Chapter Thirteen

Hannah feels unsettled after speaking to Marnie, like she is jumping out of her skin. Back home, she hides herself in her old room, craving the privacy of a shut door, and sits on the bed with her back against the headrest. With each blink, she sees another image in her mind’s eye: Alice crying, Marnie with her shorn head, a faceless old man with too-long fingers, Alice with a black eye, Alice and an older woman whose face changes into teachers from Hannah’s memory. Why did she not know that Alice was potentially being groomed by a teacher? What else did Alice keep from her?

She finds herself tracking down Doug on Facebook and recognises him from the press conferences. Back then, his face was twisted in pain as he cried and begged anyone with information to come forward. She can’t help opening the Messenger app, can’t help typing, can’t help sending, I was Alice’s best friend in high school. Why didn’t you come back when she went missing? Didn’t you care? Why did you tell her she couldn’t stay with you when she asked? Why didn’t you help her?

She doesn’t expect an answer, but she gets one an hour later, a one-liner: please don’t contact me or my family bringing up upsetting things. She’s furious, because Alice was his family too, wasn’t she? But when Hannah goes to reply, he has blocked her. She slams her laptop closed with the rage she wishes she could direct at Doug.

Next she goes to her diaries, skipping through entries to see if there is any hint as to who that teacher might have been.

– so annoyed, I really wanted to go after school to the beach, get some food, hang with Alice. I feel like she’s been avoiding me? She’s never around anymore, and I don’t even know why or if I’ve annoyed her. Why not just tell me instead of being weird?? Anyway so I found her after school just sitting on the steps outside instead of heading to the bus and I was like, let’s go to the beach, and she said no! I was asking her why, and she was being super weird, like talking about how she has homework. When have we ever cared about homework? WTF. So I asked her why she wasn’t heading home then, and she said her mum was picking her up. WTF. Her mum doesn’t drive! I said I’d wait with her and she was all weird and said I should just go home. So I did, because if she doesn’t want me around FINE, I don’t even care. I bet she has a secret boyfriend or something, but, okay no offence, who at our school would date Alice?? None of the boys like her. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Whatever. Stop thinking about Alice, grrrrr.

Hannah closes the diary. Stop thinking about Alice.

Easier said than done, Hannah figures – and that’s when she decides she is going to get drunk.

***

Jamie seems surprised but happy when Hannah announces that she’s going for drinks with old acquaintances from her teenage years.

‘I don’t remember you hanging out with Siobhan in high school,’ Jamie muses, ‘but I’m glad you’ve reconnected. I was worried you’d be cooped up at home the whole time you’re here. It’ll be good for you to get out and about! Do you know where you’re heading?’

Hannah knows only that she is to be at Sammy’s house at 7.30 p.m., far too late to start drinking when thoughts of Alice crowd her mind. She has therefore already been to the liquor store and filled the drink bottle she is swigging from with white wine. It’s only four-thirty in the afternoon.

‘Not really,’ she tells Jamie.

‘Oooh, and what will you wear?’ Jamie looks excited. ‘Did you bring any nice clothes from Melbourne?’

Hannah is currently wearing jeans, boots and a black long-sleeved shirt. She has no plans to change. ‘I’ll figure something out.’ To avoid further questions she wanders to the back porch, taking large gulps from her drink bottle as she goes.

Siobhan has offered to pick her up and take her to Sammy’s. By the time Siobhan swings by, Hannah has finished off most of the bottle of wine, has a nice buzz going on, can’t remember when she last ate and feels disconnected from her body.

Siobhan greets her – ‘Oh! You look … um. Are you ready to go?’ – introduces the man driving the car as her husband – ‘Do you remember Brandon from high school?’– asks a few more times if Hannah is ready to go, then finally relents and lets her into the car.

Siobhan is dressed in skinny jeans and a spangly top, her eyelids adorned with sweeps of glitter and her cheeks rouged to high heaven. Her hair is beautifully curled and coiffed, and she’s had her nails done. She seems disappointed in Hannah’s lack of effort, but the wonderful wine Hannah has ingested ensures she couldn’t care less about this.

