Trip of a Lifetime Page 7

  Diane had been disappointed to discover that while she admired Heather she didn’t much like her. Underneath the apparent niceness there was a steeliness that Diane found quite intimidating. But to leave now would be like running away. As soon as it was over, once they’d arrested someone, then it would be all right to leave. She tossed a pack of six toilet rolls into the trolley and headed for the checkout. No, she couldn’t leave just yet, but she definitely wouldn’t be volunteering for any more shopping.

  Jill sat, legs stretched out in front of her, on Kirsty’s bed, watching her stepdaughter sort clothes into two suitcases and a bin bag while from the music room, where Adam was giving a private lesson to one of his students, the bleat of a tortured cello echoed through the house. Kirsty looked so much like her father, the same fair, freckled skin and blue eyes, but she had her mother’s forcefulness and energy.

  ‘Exactly how many black t-shirts do you have?’ Jill asked, staring at the bundle that Kirsty had just dumped on the foot of the bed.

  ‘Not sure, but never enough. I mean, you never have the actual one you want, do you? It’s either got the wrong neck, or wrong sleeves, too snug, too loose . . .’ She held up one with a heart shape cut out of the back. ‘But I think the Salvos can have this one,’ she said, dropping it into the bin bag.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Yep. It’s much too girlie –’

  ‘Not the t-shirt – moving, I mean. Moving in with Nick.’

  Kirsty stopped what she was doing and looked up, raising her eyebrows. ‘We’ve had this conversation.’

  Jill sighed. ‘I know, sorry. You’re a perfectly rational adult and able to make your own decisions. It’s just that I’ll miss you. I hate the fact that you’re going, and so does Adam.’

  ‘We’ll still see each other,’ Kirsty said. ‘I won’t be staying away just to show how independent I am.’ She grinned and fleetingly Jill saw the eight year old she’d met for the first time when Adam had suggested a picnic at the beach so that she and Kirsty could get to know each other. ‘I might go and see Aunty Heather tomorrow,’ Kirsty continued, ‘maybe go to parliament. I’ve got the afternoon free.’

  Jill raised her eyebrows and tried to iron the resentment out of her tone. ‘Why parliament?’

  ‘It’ll be her first question time since the shooting. She said she was feeling a bit weird about it so I thought I’d go, be there for moral support.’

  Jill gritted her teeth. It was more than six weeks since the shooting and still everyone was running around after Heather.

  ‘Maybe we should suggest she stays here for a while when she comes back to Sydney for parliament,’ Adam had said.

  ‘But she’s got a lease on that place in Potts Point for when she’s in Sydney,’ Jill had said to him. ‘Won’t she go there?’

  ‘I just thought she might feel better being with us at first. It won’t be easy.’

  ‘No, but she said she wanted to get back to normal as soon as possible.’ Jill could feel her heart hardening in self-defence. ‘Didn’t she say Shaun was going to come to Sydney with her for the first week? He’ll probably be staying nearby, and she might feel better in her own place.’

  Adam, typically, had shrugged his shoulders and looked away. ‘Maybe, but on the other hand –’ he began.

  ‘Look,’ Jill cut in, ‘let’s wait and see what she wants to do, not pre-empt anything.’

  He hadn’t raised the subject again and a few days later it was clear that Heather planned to stay in her own place. ‘So come for dinner, bring Shaun,’ Jill had heard Adam say on the phone. ‘Which day would suit you?’ And Jill reminded herself that dinner was a whole lot better than having Heather to stay with them for a couple of weeks.

  ‘Moral support, yes, that’s really thoughtful,’ Jill said now, hearing the false note in her own voice. ‘Kirsty, this might seem like an odd question, but do you feel sort of exposed since the shooting?’

  ‘Exposed?’

  ‘Yes, like we could be part of the target . . . the wider target, if someone wants to get rid of Heather.’

  Kirsty shrugged. ‘Nope. Should I? Do you think we are?’

  ‘No,’ Jill said hastily, ‘of course not. I . . . well, I just wondered.’

