On her way back up to the house in the early evening dusk, Lucy saw that the dog was once again chained up in her kennel. Dora had disappeared some time during the afternoon and she’d wondered what had happened to her. As soon as Lucy walked into the kitchen, where Melanie was preparing dinner, her sister turned to her.
‘You let the dog off her chain.’
‘Yeah, I did. I don’t see why she has to be chained up like that.’
Melanie leaned on the bench, her face taut. Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension.
‘She’s chained up because Dad wants her to be. So you have to leave her like that or he gets upset. And when he gets upset, he takes it out on me. He can still do that, even if he’s only whispering at me. The things he says — they are just so gross. Would you not take her for a walk like that again? Please. It’s too hard, Luce.’
Lucy turned away, shaking her head against rising furies.
‘Do you want some tea?’ her sister called out to her but Lucy did not reply.
She walked slowly down the hallway to the lounge room, drawn towards the sound of the television. Yellow light shone through the door onto the carpet in the hallway, a contoured and gleaming polyester blue.
As Lucy drew closer, she began to chew on her thumbnail. Through the door she could see the television was turned on to an evening game show, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, the volume turned up high. Then her mother, sitting on the lounge watching the show, and her father, stretched out in his reclining chair, apparently asleep, the tray of medications Melanie had prepared earlier sitting near him on a coffee table. She stopped at the door. The room was filled with an odour of sickness, like rotting flowers. Seeing her, her mother pulled herself upright, dragging her cardigan down past her waist. She tried to speak but could not, looked from her daughter to her sick husband, whose eyes remained closed.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Lucy said, going inside.
Her mother nodded in silent response. Her husband opened his eyes and looked at his daughter.
‘Hi, Luce,’ he said. ‘We heard you were home. How are you?’
Her father’s face had become an under-face, the kind you arrive at after sickness has stripped everything else to the bone. Illness had drawn pain to the surface of George Hurst’s face, it was almost the only thing that still existed of him. Lucy could not speak. She almost cried.
‘Come home to see your old man at last,’ he said against the racket of the television show. ‘Come and give him a kiss, hey? I know I’m not too pretty to look at these days.’
She did not. She sat in an armchair opposite them both.
‘Stevie asked me to come home,’ she said slowly, looking from her father to her mother, who was still playing with the ends of her cardigan. She had not changed at all, she was a round-faced woman, a little pudgy, with flat hair brushed back behind her ears.
‘How are you, Lucy?’ she said, now that her husband had spoken.
‘Are you keeping well?’
Above the noise of the television, the air seemed to simmer with a thousand jangling and unheard sounds.
‘Yeah,’ Lucy replied.
‘I’ve been worried about you,’ her mother said, her attention drifting back to the television set.
‘What have you been up to out there?’ her father asked.
‘Don’t you know?’ Lucy said, poker-faced.
‘Stevie told us you were living with some friends. You had a job in a shop. He said you were doing well,’ her mother said.
‘I’m glad you’ve come, Luce,’ her father said. ‘I wanted to see you.
I haven’t got that much time now. I want you to know your mother and me have always really cared about you. Always.’
‘Always,’ her mother said, looking away from the television screen and back to her daughter. ‘I always did what I had to do for you, Lucy.
I made sure I looked after you. I did the best I could, I couldn’t do any more than that. I hope you know that.’
‘We’ve been worried sick about you since you left.’ Her father moved his chair a little more upright. ‘I thought, my little girl out there all on her own. Who’s going to look after her? And we never heard anything from you, except through Stevie. Not even at Christmas.’
‘You could have sent us a card,’ her mother added. ‘We wanted to hear from you.’
‘Why didn’t you come looking for me?’ Lucy asked.
‘We couldn’t, Luce. We didn’t know where to find you,’ her father said.
‘You could have asked Stevie.’
‘He said you didn’t want to see us,’ her mother said, her face slightly red.
‘It’s hard for a man, worrying about his daughter like that. My little girl, I thought, and I don’t know where she is. And she won’t tell me.
She won’t even tell me.’
The TV show host invaded the lounge room noisily and Lucy saw her mother’s attention once again drift back towards the screen. She got to her feet and turned it off. Her mother blinked a little, but did not speak. Her father stared at her with eyes that were large and bright in his worn face. She sat down again, staring at him, unable to turn away even though she didn’t want to look. It was horrible to see him like this.
‘I’m a sick man, Luce,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘I can’t hide it. Sometimes I think I can’t bear the pain any more. I want it finished.
When it’s finished, I’m going to be happy.’
Lucy, watching and listening to him, had no thoughts. Her feelings were thin, her mind was blank, flat like a sheet of unpainted plasterboard.
‘You have to understand that me and your mother love you. More than anything.’
