer looking up a flight for Vic from Cairns to Darwin. On a second phone Buck confirmed it all with Alan, he and Sandy were available tonight.
Vic could hear Buck talking on the other line, Buck did not tell Alan the content that Vic had relayed, just that something of critical importance about Susan had come up and they all needed to talk tonight.
Soon Vic was on his way for a five hour flight helicopter flight back to Cairns, from where he was booked on a late flight to Darwin this evening. Buck and Julie would take the station plane to Darwin this afternoon. Vic’s flight arrived about nine in the evening and they would all meet soon after at Alan’s flat.
It was after 9:30 that night when Vic arrived and the others were seated out on the verandah around a big table. He was surprised to see three extra people and felt apprehensive at seeing them, Susan’s mother, father and Anne. Alan broached it directly with Vic.
“Mate, I am sorry to put you on the spot like this, but these others are flying out in the morning, returning to the UK after meetings over the last week with the police and coroner. We promised each other to immediately share any leads we get, no matter how small or inconsequential. Plus we all have exactly the same interest, to find Susan and help her anyway we can.
“Buck has been tight lipped about what you know but I can read between the lines and I know it has to be significant. You would not have flown half way across the country and them up from VRD at the drop of a hat, not unless it was really important.
“I don’t want to have to relay what you say, so it just seemed the best solution was for you to tell your story to us all at once. We have already agreed in advance that nothing you say will leave this room and none of us will take any action on it without your agreement.”
Vic felt pressured; he really just wanted a frank one on one chat with Alan and Buck, to toss around what it all meant and what should be done. But he took on board what Alan had said; they all had the same right to know, he could not bear the idea that someone else would have held back from him news this significant.
So he nodded and took a deep breath. Buck and Julie were nodding too.
“I think I saw Susan yesterday and again this morning. But she did not show any sign of knowing me and I really am not sure about it,” he begun.
Vic saw the shocked and dazed looks on people’s faces, struggling to take in this naked fact and make sense of it.
Buck put his hand on Vic’s shoulder. “Mate, you should just start at very beginning and tell it as you saw it, not what you think now.”
Vic nodded and the others nodded. So he began again. He told the story of his week, deciding to leave out the exact location. He told of mustering in Queensland, then about the booking to muster the aboriginal station. He told them about him standing by the yards, thinking he might head away, but how he enjoyed chatting to the local kids; then how they called out, “Miss Bennet, come and see the cattle.”
He told how he looked around to see who this Miss Bennet was and how his heart almost stopped when he looked up and saw someone who looked just like Susan walking towards him. This person was holding a toddler with each hand, a boy and girl who walked at each side of her.
He told of the excruciating moment when he searched her eyes for a sign of recognition and found none. Then he told of the barbeque and the singing in the church, and finally how he showed her the photo and she said it looked like her but it was someone else who was no longer there. He told them how he asked others about her and found out she had first come there around the time Susan vanished and that her children were the right age, sex and names, that her name was Jane Bennet fitting the Mark identity.
He finished by saying. ”My mind says it is Susan, my heart so wants it to be Susan, and yet I really don’t know.
“When I asked Rick, the station manager, about her he said she seemed like someone who was nobody, a person you could look through and see no one there, a person without a soul. I don’t think that is right, but if it is her, she is not the person she used to be. I don’t think she remembers anything from when we knew her before. The minister’s wife, who is her friend, said that once Jane asked her how old own children were when they first walked. She said she would have asked her mother how old she was when she first walked but did not know where her mother was.
“So my best guess it is Susan. But if you go there expecting to find the person you once knew she is no longer there. The best way I can describe her now is she has a calm flat surface, as if she is happy and at peace. But it is like the surface of a frozen pond, a thin shiny layer which covers something else underneath which she cannot see. And, if you look hard, you start to see cracks running through everywhere, just below the surface. It is like, if someone broke the ice on a pond, and smashed it into a hundred pieces. Then the bits of ice refroze and made a new surface, but underneath are all the broken bits. With the cracks running all through it you can no longer see anything reflected in it properly, just mixed up bits. It has shapes that look familiar but with most bits from before jumbled and gone.
“So now there is this person who looks like Susan and who sounds like Susan, but it isn’t really the Susan that any of us knew. And this new Susan is like a piece of ice that is really thin. One tiny knock could break it all apart and then there would be nothing left that we know.
“So, before I tell any of you where she was when I found her, I need you all to promise you won’t rush off to see her and make her try to remember and you will not let anyone else know where she is unless we all agree.”
Vic looked at the stunned faces one by one, all struggling to come to grips with this new information, hope and heartbreak in equal parts. One by one they met his eyes and nodded. So he finished the story with the where.