Sammy lives in a display home with closed doors that hide the messy reality of having two toddlers. As the other women knock back a cocktail punch in the lounge, Hannah enjoys wandering the house and peeking into the underbelly Sammy has tried to conceal.

The other women greeted her with varying degrees of recognition and a few raised eyebrows. Their introductions came in a stream – Alana, Talea, Cassie, Liz – and Hannah barely keeps track of them all. They’re all dressed up in heels and dresses or nice tops, and they spent a good ten minutes cooing over one another in the ritualistic greeting performed by tipsy women.

When Hannah’s snooping ends, she tucks herself into a couch corner next to the punch and refills her cup each time it empties. The world has been muted and blurred, and her head swims gloriously. She has a pleasant time drifting in and out of conversations, listening to the flurry of voices mixing with a boppy playlist, and responding whenever a woman occasionally tries to talk to her.

‘So what do you do in Melbourne?’ asks Alana, whose slicked-back ponytail is high atop her head.

‘I’m studying architecture,’ Hannah invents. ‘And I work for an interior-decorating company.’

‘That’s so cool!’ Alana gasps.

Hannah tells Liz she’s interning at a news network and studying journalism. To Sammy she says she’s a makeup artist – and she isn’t sure if she gets away with that one. But she enjoys creating different versions of herself, like she is crafting tiny Hannah-dolls and playing out their lives for these women. She is everyone and anything but herself.

Around nine-thirty, Sammy’s husband drives them to a small bar in the next town over. Hannah squeezes into the back seat next to Talea and tells her she’s a bank teller in Melbourne. Talea says, ‘I thought you were in public relations …?’ and Hannah can’t stop laughing. The woman doesn’t talk to her again.

The bar is surprisingly modern, lit in orange and red, and cramped in that endearing way of dive bars. Thumping music mingles with the incessant shake of a cocktail mixer. The air smells like sweat, beer and vapes, and for a moment Hannah feels like she’s back in Melbourne, the familiarity steadying her enough that the first thing she orders is a water.

And then Liz is next to her, ordering three espresso martinis and saying, ‘Oh my god, I just remembered – you were friends with that Alice girl, right, the one who went missing? My god, did they ever find her?’

Hannah finishes her water in three gulps. She turns to the woman. ‘Want to do shots?’ she says, then orders two and a bottle of beer without checking if Liz agrees.

As soon as they’re in front of her, Hannah knocks back one of the shots. The vodka burns down her throat, there’s a wave of nausea, then the feeling fades and her hands are tingling. She walks off with her stubby clutched to her chest, leaving the remaining shot and Liz behind. Finding the booth where the other women are settled, she slots herself into the end.

The woman next to her … Hannah remembers her name from the earlier introductions: Cassie. Cassie with the tight black curls, blunt fringe and nose ring, her blazer sleeves rolled up to reveal a spiral of tattoos leading up her arms.

‘You don’t look like you belong here,’ Hannah says.

Cassie also has a beer on the table in front of her. She has barely drunk any of it, while Hannah has already knocked back half of hers. At Hannah’s question, Cassie’s face becomes coolly guarded. ‘I don’t …?’

Hannah drunkenly realises she might have made a misstep. ‘No, I mean … you don’t have a –’ she searches, and it feels like her brain is a house with flickering power, and she must grope in darkness with sporadic flashes of light to find coherent thoughts ‘– a beach vibe.’

The guardedness gives way, somewhat, to amusement. ‘What vibe do I have then?’

Hannah wrinkles her nose. ‘Barista,’ she settles on.

‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.’ Cassie takes a measured sip of her beer. ‘For the record, I’m an accountant. But yes, I live in Brisbane. I’m just visiting. I did grow up here, though. You clearly don’t remember me from high school then?’

Hannah squints, leaning in close to study Cassie’s face. ‘Nope,’ she declares.

