Ora's Gold Read online

  The shove this time is violent. My head snaps back. I need to pull myself together. I can’t collapse. I look down, focus on my boots, putting one foot in front of the other. The leather. The rhythm. My breath.

  My boots, my steps, my breath.

  Hours later we hit an unmade road, and I finally look up. We are at the bottom of the mountain. A van is parked up ahead. Will Jake be in it? I desperately want him to be. I desperately want him not to be.

  What if I’m put in with the dogs? A new fear uncurls itself. When we get closer I see a dog van parked beside the first car, and another SIF van as well. I feel a momentary relief when I’m bundled into the back of the car and handcuffed to the door. I am so thirsty.

  There’s a third guy now, talking to them. Finally, they shake hands, laughing. The dog handler is putting the dogs into his vehicle as we drive off. I breathe in and make a wish for Jake’s safety. He’s risked so much coming out here, tracking down a girl he barely knows.

  Tears threaten again and I close my eyes. I can’t watch the familiar countryside slipping away.

  The drive is interminable. I keep my eyes shut, trying to stop the thoughts and fears shooting through me in waves.

  How did this happen? There’s one golden rule with the SIF: don’t break the law. It’s simple. My fury at Dione boils in my blood. She should have kept me out of this. We should have remained strangers.

  I open my eyes, then close them again. Memories crash into my thoughts.

  Reggae rhythms. Mum and Dad in their bathers, dancing in the kitchen. Stinking hot day. Me and Holly, little, drawing at the table, giggling. Mum doing outrageous moves. Dad not knowing what to do with her …

  My heart feels too big in my chest when I think of Dad. He’ll help me, I know he will. They’ll have to let me phone him. He tried to warn me. I need water.

  16

  The SIF

  I am being watched. The room is bare, except for a table and chairs and bright, fluorescent lights which hurt my eyes. It feels like a flock of vultures are observing me behind the darkened viewing window. I’m not naked in this puke-green, hospital robe, but I might as well be. They even took my underwear.

  I can’t stop shivering. My hands and feet are blue and my heart is a chunk of ice.

  The walls and floor are metal. I sit at the table and tuck my legs under me. The edges of the chair are sharp and dig in, but I stay like this. The more of me I can feel, the better. The temperature must be below zero.

  When we got here, they dragged me into a decontamination unit. I was dunked and blasted with chemicals that have made my skin peel and itch. I tried to make myself disappear through the corner walls, crouching small and covering my head with my hands. Shock kept the pain away at first. Now my whole body aches. The chemicals must be inside me now.

  The door opens and two guards come in wearing thick puffa jackets. They look warm and rosy, like they’ve been drinking hot tea. But there’s nothing rosy about them. Steely grey eyes, tight lips, squat bodies with dull, thinning hair. She looks tough, he looks mean.

  They have come to break me.

  I breathe in and close my eyes, calling for help. Lion and Snake arrive immediately. Lion jumps on the table to block the guards, ferocious and cool. Snake is beside the female guard, lower body coiled, upper body rippling from side to side at her elbow.

  ‘Open your eyes, now.’ The male guard’s voice is too loud.

  I keep looking at Snake in my mind’s eye. ‘Draw a circle of light around yourself,’ she says. ‘Bring it up into a pyramid point above your head. It will protect you.’ I see myself inside a case of light and a glimmer of warmth starts to move in my belly.

  The guard bangs on the table and shouts at me to open my eyes.

  I do.

  The ends of their noses are red with cold and they have shrunk. He is a rat with a twitching mouth. She is a slug. Snake is elegant and graceful beside her.

  The slug leans in over the table. I’m glad my hands are tucked under my legs, I think she’d snatch at them. Lion roars and I only catch the last word of what she says, and then Lion is gone, and Snake too.

  ‘—Jake?’

  She smiles. She’s snagged me on her line. Now she is going to reel me in, savouring her words as she casts them.

  ‘In the hospital.’ She smiles. ‘Coma.’ Pause. ‘Stupid boy.’ Another smile. ‘Running down a mountain! Doesn’t he know about rock faces?’ She sniggers. ‘What a hero.’