  ‘So we could meet and go to parliament together if you like,’ Kirsty said. ‘I’m going to look for a new duvet cover, Nick’s is falling apart. We could go shopping, have lunch and then go to question time.’

  Jill shook her head. ‘Busy day, meetings, stuff to finish . . . sorry.’ She paused. ‘Do you ever wonder why Heather doesn’t have any friends? Women friends?’

  Kirsty straightened up from a pile of shoes. ‘Where’s all this coming from, Jill? Being a target, women friends – doesn’t she have friends?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She never talks about them, or seems to do anything with friends.’

  ‘Too busy, I suppose. I’d hate to have a job that meant I couldn’t have a life. Still, I’ll have to find something serious now, no more making cappuccinos to earn a crust. No more uni, and I even submitted my paper ahead of time, so it’s the end of an era. I have to move out now that I’ve finally given up on waiting for you to be an evil stepmother.’

  ‘I can be evil if that’s what’ll keep you here.’

  ‘You are being evil now, actually,’ Kirsty said. ‘This is emotional blackmail.’

  ‘I know, and I think I could get really good at it. Will you still babysit?’

  ‘Would I miss out on the chance to bully my siblings? Anyway, the TV and DVD player here are much better than Nick’s.’ She stopped suddenly and sat down on the bed. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Apart from you moving? Yes, fine, why?’

  Kirsty shrugged and looked away. ‘You look a bit stressed. Sometimes I wonder if Dad . . . well, he’s gorgeous and we all love him to bits, but he does seem to opt out a bit.’

  Jill sighed. ‘You’ve noticed! Yes, he does, and it pisses me off. It’s not easy being the one who always has to be in charge of things getting done.’

  ‘He adores you, you know,’ Kirsty said, anxiety in her eyes.

  ‘And I him,’ Jill said, reaching out to pat her hand. ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about. Just work, and then Daisy and Toby are so full on, and I’m at least a century older than all the other mothers. Not that I’d change anything, but sometimes I feel a bit worn out.’

  ‘What’s worn out?’ Daisy said, appearing in the bedroom doorway and bounding towards a pile of bags and shoes. ‘This?’ she cried, picking up a pink, heart-shaped handbag patterned with butterflies. ‘Is this worn out? Can I have it pleeeease, Kirst, please?’

  Kirsty nodded and threw her a matching belt. ‘Yes you can, but don’t mix up those shoes; they’re all sorted. Well, at least there’s one of us out of the way now,’ she said, turning back to Jill. ‘Less work, fewer people to look after.’

  ‘That’s not how it feels,’ Jill said. ‘I’ve loved having you here, loved you since that first picnic.’

  Kirsty grinned and started packing again. ‘Even the dope-smoking, and having to talk to me about safe sex?’

  ‘Some moments more than others,’ Jill replied. ‘Remember, if it doesn’t work out you can always come back.’

  Kirsty, who was peering into the wardrobe, turned to face her again. ‘Thanks, I do know but I’ll try not to. This is the big one. I need to make my own way, stop relying on you and Dad.’

  ‘And stop us relying on you?’

  ‘That too,’ she said, dropping two pairs of jeans into a bag and kneeling to close it.

  Adam, standing by the window, his back turned to his student, could hear the low murmur of female voices coming from Kirsty’s room. The comfort he derived from this reassuring background music was, he felt, like a guilty secret. He had been eleven when his father died and he spent the remainder of his childhood and adolescence in a house filled with women: his mother; Barbara; and Heather, who wa
s two years younger than him. There had been times in his teens when he’d resented it, moaned about it to his friends, and brooded in his room, planning confrontations with one or all of them simply for the sake of it. But he was a boy who hated conflict and he usually talked himself out of it. And when, at nineteen, he moved into a share house the daily rows and noisy, abusive banter came as a shock. He longed for the serenity of home but moving back was not an option; it was the sixties, living at home was totally square.

