Ora's Gold Read online

  The cottage is empty when I step inside. I lean against the rough wood of the door, momentarily dazed. It’s too quiet.

  Where are they?

  ‘Uuhh.’ A deep powerful moan thumps the silence, making me start and bang my head on the low beam. It sounds like there’s a beast downstairs—but this cottage doesn’t have a downstairs. ‘Uuhh.’ I don’t want to move but my body is already heading towards the sound.

  The floral armchair, sitting at an awkward angle in the middle of the room, has been pushed aside to reveal a trapdoor lying open. I hear another groan, deep and primal. My heart feels like it’s going to punch a hole in my chest. I hoist the bag onto my shoulder and turn around to grasp the metal rails either side of the stairwell. The ply board steps are steep and they creak and whine as I make my way closer to Dione’s freak show. How did the woman get down here? My instinct is to run, but a mystery pilot is in charge and taking me down.

  I pause on the bottom step, looking back up at the trapdoor. Maybe I should just dump the bag and flee. I start to slip the handles off my shoulder.

  ‘Ora.’ Dione’s voice is gentle.

  I turn and see the woman sitting back in a deep round tub of water, just big enough for her. Dione is leaning over her, tenderly wiping the woman’s face. The man is the other side, supporting her head. Her bare breasts are full and arching up towards the ceiling, shiny from the water. She looks like she’s sleeping. But then her head snaps forward and she looks straight at me, making me jump.

  ‘Get her out,’ she says loudly, a she-wolf baring her teeth.

  Dione gestures with her head for me to go back up the steps, dismissing me.

  But I don’t go. I’m a mess of fear and rage and longing. I want to stay in this little cave of warmth where the air is gentle and expectant and full of all the nurturing that Dione used to shower upon me. So this is who she’s saving it for! I’m locked to the spot by a swirl of emotions, clutching the woman’s bag and looking at her breasts. Her baby is coming. Dione is coming towards me when another wave takes the woman.

  I finally find my words, ‘You shouldn’t be—’

  ‘Uugh!’ The woman’s cry overpowers my voice.

  I drop the bag and run.

  6

  Not Swimming

  I spend the whole night thinking about running away. To New Zealand, or back to Dad’s. Maybe I should just move to Sydney or Melbourne and lose myself there? I go back to thinking about Dad, but I can’t live with him again. At least Dione can look me in the eye sometimes. I was so stupid to think we would have a connection. She’s totally lost it with her crackpot birthing unit. I have to get away. I want to tell Lucy but I can’t. Not on the phone.

  By the time the first bird starts calling my head is fuzzy and full of white noise. The beach. I have to get to the beach and into the water. Then I’ll be able to think straight.

  I creep out into the sepia dawn and see the sun’s first glow offering some colour. The morning chill hits my bones. I forgot my hoodie. The bus won’t be running for ages, so I start walking. I need to get away.

  I walk until my feet are sore. Eventually I get on a bus. At the beach I head straight for the water. I get to the buoy in no time and just keep going. All the thoughts and memories and hurt that have been torturing me surge out of my arms and legs as I push through the water. The rhythm soothes me, but the hurt explodes inside my chest.

  When I saw Dione with that woman I knew the truth. She only cares about pregnant women. She doesn’t want me anywhere near her—she won’t even hug me.

  It’s hard to cry when you’re swimming.

  Why can’t she love me?

  It’s even harder to swim when you’re crying.

  My dad can’t stand the sight of me. I know he wishes I’d died instead of …

  I have no one.

  I’m over halfway across the bay when I have to stop, I’m crying so hard.

  Why did they have to die?

  I am back inside the raw, grisly grief of losing them. The hole that they left is too big. I can’t stand it anymore.

  My sobs roll over the water into nothingness. Lion and Snake flash briefly through my mind but I push them away.

  I hear the sound of a motor, then an orange boat swishes in beside me. Before I know what’s happening, I’m being scooped up by a bronzed, round-faced lifesaver. She flashes her straight white teeth as she heaves me over the side.

  What is she so bloody happy about?