  Movement returns to my icy fingers and my feet make contact with the ground. I will throttle her.

  ‘Your circle, Ora!’ Snake is loud in my ear. ‘Keep it around you. And the pyramid. It’s your only chance.’

  I slump back, scrabbling to re-draw a shield of light as images of Jake lying at the bottom of a cliff torpedo into my heart.

  ‘He won’t be swimming again,’ says the rat to the slug, shaking his head and raising his eyebrows in feigned compassion. ‘With both legs broken …’ he trails off, turning to me with a hateful smile. The image of Jake becomes more defined, his legs at right angles to his crumpled body.

  ‘And then there’s Dione,’ she says, sounding almost bored.

  I close my eyes tightly, a mantra forming. Circle, white light, pyramid. Circle, white light, pyramid.

  A blow to my ear knocks me to the ground. Stunned, I vaguely register that my head is pounding. I am half deaf.

  ‘Get up, and don’t close your eyes again.’

  The slug is leering over me. I scramble back onto the chair. Small. I am small. And cold. And not cut out for this. I press my lips together tightly. I will not cry. I will not. I keep my eyes open and take another breath. I feel Lion sitting on my right. Very close.

  The guards are looking at me. I want to ask about Dione but I won’t give them the pleasure. Snake is with me too, dancing and bobbing on my left. I know what I have to do. I breathe in again, rebuilding my wall of light, then sit up straight, staring at the window behind them. I resist the urge to lift my chin. Disdain won’t help.

  The rat flings his chair back and comes around the table. I imagine him tripping over Lion’s tail. And then, weirdly, he stumbles. Just momentarily.

  Warm tingles cascade down my spine as my imaginary world suddenly becomes a lot more real.

  When the rat grips my shoulder, threatening to crush my collarbone with his fingers, I don’t scream. Or cry. I take another breath and look ahead.

  ‘If you don’t tell us where she is, we’ll make sure your lover boy doesn’t come out of his coma.’

  Everything goes still as my emotions collide. Relief floods through me—Dione is still free. And black, coal-like fear. Jake. In a hospital bed, surrounded by guards with drug-filled needles.

  ‘I don’t know where she is!’ My voice sounds raspy in the dank air. I haven’t spoken or eaten for hours. ‘The last time I saw her was before I ran away.’ I sound desperate. I am desperate. I have to make them understand.

  The guards look at each other briefly. They don’t give anything away. The rat’s grip tightens even more and I let out an involuntary yelp.

  ‘Why did you run?’ He is speaking through gritted teeth. Now he is a terrier who will never let go.

  ‘I wanted to get away!’ Circle, white light, pyramid.

  His cold hand moves over to my throat. Is this how it ends?

  ‘Had something to hide, did you?’

  ‘Jake! I wanted to be with Jake!’

  He lets go with a shove.

  ‘Dione didn’t like him. She … we argued …’ I rub at my sore neck and shoulder.

  Their eyes are searing into me. Can they tell I’m lying? I look back at them, trying to look convincing.

  ‘Please, is he going to be okay?’ Oh God I hope he tells them the same story. If he wakes up.

  Just like that, they leave. The door slams. I take a breath in and my defence crumbles. I turn away from the window and clutch the back of the chair. The last time I cried this hard was two nights ago in Jak
e’s arms. Rage and distress, fear for his life. I am crying so hard I don’t feel the cold.

  *

  They spray me daily with toxic chemicals that sear my skin. By day three I’m a mass of open sores which seep and burn every time they blast me again.

  The only time I am with people is when I’m being interrogated. Mostly, by Slug and Rat. They have jagged, gashing tongues that slice me with their words. It was my fault Mum and Holly died. Dad wishes I had died. I am a waste of space, wanted by no-one. On and on. I am lost. They know everything about me.

  They try so many ways to get me to talk about the births and dob Dione in. They start being all friendly which is totally creepy. I don’t touch their food offerings—probably full of drugs. Lion and Snake see me through and keep me sane—which is mad, I know but as soon as I’m on the edge of breaking, one of them does something to distract me; Lion jumps on the table, Snake starts dancing. Something. Always something.

