Shallow Breath Page 11

  Now that she is on sealed road, the low bushland flies by and before long she sees the gate. There is a hand-painted sign on one of the slats: ‘Hoppers Rest’. Perhaps this is a terrible idea, but she has no choice. She climbs out to open the gate, drives through and then gets out to shut it behind her again. Then she steers the car carefully along the track to the low-lying, single-storey house. A couple of kangaroos move slowly away, shifting their weight idly between their front paws and tail, no urgency to their movements. A third lolls under a tree, surveying her as she passes.

  There are people on the front verandah before she has even stopped the car. The man is rubbing his eyes as though he’s been woken. The woman is squinting in the early light. Perhaps she cannot see who it is yet, or maybe she cannot believe it.

  Maya gets out of the car and goes quickly to the passenger side, grabbing the esky. Her heart is thundering. She marches towards the steps that lead up to the house. ‘We need your help,’ she says, holding out the box. Then she sets it down in front of her, a barrier between them. The man kneels down and peeks under the blankets. ‘Okay,’ he murmurs. He looks at Maya but doesn’t say anything, just picks up the esky and hurries inside. As he passes his wife, he says, ‘It’s furred, but unresponsive. We’ll see.’

  She nods, but remains watching Maya. They both hear the screen door slam.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Maya,’ Rebecca says softly. ‘It’s been too long. Would you like to come in?’

  17

  Rebecca

  Rebecca is saddened by how wary Maya is as they sit in the kitchen. This is the same girl who spent hours here as a child, who would concentrate on her colouring at the kitchen table, unaware that her tongue was always testing the side of her mouth; or would tickle baby Caitlin’s tummy as she lay in her rocker, smiling adoringly at her. The girls had been drawn to one another despite the six-year age gap, neither having a sibling to call their own. Rebecca had always loved watching them together. Again, the surge of anger at Desi rises. Do you see what you’ve done? she thinks. Do you see how many lives you crashed into that day, aside from the one you were so keen to ruin?

  Theo has taken the little animal into the spare bedroom, which he uses as a makeshift surgery when he’s not at the vet’s. Rebecca would like to see how it’s going, but doesn’t want to leave Maya alone. She pours two glasses of water, pushes one across to Maya and sits down at the table.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ she says.

  ‘A friend of mine found him.’ Maya stares glumly at her fingers. ‘We kept him overnight – I thought I could do better … It’s harder than I imagined …’

  ‘It’s hard for all of us when we’re starting out,’ Rebecca reassures her. ‘And every case is different. What did you try?’

  ‘I put him in the esky with blankets and a hot-water bottle. I knew not to give him milk, so I tried to give him black tea – I’d seen Mum do that a couple of times – but I didn’t have the right bottle either …’

  She trails off and stares at Rebecca in alarm, as though realising she has mentioned the unmentionable.

  Rebecca holds tight to the cool glass, tips the water so it sways from side to side. ‘I’ve heard Desi is home,’ she says. ‘How is she?’

  Maya shrugs. ‘I haven’t seen her properly yet.’ She won’t meet Rebecca’s eye.

  Rebecca can see how miserable Maya is. She puts her hand on the teenager’s. ‘You haven’t forgiven her?’ she asks softly.

  Maya looks down for a moment, then jerks her head up to meet Rebecca’s eyes. ‘Not really. So, how –’

  She is interrupted by Theo appearing in the doorway.

  ‘I’ve put her on a drip,’ he says to them both. ‘She’s pretty weak. We’ll have to see.’

  Maya’s face crumples. ‘It’s a she? I should have brought her here straight away,’ she says, her lip trembling. She presses her hands against her eyes, trying not to cry.

  Before Rebecca can move, Theo goes across to Maya. ‘Hey,’ he says, patting her shoulder. ‘Chances are she’d be like this anyway. I heard what you told Bec. You’ve only had her a few hours, you did everything you could, and when you saw she was in trouble you brought her straight here. That must have taken some guts, Maya, in the circumstances.’

