Darcy was baking a cake in the kitchen, whipping cream by hand, while his father poured a bottle of Remy Martin down the sink. The school says she’s disappeared, his father said. He never mentioned Fin by name when Darcy’s mother was in earshot, but she was sitting at the dining-room table and Darcy could tell his father wanted her to hear.
With some New Australian boy. Older. Apparently he took her off to Queensland. Did you know about this?
Darcy stood at the fridge with a bowl of cream in his hands, sinking. She hadn’t said goodbye; he’d barely seen her since the day at the beach. Darcy moved to lean against the bench, told his father he knew nothing. But he’d seen Jostler just a week ago, the Monaro stopping on the corner of Mountain Road, offering a ride down the hill. Jostler, who’d come from the Somerville pub.
Darcy began whipping cream furiously. Yes, he knew Jostler. Darcy still remembered the holes in the knees of his jeans. He’d fantasised about being alone with him and some tinnies up at the old quarry on Two Bays Road. And now Jostler had taken her away.
His mother stood silent in the doorway as his father drained sherry from the stem of a tulip-shaped bottle. Apparently his last name is Garabed or something, he said. The police are searching for them.
Darcy mouthed the name: Garabed. I wish they’d taken me, he mumbled, but his father pretended not to hear, his mother glaring at the loss of liquid. A mix of envy and rage unbuckled inside Darcy, images of the endless beach at Surfers Paradise swirling white before him, Fin’s head on Jostler’s thigh in white sand as the clouds ran silent above, shadows on that phosphorous ocean. Fin knew first-hand about being abandoned, had left Darcy knowing how he’d feel. Jostler made her promise, he thought.
Darcy’s mother drew on her smoke. She came, she went, she said sarcastically, and look at us.
Darcy threw the bowl of cream across the room. Most of it landed on the stove, dolloping down into the electric elements, some like semen on the walls.
Tut, tut, said his mother. Now we’ll have to clean that up.
His father had an emptied bottle of her Gilbey’s in his hand. He didn’t look at the mess. Maybe we should go on a trip, he said.
Not to Queensland, said his mother.
Darcy hated her dismissal of every idea with a word or a wave of a cigarette. He felt a sudden desire to run from them, catch the bus to Surfers Paradise, or just walk out into the darkness, search the roads for the missionaries. He’d been right—Fin was the lucky one.