I don’t know what it was about the Anna Larossa case, but I couldn’t seem to get away from it. Here I was back in Strathfield, but not outside the Larossa house. Outside Madalena’s school. I was sitting in a borrowed Mazda. After Rookwood I’d decided to take up Danny’s offer of a car. I mean, who’s ever heard of a PI getting around on public transport? Danny had a range of cars at his disposal. He’d offered me the sleek black 1965 Valiant with purple Gothic trim, but I settled on the more modest Mazda.
I’d only ever run away from home once. The issue was broad beans. I emptied the contents of my sock drawer into my school bag. ‘I’m going to find Dad,’ I’d shouted at Mina, ‘he wouldn’t make me eat those beans!’ I stormed out of the house, all set for adventure. Imagine what a good omen I took it to be when I spied a bright, shiny five cent piece lying in the middle of the footpath. Decimal currency had only just come in then and all the coins were brand spanking new. I felt like Dick Wittington going to London where the streets were paved with gold.
I didn’t get to London, I only got as far as the corner store. I spent ages looking at the big jars of lollies. Then, and I recall this moment as being my first experience of logical reasoning, I considered my situation. I was leaving home, I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from, so I’d better spend that money wisely. I would forgo the lollies and buy something more sustaining.
‘A packet of chips, please,’ I said, holding my five cents up to the counter.
I scoffed the lot, sitting at the bus stop, before Mrs Papadopoulos came by in her car and offered me a lift home. I had to take up the offer, she knew I wasn’t allowed to catch the bus by myself.
When I snuck back in, Mina was watching television as if nothing had happened. When the first ad break came on she said, ‘Your dinner’s in the oven. If you’re still interested.’
With a whole bag of chips sitting heavily on my stomach, the last thing I wanted to do was eat dinner. But as she seemed prepared to forget my little temper tantrum, how could I refuse? ‘Hmm, thanks Mum, don’t mind if I do.’
I could see the plate through the glass in the oven door. The chicken leg was still there, and the carrots and mashed potato. But the broad beans had gone. In my haste to get the door opened I burnt my hand. I stood in the kitchen flicking my hand back and forth, my lips tight, face squeezed up, trying to suppress an outcry of pain.
‘Oven’s still a bit warm,’ my mother’s voice wafted in. ‘You’ll probably need to use the gloves. They’re on the bench.’ How did she know—could she see through walls?
I turned on the tap and stuck my fingers under the stream of water. ‘Just getting a glass of water.’
I came back into the lounge room and forced the dinner down.
It wasn’t till we were doing the washing up that she said, ‘And where were you going to start looking for your father?’ At the same time she handed me a plate to dry.
‘Oh. Look in the phone book, I guess.’
‘And what if you didn’t find him there?’ I don’t know if it was her tone of voice or the actual questions, but I was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.
‘I dunno.’ I shrugged my shoulders, hoping she’d take the hint, and spent a lot of time wiping the same plate. But it played on my mind. After, when I’d had a bath and put on my pyjamas and was snuggled up in bed, I asked her: ‘Why doesn’t he ever come to see us?’ And Mina told me.
This is what I was thinking about as I sat outside the school waiting for Kerry to appear. The visit to Madalena’s house, the family background, the robbery which looked like Madalena coming back for money and personal items—the more I was convinced that she hadn’t been abducted, she’d left of her own accord. And if this was the case, her friends would be more likely to know where she was than her parents or teachers. Whether the friends were prepared to tell an adult what they knew was another matter. Amongst themselves kids share confidences and sometimes break them, but they rarely betray each other to an adult. After all, this was the generation they were going to have to live with in the outside world. I wanted to get to know Kerry, from a distance, before I talked to her.
The school was a stately sandstone building like a huge manor house. It didn’t exactly frown, but you did get the feeling it was watching to see that you behaved yourself. Even the fact that this was the last week of term and it would soon be child-free didn’t lighten its mood. I looked at my watch—3.20 pm. In five minutes the school day would be over. Some early leavers, for the variety of mysterious reasons kids are let go early, had already started trickling out. I was sitting at the exit closest to the train station. There’d probably be about five hundred girls coming through these gates in a minute, but that didn’t bother me. I knew which one I was looking for.
Out they came, the five hundred, all looking like soft little canaries in their grey and yellow uniforms. Twittering like canaries as well. Lebanese girls, Indians, Chinese, Korean, Italian. An Anglo girl with dyed red hair wasn’t going to be that difficult to find.
Almost every girl in the school must have passed through that gate before I saw Kerry and her group sauntering across the well-manicured grounds. There were five of them and Kerry was the tallest. She had long bronzed legs, set off by yellow socks, and carried herself well. The other girls were hanging on her every word, but she didn’t give a shit.
The group got closer to the gate, walking along, suddenly bursting into laughter and putting their hands up to their faces. They came out and turned in the direction of the station, oblivious to everything around them. They were in Year 10, they’d had four years of walking this exact same path. They looked like they could have done it blindfolded.
I didn’t really want to cruise down the street following a group of schoolgirls in my car, so I got out and continued on foot. I followed them into Strathfield Plaza. There were lots of schoolkids in here, boys and girls licking recently purchased icecreams and chomping into battered saveloys, doing wonders for their pimples.
One of Kerry’s group broke off and lined up in the icecream shop. The rest of them hung around looking idly in the window of a boutique. It was all there again, all that stuff from the seventies we laughed so much about in the eighties. The crocheted vests, the platform shoes and even, God forbid, the flared trousers. ‘That’s cute,’ said a girl with a pudgy face and well-shaped eyebrows. Kerry stuck out her bottom lip as she considered the black crocheted vest.