  ‘You looked like you were in a bit of trouble there.’ She looks me over closely, deciding whether I need medical attention.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I sob, embarrassed and angry. And cold. I start to shake uncontrollably. She puts a towel over me and settles herself into position.

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ she says. ‘I’ll have you back in no time.’

  ‘I was fine!’

  ‘It’s no bother. Better safe than sorry.’

  How dare she pluck me out like a rag doll? I want to scream at her but all the air goes out of me, making me slide to the bottom of the boat. I rest my head against the hard rubber side and shut my eyes, concentrating on the whir of the motor.

  I am jolted into the present by the crunch of sand underneath the boat. She has expertly surfed us in on a wave. I get ready to disappear as soon as my feet touch land. All I want to do is slink back to my towel and burrow into it, hiding my shame. I look along the beach to my pile of things and there he is, sitting just outside the flags not far from my towel, looking straight at me.

  No!

  ‘You’ll have to rest for a while, love,’ says the lifesaver, smiling again. I want to hit her. ‘Just so we can keep an eye on you. Have you got someone we can call?’

  I sigh and shake my head.

  ‘Well, let’s get you out of the boat and you can sit here for a bit. I’m sure you’ll think of someone soon.’ She’s smiling brightly, and doesn’t move away until I’m sitting on the sand.

  I hug my knees hard and look straight ahead. People are looking at me, curious about the girl who needed saving.

  ‘Drowned rat’ is taking on a whole new meaning—my hair has started to frizz into a wild afro and I feel wretched. I pretend to zone out into the horizon as I feel my self-esteem belly flopping into the ocean.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Seaboy get up and start walking towards me. I stop breathing and look down. Please walk past. Please.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, sitting a little way from me. I can’t speak. He picks up some sand and moves it between his fingers. ‘You know, I’m the only one around here who can manage to swim across the bay?’

  I look at him and he’s wearing this grandiose grin and just for a second I forget myself.

  ‘Well excuse me, Mr Weedy Pants Wetsuit!’

  He opens his mouth—I’ve surprised him—then laughs. ‘I have to wear it, it gets way too cold out there for that long.’ I smile and try not to think about how crap my eyes must look after all that crying.

  ‘I’m Jake, by the way.’

  ‘Ora,’ I say, shaking his outstretched hand. The gesture is more matey than formal. His skin is soft under the grains of sand.

  ‘So what was happening out there?’

  I drop his hand and look back at the horizon.

  ‘Ora!?’ Dione’s voice travels up the beach.

  ‘Oh no,’ I say. ‘My aunt.’

  Seaboy raises an eyebrow and we watch her marching towards us on the uneven sand.

  He starts to stand and so do I, feeling wobbly.

  ‘Ora!’ Dione comes to a halting stop and there’s an awkward silence.

  ‘Hi.’ He holds out his hand for a second time. ‘I’m Jake.’

  ‘Dione,’ she says, shaking it briefly. She looks at me. ‘I’m glad I guessed the right beach.’

  My insides feel tight when I look at her.

  ‘We need to talk,’ she says.

  Great. I finally get to chat to Seaboy and she ruins it! Just like she’s ruining the rest of
my life.

  ‘I’ll see you another time.’ Jake turns and walks back to his towel before I can respond.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ she says.

  ‘No!’ There’s no way I’m going back to that house. Not with her. I start walking towards my stuff.

  ‘Iced chocolate?’ she calls after me. ‘The Star of Greece?’

  The years fall away when I hear the name. Every visit, we always had to go there—Me, Holly, Mum and Dione—the high-up café overlooking the sea.

  I walk stiffly to my things. I can’t look at Seaboy … Jake … whatever. I want the ground to swallow me up.

  The lifesaver says something to Dione.

  I walk away from the sea and away from Dione, towards the bus stop. I have to get away.

  But where to?

  7

  Justification?

  I slump onto the bus-stop bench and dump my bag beside me. Dione has followed me.

  ‘Aren’t you wasting your precious petrol, coming here?’

