The men were late returning again. Standing on the front verandah Sara watched the day die in an extravagance of gold and pink above the dark line of the mulga. The paddock beyond the garden fence had a melancholy cast at sunset, the shadows beneath the trees a place where loneliness lived. Sara turned her gaze to the darkening sky, amazed to see tiny bats darting on velvet wings as the stars pricked out above them. There must be insects to feed them, though what they would live on was a puzzle, when the parched earth and the very air crackled with dryness. The dim shapes of the scrub seemed to yearn towards the cloudless sky, seeking the moisture that never came. Sara wondered how long it took for mulga to die. What would the cattle do then – or Len and Bungy, and the rest of the people whose livelihood the mulga was? And she wondered too how the station people stood the endless deferment of hope. No doubt Jack could tell her. She frowned then at how often he seemed to creep into her thoughts – but then she looked quickly towards the track where a vehicle’s lights were flashing through the trees.
‘So did you get the bore fixed? Canteen, was it?’ Sara asked once they were all at table. Len had greeted his son with a hug and spoken privately to Beth, and both the children were present, Becky subdued but Sam looking brighter than he had earlier. The fan was on, moving lazily in the warm air.
‘Yep.’ Jack ate hungrily, nudging Sam after his first mouthful. ‘Dig in, mate. It’s good. Besides, you don’t wanna insult the cook, very bad move that.’
Sam gave a fleeting grin and obeyed. Sara was touched by his effort. He obviously adored his uncle, just as Becky did. The boy said, ‘We had smoko at Mr Hammond’s camp, Uncle Jack. He’s building a new bridge over the Three Man. And I’ve got a new watch, see?’ He held up a thin wrist to display it. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Nice,’ Jack said admiringly. ‘You’ll never be late for dinner now. It’s about time Main Roads got off their butt and did something; that bridge was barely safe. The pump packed it in at Canteen so your Dad and I have been out there. It took us a day and a half to fix. Trough was bone dry for most of it.’ He spoke as to another man. ‘When we were done there we went onto Wintergreen to see the Kingco blokes about getting a hole put down on the Forty Mile – when they’ve finished their own drilling, that is.’
Sam looked eagerly at him, the fork halfway to his mouth. ‘You gonna take your stick out there?’
‘I’ll have a look tomorrow. Wasn’t time today. I’m not too hopeful, though. That’s a dry strip of country, but your dad reckons it’s worth a try.’
‘I wish I could go with you.’ Sam looked at his parents. ‘Mum, I don’t s’pose . . .’
Beth shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Sam. We have to be sensible. Later, when you’re well, there’ll be other trips.’
‘It’s okay,’ he muttered, though his disappointment was plain.
Beth looked at her governess. ‘Why don’t you go, Sara? Would you be interested? You’ve certainly earned a day off and if you’ve never seen divining . . .’
‘I haven’t.’ Sara hesitated. ‘I thought it was, you know, sideshow alley stuff, like tarot cards and fortune telling. But tomorrow’s a school day anyhow.’
Her employer smiled. ‘I can manage that. I’ve nothing else to do. You’ve baked, washed, cleaned – take a break and have a day out.’
‘I want to go too,’ Becky said. ‘Can I, Uncle Jack?’
Diplomatically he left it to Beth to shake her head. ‘Not this time, pet. You’ve got school.’
Becky’s brown eyes flashed with remembered hurt. ‘Then I want Sara to teach me, not you.’
‘But Sara hasn’t had a day off since she got here.’
‘It’s not fair!’ Becky leapt to her feet, knocking her fork flying. ‘I never get to do anything I want. I hate you! I hate everybody!’ She ran from the room and a moment later the crash of her bedroom door echoed through the house.
Sara felt immensely uncomfortable, both from Becky’s pointed retort and Beth’s assumption that Jack would have no objection to her plan. She murmured, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t, she’s got used to my ways.’
‘No,’ Beth said firmly. ‘I won’t have her thinking that tantrums work. She’s feeling hurt and insecure right now, but there have to be rules.’
Sara inwardly cursed Jack, who still hadn’t spoken. ‘Well, in that case I can open gates,’ she offered after a moment, and was relieved to see him nod.
‘Sounds like a deal, then.’
For once they had an unhurried morning. School had started before Sara finished cutting lunches for herself and Jack. She packed them into a cool-box along with a freezer brick, collected her hat and headed for the vehicle shed to find Jack fuelling up the Toyota at the bowser. The cool-box went into the middle seat, though first she had to pluck aside a Y-shaped stick. On the point of tossing it out, she waved it at Jack.
‘What’s this?’
‘Hang on to that.’ He hooked up the bowser hose. ‘I just went and cut it.’ He wiped his hands on a rag that he stuffed under his seat, then got into the cab. ‘All set?’
‘I think so.’ Sara inspected the stick. ‘What is it? Some special wood?’
‘Nope, just a bit of mulga. Point is, there’s precious few trees out on the Twelve Mile, that big plain where you felt crook. And before you ask, there are maybe a million Eight Miles, Six Miles and so on spread across the country and nobody is gonna change ’em into kilometres. Not even in fifty years’ time when everyone’s forgotten what a mile is.’
