In the Clearing Read online

  The couple will move on. Rocky has given them enough of a scare. They’re harmless, I’m sure, yet I can feel the man’s eyes following me as I walk away.

  I fiddle with the tennis ball in my pocket, scratching it with my fingernail. As I climb the next hill, I bounce it once on the hard earth, thinking about Billy.

  I can’t help but imagine Billy choking, or drowning, or swept up from a roadside. Perhaps that’s an affliction of motherhood, the way we evolved; mothers must always consider the worst scenarios in order to prepare for them, to keep us alert. It was the same with Aspen, until one slip and he was gone.

  My connection with Billy is not something you can fake, the bond forged in childbirth; the earthy mud smell, the feeling of being split in two, the overwhelming sense of relief when the nurse wrapped him in cotton with my blood drying in his hair. I think about my own mother, how her indifference tempered me. The brief glimpses of love she did show drove me into a frenzy for more; the slightest hint of affection could make me buzz.

  I bounce the ball again and Rocky leaps up, barking. ‘Just a little further,’ I tell him.

  The trail follows the curve of the river, the incline levelling out. Looking down, I can see the couple still watching me. Their voices are low, reaching me as a hum. So long as they’re gone by evening it will be okay. So long as they leave and don’t come back.

  I continue on, walking much further than I’d planned to, all the way to the next gap in the shrub. I hurl the ball into the water for Rocky, who swims out, ploughing through the mirrored surface.

  Eventually, I clip him back on to his leash and head for home. The leash is for show; he obeys every command. I could take him anywhere and he would only listen to me, but people feel more comfortable when he is leashed.

  Four eyes track me down around the bend beside the river, then through the bush. Their voices are quiet and rushed over the trickle of the river. Rocky walks stiffly beside me. That grey washing sensation in my gut comes back.

  ‘Good boy,’ I say. ‘Good boy, Rocky.’

  Inside, the clock reads 1 pm. I look out over the sun-bleached yard to Rocky who flicks his legs back with military decorum, his post-shit dance. I’ve locked him out so he is lingering down in the shade at the fence line. Even in the cool breath of the air-conditioning, I still feel the burn of the walk. Despite the efforts of surgeons and the ‘wellness’ industry, we all age, we all wither. After exercise, I’m reminded of my age by the tightness in my muscles. Yoga helps, I suppose, but seeing all the petite yoga-toned mums in their late twenties doesn’t.

  There’s a white-tailed spider in the corner of my bedroom. I use a glass from the kitchen to trap the spider before sliding a piece of paper underneath. I carry it out into the garden to set down near the paperbark tree.

  Back inside in the lounge, I do my push-ups, three sets of twenty, then step into the cold shower, my skin prickling and my legs becoming blue. You don’t get used to cold showers; even when the mercury hits the forties, it still feels like hands slapping all over my body.

  I turn the TV on and head to the room to get dressed. A quirk of the open-planned home means my kitchen, dining room and lounge are all one giant L-shaped room – I can watch the afternoon news while I down my tonics and eat a chia bowl at the kitchen bench. On TV, they’re talking about the Great Barrier Reef again, sixty percent bleached and not coming back any time soon. Run-off from a new coalmine in Queensland will hasten the decline. I open the fridge and pull out my bottle of kombucha, twisting off the cap.

  Another news story is running: ‘… the girl went missing yesterday afternoon between three and four …’

  I face the TV as the news cuts to an aerial view of a paddock with a line of people walking slowly, heads bowed, scanning the long grass. I rush to the remote and snatch it up.

  ‘… police are asking for members of the public to come forward with any informa—’

  I mute the story and turn to watch the backyard, feeling the anxiety continue to churn within. The girl went missing. I know what the parents are going through.

  Rocky stands at attention, watching something on the other side of the fence. Maybe it’s the couple walking back up to the road? I want to wait, to be certain that they have left, but I have a class soon and a boss – or she prefers ‘spiritual coach’ – named Milly who is all Lululemon, meditation and sunshine until you are late, then she is Old Testament wrath. When I had a flat tyre she reminded me that it might have been ‘negative energy’ that caused it, and that it was something I should work on. I sense the studio is just a tax write-off for her wealthy husband.

