It was while she was cleaning Mr Fitzgerald’s office that Justine saw the map. He had left that morning on farm business and she’d been told to clean up but not to touch anything on the desk. The relief of knowing he’d be gone for a few days was huge. The worst times were when Mrs Fitzgerald herself was away, but even when she was home he still turned up in Justine’s room after his wife was asleep; just as he had done last night, drunk and more brutal than ever.
‘Say anything and I’ll break your fucking neck,’ he’d told her several times. ‘You’re a dirty boong and nobody will give a tinker’s cuss if I kill you. This is your fault and if I don’t kill you, then my missus will.’
It was hard for Justine to believe that Gwen Fitzgerald could possibly kill her but, all the same, she was terrified of discovery. And so, for months now, she had grown more and more withdrawn and could no longer look Mrs Fitzgerald in the eye. She slept only fitfully, always on edge in the dark, listening, waiting. She even stopped reading, fearing the lamplight might attract him. The lightness of life here after the convent had degenerated into a bitter darkness and now, more than ever before, she was burdened by shame and sickened by her own wickedness. At the same time, she was unable to understand how what he was doing was her fault or how she could make it stop.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you these days,’ Mrs Fitzgerald had said that morning. ‘You hardly talk, and you walk about all hunched up.’
‘Sorry,’ Justine mumbled, drawing lines in the sand with the toe of her boot and not looking up.
Mrs Fitzgerald sighed. ‘I had such high hopes for you. Well, just give the floor and the windows a good clean, and if you do have to move anything, make sure you put it back exactly where you found it.’ She paused so long that Justine actually had to look up at her. ‘Are you all right? You don’t look too well.’
Justine nodded and turned away, picking up her bucket. Mrs Fitzgerald gave an irritable shake of her head and went out of the office.
Justine had finished the windows and the sills and was about to start wiping down the picture frames, when, looking up quickly, she felt slightly dizzy and had to hold on to the windowsill. Her skin was damp with sweat and there was a throbbing pain in the pit of her stomach. It was while she was standing there, waiting for the dizziness to pass, that she noticed the map pinned to a big board. For a while she just looked at it, wondering, and then, rubbing her hand across her forehead, she walked cautiously across the room to take a closer look.
The only name she recognised was Perth; she’d seen pictures of it, and of the beaches along the coast. And then, as she studied it more closely, she spotted a red dot stuck on the map about an inch to the north-east of Perth and beside it someone had written ‘Fitzgerald Property’. Justine traced the line from the red dot back towards the ocean, wondering how far it was.
‘What are you doing?’ Mrs Fitzgerald asked and Justine nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘Trying to find somewhere? You’ve found the farm – what are you looking for now?’
‘The convent.’
Mrs Fitzgerald crossed the room and looked closely at the map, pointing to a cross close to Perth. Justine’s heart beat very fast. For the first time in weeks, she looked straight at Mrs Fitzgerald.
‘Where do I come from?’ she asked, the question bolting from her mouth before she’d thought about it.
Mrs Fitzgerald took a step back and crossed her arms, scanning the map.
‘I’m not too sure,’ she said, ‘but I think it’s up here somewhere.’ And she pointed to a place near the top. ‘This whole area here is called the Pilbara. I think you may have come from somewhere here. Do you remember any names?’
‘My mum’s name is Norah,’ Justine said.
Mrs Fitzgerald smiled, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘I mean, place names. The place you lived or somewhere nearby?’
Justine closed her eyes. ‘It was red,’ she said, ‘I can see it. The earth was red, redder than here, there were rocks, but I can’t remember what it was called.’
‘Yes, well, I think it’s up there somewhere. I’m glad you’re taking an interest in something at last. When you’ve finished the dusting, you can start on the floor; it’s very dirty just in the well of the desk because he forgets to take off his boots.’ And she smiled again and went out to speak to Gladys, who was carrying a bucket of potato peelings over to the chicken pen.
Justine wiped the dust off a frame and looked again at the map. People used maps to find their way. Could she use this one to get back to the convent and then to Norah? She plunged the mop into the bucket and watched the soapy water swirl around it. She would leave before he got back. She would go at night; take food and water, a torch, some matches, a knife and one of her blankets, put them in the cloth bag she’d brought with her from the convent. And she would take the map. It would be stealing but she didn’t care. She’d found it and it seemed like a sign.
