The Etch A Sketch still had Oliver’s name imprinted on its screen in thick dark letters and the Rubik’s Cube was almost complete, left just as it was when they’d last visited two years earlier. Kathryn picked up the View-Master and placed the Bambi card in the slot, clicking through as she watched the 2D images in the eyeholes. She loved how the bedroom had never changed, not since she and her brother Tom were kids, so that when Oliver and his cousins visited they played with the same games and toys. There was a tin of Tom’s khaki plastic soldiers, half-reclining figures designed to fire a gun, the rest balanced precariously on bent legs so that they would always topple over. And there, bravely in among them, were two of her treasured Barbies. Opening the lid of another box, she smiled as she noticed that the game of Operation still had only a few of its bones and organs missing.
Kathryn closed the wardrobe door and went to sit on the bed, nestling with the dozens of fluffy toys. They tickled her nostrils with dust and fluff. Leaning back, she realised that she was responsible for nearly half of them. To her left were all the usual suspects—misshapen fairground wins, Easter bunnies, Christmas reindeers, a variety of cats and dogs—while on her right was a growing colony of antipodean animals: koalas, kangaroos, echidnas, emus and crocodiles, nearly all acquired on trips to Melbourne Zoo. They’d been left here at Oliver’s insistence, to keep his great-grandmother company.
It struck Kathryn as simultaneously odd and amusing that these furry creatures had managed to express what she’d been so reluctant to put into words—how frustrated she felt being in neither one place nor the other. She missed her life here, her friends and that intangible sense of Englishness, but she had grown to love the openness of the Australian landscape and the people, even though it still didn’t feel quite like home. When friends and colleagues asked her if she would ever be back, she couldn’t tell them, and it felt as if she was being disloyal, or ungrateful, or both.
She sank further into the musty pillows and stared up at the stippled ceiling, relishing the sense of freedom that came from returning to her family home, despite the unsightly seventies décor that her clients would abhor. She had already explored the other rooms, which were all just the same—only a little more dusty—but it was in here that time truly stood still. It was the place that she liked best, where she could imagine herself down the decades. She felt good to be back inside her twelve-year-old self: she was carefree, with no worries about money or responsibility, and the unexpected gift of time.
She dozed off, and when she woke the sound of a TV was coming from Eleanor’s room downstairs. Kathryn shook her head, trying to dispel the fogginess, and walked unsteadily into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. The mirror cast back an image that she didn’t recognise, with uneven skin tone and dull, bloodshot eyes. Perhaps a shot of caffeine would liven her up. She headed to the kitchen to make more tea, hoping that her grandmother would be more alert and willing to talk now.
When Kathryn pushed open the door with the tea tray, Eleanor was sitting in the armchair fully dressed, a jigsaw puzzle spread out on the card table in front of her.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asked brightly, turning down the TV with her remote.
‘It was a snooze, really…I think I got an hour.’ Kathryn yawned. ‘A little helps, but too much is dangerous.’ She hated the way jet lag left her head swimming for days and her body struggling to keep up, but she knew she had to get to work instantly, so there wasn’t time to think about how she felt.
Setting the tray on the table, she came to sit on the footstool beside Eleanor, studying the picture that was emerging from the puzzle pieces. ‘What have you got there?’
‘It’s the Seascape by Van Gogh. You sent it to me last Christmas, don’t you remember?’
‘Of course I do.’ Kathryn smiled, recalling how Oliver had helped to choose it.
Eleanor had completed a large section of the purple and green ocean, its white-foam waves curling towards the shore. Kathryn noticed a piece from the sailing ship, so she reached out and slotted it into place.
Eleanor picked up a similarly patterned piece and placed it alongside. ‘Your mother won’t let me have a computer—she says old people and technology don’t mix.’ Eleanor sniffed as if to demonstrate her consternation. ‘So I’m afraid it’s cards or puzzles for me.’
Her mother had told Kathryn as much, with the footnote that a computer was just another thing she would end up looking after and she simply didn’t have the time.
‘And the TV,’ Kathryn said, glancing at the screen, ‘you still have that, and the radio.’
The TV was showing images from a war zone. Lines of displaced civilians walked along a dusty roadside, injured victims lay in unsanitary conditions: similar images to those Kathryn had seen so many times before. Then the visual cut to a reporter standing in front of a camp, flimsy tents shifting precariously in the wind.
She picked up the remote to raise the volume but Eleanor reached out to stop her. ‘Please don’t, not today, it’s all so depressing. And I want to find out about all of you.’
Kathryn glanced down at her iPhone’s home screen: a photo of the three of them taken on Oliver’s birthday at a teppanyaki restaurant in Hawthorn. Chris and Oliver’s faces were screwed up in delight as the food bowls came raining down.
It would be early morning in Melbourne now and they’d be fast asleep, all quiet except for the screech of fruit bats in the park next door, which would splatter their courtyard with fruit in their nocturnal ritual.
‘You can see for yourself later,’ Kathryn told Eleanor. ‘I’ve got my laptop, so we can Skype with them…I mean, you can talk to Oli and see him at the same time.’
‘Thank you, dear. I may be old but I’m not senile—I do know how Skype works.’
Kathryn smiled as she poured the tea; her mother was right, there was nothing wrong with Eleanor. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, handing her grandmother a cup.
‘Thank you. So, where do you want to start, young lady?’
Kathryn planned to get as much background as she could before meeting Stephen Aldridge, then she planned to visit the Imperial War Museum. Trove had been useful for general information, but she hoped the correspondence and journals from the time would be more revealing. She’d have a lot to get through, but maybe she’d be lucky and find a lead that might help her discover what had happened to Jack.
First, she needed to ask Eleanor about something else that had been playing on her mind. ‘What did Stephen Aldridge mean by “are you the Eleanor Roy”?’
‘I’m not sure, dear.’ Eleanor picked up her cup and sipped slowly, and Kathryn sensed that no more information was forthcoming. ‘Anyway, where shall we start?’
‘You could start by telling me more about Jack—you said you first met him in March 1942?’
‘Yes, dear, but I didn’t see him again until a few weeks later.’
Kathryn laid the iPhone on the table and pressed record. She intended to transcribe the notes while Eleanor slept so that she could double-check everything before she made any inquiries or researched any leads.
‘What was he like?’ Kathryn asked. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘You’ll have to give me a minute, dear,’ Eleanor said, taking another gulp of tea. ‘Well, he was a mystery at first. His paintings were so beautiful—but him, he gave nothing away. Not until I knew him. Then…then it was a whole different story.’
She placed the cup down and leaned back in the armchair, eyelids closing. Kathryn watched her breathe, the faintest movement of her chest, lilac silk blouse barely moving. Outside the overflow of noise from the motorway was building, the guttural growls of the trucks, the school pick-ups that preceded rush hour.
As Kathryn waited for Eleanor to rouse from her nap, she realised that something else was bothering her, something that she hadn’t thought to ask yet. There had to be two sides to the story. So why hadn’t Jack looked for Eleanor?