  I come closest to talking on the third day when they send in a new officer. A man. Monster really. His neck is like a giant tree stump and he has a deep scar that runs across his cheek. He bangs and thumps the wall incessantly. And pounds me with his questions. I go into a deeper catatonic state than before. He carries on for hours. When he punches a hole in the wall and starts towards me, I jump up and fling myself into the corner, facing the wall. I’m just about to turn, to talk—the garden birth is on the tip of my tongue—when I lose control of my bladder. There isn’t much because I’m so dehydrated, but that warm trickling down my thigh ignites a bone-deep determination to keep quiet. I will not give them what they want. They will not control me.

  He keeps saying the spa wasn’t really a spa. I feign surprise. I kind of am surprised—could Dione have pulled it off? Slug and Rat return. I tell them I don’t know anything about a birthing centre, and I convince myself I don’t. The B&B was operating as a B&B and spa, wasn’t it? I believe what I’m telling them. I have to, to survive.

  I had nothing to do with the people who stayed. I only ever saw them in the distance. And the only pregnant woman I’ve ever seen was the one on the train. They know about her.

  I just wanted to be with Jake. Away from Dione. She didn’t like him.

  I discover I am good at lying.

  The SIF hold me for a week. The ‘lies’ get easier each time they interrogate me. My story sets hard and strong, the longer I am here. But the rest of it—being caged and blasted—takes every ounce of my determination. And as for being up close and personal to people who take pleasure in another’s suffering … I don’t know if I’ll ever trust in true goodness again.

  The fear ebbs. The cold doesn’t.

  The tip-off must have been brief, because all they keep saying is that a woman gave birth at Dione’s. I don’t know what they’re talking about.

  I am good at lying.

  Dad would not be proud of me.

  Dad. They won’t let me ring him but every day I wake up and think, this is the day he’s coming. He is going to stop this nightmare and tell them it’s got nothing to do with me. That they have no right to keep me here.

  I start to hope that they’ll blackmail him into coming. I have to see him. But he doesn’t come.

  I ask if I can ring him, but the guards just laugh at me.

  After three days, white-hot anger settles in my stomach. What a piss-weak shell of a man. The longer I wait, the more clearly I see how he’s disappeared up his own arse since Mum and Holly died. Mum was the one who held Dad up and blew all the life into him. Now she’s gone, he’s just a shell.

  Where is he? What is he doing while I’m locked up in here like a murderer? And where has he been all these years? He hasn’t visited Dione’s once, and he only came to Lucy’s three times.

  I stop wanting him to come. I begin fantasising that he was the one who died in the fire.

  I know Mum loved every cell in my body. Sure, she could shout and rave sometimes, but she loved me and Holly completely. I think Dad just loved us because she did.

  I hope he will be disappointed in me. Desperately disappointed. Stuff his stupid reputation.

  The SIF’s power-hungry zeal starts to dull—they have no fear to feed on. Their questioning becomes robotic, indifferent. They’re going through the motions now, just like me. I begin to wonder what I was so afraid of.

  By the time they let me out I have a hacking cough—who knows, maybe that’s what motivates them to release me. That, and my threat about going to the free media when I get out. It was worth the slap from Slug. I struck a nerve—she knows they’ve kept me too long. As for my skin, who knows whether it will ever be the same again?

  They give me my clothes back which are damp, and stink of mildew, but I don’t care.

  The sunshine feels sublime. I savour the rays seeping into my bones as I sit at the bus stop, grateful for freedom and the five-dollar note that’s always in my backpack, thanks to Dione, tucked into the little inner pocket, just in case.

  17

  Invitation

  There’s no sign of Dione anywhere. Her house looks like a graveyard that’s been dug up and turned inside out. The cottage, too. And it feels like there are eyes in every corner.

  The only good thing is the chickens, who have somehow survived. They carry on like wild things when I go to them, took-tooking at me madly. I don’t know where they’ve been getting water or food but they look well.

  It’s like Dione has slipped into another dimension. No clues, nothing. I keep walking around the house expecting her to appear. I don’t dare ask around—I know the SIF are watching me. Maybe that’s another reason they let me go—to lead them to her.

