Girl falling, p.4
Girl Falling, page 4
I jerked away from her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s just a question, love.’
I sat down heavily on the lounge. ‘She was clipped in too, on a different rope. They were coming down together.’
Mum had never liked Daphne.
‘Where is Magdu now?’ Mum asked, as if I might have left her at the bottom of the valley.
‘I’m . . . I’m not sure. The police came. They had to get Magdu out with a helicopter. They took me and Daphne to the station.’
Behind Mum, on the side table next to her TV-watching chair, tea seeped up the string of her tea bag, moving up and over the lip of the cup. It marched towards the square paper label. Soon, it would drip onto the table and then there would be a stain to match the dozens of others. The thought made me tired. I wanted to find a cave, crawl inside and sleep. I would come out when the world was clean and new, instead of dirty and tired and old.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Mum asked.
I looked at her.
‘Jesus, I need a cigarette,’ she said.
Mum didn’t smoke in the common spaces: the kitchen, the lounge room. But I knew she smoked in her room when it was cold and she couldn’t be bothered going outside. It was always freezing in our house at night.
The old fear – that she would have a glass of brandy with her smoke – moved through me.
She seemed to decide against the cigarette. ‘Do you want some tea?’
I sank deeper into the couch.
‘Let’s go into the kitchen.’ Mum pulled me up by the hand. ‘You need lemon balm.’
Lemon balm, which Mum grew in pots on the kitchen windowsill, was her answer for everything. She claimed lemon balm tea had helped her to stop drinking. I never said anything when she said that.
She made the tea and I held the cup between my hands, the ceramic hot against my palms.
‘Could you eat anything, do you think?’
My stomach flipped at the thought of food. Mum must have seen the look on my face because she didn’t push it.
Spencer waddled in from the hallway, inserting himself under the table, placing his wet nose in the open palm I held in front of my knee. His face had gone grey, in that way it does when golden retrievers get old. We sat together until I’d drained the cup.
Mum helped me down the hall, like I was a sick old lady. She pushed open the door of my room.
‘I’ve got it from here, Mum,’ I said. I didn’t look at her.
She rubbed my back and said, ‘Okay, love.’
It was all I could do not to lie down directly on the floor and close my eyes.
‘Mum?’ I said.
She was standing in the doorway. ‘Yes?’
‘Are you okay?’
She smiled. ‘I’ll be fine, love. Don’t worry about me.’
She walked back towards the kitchen.
I stepped forward to shut my bedroom door and came face to face with the picture of me and my little sister that hung in the hallway, arms around each other’s shoulders, wide smiles with teeth missing.
My bed was covered in clothes. I’d tried out a few different climbing outfits before deciding what to take to Magdu’s. I’d wanted to look capable for her. It took all my strength to push the clothes off the bed with a sweep of my arm. I kicked out of my pants, left them where they landed.
I threw myself down on top of the covers.
I could hear Mum somewhere in the house.
Another sound, a different one. It took me a second to place it. My mobile vibrating. I dug through the pile of clothes I’d swept off the bed and found the phone. The screen showed Daphne’s name. The smell of her neroli oil filled my nose.
‘Finn. It’s me.’ She took a big, gulping breath. ‘I’m coming over. We need to be together.’
I was glad Daphne couldn’t see me, because I couldn’t shift my face to match what I was trying to say. ‘I’m sorry, Daph. I can’t.’ I couldn’t give her what she needed. Before she could say anything else, I said, ‘I’ve got to go, okay? I’ll call you. I can’t talk tonight.’
I couldn’t ask the questions that burned in me, and I couldn’t see her and not ask them.
I wanted to know what had happened. What had gone wrong up there on the clifftop after I’d belayed down? Why had Daphne put Magdu on the blue rope? I’d seen with my own eyes before I went over that Daphne herself had been tied in on that one.
I hung up, my heart racing, acid in the back of my throat. It was hard not to give Daphne what she wanted, but she’d understand, would forgive me. I took five deep breaths, counted them.
