Without warning, the wind changed direction and the temperature dropped. She heard footsteps: the shuffle of thongs across the sand. But behind her the beach was deserted. Was someone lurking in the shadows? As she quickened her pace, an alarm, shrilling and insistent, rang once and then again and again, bellowing across the dunes. Was it an emergency warning? Should she be running? Where was everyone? She ran towards the road, her feet sinking into the soft sand. The moon slipped behind clouds, into the darkness. The alarm grew louder. She was exhausted, breathless, her heart beating faster, panic rising… She was awake. Hot, disorientated. She kicked the doona off. The alarm was still ringing. It was the doorbell. 3.04 am. Who rang the doorbell in the middle of the night?
‘I thought it was you,’ she said later to Jo. ‘I thought you’d locked yourself out, left your keys behind, or came back too drunk to open the door. I was angry. I wanted to stay in bed. I didn’t want to get up.’
The doorbell rang again. And again. There was a pause — only a few seconds, but long enough for Mandy to drop her head back on the pillow.
It rang again and she stumbled out of bed and down the hallway to the door, calling out, ‘Is that you, Jo?’
‘Mrs Neilson, it’s the police.’
Mandy closed her eyes. This is a dream, just a dream. You can wake up now. It’s just a dream; turn around and go back to bed.
Years earlier, during a spate of particularly disturbing nightmares, Mandy had read an article by a dream therapist who believed the dreamer could alter the shape and direction of their dreams — he suggested it was possible for a person to will themselves out of bad dreams and nightmares. Adopting the therapist’s techniques helped her to sleep and to control the dreams she’d begun having after she and David separated. In those dreams, she constantly lost Jo. She lost Jo while they were doing their shopping in the crowded Little Saigon shopping centre, surrounded by the cackle of voices, of vendors calling out their specials, of men and women talking in foreign languages, of long rows of fruit and vegetables, of counters piled high with meat and fish, of wet and slippery floors. She lost Jo in the middle of a crammed street as they waited for the Moomba parade, amid families and picnic baskets and toddlers chasing balloons. She lost Jo in the stands at the football; she lost Jo in a crowded school ground; in the playground at the park. She lost Jo in places she and Jo had never been, were unlikely to ever go — midtown New York, with its flashing neon lights; in a rush of tourists on the Great Wall of China; in giant mazes; at overcrowded heavy-rock concerts. But the most frightening of all the dreams began with an explosion at the Mobil Oil terminal, and huge, monstrous flames flying across the road and threatening the house. In that dream, the police came to the door, knocking and yelling at them to evacuate, evacuate now, but Jo was missing and Mandy ran in circles around the house trying to find her… In those dreams, the terror of losing Jo was so real that Mandy woke up shaking and shivering, unable to go back to sleep. On those nights, she pulled a chair up close to Jo’s bed and watched her daughter sleep. When Mandy read the article about dream therapy in a magazine in the doctor’s surgery, she tore out the pages — she hadn’t done that before. She hated it when people tore things out of other people’s magazines. She took the article home and read and re-read it. Over a couple of months, she taught herself the art of altering her dreams. The moment in the dream when Jo’s hand slipped out of hers, she wished the crowd away, or she called Jo’s name and Jo materialised.
While the police stood on the other side of the door, Mandy willed the dream to change. Go back to bed and everything will be fine. Stop the bell. Make them go away. Go back to bed, it’s a dream.
But the doorbell rang again and she knew she was awake.
‘Mrs Neilson, please open the door.’
Mandy resisted. She didn’t want to open the door, she didn’t want to hear what they had to say. She didn’t know if Jo was in bed. The bedroom door was closed. She couldn’t remember if it was closed when Jo and Ash left. She hadn’t heard Jo come in, but it was late. Surely she was in bed.
‘Mrs Neilson? Please open the door.’ They rang the bell again and knocked on the wooden frame.
‘I’m coming,’ she said, slowly unlocking and opening the door. On the step there were two police officers, a woman and a man. Behind them, the ghoulish oil tanks glowed under the security lights.
‘Are you Mrs Neilson?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes. Is it Jo?’ she said, holding her breath.
‘Jo’s fine, Mrs Neilson. Jo’s been in an accident. She’s in hospital, but she’s not hurt.’
Mandy’s hands were shaking. She began to breathe again.
‘I’m Constable Lumina and this is Constable Peters.’
‘What about Jo’s friends, Ashleigh and Mani and Laura? Jo left with her friend Ashleigh and she was going to drive them home later.’
Constable Lumina was a girl, not much older than Jo. The uniform — the heavy boots, the thick black belt, and the gun — were meant to bestow her with authority, but standing at the door, she looked like a teenager in fancy dress. Too young to be on Mandy’s doorstep at 3.00 am. Hesitating, avoiding Mandy’s eyes, she let Mandy’s question hang in the air between them. Mandy heard the distant rumble of the traffic on the bridge. She breathed in the smell of the petroleum and the sea and Constable Lumina’s floral perfume that reminded her of her mother, of being a little girl, of the years of watching her mother deteriorate, of the constant presence of fear.
‘Can we come in?’ Constable Peters asked. He was older than Constable Lumina, but not by much — in his mid-twenties, perhaps. A solid man. His blue shirt too tight, showing the shape of his muscular arms and chest. Mandy moved aside and the police officers stepped into the hallway.
‘Can we sit down?’ Constable Lumina said. But none of them moved.
‘What about the other girls? What about Ashleigh?’
‘Mani and Laura are fine, but I’m afraid Ashleigh died on impact.’
‘No.’ Mandy shook her head. She felt as if she were standing on a thin, unstable ledge and any moment she might fall into a void. ‘But they were here… just hours… they were all dressed up, going to a party, they — couldn’t Ashleigh… couldn’t they help her?’
‘It was too late,’ Constable Lumina said, reaching out for Mandy’s arm, but Mandy slid back. Her body felt light and thin in the cold. Her nightie was flimsy, an old cotton garment she should’ve thrown out years ago; it had paint stains and a couple of small holes and it was no shield against the night air. Jo had given Mandy the nightie on her third Mother’s Day, the year she and David separated. The year she and Jo moved in with her father. Jo and her grandfather had gone on their first shopping trip together, down to Forges in Footscray. Forges was the only place Tom ever shopped, and then only rarely — that’s where he went when he wanted socks and underwear, a new pair of jeans (once every five years), a shirt or a t-shirt. The parcel wrapping was ripped by the time Jo gave it to her, but it was special. The nightie was too big. The nightie was too thin. Mandy wrapped her arms across her body and pulled the nightie tight until it was a twisted knot. She wanted to tell them to go away, to go away and to let her go back to bed. To let this be a dream, a nightmare.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Your daughter was driving. She’d been drinking. We’re not sure what caused the accident, but the car spun out of control, and they hit an embankment.’