‘Fair.’ Cassie, to her credit, does not lean back, and Hannah likes that she is unruffled, cool as a cucumber. ‘I used to bleach my hair to try and be blonde – which, you can imagine, was a tragic disaster. Definitely no barista vibes back then.’

Hannah pulls away, takes a drink and thinks she might need another soon. Did she just buy this one? Time is slipping and sliding like goop between her fingers. ‘D’you remember me from then?’

‘Sure. You were a regular goth back then. I’m glad you’ve lost the eyeliner. No offence, but you were terrible at applying it.’

‘That was the point.’ Hannah frowns. ‘The point was to be bad. It was anarchy.’

‘Oh, my bad.’ Cassie chuckles. ‘I didn’t realise it was a political statement.’

‘D’you want shots?’ Hannah lifts her beer up, studies the bottle and tries to gauge how much is left. Maybe she’ll order two next.

‘No thanks, I’m driving home. I bet one of the others would be keen, though.’

Hannah looks across the table. Siobhan is giggling with Alana. Sammy, Talea and Liz are now standing beside the booth, talking to two men in button-ups. There’s enough flirtatious giggling going on to indicate it really is a proper girls’ night out.

‘No thanks,’ Hannah says, pulling a face. ‘I’d rather do shots on my own.’ She finishes her beer and looks at Cassie. ‘Are you really friends with these girls?’

Cassie seems surprised. ‘Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘Because –’ Hannah gestures, searching in the dark room of her mind ‘– because, you know, you’re … You seem different to them. They’re all, you know, kids and makeup and Taylor Swift and romance novels. And you’re … barista vibes.’

‘So?’ Cassie picks at the label on her beer. ‘We’re not in high school anymore. We don’t divide into cliques in the real world, or at least we shouldn’t. You just bond with different people.’

‘But these people?’

Frowning, Cassie peels the label half off. ‘You know, having kids and liking makeup and romance novels doesn’t automatically make you a bad person or even a boring person. And besides –’ she lifts the beer to her lips with a shrug ‘– who doesn’t love some T-Swizzle from time to time?’

Hannah feels churlish, like she is being reprimanded, and she dislikes this. Dislikes that Cassie, with her alternative vibes, isn’t joining her in judging these women, isn’t agreeing that they’re shallow and vapid, and is instead turning it on Hannah, making her out to be the bad person. And Hannah is sick of being the bad person. She wants Cassie to like her, because Cassie looks cool. She wants another drink, because her buzz is fading and failing. She wants to be out of her own skin, because right now it isn’t fitting properly; she has stretched and rearranged it too much tonight, performing for other people, playing different Hannahs.

‘I’m gonna dance,’ she announces, and she leaves the table and trips her way towards the huddle of people dancing.

They are all towards the back of the bar, near the exit into the smoker’s area. It’s a compact open space where a pool table might have once sat, and perhaps does during the week when the vibes are more lowkey. Hannah loves that when people go out at night they always form dancefloors, even when there’s no real space, even when it’s not particularly practical, because drunk people insist on being able to move. She melts into the centre of the crowd.

The next hour passes by in a blur. Her body bumps and crashes into others, their faces twirling across her vision, hands brushing across her skin. There’s the burn of more shots, the grind of a faceless man at her back.

Another man asks her if she wants to go out for a smoke, and she doesn’t smoke but agrees anyway, stumbling into the fresh air with him. The area is bricked ground, enclosed by a wooden fence draped in fairy-lights, and large enough for two tables and accompanying bench-seats. There aren’t many other people outside, most of them standing, and the air is hazy with smoke. The man leads her towards the table at the back, hands her a cigarette, and helps her fumbling fingers navigate the lighter.

On the first inhale, her stomach roils and bile floods her mouth, her head spinning. She is sure, for an instant, that she will throw up. But the feeling passes, and the man hasn’t noticed. Her mouth tastes dry and ashy, but she persists in trying to take another drag. There is something about the way her body reacts, with such revulsion, that is addictive.

‘So, you want to head back to mine, maybe …?’