Lucy did not answer, she sat there waiting. Her gaze shifted from her father to her mother and back again. Her mother kept glancing at the blank television set but she said nothing. Lucy felt weightless, with her feelings slipping towards chaos, the quiet sounds in her head buzzing like insects.
‘Luce, I’m dying, but your life will go on and you’ll do what you want to do with it. You’ll get married and you’ll be happy. And I’m glad for you, I’m glad. Because all that’s ever mattered to me is how much I’ve cared about you. All I ever did was care about you. It’s a normal thing for a father to do.’
In the midst of his illness, there was a flash of her father of old. She knew that look so well. On Saturday mornings, from her place at the cash register, she would watch him as he sold old or fatty or tough meat to his customers. He had always had that same look. Are they going to take it?
‘Did you worry about me?’ she asked.
‘Yes, Luce. I did.’
‘Did you lie awake at night worrying about me?’
‘All the time.’
Lucy waited, again chewing her thumbnail. She imagined how her father would look if she shot him in the chest now, and then looked at her mother, working through the same fantasy, bringing both images together powerfully in her mind. Under her bulky sweatshirt, her gun pressed against her midriff.
‘Did you ever lie awake and wish you hadn’t done what you did to me?’ she said.
‘Look at me, Luce,’ he replied almost immediately. ‘I’m dying and I’m dying too soon. I want us to be friends before I go. You’re home now. This is your home. There’s always a place for you here. And in my will. I’ve remembered you in my will, Lucy, I’ve remembered you especially. You can think about me one day when I’m gone and thank me for that. You can say to yourself, my old man was very generous to me in his will, he did that for me, it’s made my life easier now. Your mother and me have broken our hearts worrying about you these last few years. I’ve broken my heart worrying about you. But I’m not accusing you for that. There’s no point in accusing people for things.
Life’s a matter of give and take. Let’s be friends. Come on. Be friends with me, Lucy, before I die. Please.’
She waited in what seemed to be an endless silence, looking from one to the other expectantly, but neither of them spoke. She sat with her arms folded, pressing her gun hard into her waist.
‘You really don’t want to say anything else to me?’ she asked.
Neither replied.
‘You only have to say it once. You have to mean it, but you only have to say it once. You just have to say you wish you’d never done that to me. That’s all you have to say.’
Again there was silence. Her mother picked at her cardigan. Lucy spoke in desperation. ‘It’s not just me! There’s Mel too. What about her? Don’t you want to say … ’
Her voice dried up.
‘Luce,’ her father said, ‘I only want us to be friends. This is our last chance. I’m dying. You don’t want to put things in the way of it. Let’s just be friends.’
Lucy leaned forward in her chair and wept for some moments. She looked up, meaning to say something else and saw her father watching her, his expression still unchanged. If anything, there was a ghost of satisfaction in his eyes. She could not bear to be watched by him like this.
‘I’m going back to my room now,’ she said, ‘but you — you can’t
— You’re going to talk to me again, Dad. You are. You are going to say — ’
She stopped and stood up to leave the room, still weeping. At the door, she almost walked into Melanie.
‘Don’t you want your tea? It’s on the table,’ her sister asked.
‘Fucking later,’ she said.
‘Language!’ she heard her father say, with the remembrance of a usual reprimand in his voice.
Lucy stopped still in the doorway and spoke without turning around. ‘Don’t you say that to me.’
Then she did turn and went towards him. Her hand moved instinctively towards her waistband before she remembered to stop herself. For the first time, he seemed confused. She stood over him.
‘Don’t you ever tell me what to say again.’
Anger had made her voice almost unrecognisable. He did not speak, there was sweat on his cheeks. Everyone in the room was silent.
‘You won’t, will you? Ever again.’
He shook his head.
‘You say it, Dad. Go on, say it.’
‘No, I won’t,’ he eventually whispered.
They looked at each other.
‘I’m going to come and talk to you again, Dad,’ she said. ‘Because you owe me something. You know you do. And you are going to give it to me.’
He stared at her, showing anger and fear without any sense of disguise, and then rolled away from her, turning his back on her, refusing to speak.
Lucy left at once, moving quickly and hearing behind her as she climbed the stairs a sudden ruckus in the lounge room. The noise of her father calling out hoarsely for Melanie and the sound of the television set being turned on again.
In her room, she emptied her pack out onto her bed, scrabbling for her notebook computer, clumsy as she hurried, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. Lucy was going out on the Net to find consolation, someone to talk to, to get the buzzing out of her head.
She set up her computer on her old desk, illuminated it with her desk lamp, plugged in the phone charger and then turned on her mobile telephone, intending to connect to her ISP. She took the gun out of her waistband and placed it next to the notebook. As she did, the mobile phone rang. She let it ring until it stopped. Then, as she was about to pick it up, it rang again. She looked at it for a few moments then answered it.
‘Yeah,’ she said. As she had expected, she heard the preacher’s honey voice in reply.
