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Fifteen years ago, I’d been standing behind a door when my five-year-old gut told me there was something bad on the other side.
Pearls shone all over the wooden floor, some still rolling a little because they were too identical to be real, machine-manufactured, perfectly spherical with one tiny hole to hang by.
Coral’s necklace used to break all the time. I had seen her thread it back together over and over again. The thread was meant to be nylon, like fishing line, but she only had cotton. I liked watching her repair it, handing her a single pearl at a time in my tiny fingers. But after she died, I couldn’t find all the pearls. I was relocated to the Children’s Home with a handful of pearls inside a matchbox I kept in my pocket. I never got to put it back together.
Now, my gut is telling me something else. I turn the pages of the book until I get two pages of black. A thrill of dread runs down my back. Only three things are drawn here: a bridge, a woman running, and a man running behind her. Overhead, white veins of lightning split the sky.
Wait ... there is something else. A date. 1971.
* * *
I leaf to the end of the book and the last picture is of a church with closed doors followed by blank pages.
I pull on my sandals and cycle back down to the inn.
The bar is half full, the patrons relaxed, the occasional laugh cuts through the music.
I find Mary in the cold-room behind the bar, clutching a carton of beer bottles. She smiles over the top.
‘Hey, Lola!’ She puts the carton down and wipes her forehead with the back of her arm. She sits on the edge of an empty shelf, and the whole structure squeaks. I rub my goose bumped arms against the cold smoke pouring through the vents.
‘Walshy back yet?’
‘Nope. I’ve been looking through the sketches. It’s all about Lorrelai and the murder case. Do you know if Lorrelai’s lover, the husband, got questioned? Also, did he have a beard?’
Mary holds up both hands. ‘Lola, it was ages ago. I have no idea. I’m starving. Come have something to eat.’ She rocks forwards onto her feet.
‘Are you sure Lorrelai didn’t have a baby?’
Mary frowns. ‘I don’t recall her having a baby. I know the husband was her lover. Voila—her reason for getting rid of the wife.’ She spreads her hands like it’s all the explanation needed.
‘What else do you know about it? Was Lorrelai still living in that room outside?’
Mary shakes her head. ‘No, it happened in Northam. She got fired or something, moved to a caravan park there. I read about some of it so I could get some tourists to spend a few bucks here. Go to the Northam Library. That’s where I went.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Okay.’
‘You’re all stirred up.’ She puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘But we’re here for you, okay? You got a job here if you need it, a bed to sleep in. A meal. Now c’mon, eat.’
I nod and follow Mary like a lamb. She brings out two plates of stew with herb-speckled dumplings and salad. My mouth waters. Dumplings are another food you should jam in your mouth; the doughy bulk fills right up to the roof.
‘Whoa, girl. You’ll get hiccups.’ Mary sits opposite and eats her way through her own serving. ‘Better?’
I chew a bit and swallow before I talk. ‘Thanks for this, Mary. You know, I think Blossom knew something. Something she never told anyone. She believed Lorrelai was innocent, and if that was the case, someone else got away with murder.’ We finish, and Mary waves me away from collecting the plates.
‘Go sort out your mystery. And keep me posted. It’s getting interesting.’
* * *
I hurry home in the humid afternoon. Heat streams off the bitumen. Inside the Flower House, I go into each room, check it, and then lock the back door. I don’t know why I’m so creeped out. All this was ages ago. But it feels like the sketchbook has clawed open a crack into the past.
Blossom hid it in a crazy spot for me when she died. It’s the only connection I have left. And it feels like a message. She’s trying to tell me something in true Blossom style. Let me work it out for myself.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. There’s something I have to do. I leave the sketchbook, head for the phone and flick through the phonebook to find the number for Births, Deaths and Marriages. Alternately fearful and impatient, I’m redirected through several points of contact until I finally introduce myself to the right officer.
‘My name is Lola Harris. I need a copy of my original birth certificate. Not an extract—I have that—but the original. I was named after a relative and brought up in the state system. I don’t know my parents’ names.’ The officer confirms my caseworker’s name and runs me through the relevant requirements and documents I’ll need.
I replace the receiver. It is done.
I stand still for a moment. Then I go grab the sketchbook.
In the bathroom, I flick the light on and close the door. The window is that rippled glass which is too warped to see through. I sit on the edge of the bath, balance the book on my knees and thumb forwards to the stormy, running scene.
The river is all lines and swirls, flowing fast. Lightning forks overhead. I can imagine how fierce the rain, how loud the thunder, how immense the currents. The river changes so much. It can be fierce or calm, deeper than it appears.
The Avon Descent, a two-day race between Northam and Perth, where people paddle kayaks and canoes over a hundred kilometres of rocks, pinches and rapids, is known for its challenges. About ten years ago, in 1995, someone died during the race.
In the sketch, the woman is well ahead of the man. If it’s the wife, why is she running towards the river in the thick of a storm? What made her run? What is so urgent that they’re both out in the dead of night?
