The Midnight Dress(36)

Now, in the paddock, she is running at full pelt, blinded by the heavy rain, letting out yelps of pleasure. She races up Edie Baker’s back steps and bangs on the lattice veranda door.

‘I did it,’ she shouts, when the door opens and Edie is standing before her with hands on hips.

‘Well,’ says Edie, ‘I don’t doubt it going by the state of you. Quick into the bathroom or you’ll die of cold.’

Only then does Rose realise that she’s shivering, shivering so hard that she’s shaking, and that she’s wet through, her hands are bleeding, leeches are stuck to her lower legs, sending out spider webs of stinging blood.

Edie leads her to an ancient bathroom, sits her on the edge of the bath, and picks the leeches off one by one with a pair of tweezers, throwing them into the sink. She runs warm water into the bath, taps grumbling and hiccuping, and hands two towels to Rose.

‘I’ll find you something dry to put on,’ she says, ‘and leave it outside the door.’

Rose sinks into the bath, every cut and scratch on fire, her legs aching. She sees that a vine has grown in through the louvres and stretched its way across the ceiling and, in the summer hothouse atmosphere, erupted with yellow blooms. The rain pummels the roof, a deafening downpour. Rose lies there, legs drawn up to her chin until her shivering subsides.

Edie Baker leaves a sundress hanging on the doorknob. It’s bright green with white piping and at least fifty years old. Rose shakes her head but puts it on.

The pieces of the midnight dress are still there in the kitchen, hanging over the back of the chair.

‘Can you believe I did it?’ she says to Edie, who is cooking pikelets on the stove.

Edie turns and looks at her. The slip of a girl with the angry face. She remembers what it was like in her own childhood, how when she went outside and up that path, the sun filled her to the brim. How she ran her hands over the bare limbs of trees. How she kept raindrops in glass jars and wished she could distil the power of such things.

‘My girl, of course I can,’ she says very tenderly. ‘Of course I can.’

‘Here,’ says Rose. ‘I found these for you.’

The red leaf is wet, glossy, the skeleton leaf a pulpy mess. She places the strip of bark on the table between them. Edie’s hands tremble over them. She picks up the red leaf and places it against her cheek.

‘The gully?’ she says, eventually. ‘Did you find the rock?’

‘I think it’s fallen down. There was a rock but it was like a sinking ship, the point facing down.’

‘It’s slipped?’

‘I climbed along a log, it was the only way I could see across the gully.’

‘That could be a risky business.’

‘It was hard to tell the time. I didn’t know how long I’d been.’

‘I can teach you that.’

‘But I just kept walking. Until I found the hut.’

Edie’s eyes are dark, expectant; she hunches forward on her chair.

‘It’s still there,’ says Rose. ‘It’s filled up with leaves but still there.’





Slip Stitch





Near the burnt-out hut, Glass finds a singed water bottle and the wrapper from a packet of biscuits. He bags them. He lifts up part of the roof then lets it go again. The sound echoes in the silence. It’s quiet, too quiet. The hairs rise on his neck. He has an uncomfortable ache in his chest, feels suddenly nauseated. He lifts another part of the roof, then another. There’s nothing underneath. He can’t smell death. The only smell is ash and forest.

He should have brought more officers.

He senses someone watching. He wants to turn quickly, catch them out, but he resists the urge and turns slowly, three-sixty, peering into the trees and vine. Even after he has checked, the feeling stays.

‘Can you tell if she’s been here lately? I mean what can you tell?’ he says to Waldron, who is squatting beside a rift.

‘A week ago maybe, maybe less,’ says Waldron. ‘Sandshoe girl, she came last. Sandal girl, she doesn’t climb good, she came only a few times. Once with the man. He only came once.’

‘Who’s the man?’ thinks Glass aloud.

‘Big fella,’ says Waldron.

‘Big fella?’ says Glass. Well, that narrows it down, he thinks. Sandshoe girl, sandal girl, big fella.

Juvenile? Man? Check the boyfriends again: past, present. Love triangle? Never underestimate the power of a love triangle. Potent shit. He mentally notes these things. Touches the drawing of the dress in his pocket. The water courses over the falls, into the sunlight.

‘What do you think?’ he asks Waldron.

‘No good. I reckon not here but somewhere here. You gotta search the whole place. Take you years . . . ’ says Waldron. He motions toward the trees and means the whole of the rainforest, the entire mountain range.

Which makes Glass laugh. At the hopelessness of it all.

Glass realises that he still has the pink stone in his left hand. He looks at it then shoots it up at the sky above the falls, over the edge into the abyss.





What the hell is that thing?’ says Murray, sitting slumped in the bus.

‘It’s a guillotine, you moron,’ says Rose.

‘Fatal,’ he replies.