Mandy had never known anyone like her; her own mother was loving but reticent, Pam was loving and ebullient. She was everyone’s mother: equal parts unbearable and supportive, a gossip and a confidante.
Now, five years since she last saw her, Mandy bites her lip, resolve returning. She knows she needs to do this. She calls the number she’s found.
Pam answers. And it’s the same Pam, warm and accommodating, who always has time for others, is happy to hear from Mandy. Of course she would like to catch up. This morning? No problem. Come now.
Out in the CBD, the wind shifts and swirls, lifting the dirt and the dust and the neglect, pushing it into people’s faces, so that they hunch and they squint and they hurry, as if social distancing has returned by some overnight decree. No one is happy, no one smiles, no one pauses to chat or joke. It’s a grim place today, this city, a foreign country, faded and cold, concrete and glass, steel and cladding, its denizens silent, smartphones on and life-cancelling earbuds in.
Even so, she eschews a cab, feeling a need to be out in the midst of it, to challenge and resist. Instead, she takes the train to Redfern, lets Google Maps guide her to Pam Risoli’s terrace. The street is tree-lined, gentrified, the traffic local; in another season, with the trees in leaf, it would be charming. Not today, not with the wind and the scowling sky.
She reaches through the bars on Pam’s security door, knocking on wood.
Pamela Risoli is much as she remembers, maybe a little larger, and just as friendly, throwing open the door and swallowing Mandy in an embrace. Maybe it’s the bonding that survivors feel. Cats mill around the woman like a friendly cloud, brushing against Mandy’s legs. Her old boss looks relaxed, content. Her hair is grey, no longer dyed for work, but shaped into a sharp inner-city cut. Pam clucks away, inviting her in. Despite the extra kilo or two, Pam still manages to glide, that curious walk that once so intrigued Mandy, a walk so smooth and constant that Pam’s head doesn’t seem to rise and fall but rather floats as she leads Mandy down a narrow passage, as if levitated a constant five foot six above the floor, accompanied by an entourage of felines. No scrawny catwalk model ever moved with such grace. Pam passes the stairs, a bedroom door, making her way through a book-strewn lounge room and into a kitchen that stretches the width of the terrace. The kitchen is open and bright, a new addition, a wood stove glowing in a corner. The smell is of baking and good things. The decorative style is retro kitsch, a mix of op-shop discoveries, estate auction collectibles and found objects: there are ceramic ducks on the wall, the kitchen table is mid-century laminate ringed with aluminium, the four chairs differ from each other. At a guess, Pam spends a lot of time at garage sales, school fetes and neighbourhood markets. If Tarquin Molloy did steal millions from Mollisons, none of it made its way here.
‘I was so surprised to hear from you,’ says Pam, busying herself making coffee with an antiquated stove-top espresso pot. ‘After all you’ve been through.’
‘You’ve been following me?’
‘Not intentionally. But you were in all the papers. First out west in that town, Riversend, then in Port Silver.’ Pam smiles. ‘And of course I read the books. Martin Scarsden. Wow.’ And she bestows a luminous smile on Mandy.
‘Yes. It’s been …’ Mandy searches for the right word ‘… eventful.’
Pam turns from the stove, her face serious. ‘I tried calling you—you know that, don’t you? After he disappeared, after we were let go.’
‘I remember. I saw your messages.’
‘You just vanished.’
‘I’m sorry. I know you wanted to help. But I couldn’t face anyone, not after what he’d done to me. To all of us.’
‘You could have come here. I would have looked after you.’
‘I know. I just wanted the ground to swallow me.’
‘I understand,’ says Pam. ‘Maybe it was for the best.’ And her countenance lifts and her voice returns to its normal positivity. ‘Now you have Martin, you have your home, and you have a little boy. How wonderful to have a child. Such a gift.’
Mandy glances about the kitchen. There are the ducks on the wall, elephants of glass and wood and ceramics on the ledge above the sink, a framed Martin Sharp poster, but no photographs of family. ‘Yes. He’s gorgeous. This is the first time I’ve been away from him.’
‘He’s still in Port Silver?’
‘He’s not in Sydney.’
A frown brushes Pam’s face, and is gone. ‘What is it, Mandalay? You look troubled.’
‘Tarquin. Did you hear? They found his body.’
The woman’s lips tighten. ‘Yes. I heard. How horrible for you.’
‘He was a policeman.’
‘What?’
‘A policeman. Working undercover, investigating Mollisons.’
Now the woman appears distressed. ‘I never knew that.’
‘No. Neither did I.’ Mandy tells her what she knows, choosing her words carefully, not wanting to upset the older woman.
The coffee pot announces its readiness with a throaty gurgle, and Pam busies herself with stoneware mugs and homemade fruit cake. They sit at the table.
‘I like your house,’ Mandy says. ‘It’s very you.’
‘Thanks. Paid off my mortgage with my redundancy package.’
‘You’re not working?’
‘Don’t have to. I was there for more than thirty years. Good super. Good enough.’
Mandy sips at her coffee. It’s not Aldo’s, but her host knows what she’s doing. ‘Pam, when they were investigating Tarquin, you helped me.’
‘Did I? How?’
‘You defended me. Reminded security that I’d been upfront about lending him my passwords.’
‘I was just doing my job, standing up for my team.’ The woman looks
