The sage-green pinafore is slightly big on me now. I have to tighten my belt so it doesn’t look dowdy. Doing this raises the hem a little, revealing more leg.
Dressing, I have found, is no longer such a horrendous ordeal for me. Whenever I get a glimpse of my naked body in the full-length mirror, my thoughts aren’t nearly so critical. I don’t look for faults anymore. Instead, I know they are there and am consoled by the knowledge that I am doing something about them. Soon, I feel, they will be no more.
The television was tuned to a program for preschool children I watched religiously when I was no older than ten. After so many years, the host is still singing my favourite song, ‘The Little Rain Cloud’.
This morning, I hummed along as I assembled lunch: two Jonathon apples and a cucumber sandwich. I wasn’t likely to eat the sandwich, but it was there, just in case I got hungry.
Bag packed, I shrugged into my coat before slinging the rubbish out the door.
On the way to school it hit me. The knowledge of where I was going, or rather, what awaited me when I got there. Students, teachers, classes—normality. But what exactly is normal? I asked myself. Being mocked and ridiculed? Extracting crude love letters and hate mail from the side pockets of my school bag?
Silently, I said a prayer: Please, God. I’ve changed—changed for the better.
It gave me little strength to walk on.
All of a sudden my legs seemed to lose substance, to liquefy. For a short while, I had to stop moving.
What if nothing has changed apart from my looks?
What if they detest me even more?
So what, the stronger part of my mind argued. Life will be better no matter how they treat me. Dad’s gone. No one knows that he’s gone. No one suspects a thing. People won’t look at me and think to themselves she’s a murderer. She killed her father in cold blood. If anything, they’ll continue to tag me a loser, not a murderer.
Then I thought grievously, but I’m a reformed person! Murder, oddly enough, brought out the best in me—and my appearance.
I’m a winner!
I was petrified but resolute. I pushed the reality of Dad from my mind and concentrated on calming my nerves and steadying the butterfly wings in my stomach.
You’ll be fine, I told myself. You’ve got through the worst of it. If they give you any more trouble, just ignore them. Or smile serenely and tell them to go to hell.
I got to class on time. I imagined there’d be plenty of whispering and plenty more stares, but I imagined none so stifling as what I encountered.
Twenty-five or so heads turned in unison as I swept into the room lugging my humungous burden of a school bag. As I walked over to my desk, twenty-five or so pairs of disbelieving eyes absorbed my new appearance.
I could almost hear their thoughts: What happened to her? What happened to the unattractive girl we always teased? Where did she go? Who did they get to replace her? Can we have her back now? We enjoyed teasing her. It made us feel tough and superior. It made us forget about our own faults.
I took tremendous satisfaction from seeing Kitty’s mouth drop open like a drawbridge and Rhoda’s big caramel-brown eyes narrow to fiery slits, from hearing Law’s deafening silence as he neglected to voice a flippant remark. But I hid my smile deep in my heart, consciously protecting it. None of them deserves to see it, I thought. Perhaps Mrs Sinclair, but she isn’t alone to keep it sacred, which is what it is—sacred.
“You’re back,” said Mrs Sinclair, standing at the front of the classroom, modelling her ugly beige outfit from yesteryear.
“Back in Hades,” I muttered, taking my seat.
Gary Gibbons overheard my wisecrack and kind of smiled. I merely cast him a blank stare.
I couldn’t keep track of what Mrs Sinclair was saying. My mind reeled. It was on important issues, those that Kelly’s character in Demon’s Cross was facing not inclusive. I thought about the house. I thought about the woman whose relationship with Dad remains questionable. I was mindful of the fact that she could (and odds-on she will) cause trouble for me.
I opened up my book; to me, the pages were filled with indecipherable hogwash.
The more I dwelt on things—the house, the woman named Shirl—the more I developed a phobia about the windows and doors. I couldn’t for the life of me remember if I’d locked them or not.
I was soon able to convince myself that I hadn’t locked them. Not all of them, anyway.
I ditched lunch and went home to check that everything was secure. True, the house will never be an impenetrable fortress, but locked windows and doors will make it far less accessible to a certain investigative ex-lover.
Dad’s car looked awfully lonesome, like a giant slumbering animal bereft of a mate. Hurrying up the drive, I was overcome by how empty the house felt. There was also an eeriness to it that I hadn’t noticed before.
A slight chill scaled the length of my vertebral column, and as it reached the nape of my neck, it seemed to disband like an infestation of bugs marching through my hair, over my scalp.
I glanced over my shoulder, wary of being watched. Always a car driving by, always someone out walking their dog. But nobody appeared to be interested in what I was doing. What I was up to.
Still, I thought, I must be cautious.
The closer I got to the house, the heavier my chest felt and the weaker my legs got. It wasn’t the fact that a dead body was inside that gave me the creeps, so much as the fact that the place suddenly and indubitably felt wrong. It felt bad, in fact.
