‘Why on earth would you want to do that? It won’t bring the girl back. You always react so extravagantly when something goes wrong. Vic, speak to him.’
His father leaned forward. ‘Look, son. They said she just ran out in front of the car. It’s a terrible thing, but how can you blame yourself for that? Let me get Stephen to advise you. He deals with cases like this all the time.’
Looking back now, Finn could see that his parents had always adroitly handled any problems that arose in his life. He was the long-awaited only child of older parents, and, grateful for their late blessing, they sheltered and indulged him. While another child might have become spoiled and selfish, Michael was loving, funny, popular and clever. Things rarely went wrong for him, but when they did, he relied on his parents to deal with them and secured their support by the deployment of tears, anger, charm-whatever he could see might work at the time. He’d carried this approach over to adulthood, when the generally smooth progress of his life had ensured that he needed it only rarely. So it was that when, at the age of thirty-eight, he was faced with something fundamental, he had no resources with which to deal with it. By the time Moss heard his story, he had carried his guilt for so long that it was grafted to his skin. It was part of who he was.
Is that why he chose to reveal his secret to Moss? he wondered. She was claiming him as a father and he felt he owed her the truth. If she chose to reject him, he would accept this rejection as delayed justice. He had always regretted allowing his mother to dissuade him from confessing. If he’d been punished at the time, maybe his life would be different now. He would have done his penance and been absolved. He shook his head wearily. Who knows? He had acted as he did, and there were consequences, one of which might be the loss of his newly found daughter. That would be no more than he deserved. Of course, on another level, one he preferred not to acknowledge, he was resisting entanglement. He had never wanted a child. He had made that quite clear to her mothers from the outset. It was too late to change now. He simply didn’t have the emotional capacity to deal with the needs of an adult daughter.
He heard Moss return from her shopping expedition, but stayed in his room. At five to six, he left the house, telling her that he’d return at eight. He left the folder on the table and wrote her name on the cover with the ubiquitous magic marker. She watched him from the window and didn’t pick up the folder until he was out of sight.
Moss didn’t read everything. Some of the details were technical so she skipped to those sections that dealt with the story, the everyday tragedy of the girl they called Amber-Lee. She didn’t even rate a newspaper headline. Two column inches in the Age reported that a prostitute known only as AmberLee was hit by a car and run over by a truck in Pryor St, Churchill. Police are still trying to identify her. It is believed that Amber-Lee was not her real name. Anyone with information et cetera, et cetera…
Moss tried to imagine what would lead a young girl to leave home for such a brutal life. Who was she? What was her real name? she wondered, in a manner uncharacteristic of either the casual Amy or the impatient Linsey. Her habit of introspection and the quality of empathy had stolen in with her father’s genes.
The brief was prepared by Senior Constable Graham Patterson of Fitzroy police station. It began with a detailed report of the accident and witness statements and recorded that Michael’s blood alcohol level was within the legal limit. What engrossed her, however, was the effort the senior constable had made to identify the girl. She didn’t match any missing person’s report, although there was some fruitless investigation regarding an Adelaide schoolgirl who’d disappeared earlier that year. Furthermore, Amber-Lee’s head injuries precluded the use of dental records. Very little was gleaned from the interview with the prostitute Brenda. It was noted that she shared a flat with the deceased, knew her only as AmberLee, and that her attempts at facial imaging were ‘unhelpful’. There were very few of Amber-Lee’s belongings in the flat and some suspicion that Brenda had appropriated them. The usually helpful Prostitutes’ Collective couldn’t place the girl and suggested talking to the Ward Street Shelter, where they were told that a girl calling herself Amber-Lee had come in there one day, but left suddenly while she was waiting to be seen. The busy social worker had a very general sense of what she looked like, and the facial image from her description was nothing like the one produced by Brenda’s.
Moss suddenly realised that the sun had gone down and the fire was burning low. She looked at her watch. It was after seven, and with a muttered shit! she jumped to her feet, stoked the fire and began to prepare the meal. At five to eight she heard the gate open and close, but the footsteps stopped short of the door. She pulled back the curtains. Was that Finn waiting in the shadows? Was he ashamed to face her? She opened the door and called to him in what she hoped was a reassuring tone, ‘Come on in, Finn. I’m ready to dish up.’
Finn put a finger to his lips and remained standing in the garden for a few moments more. He peered at his watch a couple of times and then came in, taking off his coat and glancing quickly at the table where the folder had been. His eyes followed hers to the sideboard where it now lay.
‘I read it,’ she said. ‘We can talk about it later, if you like, but let’s have something to eat first.’
Finn went to wash his hands and returned to find a large pot of pasta, with salad and bread, ready for serving. Moss would have liked a glass of wine but was reluctant to open the bottle she’d found in the cupboard. She poured them each a glass of water instead. Her father had good reason not to drink and she wasn’t going to be the one to tempt him.
Finn sat down at the table and began to speak without preamble. ‘I couldn’t get her out of my head,’ he said. ‘It was her anonymity that got to me. She was somebody’s daughter and her parents either didn’t want to own her or simply didn’t know where she was. In the end, she was buried without a name.’ For the first time, he looked at his own daughter directly, appealing to her to understand. ‘It was as though she’d never existed, Moss. I could have coped if her family or even a good friend had been there for her. Even to curse me. Especially to curse me. Just think-a fifteen-year-old is buried and not one person there really cared.’
Moss longed to absolve him but knew she was impotent. He had taken the blame not only for the accident but for the girl’s whole sorry life. She took his hand, which lay lifeless on the table.
‘It’s okay, Finn. It’s okay.’ Knowing it was far from okay. She was beginning to understand the emergence of Finn and why he had decided to leave Michael behind.
They finished their pasta in silence; heads bowed over their bowls, staring down at the roughly chopped vegetables, the pasta, the mince. Cutlery and glasses chinked softly, and at one stage Finn cleared his throat. Moss looked up expectantly, but he continued to ply his fork with grim tenacity.
Outside, a dog barked and a woman’s voice called out, ‘Come on, boy. Dinnertime.’ A door slammed. A car drove past. The clock chimed the half-hour and ticked away another five minutes before Finn put down his glass and picked up the thread of his story.
‘By the time I thought to offer to pay for her funeral,’ he said, ‘she’d already been buried. It happened within a fortnight. I went to the State Trustees, but they could only direct me to the gravesite.’
He saw it all again-the discarded chip packet at his feet, the rough yellow mound, the iron fence that drew a line between the living and the dead. He had picked up the chip packet and, for want of anything else to do with it, put it into his pocket. He should have brought flowers. He would always regret that. But he was a relatively young man, unfamiliar with mourning traditions, and he only thought of flowers when he saw them adorning other, luckier graves.