Let Her Go Read online

  * * *

  Lou sniffed as her dad drove up the driveway. He hadn’t said a word on the journey home from the police station; her mum hadn’t even come with him. All Lou wanted to do was to go to sleep and wake up somewhere else, in someone else’s life. Or take off. Her parents wouldn’t understand, they never had. In between her bouts of tears, she kept thinking about how Theo and her so-called friends had abandoned her to save themselves, leaving her to look like a junkie when she was doing it all for them. She hoped they were hiding somewhere, terrified in case she had told the police about them. She should have, but she wasn’t like them: she stood up for her mates.

  As the car stopped under the carport, she tried to open her door, but the child lock was on. She tried the handle again, letting it whack back against the door, then again.

  ‘Lou! For God’s sake, just wait!’

  She glared at her father, then slumped back in the seat and waited for him to walk around and open the door from the outside. He held it open, waited for her to get out, then slammed it shut. She walked about a metre behind him to their front door, then followed him inside. She thought about turning around and running; maybe then he’d do something, say something. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d just let her go and lock the door behind her.

  She followed him down the hallway to the kitchen. In the doorway, she hesitated. Their golden retriever, Sandy, bounded over to her, wagging his tail; Lou bent down and tangled her fingers in Sandy’s thick coat as she watched her dad walk towards the sink and fill the kettle. Her mum, in her dressing-gown, was sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up at Lou, shook her head a little, then dabbed at her eyes with a damp tissue. No one said anything. Then her mum gripped the edge of the table, pushed herself up and stared at Lou. Lou’s face got hotter and hotter. She wanted to run over to her and lean into the fluffy gown, while her mum kissed her head and stroked her hair. Instead, she stood still while her mum pushed past her, out of the room and along the hallway. Her dad leaned on the grey granite kitchen bench with his back to her as the kettle started to boil.

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ Lou mumbled, trying to keep her voice steady.

  He nodded but didn’t look up.

  ‘Is Mum OK?’

  She saw the muscles in his jaw tense. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Just go. Go to bed. I can’t talk to you right now.’

  Lou pressed her lips together, trying to stop her bottom lip from quivering. She wanted him to make her a Milo and let her drink it beside him on the couch while he watched TV, like they often did when she and her mum had fought. But he only took one mug out of the cupboard, and one tea bag. Lou hung her head and walked out of the kitchen and along the hallway towards her room with Sandy padding after her.

  In her bedroom, she closed the door behind her. The room was as she had left it before she went out. Clothes were piled on her unmade bed, and shoes lay on the floor in front of the mirrors of her built-ins along the wall opposite the door. Her desk, underneath the window, was piled with books and folders, homework that she had to finish tomorrow. After a few minutes, she heard her parents talking in harsh whispers. Her mum must have gone back to the kitchen. The kettle slammed into its base, spoons clattered on the benchtop, the fridge door thudded. Lou sat cross-legged on her bed; she patted the space next to her and her dog jumped up beside her. Lou wiped her face, and her hands came away smudged with black eye make-up. Be quiet! she wanted to shout. Stop fighting, go to bed, please, sleep. Because she couldn’t sleep until they did, couldn’t shut them out; all she could think about was what they were saying about her, and why they didn’t shout at her instead of each other.

  She turned on her iPad – no doubt it would be confiscated tomorrow when they remembered – and started streaming a music video. She wanted to turn it up loud to drown out their bickering, but she also needed to know when they stopped. They were forgetting to whisper now: her mum’s voice was getting higher, her father’s deeper, though their words were still unclear. Lou brought her hand to her mouth and started to scrape off dark red nail polish with her front teeth, spitting out the little chewed-up balls onto her bed. Then she bit her nails until they were down to the quick, and started gnawing on the skin around them. She told herself to stop but couldn’t pull her hands away. Tears fell quickly now, and her head hurt. She needed a drink of water. How did they expect her to sleep like this? With all this noise? Her skin was so itchy; she began to scratch at her neck, her arms. Her jeans were too tight: she couldn’t get at her legs. She put her hand down the neck of her t-shirt and scratched at her chest and under her arms. But she’d bitten her nails too short; there was no relief from the itching. She rubbed at her face as the noise around her continued: music, shouting, slamming, crashing, pounding in her head. She squeezed her hands into fists as hard as she could, but it wasn’t enough. Her whole body was agitated now. She knew what she needed to do.

  She got off the bed, went to her bookshelf and took out the big hardback dictionary that her grandparents had given her for her last birthday, two months ago. Opening it at C, she took out the thin, sharp razor blade that she kept there for emergencies, for times exactly like this. As she looked at it her breath quickened in anticipation. The tension inside her body, her muscles, her head, was building, building, peaking, but she knew that in only a few moments she would release it, let it all out, and sink down, down, down …

  Chapter Four

  Zoe ran down the escalators to the ground floor of the shopping centre. She could see Rosemary sitting at a cafe table on the floor of the mall. Zoe would rather they sat inside where she didn’t have to watch all the mums pushing their babies in strollers with toddlers running alongside. The centre was new, all silver and white and glass and metal, high ceilings and touch-screen maps, but the shops were the same old high-street chains that you found everywhere. Zoe reached the bottom of the escalator and hurried past a nail salon where Vietnamese girls scurried around the silk-scarved middle-aged women having pedicures.