Hannah focuses on the man, and his eyes are heavily bloodshot, body swaying, sweat staining his armpits and beading across his forehead. She is feeling reckless, self-destructive – she wants to do things that push her out of her body, force her into that dissociative state that she used to slip into so easily at the library when she was a teenager. She wants to drift away, let her body be taken over and invaded.

‘Hannah?’ a voice asks.

Hannah turns and sees Cassie making her way from the smoker section entrance, beelining for their table at the back. While Hannah can feel sweat gripping her clothes to her body, which feels dishevelled and grubby, Cassie is still cool, calm and collected.

‘Everything okay here?’ Cassie asks, looking between Hannah and the man.

Hannah looks back at him – and with Cassie’s presence, with her judgement, she sees him more clearly. He looks at least fifteen years older than her, and her body reacts the same as it did to the cigarette at the thought of sleeping with this man.

She thinks of Marnie, and then, almost involuntarily, of little Marnie, of old men and bodies pressed atop tiny figures, and suddenly she has to turn her head and gag.

‘Jesus,’ the man says and backs away.

‘I’ll take it from here,’ Cassie tells him.

She guides Hannah to sit at the wooden bench next to the table, then slides in next to her. The cigarette is still burning between her fingers, and ash drifts in flecks across her jeans.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Cassie says.

‘I don’t.’ Her lips, she notes, are feeling slightly numb, her tongue large and unwieldy in her mouth.

‘Are you feeling okay? You want me to get some water?’

Hannah shakes her head. She doesn’t want Cassie to leave, because her presence is strangely grounding.

Taking another drag of the cigarette, because it is there, Hannah coughs, then retches again.

This time Cassie eases it from her fingers and stubs it into the ashtray. ‘How about we give the cigarettes a rest, yeah?’

An exhaustion creeps into Hannah’s limbs, weighing her down. Her head feels cement-like, teetering on her shoulders and pulling her body from side to side.

‘The other girls are getting ready to head off – bar’s closing at midnight,’ Cassie says. ‘Dave is about five minutes away to drive us back into town.’

‘Dave?’ Hannah mumbles, as she leans her elbows on the table and rests her head on her hands.

‘Sammy’s husband …?’ Cassie says, and she lightly pats Hannah’s shoulder. ‘You sure you’re okay? I bet some water would go down a treat right about now.’

‘M’fine. I’m not even that drunk.’

‘Of course not. After all, most sober non-smokers decide on a whim to take up smoking one night out the back of a bar.’

Hannah closes her eyes just to rest them.

Cassie’s touch to her shoulder forces them back open. ‘Hannah, don’t go to sleep just yet.’

Hannah blows out a long, frustrated sigh. ‘Fuck!’ She sits back in the chair. ‘Fuck Hannah. Fuck her. I don’t want to be her tonight. Fuck Hannah.’

‘Hannah doesn’t seem so bad to me,’ Cassie says. ‘Maybe just a little drunk is all.’

‘No.’ Hannah shakes her head, and the world spins. ‘She sucks.’

Cassie chuckles. ‘Okay, if you say so. You want to be called something else then? How about another H name to make it easier?’ She thinks for a moment. ‘What about Holly?’

Hannah feels lost; she had been busy recovering from her head shake. ‘Huh?’

‘Holly – I’ll call you Holly if you don’t want to be Hannah.’

She feels herself nod sagely. ‘Yes. Yes, good.’

Hannah is looking at Cassie. Cassie is looking at her. They are very close, and Hannah thinks Cassie has lovely brown eyes and wonders if she should tell her this.

‘Hot Bitch Holly,’ Cassie says. She’s definitely enjoying herself, smiling.

‘I’m a hot bitch …?’

‘Of course.’

They are very close. Hannah can’t remember if she has told Cassie about her eyes yet. She should – or should she kiss her? Is Cassie leaning in for a kiss?

‘Girls! Hey, you two, ride’s here!’

It’s Siobhan, and Cassie is taking Hannah’s arm, helping her up. ‘That’s our cue,’ she says – and the moment, if there had been one, has passed.