But how can that be? I argued. I have never felt safer here.
I belong here!
I hurried inside and checked that all the rooms were vacant (except the one room that is perpetually shut off from the world). I tested all the windows and doors. All locked—always locked. Of course.
Stupid paranoia.
The relief surged through me like a vortex.
It was drizzling a little when I got back to school. I slipped unnoticed through the front gates. The ash-coloured brick buildings hardly stood out against the overcast sky. The oppressive day seemed to filter through them.
According to Dad’s watch I had about five minutes to kill. I sat down behind the textiles room. I lit a cigarette, smoked it until it was a butt. Then the bell tolled. I took out my compact to powder my nose and check that my mascara hadn’t smudged. As I slowly made my way to class I didn’t care that I stank like a chimney.
Students all around me stopped what they were doing to stare.
Am I pretty to them? By the looks on their faces I realised something incredible, perhaps I was even more than pretty now, perhaps I was beautiful.
But inside I felt hollow. Wretched. Sick.
Late in the evening I was stretched out on the sofa perusing a handout from Mr De Visa’s class when I heard the unmistakable thrum of an engine. Next, bright headlights played across the far wall, pinpointing Dad’s spavined armchair, then the coffee table and the textbooks piled high on top of it.
I jumped up, ran circles round the place extinguishing the lights.
Sorry folks, I thought. Nobody home.
I was wearing my stay-at-home clothes: wrinkled grey track pants and a fleecy magenta pullover that has stains all over it. I certainly wasn’t dressed for company, although that wasn’t my biggest problem. That didn’t even come close to being my biggest problem. My biggest problem was avoiding capture and perhaps the inevitable—life imprisonment.
I crept over to the window in the lounge room. The window overlooks the front yard, extending towards the driveway. I squinted through a horizontal gash in the blind and wasn’t totally flabbergasted when I saw a cherry-red convertible parked in the drive. Still, the sight of it filled me with such dread I became paralysed.
No guessing who was back.
I wondered if I had been quick enough with the lights. I doubted it.
The tall, busty woman whom I immediately identified as Shirl climbed from the vehicle, pausing only to un-crease her skirt before slamming the door shut. She turned her head towards the front of the house. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew they were searching for movement.
I pulled back from the window and retreated to the narrow space behind the sofa, where I cowered like a cat terrified of a thunderstorm.
The sofa is just a piece of worn upholstered furniture, as dilapidated as Dad’s foul-smelling armchair; its boards are sagging after a lifetime of use. But I thought I could cut myself off from the rest of the world if I hid behind it and remained as still as I possibly could.
I plugged my ears with my forefingers so they wouldn’t have to tolerate her impending knocking. I shut my eyes, and for a short time at least, I really felt I’d removed myself from the bad place I had come to be in.
In this world, unconnected to the real one, darkness also reigned, but it was like a shield safeguarding me from the bogeyman standing at my front door. Or in this case—woman. Although bogeywoman doesn’t sound quite so scary.
The knocking was muted but still audible.
“Rene!” she called. “I know you’re in there! I know somebody is! I saw the lights!”
Her words upset me.
I wanted to scream or cry out. Go away! You’re not welcome here! Instead, I started to sing—“Poor little rain cloud, why so sad? Dry those tears, you aren’t so bad”—like a little kid trying to drown out a fight between her parents.
Eventually the talking and knocking ceased.
I pried open my eyes, one at a time. I listened for other sounds, in particular the sound of an engine turning and the convertible reversing out of the driveway and out of my life. No such luck, however.
I heard the gate at the side of the house creak open on its unoiled hinges. Next, staccato-like footsteps echoed on the path behind the house.
Oh, won’t she ever quit!
I swung my head around, in the general direction of the female interloper. I couldn’t see her, and yet I was still able to follow her closely. It was those outlandishly high shoes of hers. They betrayed her, letting me know precisely where she was.
I held my breath, hearing her pause beside the latched door of the garage. Then I heard her retracing her steps, tap-tap-tapping her way back to the rear verandah.
I worried not about her locating an unlocked door or window (there weren’t any, thanks to my obsessing over them earlier), but about her locating a tool that she could use to smash or jemmy her way in. By now I suspected she was capable of it.
The garage is full of tools, I thought. Hammers. Wrenches. Screwdrivers. Some are even scattered haphazardly about the yard.
I remembered seeing Dad’s old mattock lying in the grass beside the lemon tree.
I must get rid of her. But how?
I decided my best option was to move. I pulled off my shoes and stood using the top of the couch for leverage. I went from one window to the next, peeking out at the variegated darkness, tracking her exposed movements.
Until finally she returned to her car.
Finally, she’s leaving, I thought.
But I was sadly mistaken. Because when my eyes readjusted, I understood clearly that she wasn’t leaving. She was discussing the situation with someone on her mobile.