  She doesn’t sit next to me, thankfully. ‘I needed to check you were okay. I just had a feeling that—

  ‘—you were a mental bitch?’

  ‘Ora, I know you don’t—’

  ‘Don’t want to live with you anymore? Too right.’

  ‘Ora …’

  ‘I can’t handle all your preg—’

  ‘Shhh.’ Now she’s looking around, worried.

  ‘You’ve treated me like shit ever since I got here, Dione. Why didn’t you just tell me not to come?’

  ‘I tried! I wanted you to go to New Zealand, remember? But you insisted on coming …’ She looks at a man approaching the bus stop and speaks quietly. ‘I knew how hurt you were over your dad …’

  The man stops beside us. He could be an undercover SIF officer. The thought’s enough to make me move.

  Dione’s ute is hot and airless but the car’s speed and open windows soon have my hair dancing. We drive in silence except for the radio music. I don’t care where we’re going. I’m too busy squirming over the past twenty-four hours: Seaboy—Jake—seeing me get picked up by the lifesaver. The woman in the tub and her snarling face. Dione dismissing me.

  We pull into the car park overlooking the sea. There’s only one other car here. The café hasn’t changed, solid and white against the blue sea and sky, neat rows of sash windows with pink and orange flowers tumbling from their sills.

  I feel so old.

  Dione turns off the engine and I have to swallow hard to keep my tears in.

  ‘I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, Ora.’ She turns and reaches for my hand. I don’t let her touch me. Why is she being so nice all of a sudden? It’s … too much.

  The last time I was here was with Mum and Holly.

  I feel sick.

  ‘God, Ora,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I’m so, so sorry …’

  I want to spew my guts over her. Fury. Nausea. Pain. I want her to know everything. To feel it as deeply as I do, this searing emptiness that won’t go away.

  I force the tips of my teeth together.

  ‘You’re ridiculous, Dione. All your stupid birth stuff. You’re possessed by it … That woman last night … you were … so soft … and you shouted at me like I was …’ I shake my head, trying to delete the memory.

  ‘When I was swimming, all this sadness … I started feeling so …’ The tears are rolling down my cheeks now, but I’m not sobbing. ‘I miss them.’

  She shakes her head and squeezes my shoulder, looking stricken. Her eyes are soft now. She reminds me of Mum.

  ‘I’ve been so stupid, Ora.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s stating the obvious.’ I push her hand off me.

  ‘But I needed to keep you out, to shield you.’ She’s still shaking her head.

  I stare at her. Nothing makes sense. We sit for ages, looking through the windscreen to the sea.

  ‘Ora, I’ve always wanted you here … I just couldn’t see how to make it work with the birth stuff.’

  I need to get out of the car.

  ‘Will you let me explain? Please?’

  I look at her, knowing it’s not a good idea, but I need to find out how deep she’s in.

  We’re halfway to the entrance of the café when she stops in front me.

  ‘The only reason I didn’t have you here from the very beginning is because I couldn’t offer you the stability you needed.’ She looks very earnest, her face scrunched up against the sunshine. I can feel some heat seeping back into my heart.

  She puts her arm around my waist and hugs me from side-on. I want to snuggle in, but I pull away. We walk over to the railing at the top of the cliff.

  ‘When I heard you might be going to New Zealand I was distraught, but I knew it was for the best. I knew you were happy with Lucy and her family, and New Zealand’s got so much more going for it. But you wouldn’t listen …’

  ‘If only I had.’

  The bell above the door announces our arrival. Perfect glimpses of the ocean greet us as we step inside, each window framing a moving palette of blues. There’s a new deck at one end that offers the privacy we need. Dione orders peppermint tea and iced chocolate and we sit, staring out to sea, until the drinks arrive. I look at the milk. It’ll be genetically engineered, but I don’t care.

  ‘D’you know I was at your birth?’ Dione asks, pouring her tea.

  ‘I think so.’ I know so, but I want to hear about Mum.

  ‘I only just made it,’ she says, smiling. ‘I booked my ticket two weeks before your due date but you decided to come early. When there was no one at the airport to meet me I guessed something was up and jumped in a taxi. You were coming out just as I stepped through the door.’