‘Lucy? Is that you? You sound very different.’
‘Hi, Graeme,’ she said in an unconcerned tone. ‘Do I? I don’t know why, I’m just the same as I was yesterday.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I was wondering how you were. I’ve been thinking about you every single moment since I found you gone.’
‘I bet you have. But everybody always worries about me so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t as well. I’m fine. Great, you know,’ she replied. There was a moment of silence. ‘What do you want? I guess you want something. That’s why you’re calling me.’
‘Yes, Lucy, I do want something. I want very much to see you. I’ve been trying to ring you all day but your phone’s been switched off. I don’t think you should have done that.’
‘Don’t you? Gee, it’s too bad I forgot to turn it on.’
Lucy sat on the bed among the scattered goods that she had emptied out of her pack. She dragged her sleeping bag across her knees in the cold room.
‘Do you know Greg is in custody?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I heard.’
There was a pause.
‘You have good information. You obviously know who to ask. And where to find things.’
‘Yeah, I’m good at that,’ she said.
‘I’m going to get him bailed into my care, Lucy.’
‘Are you? I don’t think you’ll be able to do that. They won’t want to let him go this time.’
‘I can certainly try. I have contacts too. In fact, I think I’ve got a very good chance of doing just that.’
Lucy bit her lip.
‘What do you want, Graeme?’
‘I want to see you. I really think you should come and meet with me.’
She did not answer. ‘I don’t think you can get him bailed,’ she said instead.
‘We’ll see. Ria has told me he is likely to be charged with being an accessory to murder.’
‘Did she ring you?’
‘She left a message on my answering machine. The sort of message Ria Allard usually leaves on my answering machine. But fortunately, I won’t have to hear from her again.’
‘Greg doesn’t know anything about it,’ Lucy said, dismissively.
‘You said he did, Lucy.’
‘Yeah, but not like that, I mean. He wasn’t involved or anything.’
‘I don’t think that will make any difference to the police. I think you’ll find that being an accessory is exactly what he is. Apparently they have assigned a policewoman to deal with him. She will be interviewing him regularly from now on. We’ll see what happens, won’t we? Whether or not he lives up to your expectations and really does keep his mouth shut.’
‘It’s not murder anyway, Graeme. You said it was a cleansing.’
‘I’m talking about how the police will see it,’ he replied, speaking sharply. Lucy smiled to hear the irritation in his voice.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘Lucy, I’ve already told you. I want to see you. Soon. Somewhere private.’
There was a knock on Lucy’s door. She reached for her gun and slipped it out of sight under the sleeping bag.
‘There’s someone here, I’ve got to go. Even if you can get Greg bailed, he won’t go with you. So it doesn’t matter.’
‘He won’t have any choice. None whatsoever. The police will hand him over directly to me. He’ll pass from one sort of custody into another. After all, the only way he can avoid that is to tell them about you. Isn’t that so?’
The preacher’s voice had dropped to a strange, low whisper heard as a rustle within the inner ear. Lucy was silent for some time.
‘Are you still there?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I’m here.’
‘Good. Because if you are so concerned about him, you should be very careful what you do from now on. And very careful who you talk to and what you say to them. Because I don’t think Greg could be stopped if he decided to do something foolish while he’s in my care. Do you? And I can’t be held responsible for a suicide or an accidental death, can I? I’ll ring you tomorrow, Lucy. Leave your phone on.’
‘You can’t make me do anything, Graeme,’ she said, and hung up, tossing the phone on the bed. She opened the door and saw Stephen standing there, carrying a small two-bar heater.
‘I’ve got a heater for you. I thought it’d be cold in here,’ he said.
‘Yeah, it is pretty fucking cold, Stevie,’ she replied. ‘Thanks.’
He stood hesitantly in the doorway as she plugged it in.
‘Were you talking on your phone just now?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. But it’s no one worth talking about.’
‘Want your tea?’
‘Yeah.’
He went outside and picked up a plate of food from a sideboard in the hallway.
‘What’s Dad doing now?’ she asked as he handed it to her.
‘Mel’s given him his shot for the night so he’s pretty out of it. Please don’t ask about anything now, Luce. Wait till tomorrow when you’ve both calmed down a bit. I’ll have a talk to him and see if I can’t sort something out. You told me you wouldn’t argue with him.’
‘Did you tell them I was working in a shop?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Did you tell Mum and Dad I was working in a shop?’
‘Lucy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Not now, okay?
Look, I’m not going back to work until this is over. I’m going to be home tomorrow and you can talk to me then if you want to. But I’m too tired now,’ he said, and was gone.
Lucy shut the door and pushed her bedside table against it. She turned off the overhead light and sat at her desk next to the heater, which filled the room with the odour of burning dust as the bars glowed with red heat. Liar, liars, liars, she said to herself as she logged on, thumping the keys. Everyone lies, don’t they? Fucking, fucking bastards, that’s all any of them are. Why do that to me, Dad? Did I ever do anything to you?