  Just before she reached the cafe, Zoe paused and looked in the window of a luggage shop. Her face looked OK in the reflection, but it would probably still be blotchy in the daylight. Her mother would certainly notice. She reached into her bag and pulled out a lip gloss that she’d got free with a magazine. The colour wasn’t right, but she put it on anyway. Moving into her mother’s line of sight, she waved. Rosemary smiled and waved back.

  ‘Hi, Mum. Sorry I’m late.’ Zoe leaned down and kissed Rosemary’s cheek, then put her bag on the floor and sat down.

  ‘I haven’t been here long, it’s fine.’ Rosemary waved her hand dismissively, her plum-coloured nails catching the light.

  Zoe smiled and sighed. She knew her mother would have been here for at least ten minutes, and probably longer.

  Rosemary picked up the cardboard menu and scanned it. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

  Zoe shook her head. ‘Just a coffee.’

  ‘You look like you need it.’

  Zoe shrugged. ‘I didn’t sleep very well last night. Where’s the waitress?’ She looked over her shoulder to break her mother’s stare, and caught the eye of a young, red-cheeked girl, who smiled and came over to their table.

  Once they had ordered, Zoe turned back to her mum and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry about the other night. The party.’

  ‘Oh, love, there’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m sorry we were all so preoccupied and didn’t realise what was going on. How are you feeling?’

  Zoe’s face heated up and her eyes prickled with tears again. She blinked hard and looked away. ‘I’m OK. Anyway, I hope I didn’t ruin it.’

  ‘Of course not. No one even noticed!’

  ‘Did the rest of the night go well?’

  Rosemary smiled. ‘Well, Martin and Uncle Mark ended up drinking whiskey and singing a duet at two in the morning, so I’d say so!’

  Zoe smiled as she pictured her stepfather. She hated to think that she might h
ave ruined his special night. Martin never seemed to let anything worry him, although Zoe knew that it must be a veneer. He had lost his first wife, Hilary, to cancer when Nadia was only an infant. Zoe had always wondered how Rosemary had managed to deal with the emotional repercussions of taking on a traumatised widower and his young daughter. Of course, Martin had taken them on too: Rosemary, scarred from divorce; and Zoe, a toddler who missed her father. That was different, though – her dad was estranged, but still alive, living in Sydney and full of flaws. But Hilary’s memory was held sacred.

  The waitress returned with their coffees. Rosemary smiled and shifted the menu and sugar bowl to the side to make room for their drinks. When the waitress had gone, Rosemary shook her head and tutted. ‘Half my coffee is in the saucer.’

  Zoe sighed. ‘Well, you should have said something.’

  ‘What’s the point? The prices they charge for some coffee beans and milk, they should employ someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  ‘She’s probably studying law or medicine, and doing this on the side in the holidays. Maybe she recognised you from university and has a grudge against you …’ Zoe tried to joke, aware as she said it that neither of them was in a jovial mood. Rosemary worked in the university library, and there were still a few weeks before the new semester started.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if this isn’t her career. She should still take pride in her work.’

  Zoe sipped her coffee, stopping herself from reacting to the phrase she’d heard so many times before. Even when Zoe had been sick, Rosemary had always made her try her best, reminded her that she must always be proud of herself and everything she did. Zoe knew it had been her mother’s attempt to prop up Zoe’s self-esteem. What Rosemary had never said aloud, though, was that there had never been much for Zoe to be proud of. Nadia was the one whom everybody admired: clever, pretty. Healthy.

  Rosemary wiped her saucer and the bottom of her cup with a napkin, then took a sip. She cleared her throat. ‘Zoe, I’m so sorry to hear about … well, you know …’

  Why didn’t she say it? ‘About not being able to have a baby?’

  Rosemary nodded, then reached across the table for Zoe’s hand. ‘I was so shocked, we all were. It breaks my heart.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she took another napkin from the metal dispenser on the table.

  Zoe pressed her lips together. She had barely been able to contain her tears for the past few days. At home, she had let herself go: she cried, she shouted, she screamed. What did it matter if she wallowed in it? She had taken sick leave from work, and let herself lie on the couch all day and watch television while poor Lachlan begged her to talk to him. But she had hoped that being out, doing something normal, might make her feel better. She needed to hold it all together here. She shook her head quickly, then pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘I can’t talk about it now, Mum, sorry.’

  ‘I know, darling. It’s OK.’

  Zoe drank her coffee just for something to do. It wasn’t OK though, and that was what was so awful. She had never understood how much she wanted children until the doctor had told her that she couldn’t have them. Perhaps it was only because she couldn’t that she now felt so desperate. She’d spent her life having to relinquish control to other people, to her illness. Not a week went by without hearing about someone who’d beaten the odds: run a marathon after shattering their spine; swum the Channel after having limbs amputated; been cured of an incurable cancer. But this wasn’t a case of showing determination; there was no miracle waiting for her around the corner if she only fought harder. If only. It was luck, bad luck. Fate.