I stared at the phone, afraid it would ring again. Then I opened the bottom drawer of my bedside table and put the mobile inside.
Magdu wouldn’t be here for her birthday. She would’ve turned thirty-one on the thirty-first of October. The thought was hot water on a fresh burn. I thought of the smooth swell of her cheeks. When you saw her from the side, and if she turned away from you slightly, her cheeks hid her nose. Her wavy hair that she’d kept shorter than her mother knew – she wore it up on Skype, she told me – but not so short that people assumed she was anything but straight. That’s why I have to be so forthright, she’d said with a laugh. I can’t hope women will approach me like I approached you. Magdu had never even kissed a boy. I always had male friends in Dubai, and every so often one would fall in love with me, but I never cared. I thought it was so boring. I was pretty cruel to some of them. I knew she’d never been cruel. She’d have been firm, clear, if she didn’t like someone that way. She was still friends with all of them. They played Dungeons & Dragons online, read the same fat fantasy and sci-fi books. I pictured her with her headphones on in her teenage bedroom, lost in unreal lands. A nerd and a loser from the start, she sometimes said. ‘Yeah, well you’re my loser,’ is what I always said back.
My body pounded with adrenaline. I couldn’t stay here, in my bedroom, in the house. I had to know what had happened. I needed to see where she had fallen. I needed to try to understand what had gone wrong.
It was dark in the car park for the cliff. I’d driven away from the house with my lights off until I got close to the cross street. I hoped Mum hadn’t noticed me go, as I hadn’t brought my phone. Another bit of pain and worry she didn’t deserve.
I got out and leaned against the car. The trees seemed to press in around me, extending into the sky as if they were reaching for something. The moon was full, stars loosely strewn between winding branches. My head was tight, tears leaking from my eyes. I kept having flashes of Magdu falling. She dropped through an endless canopy, suspended in the thrash-horror of the fall, reaching out for something, anything, trying desperately to stop herself. For a moment, I’d almost jumped after her, had actually tugged against my harness. We had that kind of love. The kind where, when she fell, my first urge was to follow.
A hand on my shoulder made me gasp. I wheeled around.
It was Daphne, her hair pulled up into a ponytail, rain jacket on over jeans and a jumper. Her voice rang out in the clearing. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
It felt like all the air had been squeezed out of me. I didn’t want to be in my own body, needed to be somewhere else.
‘I don’t know.’ It was the truth. ‘I suppose I had to see it again for myself.’
I looked past Daphne, scanning the darkened car park. There were no other cars. ‘How did you get here?’
What I couldn’t ask was: What are you doing here?
Daphne put her hands in her jacket pockets. ‘I walked.’
I pictured Daphne back at her place, angry that I hadn’t let her come over. It would’ve taken her at least an hour to walk here. She must have left home straight after she called me.
Daphne was a notorious insomniac. She’d told me that on the nights she couldn’t sleep, she walked. She went out on the tourist trails, following a path to the visitor centre where I worked, enjoying the silence and the silvery silhouettes of the trees. I worried about her, walking alone in the dark, but she said it was the only thing that helped. Hours of walking. Sometimes, when I slept over, she would poke me awake to tell me how smug and happy I looked sleeping. I didn’t mind. I’d roll over and go to sleep again.
‘Did the police tell you we could be in real trouble?’ Daphne asked. ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’
I wanted to say, What did you do? I could almost picture myself saying it out loud. And what did you tell the police?
Instead I looked down at the ground. ‘Yes, they said that to me too.’
My heart was beating so hard it pushed against my sore tooth. We had agreed Magdu would go on my red rope.
Daphne pulled her hands out of her pockets and smoothed her ponytail. ‘Finn, did you say anything to the cops about the guy I was talking to?’
‘No,’ I said. I was cold, wished I was wearing another layer.
‘That’s good. I don’t want the fact that I was flirting with some random guy to make the cops think I was negligent.’
Why was she talking about this? I wanted her to tell me why she’d put Magdu on her rope.
