Callie shouts my name. I get to the doorway, she’s standing by the window. “Dickie’s gone,” she says. The place in the bed where he slept is empty. She pulls the curtains so we can see in the light. His suitcase isn’t there, just a stack of wooden hangers and a Paris Match magazine. An empty wineglass lies on the floor, the towel he used to dab his face is folded by the door.
“He’s been gone before,” I say, as if I’m not concerned. I look out the window towards the scrub but there’s no sign of him walking. The Vauxhall is gone from down at the sheds but there is no hint of dust along the road.
“He’s taken Darwin’s car,” I say. “He’s been gone a while.”
Callie flattens the bed with her hands as if to erase his shape. I can’t tell if she’s sad that he’s left or if she’s relieved.
“He left a photo,” she says. There are two, neatly placed on the bedside table. A bay polo pony, leather boots on its legs, its tail bandaged up into a stub. “Appeal Book,” the horse’s name, is written on the bottom, “Windsor, 1952.” Beside it is another. Dickie standing where my mother stood, by the fountain in the snow, taken on an angle. You can see the tops of the buildings.
“My mother must have taken this,” I say.
In the photo Dickie’s wearing a fur hat and pleated gaucho trousers, a zipped-up leather jacket. He’s posing with a cigarette in the rain.
“His feet have been cut off,” says Callie.
“She should have cut off more than his feet.”
I kneel beside Darwin’s bed, turn off the fan so his room is quiet. He strains without moving, he can’t tell what’s happening. “Dickie left,” I say.
Darwin juts his neck. His mouth is dry, a whiteness about his tongue.
“He took your car.”
The kite sags from the ceiling like an old face. There’s something pagan about the stretch of colourful plastic, the red and yellow. Without the fan it just hangs there.
“Will you call the police?” asks Callie from the door.
Darwin shakes his head.
“They’d only find him,” I say.