  It was Heather’s campaign to leave home eighteen months later that allowed him to quit the horrors of a houseful of his contemporaries without losing face. They could get a place together, he suggested. It worked. Heather got her independence, and Adam regained his peace of mind and kept on avoiding conflict by writing his mental scripts for imagined disputes and then discarding them. Now, almost forty years later, it was still working. He continued to avoid confrontations that might bring him into real conflict with the women close to him. It was so much easier to let them take the decision, to acquiesce, to suggest rather than insist, to compromise without their ever knowing he was doing it. And, in any case, they rarely presented him with dilemmas worthy of struggle.

  Flinching now as thirteen-year-old Brad sawed at the strings of a rather nice instrument that his limited talent barely merited, Adam breathed deeply in an effort to calm the anxiety that had dogged him since Heather’s shooting.

  ‘Everything seems threatened now,’ he’d confided to Stefan, the third cello, as they waited in the orchestra rehearsal studio for the arrival of the celebrated Russian guest conductor to start the rehearsal. ‘Nothing seems safe anymore.’

  ‘Sure,’ Stefan said, nodding slowly, ‘is very troubling.’

  ‘More than that,’ Adam went on, ‘it changes everything, like cracks suddenly appearing in what you previously thought was a very safe building. Of course it can’t go on forever. We’ll get some security again when the police arrest someone.’

  ‘You think?’ Stefan asked. ‘Is not so easy to get back, I think.’

  ‘Well, it will get better.’

  Stefan shrugged. In Kosovo he had survived years of civil war followed by the US bombing which killed his wife and daughter. He had fled his homeland to find a new life to help him survive his grief. ‘Is a myth, I think, Adam, the security, you know? Before this happens, you think, “I am secure”, then bang! It is not security that has gone, it never was there, only difference now is you know it is illusion. You don’t get illusion back.’

  Adam stared at him, conscious of his own insensitivity. ‘I’m sorry, Stefan,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘how selfish of me. This is nothing to what you’ve been through.’

  ‘No worry. What happens is you learning to live without feeling safe. Is life. You know?’

  Adam nodded. ‘I suppose so. I’m a coward, I’ve had a very peaceful life, and I’ve tried to keep it that way. I suppose I did always realise how vulnerable it was and cherished it all the more because of that.’

  Heather, in contrast, seemed to relish risk and uncertainty.

  ‘Yours is such an unsafe, volatile life,’ he’d said years earlier when, having tabled a controversial report on prostitution law reform, she had been the victim of fierce and sustained parliamentary attack. ‘How can you bear to wake up every morning worrying about what might happen?’

  ‘I don’t,’ she’d replied, looking puzzled. ‘It never occurs to me. I wake up thinking how lucky I am and wondering what I’ll tackle first.’

  ‘But stuff happens to you every day. At the very least you’ll have an angry constituent hammering on the door, or the opposition hammering you in parliament.’

  She’d laughed then. ‘Those are just life’s little challenges,’ she’d said. ‘They keep you on your toes. It’s never boring but it’s not exactly living on the edge.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Adam had said again. ‘Sometimes I think you’re really reckless.’

  And that had made her laugh too. ‘Reckless? Heavens, Adam, it’s not as though I’m climbing Everest or sailing single-handed across the Southern Ocean. You just think anything other than being shut away in a room with your music, or surrounded by the string section of the orchestra, is risky.’

  At the time he had been hurt by her sarcasm, not only because it contained a significant element of truth, but because they both knew that once, when Heather had been vulnerable and very much at risk, it was he, Adam, who had seen her safely through it. Now, in the weeks since the shooting, his fear for his sister, and the sense that he should somehow have been able to protect her, were intensified by her own obvious fear and the loss of that enviable confidence, all destroyed by one bullet.

  ‘How was that, Mr Delaney?’ Brad asked as the last excruciating note faded away. ‘I’ve been practising really, really hard.’

  Adam sighed, turning away from the window. ‘Too hard, maybe. Hard for you and hard on the music. You need to give some thought to what Brahms intended with this piece . . .’ And as he explained the delicacy of the prelude, everything that Adam valued seemed more fragile than it had ever been.