Daphne wiped at my face with her sleeve. ‘I can’t believe it.’ Her eyes filled with tears, and I put my arms around her. She pressed her face into my shoulder. ‘Everything happened so fast.’ A cold wind blew through the car park, stirring her hair. ‘It could so easily have been me.’
This was my chance to ask. Something in me hardened for just long enough to get the words out. ‘What happened up there? Why did you put Magdu on the blue rope? I saw you before I went over; you were tied in on that one.’
The air went out of the space between us. Daphne took a step back from me. ‘So, what are you saying?’ Her voice was high and strangled. ‘It would have been better if I died?’
I started sobbing. Couldn’t stop it, couldn’t make it quieter.
Daphne lowered her voice, almost apologetic. ‘I’d left my prusik in my bag, so I untied myself. When I came back Magdu was having trouble. She was nervous, wanted me to check her rope and belay device again. I thought it would make her less anxious if I untied her and then talked her through it again. I moved her on to my rope; it’s newer and I thought she’d find that reassuring. I explained what I was doing step by step as I attached her, and it seemed to help. Then I said I’d wait on the top while she went over.’
I swallowed hard. Everything Daphne was saying made perfect sense. Once you were tied in, it was a pain but not that big a deal to untie and retie. And I would have done the same thing, talked Magdu over the edge before joining her. It was always the scariest part of abseiling, when you committed your weight fully to the rope.
‘Did you see anything wrong with either rope?’ Daphne asked.
‘They were both fine when I went down,’ I said.
Daphne grabbed my hand. My skin prickled. How beautiful she looked, no make-up on. Her skin shone white in the moonlight. According to Daphne, the ancient Greeks were always going on about white skin in their poems.
I ran my free hand through my hair. I thought of being alone in her bedroom the day before the climb. The things I had seen there. The fall had wiped them from my mind. The way you forget something when you move from one room to another. You can only remember that you’re supposed to be remembering something. Daphne told me once that’s an evolutionary thing. She said it was something about moving from an area of dense vegetation to an open plain that made your brain reset, ready for predators, and that’s why I can never remember what I went into the kitchen for.
I stopped crying and took some deep breaths. When I squeezed Daphne’s hand, it remained limp.
‘Why didn’t you want me to come over, Finn? What’s wrong? Why aren’t you talking to me?’ She wasn’t accusing me, but asking me. Her eyes met mine. ‘Are you worried that they know what happened before?’
Something in my belly dropped. She was right. That was what scared me the most.
Daphne held me by the arms. ‘They don’t, Finn. I would never tell them that.’
My shoulders slumped. I was sick with relief. Of course she hadn’t said anything. Daphne was the one who kept me safe, who kept my secret.
I pulled Daphne into a hug. Neroli oil. The smell of it was in her hair, on her skin. She was smaller than I was, and I liked the way that felt for a moment.
Daphne took a step back and pulled something from her pocket.
‘When were you going to tell me about this?’ she said.
A small, maroon velvet box. Inside it, I knew, was my grandmother’s wedding ring, a simple gold band with three small opals embedded in it. I’d hidden the box inside an old climbing shoe, shoving it in the pocket behind the driver’s seat. It was silly of me to leave it there, but who would steal a single climbing shoe? I hadn’t been planning to use it the day of the climb, but when the moment was right, I wanted it close to hand.
Daphne was crying. ‘What is going on? You’ve been acting like you can’t talk to me about stuff for months. And then I find this.’
My body was ice, heavy and slow. ‘Why did you take that?’
‘Fuck, Finnbo. You act like you’ve never lost control. Like you’ve never wanted to look inside a box you knew you weren’t supposed to.’
I thought about what I’d found in a drawer at Daphne’s house only the night before. A million years ago.
‘Don’t you ever just do something?’ Daphne said. ‘Because you can?’
‘Is this supposed to be you apologising?’ The venom in my voice surprised me.
Daphne crossed her arms. ‘You’re right. We both know you understand all about losing control.’