  People would always wonder why she had no children. She had done the same in the past when she’d met childless couples. She’d pitied them, imagined their distress at miscarriages or failed fertility treatments. She supposed some couples were childless by choice, but couldn’t really imagine that now. After all, who doesn’t really want to have children? What would people think of her? What would she tell them?

  She breathed out. ‘Sorry, it’s just hard for me to talk about.’

  ‘So there’s nothing they can do, nothing at all?’

  Zoe shook her head. ‘No. Nothing.’

  ‘What about adoption … ?’

  ‘I don’t want someone else’s child. And …’ Her voice dropped into a whisper. ‘I want a baby, Mum. I want my own child. I wanted Lachlan and me to have a baby of our own, one that looked like us, that was made of parts of us.’

  Rosemary leaned forward. ‘But you’d soon think of an adopted baby as your own.’

  Zoe’s voice rose. ‘I wouldn’t. Every time I looked at the child I’d know that its mother was crying somewhere, wondering where her son or daughter was. You’d have to be desperate to give up your baby, or a terrible mother. And I don’t want a child who’s scarred by that loss, who has something missing. Even an infant knows his mother, and that would never be me. It’s like our family: you must feel the difference between me and Nadia, don’t you?’

  Rosemary paled, but she said nothing.

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.’ Zoe had overheard Rosemary telling Nadia many times that she was as much her daughter as Zoe, but Zoe had always assumed that it wasn’t true.

  ‘It’s OK. What about surrogacy? You hear about it all the time now. Didn’t that actress, what’s her name —’

  Zoe shook her head again. ‘It still wouldn’t be my child – my body isn’t making eggs any more.’

  ‘People donate their eggs – I’ve been reading about it. Or you can buy them overseas.’

  ‘Mum, we’re talking about a baby. I can’t just … buy one from China or Thailand or wherever, like a cheap handbag.’

  ‘I’m just saying it’s an option, darling. At least the baby would be Lachlan’s.’

  ‘Lachlan’s and someone else’s! That would be worse.’ Zoe had thought about it, but feared that she might never be able to love a child who reminded her of her failings every time she looked at it.

  ‘Just give it some time. You might change your mind. You do come to think of children as your own, even when you didn’t give birth to them, I promise.’

  Zoe nodded. Her mum was right: in the midst of this thick, cloying grief it was impossible to clear her eyes and her head and her heart; she couldn’t rule anything out. But how could she and Lachlan adopt a child, with him away all the time? Zoe would need Lachlan’s support to care for a child who’d been torn from its mother, and that support was part-time and distant even now. And if he was a part-time and distant husband, then it was better that he didn’t become the same type of father. But it was too hard to explain all these things to other people. There was no point in talking about it, not even with her mother.

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’ She had finished her coffee now, and took it as an opportunity to change the subject. ‘Hey, I might go and see a movie this afternoon, do you want to come?’

  ‘Sounds great. Something funny, yes?’

  Zoe smiled. ‘Definitely.’

  * * *

  ‘Here you are.’ Nadia handed a glass of white wine to Rosemary. ‘Dad, you still OK for beer?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m good thanks,’ Martin said, smiling.

  Nadia poured herself a glass then sat down on the wooden garden chair next to Eddie. She sipped her drink and reached for an olive from the tub on the table. The girls were inside playing dress-up, and Harry was right next to the adults, in the plastic clamshell sandpit. She leaned back and let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you both here. I know it’s a long drive.’

  ‘Part of the attraction of living in the hills, eh?’ Martin said, smiling.

  ‘Yes, for me, but Eddie gets a bit fed up with commuting an hour to work every day, don’t you?’ Nadia nudged Eddie.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit tiring.’

  ‘I think he likes the peace and quiet of the drive, a good excuse to stay away from the kids.’ Nadia
winked at her dad, then leaned into Eddie. ‘Only joking.’

  Eddie raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I texted Zoe in case she wanted to come over too, but she didn’t reply,’ Nadia said.

  ‘How is she, Rosemary?’ Eddie said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I had a coffee with her today, then we went to a movie. She’s putting on a brave face, but she’s not good.’ Rosemary shrugged. ‘You know what she’s like. She doesn’t like to talk about things.’

  ‘Did you get any more details from her?’ Nadia was frowning. ‘Is there definitely nothing that the doctors can do?’

  Rosemary shook her head. ‘I called Lachlan too this afternoon, just in case … well, sometimes you don’t take in all the information at medical appointments when you’re upset. But he said the doctor was definite. They can adopt, or use a surrogate. That’s it.’

  ‘Shit,’ Eddie said. ‘Do you think they will?’

  Rosemary sighed. ‘I don’t know. Zoe’s adamant that she wants her own baby. She kept saying that adopted kids would have problems.’

  ‘She’s probably right,’ Nadia said. She’d worked with enough disturbed kids – before she had her own children – who’d been through the child protection system to know that it wasn’t easy for them, or for the families who took them on.

  ‘But she’d cope, she’s a kids’ nurse!’ said Martin. ‘What better person is there to adopt?’