Chapter Eighteen

Under any other circumstances, the look on Ginger’s face when she opens her front door would have been comical to Hannah. The woman’s pencilled eyebrows move upwards dramatically, her wrinkled mouth forming a startled, ‘Oh.’

But because Hannah is feeling belligerent that it’s Ginger, of all people, that she needs to butter up, she can do little more than muster the strength for a placating smile.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ginger doesn’t seem placated. ‘Is your mum okay?’

‘Jamie’s fine,’ Hannah replies – even though she hasn’t been home since her meeting with Cassie, and so Jamie could, for all she knows, be lying at the base of the stairs. Hannah is startled by her sudden guilt at not stopping by home first. This, she thinks, is exactly what Ginger does: makes Hannah question everything to do with her relationship with Jamie. ‘I’m actually just wondering if I could chat with you.’

‘What about?’ Ginger doesn’t budge from the doorway to invite Hannah in.

‘It’s just been a while since I’ve been back, and I’m seeing all these old friends … You’ve always had your finger on the pulse of what goes on around here, and I guess I’m looking to catch up on everything and everyone. I’m feeling sort of disconnected, in a way …? Out of the loop.’ She tries for a smile again. ‘Also, you know, we’re both looking after Ja… my mum –’ The term of familial connection and all the associated closeness it implies, Hannah figures, might convince Ginger that she’s being genuine. ‘– but we don’t really … talk. I was thinking, in the interests of making it easier to look after J– Mum, maybe we should, you know, get to know each other more.’

‘What do you really want to talk to me about?’

‘Like I said –’

Ginger sighs a sigh that is at least 80 per cent overemphasised for impact. ‘Okay, Hannah, my coffee is getting cold and this isn’t going anywhere. I’ll see you –’ She steps back from the door to close it.

‘Wait.’ Hannah’s hand slams onto the wood with more force than she intended. ‘Do you know Rachel Olney?’

She has caught Ginger’s attention. ‘Who?’ But the woman heard the name clear enough – Hannah can tell by the way those once drug-dulled eyes grow sharp and intense.

‘Rachel Olney.’ Hannah drops her hand from the door. ‘She was an English teacher at my high school.’

Ginger slowly cocks her head. ‘And why would you want to know more about her?’

Hannah tries to fashion a reason in her head, a story with a structure strong enough to withstand the battering ram that is Ginger.

‘Listen, I wasn’t lying – my coffee is getting cold.’ To Hannah’s surprise, Ginger steps back from the door. ‘Just come in. Stupid standing out here.’ Just like Marnie did when Hannah visited, Ginger wanders inside and leaves Hannah to follow suit.

Hannah hasn’t been inside this house before, she realises, and it isn’t how she pictured it. It looks like Ginger hasn’t changed the décor since her husband left; it looks like the kind of home a young couple in the late 2000s might have created in anticipation of starting a family there. The desire for a home that houses the pitter-patter of tiny feet, the laughter of a unit, is so achingly apparent that Hannah feels almost overwhelmed with sadness as she stands in the hallway. Ginger’s house is a testament to the life she wanted, frozen in a moment of hope.

When Hannah walks into the lounge room, Ginger is sitting on an old purple suede five-seater couch that makes her seem shrunken. Hannah sits in a recliner that looks like it was made for a sitcom father with his legs up and slippers on, hollering for dinner, playing the fun-loving part for his wisecracking kids. Dust puffs into the air as she sits, the chair creaking beneath her.

Ginger sips her coffee from a flower-patterned mug and watches Hannah. The woman’s hair is as sloppy as ever, a high bun teetering sideways. ‘So, Rachel Olney, huh. You just decided you wanted to chat to your old teacher out of the blue, or has this got something to do with your friend Alice?’

Hannah tenses. ‘So Rachel Olney is connected to Alice, then?’

‘You tell me.’ Ginger snorts. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue.’

‘But you just said –’

‘I mentioned Alice because I knew all along.’ Ginger leans forward. ‘I knew you came back here because of Alice and not because of your mum. I knew you were only back to stir things up. The only reason I can think of for you suddenly wanting to track down a teacher is because you’re chasing something to do with Alice.’

‘You’re wrong. I did come back for Jamie. I didn’t start looking into Alice-related things –’ Hannah figures she may as well come clean, because Ginger has her number anyway ‘– until you mentioned Marnie has cancer.’

‘You only think you didn’t come back here for Alice. The brain is a weird thing – lots of subconscious stuff is always going on.’

Hannah can’t resist a jab. There is something about Ginger that has her abandoning all her usual control. ‘I didn’t realise you’d become a psychologist.’

‘I don’t need to be a psychologist to know we’ve all got underlying motives. Speaking of which – what do you want with Rachel?’

‘To talk to her,’ Hannah says.

‘About Alice.’

‘About when Alice disappeared.’ Hannah dances expertly around the truth.

