Chapter Three
Hannah.
I wake up to the sound of pounding on my front door. I open my eyes and look around the room—disoriented and not sure what the hell is going on. The pounding starts again, this time with more urgency. I jump out of bed, panicked. Is the place on fire? Has someone died? Or maybe someone caught on fire and died? If it’s none of those three, I’m gonna be angry.
Grumbling under my breath, I stumble in the direction of the door. My eyes are still half closed, so I follow the sounds of the intense pounding and know I’m going in the right direction.
“I’m coming,” I growl.
I hate being woken up before my alarm goes off. I’m annoyed that the little sleep I did get has been so rudely interrupted. Contrary to what people—like Tully—think, I am not a morning person. Far from it. I hate mornings with a passion. The only reason I get up so early is because there aren’t enough hours in the day to get what I need to get done.
This better be important,” I mutter as I yank open the door.
Tully pushes past me, rushing inside. Her pale cheeks are flushed red, like they only get when she’s been running. I chuckle at the thought of her running. Her idea of exercise would be jogging to the fridge. She glares at me, and I wipe the smirk off my face and replace it with a frown that matches hers.
“Jesus, Hannah, where the hell have you been? Mum’s in full on panic mode because she hasn’t heard from you since yesterday. She’s driving me insane. I can’t handle her right now, Hannah. I have Uni starting this week, and I’m trying to get shit done.” She scowls at me, her arms crossed.
Seriously? We both know looking after Mum is a job she expects me to do, but I never signed up for it. Would it kill Tully to deal with her for once? And why does not hearing from me for twelve hours automatically mean something is wrong? I groan and rub my temples. The second anything is unexplained, like me not answering her texts, she fears the worst. I understand why she’s like this, but God, it’s frustrating. I need to diffuse this, and quickly. Me getting upset isn’t going to help anything.
“I’m fine,” I sigh, not wanting to add fuel to the fire. “I just had a hell of a day at work so I came home and went to sleep. Then I wake up to you pounding on the door at some ridiculous hour,” I grumble. I rub my aching head, for which her yelling isn’t helping.
“Some ridiculous hour?” She gapes at me, her green eyes wide. She laughs. “Han, it’s one in the freaking afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever known you to get up later than eight.”
“What?” I gasp.
My heart stops. I grab my phone and stare at it, as if her words aren’t proof enough. The numbers one, zero, four stared back at me. Holy shit, I’m so late. I ignore the multitude of missed calls and jump straight into panic mode. How the hell did this happen? In two years, I’ve never forgotten to set my alarm, let alone been six hours late for work.
Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. I manage a few more curse words before I sprint to the bathroom, peeling off my clothes along the way. I jump under the stream of water and wash myself in record time, before draping myself in a towel and racing back to the bedroom. Tully clicks at my heels, chuckling, as if she’s witnessing the most hysterical thing she’s ever seen.
“Do something useful or get out,” I bark, my eyes flashing.
“What would be useful?” she asks, blinking back tears between her fits of laughter.
“I don’t know. Make me coffee or something,” I huff, annoyed that she’s finding this so funny. Still laughing, she walks from the room as I throw on a shirt and a black pencil skirt. I bundle my dark hair back in a loose ponytail and run some lipstick over my lips.
On my way back to the kitchen, I wrestle my feet into my four-inch heels and shove my phone in my bag, along with my keys. All this, and I’m still only barely awake.
“Here,” Tully says, handing me a coffee. “It’s just warm, so you can drink it quickly.”
“Thanks,” I say gratefully. I gulp it down. Hell, I haven’t even left the house and I am almost out of breath. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call Mum later, okay?”
“Fine. I’ll let her know you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere.” She pauses, studying my face. “Do you think maybe this is a sign that you need to slow down? How many hours have you put in this week?” she asks, following me out the door.
Too many. I don’t say it aloud because I’ll never hear the end of it. I frown, hating how she always manages to sound so damn rude. Like she’s in the position to lecture me. At least I have a job, which is more than I can say for Tully, the professional student. I’m sick of my job being the centre of her—and Mum’s—every conversation.
“It’s just there’s a lot of things happening at work,” I huff. I so don’t have the time to deal with this now. “We’re short-staffed—”
“You’re always short-staffed,” she retorts, cutting me off. “And there’s a reason for that; they work you into the ground. If anything, you should be getting more time off because of the kind of stuff you have to deal with. It’s hardly fair. No wonder they burn through staff so quickly.”
“Enough, Tull,” I growl, holding my hand up. “I hear this every week from Mum. I don’t need to hear it from you, too, especially today, when I’m running so late.”
“You’re six hours late. Is an extra five minutes really going to hurt?” she laughs. Her expression turns serious when I glare at her. She sighs, then shakes her head. “Fine, just think about it, okay? I’m just saying that maybe a week or two off isn’t going to kill you.”
No, but it might just kill someone else.
The good thing about being the person that always puts in the long hours and who is never late is that the one day I do arrive at two in the afternoon, nobody says anything. They probably think I was out on a call. I duck into my office, throw my jacket over the back of my chair and sit down, trying to act like I’ve been there all day.
I’ve been working in child protection for two years, landing my dream job right out of university. Two years is pretty impressive, considering the shelf life of these types of jobs are around eight months. Eight months. That’s how long it takes most people to burn out and quit.