When he stopped talking Susan’s mother came over and sat by him, taking his hand. Her shoulders were shaking with emotion as she said, “Thank you so much for rushing back to tell us all, it means so much to me that there is hope that my daughter is still alive no matter how broken she may be inside. And not only that, but perhaps we have grand children, a double blessing. I will trust you to tell us when you think it is safe for us to go and see her. When you next see her could you please take a picture of her with her children so that we will have that to remember her by?”
Vic had never really talked to Susan’s mother before apart from the cursory greetings. But now, as she talked earnestly, he could see Susan’s mannerisms and personality in reflection. He felt a flood of warmth for her. He started to talk to her about the children, how the boy had sat on his shoulders and patted his head like a dog, how the lady, Jane, had told him. “David has never willingly gone to another man before.” He told of how David had fallen and cut his lip at the barbeque and how he had picked the boy up and taken out his hanky to dab the blood from his cut, and then, once done, the boy had pushed away his tears and gone back to play. He said how this seemed to have happened in another life and it was hard to believe it was only last night.
Sandy was sitting next to Susan’s mother, talking quietly to Anne. She must have caught the edge of their conversation. Now she turned to Vic and said, “Did you say you have a hanky with the David’s blood on it?”
Vic frowned, needing to think what he had done with it. All his dirty clothes had been put in his bag in his helicopter. Then he had left them at a laundry in Cairns to collect on his return, except the clothes he was wearing now, the same ones he had worn last night. He had figured on buying another set or two of clothes in Darwin tomorrow, before he returned. He felt in his pockets. Sure enough the hanky was there with a small dark spot of blood in one corner.
Sandy reached over and took it, looking closely. “That’s more than enough for what we need,” she said.
Others looked at her, puzzled. They asked, “For what?”
“To know who she is,” Sandy answered. David’s DNA is there, we have both Susan’s and Mark’s on file, and we have Mark’s uncle’s DNA on file too. We could even get yours if we needed,” she said, indicating to Susan’s mother and father.
“So we can match this DNA to any of those other people’s and we will know whether this boy is related. It appears that there is no dispute that he is this woman’s child. So, if his DNA matches our record for Susan, or matches any of the others then we will have confirmation of the identity of the mother as Susan. If it doesn’t we will know it is not her. I am assuming we all really want to know, right?”
Sandy looked from person to person. All thought for a minute and then nodded.
Only Alan shook his head. “We need to think carefully before we go there. If we submit an official sample and it comes back positive, what do we do then and can we withhold the information? Both Sandy and I are officers of the crown. We will be obliged to report our findings and act on them, not to mention that these samples will have to be logged in our database when we seek to match them to Susan’s identity. There are others who will have access to that database. So once this information is in there I am far from sure we can keep this to ourselves.
“If it is Susan I am not sure if it is in her best interests for it to come out so quickly. At the moment all we have in anecdotal information saying this person may be her. This gives me a basis for further investigation but does not oblige me to release information suggesting that it is her. A positive result changes all that.
“If it comes through the NT laboratory system I am far from confident I could keep it hidden, even if I wanted to, or had agreement to do so from my superiors. There have already been several leaks of what was supposed to be confidential information about Susan.
“So I, for one, don’t want to know until it is decided what to do with this information. Don’t forget there is still a warrant for Susan’s arrest from when she disappeared on bail. It was never revoked. It never seemed to matter before, but now I need to work out what to do about that before this knowledge gets outside this room.
“So, at a minimum, I need to talk to the judge and crown prosecutor before we contemplate doing this DNA test. We need to ensure some gung ho officer does not go flying over there to arrest her, or worse for someone to leak it to the media and have a pack of journalists descend on her.
“I think Vic should keep this as his own property for the time being. If there is to be DNA testing for now I think it would be better if it was to match the hanky to a sample from Susan’s parents, only done through a private laboratory and preferably overseas, where they cannot match it to Susan’s sample in our database.
“If it really is her we can soon get an official sample for testing, directly from her, if it is needed.”
Vic took the hanky back, and went to put is in his pocket. Then, as an afterthought, he handed it to Susan’s mother. “Perhaps I can leave this with you for safe keeping,” he said.
She nodded, “Of course. I will ring you and tell you once I know a result. I understand what Alan is saying; that some people are better off not knowing right now. But I and her father need to know. I think you also need to know, even though you need to keep seeing this lady, whoever she is.”
At first Sandy looked chagrined, but then she nodded her agreement.
“I hate to admit to a smarter mind, but Alan is right and testing overseas is a good idea.
“Now, before we get too much further, I have a big pot of dinner in the oven. I think we should all have a plate and a drink to take hope in this momentous occasion. It is the first time I have felt hope in a year and a half. I don’t want to get in front of myself but somehow it all fits,” she said.