‘Why not any other teachers?’

This time a lie comes to Hannah in an instant. ‘Marnie told me that Rachel had been tutoring Alice after school the year she disappeared.’

‘Marnie, hey.’ Ginger quirks an eyebrow and sets down her mug on the glass-topped coffee table. ‘You know, rumour was that Marnie did her daughter in – smothered her with a pillow in one of her drug-induced rages, then tossed the body in the bay. But there were a lot of rumours.’

Hannah thinks of a pick-and-mix lolly shop, except rather than a wall of sugar-laden treats to choose from, there are different weapons – a cleaver, a pillow, a lamp, a car – and different methods of disposal – chopped into pieces, thrown in the bay, driven out of town by a john – and voilà, you have your very own little Alice-death story to spread about town.

‘Lots of rumours, lots of gossip. People prefer that salacious crap to obvious answers. It is true Marnie was a mess, though,’ Ginger continues. ‘She didn’t know which planet she was on half the time.’

This seems ironic coming from a woman who was more or less comatose half the time Hannah knew her back then.

‘Marnie didn’t kill Alice,’ Hannah says.

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I don’t think she did.’ Hannah shrugs. ‘I talked to her. She was … she was a bad mother, but she’s not a murderer.’

‘And you think, out of nowhere, that Rachel is?’

‘No. What? I just want to talk to Alice’s tutor. From what I remember, Rachel was the young cool teacher –’ Hannah warms to the story as she spins it ‘– and she had a way of relating to us all. I just started thinking, there might be a chance Alice opened up to her. Maybe Alice told Rachel something that didn’t seem relevant at the time but could blow this case wide open. Like a … a secret boyfriend or something.’

‘And why wouldn’t Alice have told you that? You were her best friend, after all.’

‘We –’ Hannah starts.

– stupid junkie whore daughter –

‘– we were teenagers. You keep secrets for no reason when you’re a teenager. I didn’t tell her everything, so makes sense she did the same. It was all about being mysterious. We all read those stupid teen books or watched those shows, and we wanted dramatic lives too.’

Hannah can tell Ginger is turning over the words, finding the truth in them. ‘Rachel would’ve told the police, if she knew anything,’ the woman says finally. ‘You do realise that, right? That the police probably already know everything there is to know …?’

Not if Rachel has found a way to cover up her crimes, Hannah thinks, but just says, ‘A fresh pair of eyes can’t hurt.’ She rubs her face, feeling exasperated. ‘Look, I know it’s been seven years and the chances of finding answers are slim. But Alice was my friend, and when you said Marnie was dying, it just … lit a fire under me. What if the case is never solved? What if all the people who knew Alice die or leave, and I just … never know what happened?’

‘Exactly, what if that does happen?’ Ginger says. ‘Say I tell you where Rachel lives, get you guys in contact. Say she knows nothing. Then what?’

I don’t know, Hannah thinks. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, because there’s no story she can spin as an answer, not when she hasn’t given herself time and space to consider the question.

Ginger exhales noisily. ‘Yeah, I know Rachel.’

The admission is so abrupt that it stumps Hannah for a few seconds. She feels whiplash from Ginger’s sudden change of heart, her ready relinquishing of information, and wonders if Ginger was softened by Hannah’s own surprising honesty.

‘We have lunch every so often. I met her at a Catholic church the town over.’

‘You go to church?’

‘No,’ Ginger says, ‘I go to AA.’

‘I –’ Hannah’s mouth works silently, closes. ‘Oh,’ she says, finally, ‘so Rachel is –’

Ginger shakes her head. ‘No, she was just at the church. I went out for a cigarette, and she was hanging around, so I asked what she was doing there.’

Hannah thinks of a person burdened with guilt, looking for absolution, and figures she can fill in her own blanks as to why Rachel might hang around a church.

‘She said she was a lapsed Catholic,’ Ginger continues, ‘but sometimes she went to church because it comforted her. She said it reminded her of her mum. My mum was a hard-arse Catholic too, so we ended up talking. Rachel seemed nice.’ Ginger’s eyes flick to Hannah’s face, then away. ‘I don’t have many friends in town – just your mum, really. I don’t think Rachel has many either.’ The woman’s fingers drum and twitch on the couch. ‘Anyway …’ Seeming to notice Hannah’s gaze on her hands, she stills them. ‘Rachel’s a good egg, real sweet. Got me onto that Bridgerton show.’

‘So do you have her number?’ Hannah asks impatiently. ‘Her address?’

‘I have both, and I could get you in contact with her easily. But … I won’t.’

Of course Ginger is going to be difficult. Hannah corrals her face into impassivity to mask her anger.

Ginger, somehow, has the ability to cut Hannah right into the dirty core of her being without breaking a sweat. The casualness with which the woman does this is alarming. Maybe, maybe, Hannah thinks, it’s a case of like recognising like: a sad person seeing another sad person for who they really are.