  I sip my kombucha and turn back to the TV. There is an image of the child on the screen now, a school photo, hair back in a ponytail, wide grin, blue eyes shining. The type of child designed for the twenty-four-hour news cycle. I drum my fingers on my lips. It won’t happen again, I tell myself.

  I open the door, call to Rocky, then aim the hose at the grass to clear it of hot water before filling his steel bowl. I lock the house and, for the first time in years, I set the alarm and roll down all the external aluminium shutters over the windows and doors – to keep the house cool, but also for security, because Freya Heywood doesn’t trust strangers and those people at the river were verifiably strange.

  My front door opens into the dining room, and when I go to leave I find a bouquet on my doorstep. My heart stops. I glance up towards the road and about the house. A spray of yellow wattle, bunched in native fern. I don’t pick up the flowers; I simply kick them away from the door. There is no note, nothing to indicate who has sent them or why. Heat floods my cheeks. Anger or fear? Is this a sick joke? Taking a few deep breaths, I manage to calm myself, the facade restored. I walk out to the car, alert but not tense. I watch for movement in my periphery.

  When I shifted out here all those years ago, the road to the house was muddy and my hatchback got bogged. Derek, the stooped retiree from next door, backed his truck up and winched me out.

  ‘Gunna need something with a bit more guts out here, I reckon,’ he had said. I looked at his Land Rover, the badge on the side reading Discovery. ‘Good rig, especially when the river floods or the track is washed away. You ever need to get out of here in a hurry, you’re gunna need something like this,’ he said, patting the bonnet.

  Thank you, Derek. I went out and bought my own Discovery. The very had chipped off the side leaving only Disco. Now I tote my cork yoga mat out to the Disco and take off, gravel spitting out from beneath my wheels and a dragon of dust rising in my wake. I love all the euphemisms I have picked up from that old man, pocketing the vernacular like pretty flowers or perfectly shaped river stones. Bogged – now there is a word that Freya Heywood loves. Roo, Disco, crikey; I could never speak them out loud myself, but I love the sound of them when they come from Derek’s tobacco-stained mouth.

  My road is too narrow for cars to pass, so I pull onto the shoulder with a wave as a car comes the other way. Derek must have visitors. I’m running late so I speed along.

  At the dip where the drain runs out beneath the road, I slow and glance at the flattened road’s edge where visitors to the national park leave their cars. There is an old white kombi van parked with tinted windows. I repeat the first three letters of the number plate to myself. OUP. It sounds like a mantra. O-U-P. O-U-P.

  In the rear-view mirror the van disappears in the dust.

  AMY

  ‘TAKE IT EASY, both hands on the wheel, eyes ahead. Don’t speed. Indicate. Everything is on your shoulders now, Susan.’

  I can feel the warmth of my new sister in my lap as she sleeps the deepest sleep. I cradle her head, thumbing her tangled hair back behind her ears.

  ‘Forty-eight hours, then we’re in the clear.’

  Forty-eight hours.

  I feel so warm and happy. We have her. The van eases back onto the main road, merging into traffic. We all stay low in the back, holding the girl still, while Indigo takes the needle and syringe. She holds it up a
s the van jigs from side to side, eyeing the liquid in the light before plugging the needle into the girl’s arm.

  ‘The hard part is over, Susan. Eyes on the road. Deliver us home.’

  We stay flat against the floor of the van for an hour or more. All the while I stroke the girl’s face, holding her against me, making sure her head is cushioned and her body is comfortable.

  As we drive along the gravel track towards the Clearing I sit up. The entry is well disguised. A barred steel gate crawling with blackberry bushes. On the other side of the gate, the grass is flattened where the wheels roll over it. Branches squeal against the sides of the van. The trees are tinder-dry with curled leaves. I miss Autumn, when the bush is cooled and green, when mushrooms ladder up the sides of fallen trees.

