‘Not far enough. Another suburb farther inland, on the river. A small apartment. Just the two of us. I had some of the happiest days of my life since my childhood there. Mum would help me with my homework – she was clever – and she’d cook really beautiful meals. Moreton Bay bugs. Delicious. On weekends we’d pretend we were tourists and take a drive along the Sunshine Coast or the Gold Coast. We’d even go to the Big Pineapple and the Australia Zoo.’ She seemed lost in her memories for a moment, and a ghost of a smile passed across her features. ‘Then I came home one day from school,’ she said in a flat tone. ‘I was sixteen. Mum was on the floor, that good heart of hers blown all over her favourite Axminster carpet. Gray was sitting on the sofa, the shotgun still in his hands. Most of his head was gone. That was eight years ago.’
I didn’t know what to say, so I swallowed and kept silent.
Louise looked at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It is a bit gruesome, isn’t it? Not at all like movies or TV.’
I wanted to tell her about Laura, that I had sat with someone I loved and held her hand as she died, took her in my arms as her last breath fluttered from her exhausted body, but I didn’t. What good would it do? Was it supposed to trump her story, create a bond of sympathy between us? I just shook my head slowly.
‘After that, things were a bit of a blur for a while,’ Louise rushed on. ‘I went back to live with my dad in Brighton. He was still getting those bouts of depression, but he was seeing a shrink and learning how to cope better. And I didn’t mind taking care of him when he was down. I guess I didn’t inherit Mum’s gene on that one.’ She flicked her cigarette end into the fireplace.
‘Maybe your grandmother’s?’ I said. ‘She was a nurse.’
‘I know. But she was a murderer, too, wasn’t she?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I said.
She gave me a sideways glance through narrowed eyes. ‘Uncle Rolly said you were on some campaign to clear her name.’
‘I’m not on any campaign, I just have my doubts about what happened, that’s all. Would it make any difference to you?’
‘If my grandmother wasn’t a murderer?’ Louise contemplated the idea for a moment. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it would.’
‘When did you hear about Grace?’
‘When Dad knew he was dying. He was trying to explain his depressions and let me know that he had some understanding about how I felt when my mum was killed. I don’t know if that was the cause, or if the depressions were just a clinical thing, but it seemed important to him to talk about it. To be honest, he didn’t know that much. Just shared a few of his childhood memories. He was too young to follow the trial, and then his aunt and uncle brought him to Australia. He got on with his life and didn’t ask too many questions about his past, like most people who end up there. It’s a very long way from Pommy-land, and most of us prefer it that way.’
‘How did it make you feel?’
‘How did it make me feel? You sound like my shrink.’ She gave me a disappointed glance, then went on. ‘Oh, I suppose I was angry with Dad at first, for not telling me all those years, because he’d never talked about her before. But when I thought about it, I realised he couldn’t, really, could he? I mean, what do you say? And I was a bit sad, too, but more about losing my illusions than anything else. I had always thought of the Websters as my grandparents. Granny Felicity and Grandad Alf. We’d always been really close. But suddenly they weren’t who I thought they were any more. That hurt. I still loved them the same, of course, as they loved me, but it just felt different.’
‘What did your father actually tell you?’
‘Not much. Just what she’d done, you know, and what happened to her. He told me that his mother had been hanged for murdering his father back in England when he was seven, and he told me about the lover and all. Sam Porter. He said he didn’t remember much about it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? Not at that age. But it’s like a cancer growing in me. I can’t forget.’
‘Not even now?’
Louise shook her head. ‘I don’t mean I think about it all the time or have nightmares or anything. I don’t. I sleep fine. I just feel blighted, heavy, cursed. I can’t really explain it. First Mum and Gray, then finding out about Grandmother and Grandfather. Maybe it would make a difference if my grandmother turned out not to be a murderer, though I never even met her. I do feel I know her a little bit. Maybe he did pass on some of her genes. I have to say she doesn’t strike me as the murdering kind. But what do I know? I didn’t even spot Gray for what he was at first. I’m taken in by surfaces just as much as everyone else. I couldn’t even help my own mother.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
She glared at me. ‘Everyone says that. But I should have been there, been with her. I had a tummy ache that morning, and I so wanted the day off school, but it wasn’t long from exam time, and she made me go, thought I was malingering. I was sick as a dingo. I should have been at home. I should have saved her.’
‘Or died with her,’ I said.
‘Even that would have been better, I think, sometimes.’
‘What happened when you went back to live with your dad?’
‘What happened? Dad did his best. I had everything money could buy. He was only in his fifties then, at the peak of his career, making good money. But I blew it.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘It was easy. It’s amazing what a few snorts of coke and a bottle of vodka will do. I suppose I didn’t much care for myself, or my life, so I just kind of drifted with the flow, took whatever pills or powders were handed me, ended up with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam. I dropped out of uni after my first year, lived in Sydney for a while, in Kings Cross, with a bloke twice my age, a dealer. Hitchhiked to Perth with a few long stops on the way. It’s the usual story. I did heroin, gave twenty-dollar blowjobs to pervs for a fix. I drank until I couldn’t feel the pain or see the images in my mind any more. Woke up in more strangers’ beds than you’ve had hot dinners. Spent a few months in jail. You must know the story. It’s common enough. Pathetic.’
‘I’ve had a few friends whose kids have gone off the rails like that,’ I said. ‘And not always with as much reason as you had.’
‘There’s never a reason,’ she said. ‘Only an excuse.’
‘I don’t know. Don’t be so hard on yourself. I guess I was lucky with my own kids.’
‘Luck has nothing to do with it.’
I could see that there was no point arguing this matter with Louise. She had come to her own unshakable conclusions, and a certain vehemence, almost evangelical, had crept into her voice. I could hear the unmistakable tone of self-blame, and wondered whether, along with the piercings, she also went in for self-harm. I had known kids back in LA who had done exactly that, slashed themselves with knives, burned themselves with cigarettes. I wanted to cool Louise down, not fan the flames of her self-hatred. ‘But you came out the other side,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘When Dad first got sick with cancer – oh, three or four years before he finally died – I went back home and cared for him. I was about twenty-one then, and I was a mess. But I quit drugs and booze, stayed away from men, got some professional help from a colleague of Dad’s shrink.’
‘Is that when you went to the movies nearly every day?’
She gave me a surprised glance. ‘You remembered. Yes. It was my escape, just like you said. Granny Felicity was a great help, too, though she was in her eighties by then and starting to show Alzheimer’s symptoms. She’s in a home now. I go and see her sometimes, but she doesn’t know me. It’s too sad. Anyway, I got into a computer course and it turned out I was quite good at it. I’m not saying life wasn’t tough, and there weren’t times I thought of giving up, or even ending it all, but for some reason I held on. I guess Dad being sick gave me a reason to stay alive. Isn’t that weird? Then, last January, he died.’
‘And now you’re here.’
‘Yes. As it happens, I’ve got a job offer here through some contacts I had in Melbourne. Down in Cambridge. Computers. I start next week.’
‘Congratulations. I thought the brain-drain usually went the other way.’
‘I was headhunted.’
‘I see. So what else did your father tell you about his life here?’
‘Very little.’ Louise surveyed the room. ‘He told me about this house, described growing up here, what he remembered of his mother – her kindness, her gentleness, her smile, the sound of her laughter, her lovely singing voice, her love for him. All so cruelly taken away. But he didn’t understand what was happening, the trial, the