She shook her head, unfolding her arms as if she hadn’t meant what she’d said, that it wasn’t what it sounded like: a threat.
A pleading note in her voice. ‘I almost died today, Finn. I could use some compassion.’
‘Why did you take the ring, Daphne?’
Daphne threw up her hands. ‘It was a dumb joke, alright? Besides – a wedding ring? I’m your best friend, and I love you, but you can be a little intense.’ Daphne reached up and pushed a lock of hair back behind my ear. ‘I needed to make sure she could hack it. That she wasn’t going to break your heart.’
Daphne handed the box back to me, a peace offering. She held my hand as I took it, fingers closing around the maroon velvet. I didn’t want to fight with Daphne. I wanted her to tell me how to be. The belief that Daphne knew better than I did almost never went away.
Her voice was low, gentle. ‘After everything I’ve done for you, how could you possibly think that I don’t have your best interests at heart?’
Daphne wrapped her hands around mine, the velvet box hidden now under two layers of skin.
6
Before
In high school, Daphne and I had nothing in common. Until we did.
The first day I came back to school after my sister died, Daphne grabbed me by the arm and wheeled me around, marched me straight back out the school gate. I’d spent a week sitting around with Mum at home, only going out for the funeral. Even with English for first period, I’d been keen to come to school, to do something normal. At the same time, I felt freakish. Ugly and small and pink from crying.
‘You get to do what you want,’ Daphne had said. ‘Everyone’s going to give you a free pass. Let’s go smoke this.’
The smell of the joint she was holding in her hand wafted over. It was an old Looney Tunes bit, when one of the characters smells a pie cooling on a shelf, the smell indicated by two little lines that dance, and follows it, nose first. Suze and I had a set of those cartoons on VHS. We’d watched them until the videos went hazy in some places.
Daphne and I skirted the school grounds, found a place near the bus shelters where we couldn’t be seen from the road or the classrooms. We huddled together between some pathetic bushes. There were old chip packets and bottle caps on the ground, little offerings to a garbage god. It was still September, the air crisp even though it was sunny. I’d walked with Daphne every lunchtime since the day we’d met. We’d roamed the school, getting to know each other.
‘This is the problem with Australian public schools,’ Daphne said, gesturing to the rubbish on the ground. ‘They lack a certain ambiance.’ She pronounced the last word with a strange emphasis. Daphne often sounded as if she were from an earlier generation. Something full and round and juicy about the things she said.
We laughed. It felt bad to be laughing, but it was also good to be fifteen and laughing. Daphne tossed her long blonde hair. I found it hard to look away from her. The collar of her bright white school shirt folded crisply over her school jumper. She wore the school tie, which she loosened. We threw our bags down on the ground and she lay on the patchy grass.
When people talked about Daphne’s sister’s suicide, they said that the girl had been unhappy at her new school. I’d thought, She’s punishing her parents for making her move, and it had made me sad because it was such a permanent punishment, one that had wiped the girl out forever.
I lay on the ground beside Daphne.
‘Is it true what they’ve been saying?’ she asked. ‘Did your sister kill herself?’
I froze. I didn’t read newspapers, but I knew that Daphne’s sister’s death had been in them. Recently enough for people to say my sister must have seen the stories, had to have been stewing on it.
I was grateful to be lying beside Daphne, so I didn’t have to look her in the face as I spoke. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘She jumped from a cliff?’ Daphne’s voice was clear and loud. I resisted the urge to look around us to see if anyone had heard.
I wanted to tell her about going camping, about waking in the early hours to find that Suze was no longer beside me on her bedroll in our tent. Mum’s face when the cops came. Her keening when they said they’d found the body on a rock shelf. Mum and I going in the ambulance with Suze, her face and body covered with a grey blanket. How I’d had the thought that someone would wash that blanket without ever knowing it had been tucked around my thirteen-year-old sister. I wanted to tell her all the things that roiled inside of me. I couldn’t, so I just nodded.