Feeling hotter than ever, her head hurting as though it were banging inside, she felt something warm and sticky running down her legs. Finding it hard to breathe, she dropped the mop and grasped the door handle. The room was spinning and, as bile rose in her throat, she staggered outside and fell to her knees on the edge of the verandah. She heard Mrs Fitzgerald call out, and saw her running towards her, followed by Gladys. As she sank down into darkness, the last thing she saw was the bucket of potato peelings rolling away from Gladys’s feet.
Richard was making a half-hearted attempt to clean up the kitchen when someone hammered on the front door. It was Martin, jacket undone and tie askew.
‘We made it. We fucking made it. We’re on the shortlist.’ And, shoving a bottle of Jack Daniel’s into Richard’s hand, he drew a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and read out the names shortlisted for the Film and Television Producers Documentary Award. Richard took the paper and looked at it, needing to see the words in print. The nominees had been announced in March and the wait for the shortlist had seemed endless.
‘I’ve watched the others; you probably have too,’ Martin said. ‘I think we could take this one out. Let’s get plastered.’
It seemed like a good idea. It still seemed like a good idea three hours later, and even seemed to Richard to be a good idea to carry on drinking after Martin had stumbled out onto the street and hailed a taxi. It was only the next morning, when he woke lying on the window seat and thought he might be dead, that it didn’t seem like such a good idea after all.
His neck and shoulders were twisted into a position from which he was frightened to move in case he fell apart. Above him, the lampshade was sliding in and out of focus. He lay there, remembering Zoë sitting on this same seat, months earlier, counting the days to the birth and knitting baby clothes. The morning sunshine flooded through the window and, as he turned his head towards its warmth, he could see her standing by this window on the day back in March when he’d told her they’d been nominated for the award.
‘You’re so clever, Rich, I’m so proud of you. You’ll win, I know you will,’ she’d said, crossing the room to kiss him.
‘We have to get shortlisted before we think about winning.’
‘You will. And I’m going to cheer my head off when they give you the award.’
The memory was so clear, so poignant, that Richard began to cry; big wrenching sobs that made his already aching head pound. Although her reaction had pleased him, he remembered that he’d also felt it would have been worth more if it came from someone who really understood what he was doing. Now, struck down by sudden grief, he hated himself for his intellectual snobbery. In recent months, he had bitterly regretted the precipitate and very final action he had taken when the baby was born. Why hadn’t he waited, given himself time to cool down? He knew now that Zoë was the one person he wanted to share his good news with; the one person he wanted beside him at the awards if they won, and even more so if they didn’t.
The last six months had been misery. When Julia returned to Paris and he moved back to the flat, he had staggered on from day to day, gritting his teeth and burying himself in his work. For the first time in his life, he was bitterly lonely. Everywhere he turned, he saw, heard or smelt Zoë, and every day he struggled to convert hurt and loneliness into an anger that would drive him and keep every other emotion at bay. But his hangover had pulled out all the stoppers.
Richard tried to make coffee, but his hands shook so violently that coffee and water splattered across the draining board. Were these really his hands? He couldn’t even see straight and his eyes felt full of sand. His body must have aged at least twenty years overnight and his mouth bore more resemblance to the bottom of the chicken pen at Bramble Cottage than it did to anything human. He waited gloomily for the percolator to stop bubbling, and when he’d drunk his coffee he decided that a bath might help. Pulling off his clothes, he stood naked and shivering in the bathroom watching the water level rise and remembering Zoë calling him to help her get out of the bath.
Half an hour later, washed and dressed, he was still shivering and although the crying had stopped, he wasn’t sure that it was really over. It was almost midday and he considered eating something – a greasy breakfast was supposed to be the antidote to a hangover, but the mere idea of eggs, bacon and sausages made his stomach heave.
Shame was the worst part of it. The loss of Zoë and of the child he’d initially not wanted and then grown to anticipate with fierce excitement was one thing. But his shame, his disgust at himself, was the dark underbelly of his mood.
The moment in which Richard had first seen the baby’s face was engraved on his memory; the harsh bright lights, the smell of blood and antiseptic, the tense and shadowy presence of the doctor and nurse, and the tiny round face of someone else’s child. The pain still ripped into his gut whenever he thought of it. He had pulled off the gown, thrown it on the floor, punched open the door of the delivery room and strode out along the corridor, down the stairs and into the street.
