The tree was a beacon. Every evening when she sat on the back doorstep, or stood at the kitchen window, if she focused on the tree, on its white trunk illuminated under the moonlight, she could imagine another life was possible. A life away from the suburbs. A house surrounded by creeks and hills and a large garden. She remembered her mother’s suitcase with the magazine clippings — hundreds of clipped images of country cottages, of places where the morning arrived with the sound of birds and where there was a front verandah on which a person could sit looking out for miles, seeing only green and blue.
She’d finally confessed to Jo that she’d made up her mind to sell the house a few years ago and that she’d been planning to put it on the market after Jo’s exams. ‘Are you angry?’
‘No, I thought as much. You should sell as soon as you can,’ Jo said.
‘But you love this house,’ Mandy said.
‘Whenever I heard you talk about the possibility of moving, I’d get upset. I wanted us to have this house forever. Grandpa’s house. But everything is different now, and I think moving away is a good idea.’
‘I don’t know anymore. I planned for so long to get as far away from here as possible and was so worried about how you’d react, but I don’t think now is the time. We’ve got to get through the court case and the sentencing.’
‘You should sell and move away.’
‘I want you to have a home to come back to.’
‘This doesn’t feel like home anymore.’
Mandy could see that Jo was close to tears. Since she’d met Antonello and handed over the journals, Jo had spent a lot of time crying. Mandy felt like crying too. But they had to be brave for each other. She wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. ‘I will make sure you have a home to come back to.’
After Antonello took the journals, Ash’s voice stopped. Now Jo was overwhelmed by the absence of Ash, by the black hole in her life without her friend. Now she was sobbing in her sleep, waking not with Ash’s voice in her head, but with a longing to see her, to talk to her, to talk things through with her. Waking up thinking, I’ll ring Ash and tell her about Mum wanting to sell the house. I’ll ring Ash and talk to her about prison, about going to prison. These thoughts, small and momentary, were followed by the realisation again and again that there was no Ash, that she would never speak to Ash again. And then the regret that Ash wouldn’t fulfil her dreams, wouldn’t become a lawyer, wouldn’t work for the United Nations, wouldn’t have her own Hypothetical-style program on television… That Ash would never have a life.
Sadness was the dominating emotion. She was sad for Ash’s family: for Jane and Antonello, and for Rae and Alex, who now had their daughter’s journals but not their daughter. She was sad for Mandy and Mary and the lives they’d lost. And she was sad for herself. Sad for the house that would be sold and would soon belong to other people, people who did not know the story behind the mural that refused to disappear, or why there was an industrial safe in the front bedroom. Sadness lingered like smoke after a fire; it saturated everything.
She mourned her old life and her old self.
‘Our world has collapsed,’ Mandy said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said. She’d apologised over and over again. She’d continue to apologise for the rest of her life, even though she doubted it would make any difference. It wouldn’t change anything. Jo hoped that Ash’s family would get some satisfaction, some resolution, from seeing her punished. Knowing she was in prison might give them a way through to something else.
‘I hate thinking of you being locked up,’ Mandy continued. ‘How can I go on living, move somewhere new, when you’ll be there?’
‘I hate thinking of you here,’ Jo said. ‘I’ll cope better if you aren’t here, if you have gone somewhere else. And anyway, it’s not good for either of us to wake up every morning and look at the bridge.’
‘Lots of people around here have spent their lives waking up to the bridge, with all the memories, with all the connections. Maybe it’s better to look at death in the face than to turn away from it.’
There was no escaping the bridge. It was impossible to see the ghost gum and not the bridge behind it. It was impossible to step out of the front gate and not be aware of its looming presence. It was a grey span across their skyline. It was embedded in the local community, had become a symbol of the west — Westgate Motors, Westgate Computer Care, Westgate Brewers, West Gate Pasta Supplies…
The only place on their small block where you could stand or sit and not see the bridge — though you could still hear it — was in the left-hand corner of the front yard, under the canopy of an old plum tree.
Mandy wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Was it possible to make a new home somewhere else? What made a house a home, anyway?
There were times when Mandy was so besieged by their street, by the stench of the petroleum, of the car fumes, of the rattle and roar of the traffic, that her body seemed to dissolve. ‘On some days,’ Mandy said, ‘living here, I feel like I’m drowning.’ On those days, the smell was everything; it was as if she carried it with her wherever she went, even if she went away, miles across town. On those days, Mandy kept expecting the people sitting next to her on trams or trains or standing across from her at the supermarket counter to say something about the smell, to tell her off, to move away in disgust. On those days, the smell invaded everything, from her nostrils to the pores of her skin. It settled on her, made itself at home.
It was true there were other days when the smell was hardly noticeable at all and she’d be surprised when a visitor asked, How do you stand the foul smell? Or when she heard someone walking past on their way to the path along the river or to Williamstown say, How anyone can live here? and peer through the bushes, curious to see what kind of strange creatures were capable of surviving in such an awful place.
The tanks were their neighbours. Like most neighbours, there were days when they seemed friendly, benevolent, and then there were days when they appeared hostile, even frightening. Some days they could be ignored, some days they were hardly noticeable. But other days, they dominated the street and it was impossible to get away from them. On the worst days, the tanks, dirty grey and black, each with their own large red numbers, concrete and steel stained with rust, were monstrous and menacing, formidable, as they peered over the cyclone fence, leaning all of their heavy weight towards the house.
But there were times, especially in the soft light of a winter’s morning or on days when the wind blew east and the scent of the garden permeated the air, when, even for Mandy, the sight of them was home.
‘Let’s wait,’ she said to Jo. ‘Let’s see what happens after the sentencing.’
It was Jo’s twentieth birthday and Mary had made a cake, but it was sitting uneaten on the bench, and Mary had gone home in tears when she realised her desire to make it like any other birthday was impossible. Mandy and Jo peered over the fence at the bridge. It was peak hour and the traffic was building. The cars were multiplying, like rodents during a plague. They drove with determination, with a destination in mind, with purpose.
Chapter 27
The courtroom reminded Antonello of a church. In place of the large crucifix that usually stood above the altar, there was an Australian coat of arms, etched in black on a silver panel. The emu and the kangaroo held on to the shield. Below them, the judge’s wide bench, elevated on a platform, towered over the room. Below the bench there were two tables, separated by a small gap. On the right side, wearing wigs and long black gowns, the prosecutor and his assistant; on the left, Sarah and her assistant. Behind them, rows of chairs. On the left, the empty jury’s seats; to the right, the witness stand; and at the back of the room, in an elevated section behind a gate, the dock.