  FOUR

  Heather had left it until the last possible moment to take her place in the chamber. These days she hated question time, feeling it had been reduced to a celebration of ridiculous posturing, bullying and name-calling. And on this day more than any other, she was dreading it. She had been focused on the first parliamentary sitting as a milestone in her recovery, believing that by the time she arrived back in Sydney she would be over the worst and the police would have made an arrest. But the police seemed no wiser now than on day one, and while she was healing physically the deeper impact of the shooting still haunted her.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Shaun had said on the drive from Newcastle two days earlier. ‘Are you feeling okay?’

  ‘It just feels a bit strange to be going back, that’s all,’ she said. ‘Not like going back after the usual winter recess. It’s as though I’ve been away for much longer.’

  And strange it was to be back in the Parliament House office, to find herself staring with suspicion at the queue of people moving through the security checks, glancing constantly over her shoulder as she passed through the foyer and the Fountain Court.

  ‘It’s only natural,’ said Brenda in the Clerk’s office. ‘You’ll feel at home again in a day or two. We’re all glad to see you back,’ and she pulled a large bouquet of blue irises and white carnations from under the desk. ‘The staff got you these, with our best wishes.’

  ‘We’ll look after you, Heather,’ said the Clerk, appearing alongside her. ‘More security here than Fort Knox. Anything worrying you, don’t hesitate, we’re all looking out for you.’

  But she felt like a moving target, exposed wherever she went, and the physical violation was the least of it; her peace of mind was shattered. The public areas were seething with potential attackers, the closed sections scattered with doorways, alcoves, cupboards and other possible hiding places, and everything was brighter, sharper, faster-moving and more frenetic than she remembered.

  Detective Alex Roussos had been to see her that morning. The police presence in the House had, he told her, been increased, and a guard assigned to her. Vince Potter, the sergeant working with him on the case, would also be there.

  ‘So how long will you keep that up?’ she’d asked.

  ‘As long as we need to,’ he replied, not looking at her.

  She knew it was beyond his jurisdiction and at any time the resources might be needed elsewhere, or someone higher up the scale would decide that it was no longer necessary.

  ‘And there’s still nothing?’

  He shook his head. ‘But we’re not giving up,’ he said, and she heard his effort to sound confident and reassuring.

  Heather had read enough about trauma to know that half the battle of recovery lay in placing the event in the past, but as long as the perpetrator was at large, that was impossible. No matter how many times she reconstruc
ted that night and tried to consign it to history, back it came to overshadow the present and the future.

  The Speaker was asking for ministerial statements when Heather looked up and spotted Kirsty grinning widely from the front row of the public gallery. Shaun was seated just behind her and his presence was reassuring. He had saved her life simply by being there and now they were bound together by an experience that no one else could really understand. She tried to recall a saying about saving a person’s life, that they then became your responsibility – or was it the other way around? It didn’t seem fair that he might feel responsible for her, but right now she was leaning on him to an unreasonable degree and that simply had to change.

  Heather fidgeted in her seat, finding it hard to concentrate on the tedious jousting between the Premier and his counterpart, and she had an uncomfortable sense that she was being watched. She had expected the scrutiny of the journalists in the press gallery, who would be watching to see how she was coping, but this felt different. And as she looked back to the public gallery she saw that someone was staring at her, staring so intently that an intense rush of fear flooded her with sudden heat. At the far end of a row, diagonally opposite her on the lower level of the gallery, a man was leaning forward, his forearms on his knees, watching her with a steady gaze.

  Heather swallowed hard and looked away, trying to distract herself by concentrating on the Leader of the Opposition, who was stabbing his finger in the direction of the Minister for Education. But her eyes were continually drawn back to the man whose gaze never wavered. Was she being ridiculous? The back of her neck prickled with fear and beads of sweat sprung out on her forehead. The chamber was closing in, threatening to crush her. Gripped by panic, she rose, squeezed past her colleagues and slipped out through the half-glass door at the side of the chamber.