  It’s at moments like these that Rebecca’s heart brims with love for Theo. That she thanks heaven she bucked the trend of marrying a man like her father and chose the exact opposite. She doesn’t know where she would be if she hadn’t had Theo these last few years.

  She smiles gratefully at him before he disappears again, then turns to Maya. ‘Look, I’m having trouble forgiving your mum too. But, for what it’s worth, I still can’t credit her with being deliberately malicious. I believed her when she said she didn’t remember what happened.’

  She pauses, considering how much to push, but her fervour for information overwhelms her sensibilities towards Maya. ‘Dad and Desi didn’t like one another, but I never imagined it would lead to this. Do you know if anything happened that day, or that week, that might have fuelled the fire in some way?’

  Maya shakes her head vigorously. ‘No. I’ve wondered that myself, but I can’t think of anything. In the days before it happened, Mum didn’t seem any different than normal. She could be a bit quiet and distracted at times, but that’s just her. Even when she was like that, she was always kind to people … never violent.’

  Rebecca sees Maya struggle with the emotion behind her words, and feels sorry for her. Perhaps she should have got in touch sooner to offer support, but it hadn’t felt appropriate. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that she has known Maya all her life, and that this young girl had been left alone when her mother went to prison.

  Rebecca shifts uneasily in her seat. Had she made excuses to avoid getting involved, telling herself that Pete was there, and Jackson? Had she turned away because it had all been too hard?

  She tries to think of any crumbs of comfort she might offer now. ‘According to our legal rep, your mum might not have gone to prison if my father hadn’t pursued it so zealously.’

  Rick’s rage had been incandescent. He had sought justice vigorously, revelling in the psychiatric evaluation that appeared to imply Desi was lying. The prosecution had made sure the charge was bodily harm using a vehicle, and pushed for prison time. There was an uncomfortable irony in seeing Rick gloating at the sentence.

  Rebecca still replayed that afternoon over and over. The way Rick stomped down the drive, and how, at the sight of him, Caitlin, always wary of her grandfather, had quickly put down her DS and sat up. She had been opening the door to get out for him, beginning to swing her legs round, when they had first heard Desi’s vehicle approach. There had only been milliseconds after that before one car met another with a sickening bang.

  Rebecca hadn’t realised that Maya had witnessed everything until much later. She can’t imagine what Maya must have felt as she watched it all unfold and realised that her mother was responsible. It is only now, seeing Maya’s pale, thin face, that she is overtaken by compassion. She is about to tell Maya that she should come around more often now, and to apologise for the last few years, when Theo walks slowly into the room, wiping his hands, and sits down at the table. He looks at Maya, and Rebecca’s heart falls.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘We were a little bit too late with this one.’

  Rebecca watches Maya turn her gaze down towards her lap, and close her eyes. She reaches out and strokes her arm. ‘It happens. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘We’ve missed you, Maya.’

  It was what Rebecca had been going to say next, but the voice is smaller than hers. They all turn to see the girl leaning in the doorway. Caitlin is just out of bed, wearing shorts and a crumpled T-shirt.

  Rebecca glances towards Maya, sees her straighten in her seat and bite her tears back. ‘Thanks, Caitlin,’ she says, and does a wonderful job of keeping her eyes on Caitlin’s face. But Rebecca is waiting for it, and notices the momentary
flicker downwards to Caitlin’s left leg, a long, ugly scar running the length of it, where the bone had been fixed with a combination of plates, rods and screws.

  Rebecca still tries to tell herself that they are lucky. If Caitlin had been any further out of the car, she would have been pinned between the vehicles. She might have lost her legs completely, even her life. The long-term prognosis is reasonably encouraging, but Caitlin will always have trouble dancing. How she misses the daughter who had whirled around the room, and through life, innocent and untroubled. A ten-year-old shouldn’t have to face such pain. When you saw it, close up, day after day, it was hard not to ask bigger, angry questions about karma.