Willing the picture to give me more, I focus on the man. He carries a torch and stares at the beam on the ground. His eyes are wide, searching. He doesn’t look murderous. He looks scared. Unlike the woman, he’s dressed for the weather: a warm jacket, trousers and boots.
The woman’s face is expressionless, like someone in shock. She doesn’t look scared; she looks blind or mad. Her high heels are incongruous with the shapeless dress, which is stuck to her bony body, her breasts and ribs visible through the fabric.
The one picture left in the sketchbook after the storm, the church, seems to signify a natural end. A death. Then, between the storm scene and the church, the sketchbook falls wide open. I notice something near the spine. A ripped edge. I run a finger along it. Someone’s ripped a few pages out. Right where a murder could have happened. Did Blossom know about the missing pages? Did she remove them herself? The postal bag was sealed when I found it. Why would she leave me a story with the crucial part gone?
Carefully, I close the book. What happened next? Did the man reach the woman? Strangle her and push her into the river? Or was someone else on the bridge, waiting?
I go outside for some fresh air. It’s late afternoon, long shadows painting the ground. The air is still very warm, and in the sky, the small white shape of a plane slides across the blue.
* * *
Back inside, I turn on the lights and put the sketchbook in the pantry, placing my copy of the Country Women’s Association Cookery Book and Handy Hints on top and closing the doors.
The cookbook was Coral’s. I took it when the ambulance came, before I was taken away. I knew I’d never go back to that house. I’d never get anything that belonged to Coral, not even a photograph. That’s the thing with not belonging. Nothing is really yours. Not family photos. Not even your bedroom. You get used to nothing being your own. To walking away.
I shower in cold water. It makes me gasp, but it’s fresh and clean and good. I cup my hands, slurping handfuls until my head feels better.
Days like this suck you dry. It was something Blossom always said on hot days. The real stinkers, forty degrees and over, when the garden wilted, the grass frizzled, and the ravens hissed in the shade with their beaks open, watching panting dogs dig to keep cool.
Blossom knew about the outdoors. She had a farmer’s tan, leathery skin, scabby ears, and a weathered red V below her neck. She was strong and capable, far more comfortable with plants and vegetables than with people.
I wonder what it will be like at Blossom’s funeral. I can’t do a speech, because I didn’t really know her. I still don’t. What would I say? I was grateful. She provided me with a house, somewhere Walshy and I could live. Did she know the house would be taken off us when she died?
I towel off and pull on the shirt I use to sleep in. I imagine some of Blossom’s sketches. Something hovers around my thoughts like a bee round a bloom, almost ready to land. I go out and get the sketchbook. Cross-legged on my bed, underneath the light, I open it on my lap. The pictures are so lifelike, yet so mundane. Lorrelai going about her life while Blossom sketched her in a caravan park in 1971.
I go to one picture that’s stayed in my mind. Lorrelai with her hands in the dough, flour up one arm, some on the bench, a smear on her forehead. A spoon and bowl and a box of yeast, a fabric bag labelled SALT. I turn the page. Lorrelai in the vegetable garden, a pea pod in her hand, dirt under her nails, a dark curl stuck to her temple. A grinning Lorrelai grating an apple, hand gripping the fruit, eyebrows up like she’s talking to someone. The person behind the camera. Click.
I leave the book, walk to the kitchen, and turn on the pantry light. There’s flour and salt and two sachets of yeast. I check the best before date. After heating water in the kettle, I add some to a cereal bowl and drop in some sugar, picking out two ants. Tap water makes it tepid and then a sprinkle of yeast goes over. Beige blooms rise to the surface. I measure three cups of flour and two pinches of salt into another big bowl.
I can see Lorrelai working. She is sweating a little, stringy muscles standing out in her arms. She talks as she works. She smiles. She falls silent, wiping her hands on a cloth, reacting to the baby, hurrying to the crib. I see her eating with the big, bearded man, peas falling off her fork. Or swatting a fly as she milks, her hands pumping rhythmically. I see her waist thinning as she reaches overhead for an apple, as she bends down and places it in a wicker basket.
Blossom didn’t make bread; she didn’t cook.
I add the yeast mix to the flour, combine wet and dry, knead it, and then flop it out onto the floured bench. The dough is warm, dense, tacky as belly fat. Using both hands, I knead again, then I lower it into the bowl and cover it with a tea towel. It will double in size before morning.
The clock ticks. The fridge hums. There’s a dusting of flour on the back of my hand. I slap the dough through the tea towel like it’s a mate I’m sharing something with.
‘You were there,’ I say to the empty kitchen, and I laugh, feeling elated that Blossom has finally told me something. A secret. A big secret.
She didn’t just draw pictures about a famous murder story. She knew Lorrelai. She watched her and sketched her. Maybe they were friends who spent time together and shared secrets. Secrets about Lorrelai’s affair with a married man, and later, secrets about the murder of his wife.