  SIF cars come up the driveway daily. They sit out the front, engines running. At first I’m terrified. But after a few visits, fury sets in, and I plant nails all over the driveway.

  Lion doesn’t leave my side.

  My body feels older. The cough takes a while to shift—sometimes it’s so bad my lungs ache for ages afterwards. In the mornings I sit out in the sun, imagining that the rays are making me stronger.

  I try to find Jake. I call Melissa but she hasn’t seen him. Neither has Tom. I can tell Melissa’s annoyed at me for not calling. How do I tell her I’ve been in a nightmare for days? That the SIF are probably listening in on our conversation, that her cousin might be dead because of me?

  I ring every hospital in Adelaide but they won’t give me any information. I sound completely stupid—I don’t even know his surname. But there can’t be that many guys with two broken legs. Nobody at the surf shop knows where he is. I refuse to believe he’s gone too. Hope makes me daydream long and hard about meeting him again.

  I go to the beach every day and wait for him, hoping. Every night I come home empty. As the days stretch into weeks, my hope fades and a dark ghoul takes its place, filling my mind with nightmare scenarios of him being tortured at the hands of the SIF.

  After a few days, I force myself to blank him out. I have to hold onto some sort of sanity.

  But I can’t control my dreams.

  I’ve spoken to Lucy twice. The first time she told me what a bitch I was for not returning her calls. I tried to laugh her out of it but she was so furious she hung up. I was devastated. The second time I called, she hardly said a word and I struggled to feel anything, except stiff and hard, like old leather toughened by the sun.

  I’ve been here alone for three weeks.

  I stop going to the beach. Dione will come back soon, she has to. I know she will. My phone is by my side constantly, always charged, and I go to town weekly to collect the water and check her mail box.

  The general store is old-fashioned, with a wooden veranda and ornate iron lacework. The mail boxes are outside. I sit down on a nearby bench to sift through Dione’s letters, hoping there’s some sign of her. Unopened, they’re like an oracle holding the answers to my fate, but opened and read, they become scraps of useless paper that I want to hurl as far as I can.

  The pile on the
hall table just grows steadily.

  One envelope catches my attention with its rough and earthy paper. It’s addressed to the two of us, from Tom. He mustn’t know Dione’s missing. I don’t understand why the SIF haven’t paid them a visit. It makes me think Jake must be dead. But then, surely they’d know? Unless the SIF have covered it up.

  It’s an invitation to a ‘bush doof under the stars’, in three weeks. Little Tom is almost two, Tom is turning thirty and Sarah and the baby will be home soon. Tom wants to celebrate with some dancing.

  I wonder how Melissa will feel about me being invited.

  I put the card on the mantelpiece, thinking fondly of them all. But I won’t go. Melissa hasn’t returned my calls. Besides, a party is the last thing I feel like.

  Time drags by. I have nothing to do. The house is sparkling, the garden thriving. Dione was right about the veggies—the SIF didn’t find them. They would have ripped them up if they had.

  I am running out of money. I’ve been going through my savings with care but the money is dwindling fast. I’ll have to start thinking about another job—maybe the supermarket will have me back? But I’m not ready to try. If I did get a job it’d be like accepting that Dione’s gone, and not coming back.

  *

  Saturday night, I’m moping from room to room, treading a familiar path. I pass the mantelpiece and the invitation jumps out at me. I read it again and realise the party is tonight. I look at the time. Nine o’clock. It’d take me an hour to get there. Would the SIF suspect anything? Their visits have slowed to a trickle, they may not even be watching me anymore, especially not on a Saturday night.

  Without giving it another thought, I decide I’m going. Maybe I’ll tell Melissa what’s been going on. I pull out the old green suitcase from under my bed. Dione gave it to me soon after our visit to the Star of Greece. It has some of Mum’s clothes inside, and a book—one of her favourites, by Lao Tzu. These are the only things I have of hers, other than my memories and the box of journals from the garage. I click the brass catches and open the lid. Out wafts a faint scent of clary sage.