‘Nothing special,’ she said, delivering her verdict in a blase tone of voice. They kept moving, slowly, waiting for their friend buying the icecream. They looked in other windows. They weren’t serious buyers, they were just using the Plaza as a more interesting way of getting to the station.
They were almost out the other side when the pudgy-faced girl looked over her shoulder in the direction of the icecream shop. ‘Tamara’s going to miss the train if she doesn’t hurry.’
‘She’ll catch up,’ said Kerry. ‘C’mon, let’s go, Gula.’ The girl hesitated, torn between Tamara and Kerry. She followed Kerry. Into the station and down the ramp to the platform.
The few adults waiting for the train were far outnumbered by schoolkids. Not that that made me feel conspicuous. As far as the kids were concerned, adults were just part of the scenery. Like the benches, or the waiting rooms. They were there but completely outside the intrigues of the kids’ world.
There was a bunch of pimply-faced boys in maroon jackets talking to the girls. Standing there in their long trousers, five foot tall trying to look six foot. The hand on the hip holding the blazer open, developing the swaggering kind of gait that would serve them well at the bar, the pub kind as well as the court kind. The pudgy-faced Gula suddenly went all giggly in the presence of these budding representatives of the opposite sex. The girls and boys bantered friendly insults back and forth. But Kerry showed little concern or interest. In fact, she appeared downright bored. The boys seemed wary of her, as if they instinctively knew she had it all over them.
There was a whoosh of breeze—a train approaching. Kerry looked down the line towards the city, the direction the train was coming from, then asked casually: ‘Where’s Tamara?’ The other girls stopped flirting with the boys. Kerry had spoken. They looked around, at the entrance to the platform, anxious expressions on their faces. If Kerry was even the slightest bit worried, then they were too. The train was pulling in, slowing to a pneumatic halt. I folded my newspaper under my arm, a natural enough gesture if you’re catching the train, and watched Kerry’s face. She was still looking back towards the ramp. The doors of the train had parted now and people were getting off, trying to push their way past the throng of schoolkids crowding through. ‘Honestly!’ exclaimed a frustrated older woman, shoving her shopping past the kids who threatened to engulf her.
Except for Kerry, the others had forgotten all about Tamara. Their consuming interest at the moment was storming their way onto the train. My eyes flicked between Kerry’s face and the entrance to the platform, saw real anxiety as she searched for the stray member of her flock. Is this the way it had been with Madalena? She stopped for an icecream then simply disappeared?
Kerry’s face relaxed as Tamara came running down the ramp, icecream in hand, ponytail flying behind her. ‘Jesus, Tamara,’ said an exasperated Kerry. ‘There was a queue,’ Tamara explained feebly. She looked at Kerry, wondering what the big deal was. ‘Go on,’ said Kerry, closing off the conversation, ‘get on the train.’
It wasn’t necessary for me to stay on the train with her, I knew where she’d be getting off. Riverwood, the end of the line. I went back for the car and drove to Riverwood station. It was getting busier but it was still a little early for the full force of peak hour.
A bus pulled into Riverwood station and shuddered to a halt. The driver spread his newspaper out over the steering wheel and began to read, seemingly oblivious to a small grey-haired lady tapping on the door. No way he was going to open that door. He was off-duty, even if it was for only a few minutes.
I got out of the car and sat in the bus shelter, next to an enormously fat man who took up half of the bench that was built to accommodate four people. Despite the grey-haired lady’s insistent tapping, the bus driver remained mute. Eventually she stopped and approached the bench. Usually when someone goes to sit on a public bench, those already on it move along to make room. I squeezed up beside the man but this man’s mass remained immutable. I vacated the space altogether. Prolonged body contact with an unattractive stranger is not my favourite way of passing time.
The lady sat down, smiling in recognition of my good deed. The bus driver glanced at his watch then went back to the paper.
The lady dug into her voluminous bag and pulled out a book, The Principles of Russian Formalism. She’d only just opened the book when we heard the rumble that heralded the imminent arrival of the train. The bus driver folded the paper up and put it away. As the train pulled into the station he started the bus up and wheezed open the door. Quick as a flash the grey-haired lady sprung up.
I watched the people getting off the train. Hardly any schoolkids alighted, only Kerry and one of the boys in the maroon blazers. She gave him a cursory wave and he lurched off in the opposite direction. Kerry sauntered to the bus. She was in no hurry. The school hat was now perched right back on her head, her gloves were off and so was her belt. It was as grungy as you could get a uniform that was designed to be neat and ‘ladylike’. She showed the driver her school pass and went up the back of the bus.
The fat man was in front of me, fiddling in his pockets. Eventually he produced a stream of coins and the driver processed the ticket. I asked for a $2.50 fare. Peakhurst, where Kerry lived, couldn’t be any more than that. I went up to the very back seat. Kerry was sitting, feet propped up, gazing out the open window. She didn’t even give me a second look. The seat beside her was empty, as was most of this section of the bus. She was on her own now, no school, no group of admirers. No Madalena.
I watched Kerry the whole way to Peakhurst. She chewed her fingernails, gazing out the window, looking at nothing in particular. Then she pressed the button, indicating she wanted the next stop, and stood up. I did too.
I watched her open the gate and walk up a path either side of which grew weeds and a few stalky geraniums gasping for water. There was a verandah of weathered floorboards with a couple of black garbage bags sitting near the front door. The house looked like no-one lived there. She turned the key in the lock and went in.