  I shrug.

  ‘That was the last year homebirth was still legal.’

  ‘I can’t believe Dad let Mum have me at home.’

  ‘He didn’t have a say.’ Dione smiles again.

  I shrug again and inhale a waft of seaweed.

  ‘I didn’t plan any of this, Ora.’ She’s got her activist voice on now. ‘It just happened. When the government changed the rules, it flicked some kind of switch in me. I was outraged. Safety, safety, safety,’ she spits. ‘It’s just one big excuse to control us.’

  I use my finger to scoop some iced chocolate into my mouth.

  ‘Then after your mum and Holly died … I stopped working altogether. I just shut down … until an old client turned up on my doorstep. She was very pregnant and on the run from the SIF, so I hid her in the cottage.’

  ‘Dione, the Good Samaritan,’ I say.

  She continues, ignoring my scorn. ‘Her partner was a plumber, and he fixed up the shelter with the birthing tub and did some building work to make it right for her. I told myself I was only going to help her, but then her friend wanted help soon after. Every time I tried to stop, another woman would contact me. Maybe I was easily persuaded, I don’t know, but before I knew it, I was running an underground birthing centre.’

  There’s a long silence.

  ‘How do the women not get caught once they’ve had the baby?’ I wonder aloud. ‘And how do they get around MBD?’

  ‘They get friends to share their blood. The donor centres don’t identify or measure the blood—it’s too expensive. As long as you show up with a donation, that’s enough. As for the birth records, there are a few master hackers out there who can get into the system, make it look like the babies were born into the Safety Programs. I don’t know how they do it, but it works. There are also some skilled forgers who create fake papers.’

  ‘So there’s a whole racket going on! A kind of underground revolution? I bet that couple on the train were part of it.’

  ‘I don’t know about the couple on the train but all of them are just people who want sovereignty over their own bodies, that’s all. There’ll never be a revolution. All the Programs and centres are way too big now. It just comes down to what each individual believes is right.’

  ‘What’s right? T
hese individuals don’t care one bit about the safety of their babies. I can’t believe you’re doing this!’ I’m finding it hard to speak quietly.

  ‘What makes you so sure the babies are better off in the centres, Ora? Have you been so brainwashed?’

  ‘It’s been proven. What you’re doing is dangerous. And negligent.’

  ‘Do you know what happens in those centres? They’re like prisons. Women are sedated as soon as they step inside. You have no idea. The centres are overcrowded—twenty women to a dorm—and there’s nothing to do for the entire pregnancy! No wonder they come out half deranged. The births are all scheduled and the babies are whisked off to incubators as soon as they’re delivered. The mothers don’t even get to hold their newborns. What chance have they got of bonding? We’re creating a zombie nation, all in the name of safety!’

  ‘What if something goes wrong? Do you have a back-up plan? You’re too far from a hospital to get help.’

  ‘Listen to how fearful you sound, Ora. Everyone is a seething mass of fear. We’ve turned into sheep, running to do whatever the government asks. And the centres haven’t been proven to be safer. They’ve just managed to convince everyone that it’s a big scary world. All that E. coli and H. coli propaganda. It was nonsense.’

  ‘Thousands of deaths does not equal nonsense, Dione.’

  ‘It was never thousands. It’s all about control. They’ve found another way of controlling women. That’s the bottom line, Ora. If you control the way women give birth, throw enough fear in there, you’ve got the whole of society sewn up.’ She’s fidgeting in her seat now. ‘Do you know when it all started?’

  I sigh loudly and sit back for the lecture.

  ‘Way back in the sixteen hundreds when women started lying on their backs to give birth—and guess who for? The king! Louis the Fourteenth got a kick out of watching his mistresses give birth, so he ordered the doctor to make them lie down so he could see better. After that, the doctor realised it made things so much easier—for him! Soon it was all the rage. The doctors loved it because they didn’t have to kneel anymore, and the women just followed the fashion, like they always do.’