  We keep driving.

  Tamsin climbs out and opens the last gate, and we drive through, crossing the expanse of grass where the bush has been cleared away. As we near the Great Hall, where the kitchen and our classroom are, I see my brothers and sisters and the other minders burst from the building and rush towards us. Everyone knows the precious cargo we are carrying and their palms bang on the windows as we pass. My chest fills with pride. The enthusiasm of the others is infectious. Susan honks the horn, waving to the children outside, and then we are heading around the Great Tree, then beyond the Burrow, where we sleep and bathe, making our way to the Shed at the south-east corner of the property.

  We pass the child through the door of the van and into the waiting hands as though delivering a baby. Her small body seems to float into the Shed. We lay her down on the stained cotton cloth covering the bench. Adam has rigged a square in the sheet-metal roof on a pulley so when my brother Anton – the only child older than me – turns the wheel near the door a perfect diamond of light falls through the ceiling and across the girl. We circle her, to be close, to look at her.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Adrienne says. ‘We need to get to work.’

  I know that soon the child will wake and when she does she will be hungry and thirsty. I know we have chores to do, but it is so hard to walk away.

  •

  I know that when we liberate a child from the world outside, the minders become tense and agitated. Susan was chewing her nails today and now, as I’m peeling potatoes, looking out the kitchen window, I watch Tamsin in the yard with the young girls. She is near the vegetable garden, squatting down and pointing at something in the earth. The children stand and watch. The peeler catches on my knuckle and a pearl of blood seeps from the flap of skin, distracting me momentarily. When I look back up I see Tamsin rise and strike one of the younger girls. It’s so sudden, like a cat’s paw. The girl clutches her cheek as Tamsin stands over her. Tamsin slaps the child once more, then shoves her to the ground. The other children remain completely still. I know the heat of those slaps.

  I turn my gaze towards the Shed. Adam is there with our newest sister, Asha. Anton is in there, too, and Adrienne.

  How different will Asha’s life be here with us in the Clearing? I think about the road she was walking along to her old house. If it was so bad there, why would she keep walking back?

  But I chase the thought out of my head. That is a deviant thought, something evil. It is my duty to confess thoughts like this, to be purged, or they might burn me up inside. We only have room for the Truth. Deviant thoughts will bring about the apocalypse for our little world.

  I wonder if Asha will remember the collection when she wakes. I hope she doesn’t remember me putting her to sleep. I think about the journal Adrienne gave me to write in. I will return to it tonight.

  FREYA

  Four days to go

  IN SUMMER I spend my life dashing between air-conditioned spaces. The house, the Disco, the yoga studio, the grocer. There was a time when I loved the heat, leaping into the waterhole while the sun drew colour to my skin. As I got older, when I first had a mole removed and noticed the spots and creases, the creped texture of my forearms, I realised I couldn’t control the simple fact of my biology; I was getting older and would continue to get older until I died. I began to wear longer sleeves, slathered on sunblock.

  I put on some music and take a long drink from my water bottle. Wedges of lemon float within; it alkalises the body. I might be the oldest instructor at the centre but I am also, as I remind others, the most experienced.

  Our place is a decent drive away from Tullawarra town, far enough removed from civilisation to be alone but close enough to have access to all the trappings of a modern urban society. Still, my side of Tullawarra – north of the bridge and further from Melbourne city – is mostly populated by small-town people, with small-town attitudes. When a set of traffic lights was being put in down near the bridge, people petitioned and protested (yes, protested: placards, t-shirts with anti-traffic light slogans, meetings at the town hall).

  The southern side of town is newer, closer to the city. It’s full of people like Karen, who is at yoga today, swollen with a baby. Most of the yoga mothers live on the south side. They have husbands who commute an hour to the Melbourne CBD so the family can afford to live on one white-collar income.

  ‘In,’ I say, drawing a breath. The arms of the class rise in unison. ‘Hold … and now out.’ I do this a dozen times until the oakpanelled room, the building, seems to breathe with us. All the bodies rise in a sort of tidal movement then fall as we move through a series of sun salutations and on to the next poses.