***

Hannah finds a corner of the car to huddle into, tucked away against the door with the window open so the cold air can snatch the growing nausea from her mouth. The other women complain about the cold, Hannah ignores them, and then someone puts on Taylor Swift, and Hannah closes her eyes and wishes she could sleep.

At Sammy’s, a convoy of husbands and boyfriends and fiancés have congregated to collect their partners. Hannah stands, swaying, then Cassie offers her a lift back home and leads her to a tiny dark green Hyundai Getz. Inside it smells like incense, and there is a Funko Pop! of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons Blu-Tacked onto the dashboard.

There are plastic bags of old clothes on the back seat, and Cassie grimaces when she sees Hannah looking. ‘Every day I tell myself I’ll drop them at the op shop,’ she explains, ‘and every day I forget. Now –’ she has plugged her phone into the aux cord ‘– what’s your address?’

Hannah tells her, she enters it, and then she cues up some appropriately indie music. She winds down the windows without Hannah having to ask, and they start the ten-minute drive to Jamie’s house. Cassie is quiet for the first few minutes, and Hannah uses the time to cling to some stability as her head and stomach spin.

‘You know, I really do remember you from high school,’ Cassie says. ‘I was always envious of you, actually.’

Hannah bobs her head to show she is listening.

‘Like, you clearly gave zero shits. It was pretty admirable – very intimidating. Most of us were terrified of you.’

Hannah thinks her sixteen-year-old self would have liked that.

‘I always thought …’ A considered pause. ‘Well, that it was odd that Alice Montgomery was your best friend.’

Closing her eyes, Hannah turns her head away. There it is, she thinks. Alice, Alice, Alice. Always and forever, Alice.

‘Because she was so shy and quiet,’ Cassie says. ‘But maybe that’s why she was drawn to you, I guess. I know she had a tough home life.’

Marnie. Hannah swallows. The old man. Marnie’s boyfriend Josh. Skin mottled with bruises, rotting from the inside out, a deep black quiet decay of badness bubbling inside.

Opening her eyes, Hannah checks the GPS, squints to focus. Just two minutes away.

‘Can we not talk about Alice?’ she says, her words thick.

‘Oh, right.’ Cassie glances at her, then back at the road. ‘Sorry. I didn’t think. I bet that was tough for you. You must miss her.’

Hannah swallows, and her saliva feels viscous going down her throat. ‘Feel sick,’ she mutters.

‘Mmm?’ Cassie hasn’t heard. ‘You okay?’

Hannah has pressed her lips shut. If she opens them, maybe she’ll vomit. Maybe the vomit will be black. Maybe she’s rotten inside too.

They turn down her street.

‘Anyway,’ Cassie says, ‘it was really good to see you tonight. I’m around town for a bit, and Siobhan said you were here for a while. Maybe we can catch up again sometime …?’

They have arrived at the house. Hannah wants to tell Cassie that more than anything she would like to catch up again – she wants to, but the blackness is bubbling at the back of her throat.

Cassie peers past her at the house. Jamie has left a porch light on, and a light in the lounge. ‘Think your mum is still up. I’ve always liked your mum. We both worked a few weekend shifts at the IGA together. She was always so nice.’

Hannah breathes through her nose. Thinks she might be able to speak now.

‘I was … You know, I know you probably get this a lot –’ Cassie is still looking at the house ‘– but I’m … I’m really sorry about what happened with your dad. I just – my aunt, she was also –’

Hannah’s chest seizes unexpectedly. Her mouth is wrenched open, and the words tumble out, aggressive, hard, desperate, automatic: ‘Fuck you.’ Because no, no, no, not her dad, not now, we don’t talk about him, how dare you talk about him –

Cassie looks stunned. ‘What?’

Hannah pulls the door open, tumbles from the car, staggers down the path. Her face is wet, and a weird noise pulls itself from inside her, something like a howl, and it only breaks when she reaches her front door and vomits all over the welcome mat.