Between mouthfuls of Melanie’s food, she went out on the Net, in search of Turtle, moving into their own particular space where she usually met him.
Turtle, are you out there? It’s me, Firewall.
Are u there at last????? I’ve been here all day Where have ubeen?
You don’t want to know.
Don’t joke I do
No, you don’t. Because I’m right down here in the dirt now. Right here in the shit. We don’t ever treat each other like this. It’s like we’ve always said — we always talk to who we really are, don’t we? No lies, nothing like that.
Yes we do Heart 2 heart Mind 2 mind That’s wot we always do It’swot we’re always going to do
You talk turtle to me, don’t you? You never lie to me?
No Firewall I dont lie 2 u I never have I trust you, Turtle, I do. Have you told anyone about this?
No
Well, you can. If you want. You don’t have to carry this by yourself.
You can tell whoever you want.
Yeah? Well u tell me first Wot do we do????? Before I tell anyoneabout u why don’t u tell me?? Wot now??? Because that has got 2
come from u No one else can decide that In her room, Lucy lit a cigarette.
I’ve got to sort out a few things first.
Are u going 2 tell me wot?
Family things, mainly. A few things for myself with my dad.
Why? Firewall don’t do that 2 yourself Don’t waste your time Yourdad = 1 big fat 000000 He is not worth ruining your life 4 That’s yourrevenge on him My dad says that U dont let them hurt u Otherwiseall u do is hurt yourself
It’s not just him. I’ve got a friend I’ve got to think about too. I’ve got to make sure he’s okay before I do anything else. But the thing is I don’t know how. I’ve got my gun but I’m stuck back home again and I don’t how I can use it to help him. You know, I feel so … Do you still think I should go to the police?
Yes I do I do. Because maybe they can help your friend Sitting at her desk, Lucy laughed aloud.
I don’t think so. They’re the last people to do that. But I am going to go public, Turtle, one way or the other. Whether I go to the police or the media, I don’t know yet.
Why media????
So everyone will know why I did what I did. I’ve got to explain it to them.
U really think they care Firewall? Really think they care???????
They won’t understand where u are coming from U have to see thatIt won’t change how they think about u
They can’t ignore me. Not after this. I wasn’t killing for the sake of killing someone. That’s what she does, she kills. I’m protecting people. So no one has to go through what I went through.
Not your job
If it’s not mine, then whose is it? Don’t say the police again because all they ever do is bash you up. And don’t say they don’t. I know they do, because I’ve seen them do it.
Lucy waited.
Turtle, are you there? Have I lost you?
I’m still here Firewall u can’t think like that U don’t kill people U
know wot people say about me? They come up 2 my dad and theyask him why didn’t he let me die when I was a baby They say it infront of me They don’t think I can hear them Wot’s the fuckingdifference??? Killing me and killing her?
She was evil. You’re not.
Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit amp; I don’t believe u think like that U tell mewhat u think 4 real U tell me that
Do you really want to know? I wish I’d never shot either of them, Turtle. I really do. Maybe I could’ve lived with just shooting her. I don’t know. But shooting that man, I wish, I just wish I’d never done that.
It’s as simple as that. I told you it was simple from the start. It’s just that there’s nothing I can do about it now.
You got 2 go 2 the police Go now!!!! Just call them I can’t. Not now, not yet. I just can’t …
Before Lucy could type any more, Turtle stopped her. Endfirewall, their emergency close-down signal, flashed across her screen. She backed out quickly and found herself on his home page.
It was a dazzling place: seas of high glass-blue Japanese waves with the wind blowing the foam back, seagulls swirling about the sky, and a small boat with transparent sails, sailing into the bright red sun. A figure in the boat waved and smiled out of the screen. ‘Hi, I’m the Turtle,’ the figure said as he sailed against a bright sky.
Then the image dissolved into a photograph of a boy in a wheelchair with the written words: Hi, I’m Toby Harrigan. I callmyself the Turtle, because I’m like a turtle on its back when I’m outof my wheelchair. I can’t move at all then except to shake my handin the air, but out on the Net I can do what I want. I can sail, fly,do anything. Come and talk turtle to me because inside I’m justlike anybody else. The buttons, Meet Me, Meet My Family, Life at Cotswold House, Why I am the way I am, flickered into being one after the other but Lucy had other places to go. She wanted to work on her own site and slipped away out of cyberspace, taking the precaution of working offline on her own machine where no one could disturb her.
The kaleidoscope of her interior world opened out and she immersed herself in its electronic images, unwinding the tension in her neck, assuaging some of her grief and reducing the world outside to a succession of shadows. As she worked, she passed quickly over her representations of Dr Agnes Liu. Lucy was looking only for consolation.