Sara laughed, a carefree burble of sound, suddenly glad of a day’s freedom from chores. ‘I see. Not just stubborn, but pigheaded too.’
‘That’s about the size of it.’ His eyes went to her hair, which she was aware was sunlit and gleaming with coppery lights. Her hat was again on her lap, pushed off by the rifle behind her. ‘Maybe you should think about getting some proper head gear?’
‘What’s wrong with this?’ She picked up the straw covering.
He shrugged, lips twitching as he looked across at her. ‘Mobs o’ things. It’ll blow off in the wind. Given the chance, the stock’ll eat it. Rain’ll ruin it —’
‘Ha! Chance would be a fine thing.’ She flung the words over her shoulder as she got out to open the horse-paddock gate.
Once they were underway again Jack asked, ‘So what did you want to speak to me about?’ The teasing note had dropped from his voice and his glance was serious, inviting her confidence.
‘Oh.’ Now that the moment had come, Sara hardly knew how to start. She stared fixedly at the dusty dash, feeling the judder of the vehicle moving over the corrugated road. From the corner of her eye she watched his left hand shifting the gearstick through quick changes in response to the dips and gutters in the track.
‘Did you change your mind about it?’ he wondered, as if prompting her.
Sara flushed. ‘No, it’s just – where to begin? The other day when I told you I’d never fainted before? Well, I realised later that was a lie, because I did, once —’ She stopped herself. ‘Before I came here. It was a very hot day, probably a touch of the sun.’ It sounded lame, but she was regretting the impulse to confide in him. He would think she was crazy. ‘I just – well, I wanted to assure you that, despite that, I’m not ill or – or irresponsible. I thought you should know, that’s all.’ She bit her lip, cursing the heat she could feel in her face.
‘Yes?’ He sounded more puzzled than relieved. ‘Well, that’s good but I wasn’t demanding an explanation, Sara. So why are you telling me this?’
‘Because . . .’ Sara pressed her hands to her hot cheeks, framing sentences and then discarding them. ‘Because you’re here,’ she blurted. ‘I’m sorry. This was a bad idea. I felt I needed to talk to someone and Beth has too much on her plate already. Look, can we please just forget it?’
‘Obviously it’s important to you. Whatever you choose to tell me won’t go any further. If you have something to say, I’ll listen. Maybe I won’t be able to help, but often enough just setting out a problem – if that’s what you have – helps to clarify it. And it’ll be a damn sight cheaper than ringing your family from out here.’
‘There’s nobody I can ring,’ Sara admitted. ‘That’s part of it, really. There’s only my mother, and I can’t talk to her, even if I knew where she was, which I don’t.’
‘Well, fire away,’ Jack said comfortably. ‘We’ve got all day.’ When she didn’t respond, he added encouragingly, ‘A good trick is to start with a word. So in just one word, Sara, what’s your main concern?’
And suddenly she wanted to tell him. The words spilled from her almost without volition, just pouring forth, and the relief of letting them go was immense.
‘Memory,’ Sara said. ‘I’ve never been able to remember anything before the age of six – and now I think I’m starting to, and it terrifies me. That’s why I fainted, both times, here and in Mildura. It wasn’t the heat.’ She gasped then. ‘My God! I didn’t mean – I opened my mouth and it all rushed out.’
‘Obviously you did need to talk,’ he responded. ‘Okay, that seems simple enough. Remembering makes you afraid. What of?’
‘I don’t know!’ Sara gritted in frustration. ‘Anyway it’s not really remembering, because I can’t – there are just teeny flashes now and then, like something seen at high speed. A glimpse from a bus window maybe – there and gone before I can make sense of it. It’s the fear that comes with it that —’ She stopped and tried again. ‘It’s like something bad happened back then when I was little, something so terrible that I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t know about it. Not my real eyes.’ She struggled to explain. ‘I think I must’ve seen something I can’t bear to remember.’
‘So you think you blocked it out back then, shoved it into a dark cupboard, if you like, and locked the door?’ Jack said slowly. ‘And now that door’s coming open?’
‘Yes.’ She was grateful for his quick comprehension.
‘I see. Well, is there nobody you could ask about that time? Not your mother, you said. Your father, perhaps?’
‘He died when I was a kid. I scarcely remember him. I only remember that he scared me. I have this picture of hiding from him; well, I think it was him, but I can’t recall his face. Just somebody who shouted, a shadow on the wall that shouted.’ She shivered. ‘I think I made him angry going out. It was after the crash. I was supposed to stay in bed. Afterwards, Stella said he got sick. That’s when he went away and I didn’t see him again.’
‘Hang on, you’re losing me. Who’s Stella, and what crash?’
‘My mother. She said there was a car accident. I don’t remember it so I can’t say if I was in the car or hit by a car. I just recall a dark little room I had to stay in, and that my head hurt a lot.’
The vehicle had slowed to a crawl. Jack waited for a patch of shade on the road and pulled up in it. ‘I seem to be missing something here. This was years and years ago, right? And you’ve never asked your mother about any of it – how this accident happened, or what you might’ve seen? Whereabouts did it occur, for instance, and was anybody killed? Questions like that.’
