4

The coffee shop was done out in red and black and tin. It was lit with unflattering fluorescent — the kind of lighting that made you look jaundiced. Brigitte smoothed the skin beneath her eyes with her middle fingers, as if that might rub away the fine lines, the years.

She sipped her skinny flat white; her hand shook, and the cup rattled as she placed it in the milky spill on the saucer.

Ella looked up from Good Night, Sleep Tight — babycino moustache on her top lip. Brigitte smiled, and then lowered her head when she saw Kumiko rush past the café towards the bookshop.

‘That man in the bookshop from your work?’

Brigitte blinked.

‘Can I have a cookie?’ Ella had a sly look on her little face. ‘With smarties on top.’ She turned her dark, inquiring eyes — Aidan’s eyes — back to her book, and Brigitte went up to the counter to buy a cookie.

They sat in silence for an unusually long time — maybe a whole minute. Brigitte heard the wall-clock ticking as the song on the sound system faded out. When that bloody Gotye track — ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ — started, she picked up her bag and stood. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘It’s meant to be a Mummy-and-Ella day, so I think we might go. I don’t really need to see that man.’

‘Won’t he be cross?’

‘No.’

Ella whined about not finishing her babycino. Brigitte took her hand firmly, in a hurry now. She turned in the doorway and saw herself in the mirror at the back of the café. A mother, old, boring. The dark patches under her eyes were visible from there — she’d tossed and turned all night, weighing up whether or not to come. She corrected her posture, and smoothed her skirt; it was too short for somebody her age. What the fuck was she thinking?

Gotye launched into the annoying chorus. She looked at their half-empty cups — Harmony lipstick mark on hers — abandoned on the red-lacquered table. Would they still be there when Matt walked in?

The primary-coloured shade sails cast triangular shadows on the playground sand. Brigitte sat at the picnic table staring, from behind her sunglasses, at Lake Victoria beyond the retaining wall. Buoys bobbed on the green-grey chop; a fishing boat rocked in the distance.

She rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms as she remembered the first time Matt had kissed her. God, almost twenty years ago. They’re drinking at Young and Jackson’s, around the corner from his work. It has been raining but the sun is out now, and a rainbow shimmers over Flinders Street Station.

She has to leave for some reason. She stumbles off the bar stool and stands on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, but he turns his face so it’s on his lips. She couldn’t remember what that kiss felt like, but she remembered the red-and-gold carpet, the heat from his body, the smell of — what was it on his skin? Spice? Citrus? — cinnamon and bergamot. Trams rattle past, and across the street, above the shop next to the station, a red neon sign blinks: City Hatters. That shop was still there — she’d driven past it the last time she was in the city.

‘Mummy, Mummy.’

She blinked and looked across at Ella sitting on the swing, feet dangling, sun glinting golden streaks on her long dark hair.

‘Can you please push me?’

She smiled, rubbed her face — rubbed away her thoughts — and walked towards Ella. She hurt her arm as she swung around the fireman’s pole on the way. Hard to believe she once did that eight hours a night for a living.

***

The weather had deteriorated; it was grey and drizzling when they reached The Esplanade on the way home after school pick-up. A police car was blocking the road. Constable Brandon Williams was directing traffic to detour around Wellington Street. Brigitte stopped the X-Trail, wound down her window, and asked him what had happened.

‘An incident in the water near the Bateau House restaurant.’

She caught Brandon’s glance at the kids in the back and didn’t ask what kind of incident. Her stomach turned like a giant slug.

Brandon read her thoughts. ‘Aidan’s down there.’

She took the detour, parked in the ferry waiting-bay beside the road, and told the kids to stay where they were. Finn stepped out to follow her. She yelled at him to get back in the car as she walked in the direction of the blue-and-white weatherboard restaurant.

The uniformed officer at the Victoria Street end was dealing with a group of youths, arguing about entering the street. He didn’t notice Brigitte slip past the roadblock, buttoning her cream trench coat, drizzle in her face.