  Yoga mothers, I’ve found, are the least self-aware, least forgiving gaggle of women you will meet in your entire life. They ask what organic sanitary pads you use (and remind you that menstruation cups are actually better for the environment). Without guilt they explain why they chose not to vaccinate their children. They choose everything natural but fail to see the irony with their sports bras and legs shrink-wrapped in lycra. They disarm you with their questions, their nauseatingly kind eyes. They are like me in that way, I suppose.

  The class huffs and heaves along with me. I move about the room, pausing to correct the position of anyone who needs it. I rest my hand on an older man’s spine, using the weight of my palm to make a minor adjustment to his pose. ‘Don’t push too far if it feels unstable,’ I whisper. This is a man who listens, not like some men, who see yoga as a competition.

  Taking yoga classes is not about the money; I don’t need money and I would volunteer my time if it didn’t contradict what people think they know about me: that I’m kind and hardworking, but not wealthy. No, yoga instructing is a nice, normal job and I’m good at it. And the only studio in town, a neat white-washed brick building, happens to back onto a car park across the road from Billy’s school, which helps.

  I move through flows and, finally, into a meditation. Five minutes. The meditation is a time for me. A time for the real me to reset. Meditation is shown to actually work; neuroplasticity studies suggest the brain can change itself.

  I attempt to clear my mind, scan my body, but I keep thinking about the girl who was swept up. My subconscious won’t let go of the nagging suspicion that something is going to happen to Billy and me.

  •

  I get to school just as the other mothers are arriving and sit in the car for a moment, waiting to hear the school bell. I check my various social media accounts. My brother has posted holiday snaps. He’s somewhere hot and sunny in Indonesia. The bell sounds and I climb out of the car. I cross the street towards Sandra and Cassie. They look exactly how a Sandra and a Cassie should. They usually stay the extra five minutes chatting to the teacher, as if it’s going to affect how much attention their children get in class.

  ‘Hi, ladies,’ I say. All the botox in Cassie’s face makes her smile look as if she’s smiling through an embolism. I push down my loathing and smile back. They’ve lived out here for years but still have the city-stance, heads tilted over their mobile phones with reusable coffee cups in their other hands.

  The Forrest Entrance Primary School is the only decent school in a thirty-kilometre radius, so i
t’s one of the rare places where people like me from north of the bridge and people like Sandra and Cassie from closer to Melbourne intersect.

  The kids fly from the classrooms like leaves swept by a gale, funnelling through the gates. The school bus is waiting across the road.

  Billy is walking with another boy, his blond hair ruffled. I touch his shoulder when he gets close. ‘Come on,’ I say to him. ‘See you, ladies.’

  Billy sits in the back and as we drive home, he keeps his head turned away from me, blue eyes fixed on the paddocks outside.

  ‘How was school?’ I ask.

  He shrugs one shoulder.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘It was okay.’

  It’s a twenty-minute drive, winding up through the hills then back down towards the river. I turn the radio on to break the silence.

  After a while, I try again. ‘How’s Mr Holden?’

  Mr Holden is the new teacher: young, curly hair, a little over-weight. I’ve met him once; I could tell he was nervous by the sweat rings on his cheap shirt and the sharp rising notes in his voice.

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked you a question. How is Mr Holden?’

  ‘He’s okay.’

  ‘Can’t shut you up today, can I?’

  No response. He’s probably a bit young for sarcasm.

  I feel something on my lip. I touch a hand to my mouth then hold it in front of my eyes. A slug of crimson blood is crawling down my palm.

  ‘Fuck,’ I mutter.

  ‘Mum!’ Billy says.

  I look up, drag the steering wheel to the left, my foot finding the brake. Something flashes by. Grey-brown, leaping from the road. The Disco slews one way, then the other. The tyres grip again and I don’t resist the pull of the wheel. I accelerate through the slide, the defensive driving lessons coming back. The truck straightens and I pull off the road, coming to a stop in the tall grass. Billy breathes in short high-pitched gulps.