Why hadn’t he realised what had been going on? Had everyone else known? Sandy? Charlie? That constantly shifting mob of people in the Kilburn house? Had they all been laughing at him? Stupid bastard; too dumb, too obsessed with his work to see what was going on under his nose.
‘It was only once, Richard, just one time,’ Zoë had insisted when he had finally forced himself to talk to her. ‘Just once. It was a stupid thing, it just happened. You were away and I was upset, I had too much to drink . . . it was stupid . . .’ Her voice trailed away. ‘Like I said – it just happened.’
Was it his own guilt that had made him so self-righteous? Did his own shame make him want to humiliate her, banish her? When he learned she’d registered the baby under the name they had chosen together, he had been filled with a rage so overwhelming that he had thought himself capable of physical violence.
‘I picked that name,’ he’d shouted, and she had stared at him, tears running down her face.
‘I know, and all those months before he was born, that’s how I’d thought of him, as Daniel,’ she’d sobbed. ‘It didn’t feel right to change.’
And, by refusing to take the money for which he had had to grovel to his father, she had won the moral high ground that Richard had felt was rightfully his, leaving him floundering in the mire of his own guilty secret.
He understood now that for Zoë and Harry it could have been unpremeditated, a moment that would later have shocked them both. But he, Richard, had pursued Lily, spent several nights with her, lied to Martin about his whereabouts, and feasted on those memories for weeks, even months, afterwards. Zoë had certainly done wrong by him, but it was nothing to the wrong he had done her.
Richard studied the mess of the previous night. Then he collected the glasses and poured the remains of the whisky down the sink, vowing to himself that he would clean up his act and stop drinking.
When the tickets for the awards dinner arrived the following week, Richard tucked them into his pocket, walked to the station and took the tube to West Hampstead. It was five days since he’d had a drink and more than six months since he’d seen Zoë, the day he and Julia had asked her to move out. Two weeks later, the keys had turned up in the post, with a note about the electricity bill and the need to fix one of the sitting room windows. He knew she had moved to Delphi Street and as he walked from the station Richard felt his heart lifting with hope that they could forgive each other and start again. He felt confident now that he was capable of coming to terms with the child, who was the real victim of all that had happened; confident that he had it in himself to confess, forgive and accept, that he could be a good husband to Zoë and a good father to her baby, if he could only lay his meddlesome pride to rest.
The door of the house was ajar, and Richard knocked on one of the frosted glass panels and peered inside, his heart beating fast with anticipation. It wasn’t going to be easy but there was a chance – a slim one – that Zoë might at least be willing to talk to him.
‘Hello,’ he called around the door, ‘anyone there?’
‘Richard?’ Gloria said as she reached the door. ‘Well, I sure didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘No,’ he said, looking beyond her down the hallway. ‘Sorry if it’s inconvenient but I wanted to have a word with Zoë.’
‘Your friend finished making that program about us yet?’ Gloria asked.
‘Yes. It’s done, the series goes to air next month.’
Gloria nodded, looking him up and down.
‘You’re out of luck. She’s not here. Left this morning for Glasgow.’
‘Glasgow! Where Harry . . .’
They stared at each other across the threshold, each unwilling to volunteer more information. From an upstairs room came the sound of a baby crying. He raised his eyebrows.
‘We have three babies here,’ Gloria said with a smile. ‘Not quite a cricket team.’
‘I see. Has she . . . are they . . .’ he faltered.
Gloria paused, looking him up and down again. It was painfully obvious that she despised him. ‘You’d have to ask her about that,’ she said.
His mind seethed. When would Zoë be back? Did Harry know about Daniel? Did Agnes know? If he could just tell Gloria how he felt and why he was there, would she help him?
But again his pride stopped him. ‘Well, perhaps you’d tell her that I . . .’
‘I’ll let her know you called by,’ Gloria said. ‘I’m sure she has your number if she wants to call.’
Richard nodded, anticipation replaced by despair. ‘Thanks, I really need to speak to her as soon as possible.’ He hated his pleading tone.
Gloria put her hand on the door.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘please don’t forget.’ As he turned to walk down the path, he heard the door close firmly behind him.