The phone woke me at three that night: woke me, as always, clairvoyantly, a split second before it began to ring. Years of on-call duty seem to nurture this ability: the brain learns some trick of premonition, picks up the incoming signals before they arrive.
‘Dr Fox? It’s Jill Ward. From the Assault Clinic.’
‘It’s not my night, Jill.’
‘I know. I’m sorry to wake you.’
‘Whose night is it? Have you checked the Duty Roster?’
‘Jenny Crane. But her son is ill. She’s been up with him all night. She wondered if you could cover.’
‘You want me to come in?’
‘Could you? The police just rang. They’re bringing a girl in. Pack-rape. Shall I send a taxi?’
‘I’ll drive.’
The girl was fourteen. I had met her many times before in the smallest hours of many other nights — or if not her, her clones. Black jeans bought several sizes ago; a single small tattoo on the cheek or shoulder; crude eye-liner ruined by tears.
‘All the other boys in the car seemed so nice,’ she said, sniffling.
Or if not those words, something similar: something I had also heard too many times before. Over the years, these stories had ground me down. I sought escape in the paperwork: precise measurements of the bruises, exact descriptions of the torn tissues, the ticking of small, neat boxes in neat, square case-folders. There was escape, also, in the finicky gathering of forensic specimens: driplets of semen, fingernail scratchings, tiny bloodstains, cloth-fibres.
‘Will this hurt?’
‘I’ll try to be gentle.’
‘Bobby — he was driving — he promised to pay for my leg wax. Do you think he will now? I don’t suppose he will, do you think?’
I had heard more stupid stories on the Assault Roster. I had seen far younger girls in far worse shape. But suddenly it was too much. The cunning and cruelty of men, the boundless delusions of women: I was sick of them. Both their houses. I realised suddenly — with a slight shock, like the startled shock of waking when you are overtired — that it was a long time, too long, since I had felt sympathy for any of these victims, even the most tortured. My heart had shrunk to a tight fist; whatever sympathy it still contained was reserved for myself.
In that moment I made my decision.
The eastern sky was filling with light as I drove home: the hills a dark knife-edge above the city, backlit, sharply defined. My future seemed as clearly defined; I felt relaxed, my mind cleaned of debris. At home my mother was awake and fussing in the kitchen.
‘How was Queensland, dear?’
I stood above her like a gangling cuckoo: ‘Fine.’
‘The strangest thing happened. Someone rang from the hospital yesterday. While you were away. A Dr Hemmings?’
‘Henning. Max Henning.’
‘He didn’t seem to know that you went to Queensland for the day. He seemed to think you were home ill.’
She didn’t pursue the theme, although years of city living had sharpened her country-girl senses; she had developed a nose for the lie.
‘I’ve done some handwashing. And ironed you a blouse. I didn’t think you would have time.’
‘What would I do without you?’
She glanced at me, suspecting sarcasm. I poured out a bowl of muesli, wondering how to tell her the truth.
‘I’ve resigned my job,’ I finally said, bluntly. ‘I think we’d better talk.’
She said very little as I talked; sat and sipped and listened for the most part. She was welcome to join me, I said. In fact I said more than this; forced myself to say many things I didn’t mean. That she was a great help to me. That I would miss her if she remained in Adelaide. We both knew this to be a code: a language in which the forms of politeness meant their exact opposites. The fact that such things had to be said at all meant that they were lies.
‘Well, if you’ve already made up your mind,’ she finally said, trying for an injured tone of voice, but in fact revealing only that she also had made up her mind, and wasn’t prepared to argue too strenuously.
‘I’d like to keep my room. Things may not work out. And I’ll be back for holidays.’
She smiled, as relieved to be free of me, I suspect, as I was of her. I smiled back, feeling a small, genuine tenderness for her: this ageing, ‘compact’ woman so disappointed in her changeling daughter. Not even a Nobel Prize for Medicine could have have redeemed my unmarried and childless state, or the fact that I was Not Like Other Little Girls.
‘That’s that then,’ she said, briskly. ‘I won’t stand in your way.’
I knew that she would never abandon her friends, her golf, her church, for a second time; I knew therefore that it was safe to press.
‘Come with me to Queensland,’ I urged, again. ‘If not now, later.’
She shook her head: ‘Good luck, Mara. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for.’