‘Don’t get bitchy,’ Ginger says. ‘I’m not keeping this stuff from you just to annoy you. I’m doing it for your own good.’

‘Right.’ Hannah can’t help rolling her eyes like a teenager.

‘It’s not healthy to be digging all this up. It’s not healthy to be stuck living in the past.’

Hannah holds her gaze steady, does not let it track from Ginger’s face to look pointedly around at the house, this relic of long-dead dreams.

‘You think it’s going to be the answer to all your problems, solving this mystery. You’re convinced there’s some conspiracy to sniff out. All of it is just keeping you from moving on. And besides –’ Ginger raises her eyebrows meaningfully ‘– you say you came here to help your mum. But so far you’re doing a piss-poor job of it, if you ask me.’

Ah, Hannah thinks. This is why Ginger is stepping into her path, blocking her: Jamie. It all comes back to Ginger’s protectiveness, her peculiar obsession with Jamie’s welfare. Hannah’s own musings regarding Ginger’s sexuality resurface, and she has the immature desire to accuse Ginger of being in love with Jamie.

‘My mum is fine,’ she says instead. ‘I’ve been doing a fine job looking after her.’ Which isn’t a lie. She’s been driving Jamie around, hasn’t she? Helping with rehab exercises. Microwaving frozen meals. Cleaning up.

‘You’ve been doing the bare minimum,’ Ginger argues. ‘It’s not just about the practical side of things – it’s about the emotional side too. She’s basically housebound. You’re supposed to be keeping her company as well, not going on wild goose chases.’

Hannah breathes out through her nose. ‘You’re not going to help me at all, are you?’

‘Your mum needs you.’

‘And she has me.’ Hannah rises to her feet. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

‘You know, ever since you moved to Melbourne your mum’s been telling me how worried she is about you.’

‘I don’t ask her to worry about me.’

‘But of course she’s going to – she’s your mum. Don’t you get how exhausting it can be? I have some idea, just from spending time with her.’

Hannah feels a spike of anger. She thinks of the sheer selfishness of bringing a life into the world and then deciding it’s too much; thinks of Marnie barely scraping the top of what it means to be a mother because caring for both Alice and herself was too hard. ‘So don’t have kids then,’ Hannah snaps. ‘Don’t have kids if you’re going to be inconvenienced by them living their lives. If you find it all so exhausting, then don’t do it.’

‘I’m not saying your mum doesn’t want you. You’re missing the point.’

‘Clearly,’ Hannah says icily. ‘Shall I leave now?’

‘Your mum worries because she loves you.’

Because love is exhausting, Hannah thinks. Because to love is to exhaust yourself, your resources, your life, until there is nothing left.

‘I just think you should be nicer to your mum,’ says Ginger. ‘And maybe start thinking about how your actions affect others.’ She pauses for a second. ‘And you need to stop making her feel like you hate her, or like you blame her for what your dad did.’

Hannah sucks in a breath so hard and fast she almost chokes on it. ‘I don’t blame her.’

‘Well, maybe tell her that.’

‘I’ll see myself out.’

It’s Ginger’s turn to roll her eyes. ‘Go ahead.’ She waves a hand towards the door. ‘Good talk, by the way.’

Hannah turns into the corridor towards the door, then pauses. Her gaze falls to the old-fashioned phone table. There’s a cordless landline hooked up, something she hasn’t seen in years. She steps over to it. A tiny yellow light is glowing – somehow, Ginger still has it connected. And, Hannah thinks, with a landline, there is no digital contact list.

Ginger surely has the usual list on her mobile. But it’s possible she also handwrites her contacts in the little brown hardcover embossed with a gold title, ADDRESS BOOK, that sits next to the cordless cradle.

Hannah, hardly daring to breathe, opens the book and tracks the alphabetically sorted tabs. R, she thinks, or O?

‘You right out there?’ Ginger calls.

Hannah whips her phone out and flicks to the ‘R’ page, snaps a shot, flips to the ‘O’, takes another shot, closes the book, puts her phone away and lunges towards the door – so that when Ginger appears in the entryway from the lounge, Hannah has her fingers around the handle and her heart in her throat, but Ginger can only see one of those things.

‘You right?’ she repeats.

‘Fine.’ Hannah’s voice is faintly high-pitched.

‘Right.’ Ginger eyes her. ‘Look, if I seemed harsh –’ and Hannah realises, with relief, that Ginger sees her flustered demeanour as a reaction to their conversation ‘– it’s just because Jamie is the only person who’s stuck by me over the years. I owe her a lot. I guess I get protective. But just … think about what I said.’ She meets Hannah’s gaze. ‘And forget about this Alice stuff. Move on. Talk to your mum instead, spend time with her. Stop chasing ghosts.’

Hannah nods, opens the door and steps outside. She closes the door behind her, pulls her phone back out and messages Cassie.