“Oh God,” she breathed. “I hope it’s not illegal?”
I ignored her and went straight to the heart of it: “The Association needs to know about as many cases of abused animals, vandalism, arson… well, any damage to the environment.” Connie frowned and I quickly added: “Nothing the police is still working on. We’re mainly interested in closed cases which didn’t make it to the news and media.”
“Hm,” she sighed and it was as if she wanted to say: That’s what I was afraid of. For a few seconds she was just looking at her own fidgeting fingers. She didn’t glance up when she asked: “And why does the Association need that? Don’t you work with similar information too? You don’t need the police to get involved…”
I couldn’t let her back away. “You know that we are preparing a protest against animal abuse and environmental damage. We want to get the punishment as high as possible, because the way things are now… let’s be honest, it’s pathetic.”
“That’s true.”
“We’ve been in talks with the government for some time now,” I continued, “we have our people there. The Association thinks that we’ll get our way faster if we present them with real cases, with full photo documentation rather than guesses and summaries.”
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. People from a nearby table were looking over at us curiously. Did they think we were having an argument?
“Why don’t you just look up the court cases?” Connie asked. “They’re available to the public.”
“Are you saying that every case makes it to court?” I asked, and judging by her expression, I hit the mark. “We don’t want to make anything public, we just want to show it to the government, to support our cause.”
“You know I don’t have the authority to give you that kind of information…”
I leaned back too and sighed. Time to slow down. “I don’t want to put you in a difficult position, and I definitely don’t mean to cause you any trouble. I just think… well, all of us in the Association think, there are such terrible things happening in the world, and nobody can do anything about it. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Mark… You don’t know how much I agree with you. But in order to keep fighting those bad things you talk about, I need to keep my job. Without that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my family.”
I thought I could see her lips trembling, but she hid them behind her palm. I didn’t want to upset her any further. “Alright. I’ll try the court cases.”
She reached for her cup too quickly and a bit of coffee spilled on the coaster. Connie then drank the rest of it quickly, as if she wanted an excuse to leave as soon as possible without being rude. That’s not what I wanted.
“I would be really happy if we didn’t end this meeting on a bad note. Could we just forget that conversation and talk about something else?”
She frowned again, probably thinking I was some crazy guy who didn’t want to let his victims go. Or was I overthinking? I wanted to keep talking to her though, and didn’t really care what about. My life had shrunk to working for the Association and The Collective, and while I was more or less happy, sitting in a café like this reminded me of a normal life, which, were it not for my past, I’d probably have. A regular job, family dinners, going for a drink with friends, sleeping soundly… I could only dream of these things. I’d never had them, so I wanted to hold on to this moment just a little longer.
“What would you like to talk about?” Connie asked, as if she knew what I was thinking about.
“You mentioned your family. We could talk about them?”
Connie
For a while I forgot about the world outside the café, and was only reminded of its existence when, at eight o’clock, Dad called and disrupted the nice evening.
“Are you still at the Association meeting?” he asked, surprised.
“Yeah. It ended up being much longer than I expected,” I smiled and realised that I didn’t want to leave, despite the heavy darkness outside the windows.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you, sorry. I just…” He paused and I finished the thought for him: I wanted to make sure you didn’t revert back to that numb trance state, and aren’t staring at a wall somewhere. Or that you hadn’t had another car accident.
“I’m alright. I’ll be home in half an hour.”
“What did they want from you?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back,” I promised and started thinking about those three hours with Mark, and how Dad would interpret them. I didn’t need to justify myself to him, but it would be nice to tell him about the evening, since he did me a favour and looked after Ruby. Again.
This was an innocent and casual meeting, you could almost call it business. So why did it make me feel so strangely nervous?
“Somebody’s really worried about you,” said Mark.
“It’s my Dad. He’s not normally this protective, but… the last few weeks I’ve been a bit out of it,” I confessed. “He just wanted to make sure I’m not stuck somewhere.”
“He sounds like a good man,” Mark said softly and his face turned sad.
“He is,” I agreed, though I didn’t understand why Mark was upset. “We’ve been a strong team ever since my Mum died.”
“It’s good that you’ve got him,” he said firmly.
He kept asking me all sorts of questions about my work, the origin of my surname and therefore my European roots, what brought Dad to Australia, if I have travelled anywhere. Why did Dad and I live together, how old my daughter was and what kind of friends she had in kindy. His interest in my life was pleasing.
“What about your family? We’ve been talking about me almost the whole time.”
He smiled, heavy