  Rebecca watches Maya’s head turning to follow Caitlin across the room as she limps over to the sink to get some water. When Maya catches Rebecca’s eye, she looks away quickly, as though she is the guilty one, not her mother. And now Rebecca finds a true reason that Caitlin is lucky – because she has had the consistency of a mother and father to love her through it all. Caitlin’s scars are on the outside, but she suspects Maya’s hidden ones are giving her just as much grief.

  18

  Desi

  It is January 1992, and through Christmas and New Year Desi has not stopped thinking about Connor’s offer. Once he is gone, distance lets the doubts set in. Does he mean it? She hardly knows him, and his conversation is hard to read. What if he had been teasing her? Is she being naive? Would she call the caravan site only to hear him laugh at her?

  Even if he was serious, it has been weeks since she saw him – has she left it too late already?

  And yet, as she takes orders and wipes down tables, she keeps asking herself, what if this is her ticket out of here? She can all too easily picture herself on a boat with Connor in golden sunshine, a dozen dolphins leaping and frolicking around them.

  She tells no one about the offer, hiding her secret away as tight as an oyster guards its treasure. She desperately wants to share it with her mother, or Rebecca, but she knows they will mar the dream with practicalities. Neither of them will want her to go; they will only begin thinking of ways to persuade her to stay, and she is worried she will be swayed by their entreaties. She fears that they might actually be able to talk her out of it.

  The way she is thinking surprises her. It is as though her mind is already made up – but if that is the case, then why isn’t she doing anything about it? It is as if she is standing high on a precipice, trying to see through the surface of the rippling, beckoning water beneath her. Waiting for some sign before she jumps.

  The days slowly lose their charm, rolling on in monotonous sunshine, until Desi finds herself praying for a storm. For the first few weeks of the year, it is as though she is split in two. Her body operates on automatic pilot, fulfilling her shifts at the cafe, visiting friends, going down to the marina to watch the dolphins. But her mind is elsewhere, skimming the sea, or eyeing the telephone, asking, Dare I? Dare I?

  In the end, two things push her into a decision. The first happens on the morning of 13 January, when Rebecca knocks on the door of the closed cafe in obvious excitement, soon after eight o’clock, when they are still setting up for the day.

  ‘They’ve opened the gates,’ she announces.

  Desi looks behind her to her boss, Rachel, who nods. She pulls off her apron and runs with Rebecca down to the quayside. The crowd is gathering; the locals don’t want to miss the send-off.

  Desi is full of the emotion of the moment. She thinks of all the years, all the shows, all the people who have met and loved these beautiful creatures, whose good will travels with this little group into the deep, dark waters of the Indian Ocean. She hopes that it might make a difference somehow, buoy them up and lend them strength on their journey. She glances towards the trainers watching on one side, who have put months of energy into the build-up to today. She tries to imagine what they are going through as they stand together in a group, talking and waiting.

  The dolphins are circling close to the open gate, but none of them gives any sign of venturing through. Desi shades her eyes and waits, Rebecca next to her.

  ‘Why won’t they go?’ Rebecca asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Desi replies. But then she imagines herself with them in the cloudy water, sensing not only freedom but the danger of the unknown. Do they comprehend that once they go through there may be no going back?

  Desi waits for half an hour, but doesn’t want to leave Rachel alone once the cafe is open. She trudges reluctantly back to work, after Rebecca promises to update her if anything happens. For once, her morning isn’t filled with thoughts of Connor’s offer but of the dolphins a few metres away, plucking up courage.

  Rebecca comes in a couple of hours later. ‘They’ve taken the boat out, tried to entice them through the gate with fish, but they don’t seem that interested,’ she said. ‘The young ones swam about fifty metres, and then swam back. I’ve heard that they’ll leave the gate open now – they’re free to go when they’re ready. Perhaps they’ll just stay close to the marina.’