She pulled her hood on and hugged herself as she watched from the embankment a scene, similar to the one described in Matt’s book blurb, unfolding below. The waterfront had been cordoned off with police tape from the Bateau House to the ferry shelter. Forensic crime-scene officers were taking photos and notes. Bag-and-taggers, Aidan called them. There were a few plainclothes guys that Brigitte didn’t recognise. Melbourne Homicide? One waded in the shallow water; his suit trousers rolled up above his knees. Aidan stood on the wharf, jacket off, hi-vis vest on, shirt sleeves pushed up. He was saying something to the wading guy. The wading guy tripped, fell forward to his knees, splashed in the water, swore.

Brigitte put her hands over her mouth and sucked in her breath as a team of police divers lifted a body onto the wharf near the post to which an orange lifebuoy was attached. The sign above the lifebuoy said: Lifebuoy is for saving lives. She looked away as they placed the body in a bag. The ferry’s flashing red light reflected on the Bateau House’s glass doors.

‘Stand back!’ The new detective, Senior Constable Carla Flanagan, strode over. Brigitte had no intention of going any closer. Flanagan — tall, late twenties, pretty with curly blonde hair pulled into a tight ponytail — ducked under the tape, gripped Brigitte’s shoulder, and used physical force to bustle her back. Flanagan looked as though she trained hard at the gym and could break your arm with little effort.

Aidan saw and walked up to the edge of the tape. Flanagan took a step back. Aidan nodded and told Brigitte it was OK; deep, calm voice. There were raindrops on his long eyelashes. ‘Go home. No — go to Harry’s.’

She wanted to know what was going on, what had happened, did they know who was in the water, but she nodded, her legs shaking, the back of her throat tight.

‘Be there as soon as I can,’ Aidan said. His top button was hanging by its last thread.

There was a sandwich board outside the ferry shelter: IMPORTANT. YOU MUST BE AT THE NEXT COUNCIL MEETING TO VOTE AGAINST THE NEW FERRY FEES.

Brigitte drove on and parked at the front of lane three. The ‘new bloke’ was operating the ferry. He was wearing red sunglasses in the rain. He pushed the reddish-brown hair off his face and rested freckled hands on her window frame. She recognised him from the gym: fortyish, big muscles, spent a lot of time looking in the mirrors.

‘Fisherman spotted the body in the water just after lunchtime,’ he said.

Brigitte tilted her head towards the kids.

He grinned at them. ‘Good day at school, guys?’

Brigitte hadn’t seen him around school, but he looked like one of the sporty dads who coached the soccer team, chaired the parents’ association, and helped out in the canteen in his spare time.

He lowered his voice and turned back to her. ‘Been crazy with coppers all afternoon.’ His eyes were hidden behind the sunglasses, but his downturned smile was reassuring. ‘I’m Jeremy Williams.’ He held out a hand to her.

She returned his smile, and lifted her right hand off the steering wheel. It was cold and clammy like a fish, but Jeremy shook it with just the right amount of firmness. ‘Not related to Brandon?’

‘Nah. Williams is the third most common surname in Australia.’

‘Brigitte Serra.’

A group of Japanese tourists in bright raincoats stepped out from the passenger saloon and called to Jeremy. Funny how the narrow, enclosed shelter on the south side was called a ‘saloon’. No Wyatt Earp, whisky, or wild-west cowboys.

Jeremy scratched his neck as he turned and strode across to the tourists, glancing back over his shoulder. Blue jeans a tad too short, red Doc Martens. In the rear-view mirror, his image appeared distorted — the top half of his body smaller than the bottom — as he pointed at the crime scene, telling the tourists, with animated arms, the story he must have told a hundred times already that afternoon.

She saw in her peripheral vision that the strait was very choppy. Don’t look at the water, don’t look at the water. If you don’t see it, it’s not there. She looked instead up at the red flashing light on the Raymond Island end of the ferry, indicating its direction of travel.

A crackled message from the Coast Guard came over the radio in the control stand. Breathe. She did the wrong kind of breathing — gulped deep breaths, but couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. The houses and eucalypt trees on the island receded to outlines. She clamped her hands on the wheel and closed her eyes as Jeremy climbed the steel stairs, two at a time.