‘Jack, you don’t know my mother. I’ve never had a straight answer from her in my life about anything I’ve asked. She had no time for me as a kid and used to say so to my face. She never wanted me and couldn’t wait to get me out of her life. Right now I don’t even know where she’s living.’
‘Okay.’ He tapped the steering wheel in thought. ‘Family friends, then? Aunts, next-door neighbours?’
‘I have no rellies,’ Sara said simply. ‘Not that I know of, anyway. And Stella always rented. She hopped – still hops around – like a flea on a dog. So, no neighbours, and as for friends . . .’ These had only ever been male, men Stella met in the pub and brought home from time to time for companionship and casual sex. Sara had been a teenager before the true nature of their presence had dawned on her. With a teenager’s righteousness she had made no secret of her disgust, disdaining the men with their fading hair and heavy bodies who littered the bathroom with their dirty clothing and filled the fridge with their beer. She had hated the way they treated the place as their own, sprawling on the couch, leaving their mess for others to clean up. Once, when she was fifteen, she had come home from school to find her own bed stripped back to the linen and a used condom on the sheet. Stella, when confronted with Sara’s blazing green eyes, had been unrepentant, claiming that her own much prized waterbed had sprung a leak.
‘It’s my room,’ Sara had yelled. ‘How dare you and that hairy ape even go in there?’
Stella’s eyes had narrowed. She said venomously, ‘It’s the room I let you have, and don’t you forget it! What’s your problem anyway? You can change a bed, can’t you?’
‘With that filthy thing in it?’
Her mother had laughed mockingly. ‘Oh, grow up, Miss Priss. So Jerry’s a careless sod. Men are, you’ll find.’
Remembering the exchange, Sara pressed her lips together, reiterating, ‘No, there’s nobody. I never really thought about it before but my parents seem to have been rootless. Stella anyway, and all I know about my father is his name – well, not even that really. Stella called him Vic, so I suppose he was Victor, or even Vittoria. He could have been Italian, he had olive skin – at least, I think he did. I don’t even know what he worked at. I asked Stella once and she just looked at me and said, “This and that. What business is it of yours?” He was my father and she wouldn’t even tell me his occupation.’
‘Not much help there, then,’ Jack said. ‘I haven’t been either, I’m afraid.’
‘You have,’ Sara said. ‘Maybe it hasn’t solved anything but laying it out does help. If I’d only done it before, that man mightn’t have driven me out of my job —’ She swallowed the rest of the sentence.
Jack leaned back in his seat again, the key he had been reaching for left unturned.
‘Which job, and what man was that?’
Sara told him. Part of her wondered if this was what she had wanted all along and that the slip of her tongue had been intentional, just an excuse to confide in him. Then halfway through the telling she had the unhappy thought that it all sounded too strange to be credible. Would he think she suffered from hysteria, or was simply seeking attention? He was frowning by the time she finished and her heart sank. However, his response surprised her.
‘So this all began at the same time. I mean, you saw this man again in Mildura after he’d apparently followed you from Adelaide. You fainted in what, shock? And it was after that that the flashes of memory started?’
Sara goggled at him. She felt the blood begin to recede from her head, then rush back.
‘I am such a fool,’ she said faintly. ‘I never put it together like that, but it’s true. Does that mean . . . Do you think he’s got something to do with . . . But surely he’s too young to be involved? He looked to be about your age. And I never considered that the two events weren’t separate. Him stalking me and me remembering things, I mean. I thought he just had some freakish fixation thing going. But if it’s not that then how would he know who I was? And if it’s to do with my past, then he must.’
‘The electoral roll,’ Jack said, ‘the phone book, a private investigator – all you need’s a name. People aren’t hard to find. Vagrants might be, but not law-abiding folk. Of course, he might just have found you madly attractive.’ He raised an eyebrow at her.
She shivered, unamused. ‘Enough to break into my flat? Is that normal behaviour? Besides, why did I feel such terror at the sight of him, that first time I saw him on the beach?’’
‘No, none of that’s normal,’ Jack agreed. He leaned forward again and this time keyed the starter motor. ‘You were wise to clear out. Dr Ketch’s advice on the matter is to be patient, and wait for your subconscious to heave up whatever it’s been hiding from you.’ His glance was sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry. That’s not much comfort, but if it all gets on top of you again and you want to talk, I’m here.’
‘Thank you. I appreciate it, Jack. It helps.’ And it did; fresh viewpoints were always helpful. She wondered if her stalker was somehow connected to the crash that had stolen her memory. Was it possible that he had lost a relative in the accident and blamed her? Or could she have somehow been the cause of it? If so, might he have been tracking her down in revenge for the death of some family member – a parent, say, or a sibling? Nibbling her lip, Sara considered then dismissed the notion as fanciful, if not plain silly. No six-year-old could be held accountable for her actions. What sane person could think so? As for the alternative . . . She shivered, suddenly glad she was out here in the middle of desert country, where nobody would ever think to look for her.