  ‘I don’t think the trainers want that – it’s dangerous for the dolphins to hang around when there are lots of boats in the area,’ Desi answers. But she is glad to hear they are still there. She knows it can’t go on forever, that this is the beginning of the end, but she is grateful they are safe for a little while longer.

  ‘There’s still something fishy about freedom’, shouts the front page of The West Australian newspaper the next day, with a picture of one of the dolphins appearing to smile for the camera. As people realise their release will not be as punctual or coordinated as one of their shows, the excitement dies down, and progress reports begin to come in snatches. First, Rajah leaves on his own. Two days after that, the rest follow the boat out. They split into smaller groups, and the trainers begin the busy work of trying to track the dolphins by boat, plane and reported sightings as they swim free.

  Once they’ve gone, Desi keeps up with the news as best she can, though it isn’t hard in the first weeks, since the dolphins are a popular topic in the cafe. There are some triumphs. The juveniles are sighted with pods of wild dolphins. Frodo and Nero are two hundred kilometres further south, playing with people on a beach at Dwellingup. But then disturbing reports begin to trickle in. Mila and her calf are spotted forty kilometres away at Hillarys, both losing body weight fast. And Echo is in trouble nearby, begging for fish and beaching herself at Ocean Reef. She is the first dolphin returned to the sea pen, quickly joined by Rajah, who has reappeared in poor condition after his extended sortie up the coast. Two weeks later, Mila is recaptured too, after her calf disappears. They are a rag-tag three, milling about in confined space again, as those in charge decide what to do with them.

  In the cafe, as the days go by, Desi hears about them less and less. Immigration is the new dish du jour, after a boat full of refugees made landfall in the Kimberley. The group stumbled around undiscovered in the desert for days before two of them eventually reached an outback station. They are now in custody, while emergency services try to locate the rest.

  But then the rumours begin – the three dolphins in the sea pen are to go to a nearby aquarium at Hillarys marina. As it becomes substantiated, a petition begins to keep them in Two Rocks. ‘They are our dolphins,’ Desi hears a few people say. ‘They cannot take them.’

  January spills over into February, and still she waits. She has left it too late now, surely. She develops a strange obsession with the telephone, urging it to ring, pretending she doesn’t know that it has to be her that takes the first step. She spends her days sweating in the cafe: it is still so warm. When will the weather break?

  After the long build-up, the storm is swift and unrelenting. The rain is ruthless, turning the roads into paddling pools within hours. After work, Charlie collects her in his ute and they drive home in silence, the water tracing rivers down the windscreen in the dim light. Charlie’s face is grim, while Desi is praying they make it all the way down the track – she can’
t think of anything worse than getting bogged with her father in the twilight.

  About halfway along, another ute catches up and begins to tail them, its lights bouncing into their car in the gloom. Desi twists around to see it driving far too close, and glances at her father. She notices his eyes flicking towards his rear-view mirror, but he doesn’t say anything, nor does he speed up or slow down. His jaw is a fixed line as he stares hard ahead.

  The ute keeps up its tailgating all the way along the track to the house. As they pull up, Desi hears the harsh slam of a door before she has managed to get out the car, and then Rick is stomping towards them.

  ‘Where is she?’ he roars, marching up the steps and barging into the house, the stench of stale beer trailing in his wake.

  Charlie ambles after him – much too slowly, Desi thinks. Fear makes her unsteady on her feet as she runs up the steps to the verandah, out of the rain. She can already hear raised voices inside.

  ‘Get out here, woman! Get in the car now!’

  There is no way Desi is going in there. She tries to hide around the corner of the house, but she cannot miss what is happening.

  Rick bangs through the door, dragging Marie after him, his fingers digging into her arm. She has curled into herself, cowering, but Desi still spots the livid bruise on her cheek. Next comes Charlie, then Hester, in tears.