Tully was right. Not that I would ever tell her that. Everyone comes into this job the same way, thinking they can make a difference. The thing is, all the hard work in the world can’t make up for a flawed system. People fall through the cracks, and when that gets personal, it’s hard to cope with. When an innocent child dies because you couldn’t protect them, it crushes you. Add to that the fact that we’ve all got too many cases to deal with at once, and you’re asking for trouble.
“Hannah, thank God. I’ve been trying to get onto you all morning. Where the hell have you been?”
I glance up from my desk to see Jacinta standing there. Jacinta has been here for less than a month, which means she still believes she’s that person who can make a difference. She’s the exact type of person who will have moved on in a few months. Don’t get me wrong, she’s got a heart of gold and wants nothing more than to help, but she’s way too sensitive to be able to cope with the demands of this job.
“What’s up?” I ask, forcing a smile. She doesn’t smile back, and I’m immediately concerned. She always smiles. I’ve never met someone so damn chirpy. I almost want to slap her just to see if she reacts.
“Gosh,” she mumbles. She shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes as she fans her face with her hand. “There’s no easy way to say this, Hannah. I got a call from the police. That family you assisted yesterday? Amanda Jacobson?” My heart races. Please don’t let this be going where I think it is. “It’s not good news,” she continues, her expression troubled. “She went back. God knows why, but she went back and the boyfriend killed her.” She shakes her head. “Why? Why do they always go back?”
Holy fuck! Shocked, I sit back in my chair. I feel numb. I’m so angry at myself. I knew something like this was going to happen, and I left anyway. I knew she would be back with him the first chance she got, and I didn’t do anything about it. But the worst thing is that I was unreachable when all this was going down. What if I could’ve done something? A wave of nausea hits me. What if that little girl tried calling me and couldn’t get through?
“When did it happen?” I ask. My hands shake as I focus on not bursting into tears. Jacinta isn’t being quite so successful at holding back her emotions.
“Pretty shortly after you dropped them off at the shelter,” she whispers, her eyes glassy. Hearing that doesn’t make me feel any better. Maybe if I had stuck around longer and talked to her …
“For God’s sake, why?” I growl. “Why did she go back?” I ask this more to myself, but Jacinta answers.
“The police are pretty sure it was for drugs,” Jacinta mumbles, wiping her eyes. I look at her and wonder if I should be telling her to take the rest of the day off. But as upsetting as it is, things like this happen all the time. She needs to learn how to cope with it eventually.
I slam my fist down on my desk, angry and upset for that little girl. She will probably end up locked in a never-ending cycle of foster care. The saddest thing is that, who knows, maybe that’s still better than what she would’ve had at home.
“Where is the girl now?” I ask. I kick back my seat and grab my jacket, shrugging it on. I’m still hazy from my late start. I gulp down the last of my coffee, hoping to God it kicks in soon.
“She’s with the family priest. She kept asking for him, and wouldn’t speak to anyone else. She was pretty hysterical, apparently.” I don’t blame her. I would be too.
She hands me a slip of paper with the name and address of the church scrawled across it in black ink. Huh. I’m surprised that Amanda went to church. She didn’t strike me as the type. I realise how judgemental that sounded, and I frown, shoving the slip of paper into my pocket. If anyone needs to be judged, it’s me for leaving them last night.
“I guess I’ll go and talk to her.” I give Jacinta a tight smile. I’m not looking forward to this.
“You should also know …” Jacinta’s voice trails off. I wait, wondering how this could get any worse. “The little girl, Anna? She witnessed the whole thing.”
Oh shit. Her words crush me. I didn’t think things could possibly get worse, but they have. I blink back tears thinking of what that little girl is been through in the past twenty-four hours. How am I supposed to help her move on from that? Losing a parent so young is the worst thing you could ever experience, and to witness it happen so violently. She would’ve felt so helpless, so scared, and alone. My heart breaks for that poor little girl.
“What actually happened?” I ask, dreading hearing the details.
“He stabbed her. Sixty times. They found him sitting next to her body, smoking a joint, covered in her blood.”
“She was huddled under the kitchen table.”
I swallow back tears, wishing I’d done more. The guilt is suffocating me. Maybe if I’d stayed and spoken to Amanda, she wouldn’t have gone back there. God, why the hell did she go back there? How could she have possibly thought that would be okay?
I’m so angry at her for putting that little girl in danger. How could she have been so stupid? She’s paid the ultimate price, and I feel sorry for her, but what about Anna? She will never get over this. I think about how hard it was for me to move on after Cecily, and that pales in comparison to witnessing your father murder your mother.
The whole drive to the church I relive yesterday, from the moment I turned up at that house to check on Anna, to the moment I left the shelter. All I wanted to do was get home. Surely I could have done something. Did I miss something? Was I too rushed? There had to be something I could’ve done differently that could have prevented this.
No matter what I do, I just can’t switch my mind off. I turn the radio on to try and drown out my thoughts, and then I turn it off, because I can’t think. My mind is a mess of mixed emotions. I’m losing it, and I know I need to get myself together before I face that little girl.
This is why the burnout rate is so high. Everything we do has serious consequences, and most decisions lead to an overwhelming sense of guilt that you can never truly get rid of.
Aside from an old minivan and a newish Toyota, the parking lot of the church is empty when I pull in. I park next to the Toyota and get out, slamming the door shut. I don’t bother locking it, because if my car isn’t safe under the watchful eye of God, then I’m fucked anyway, right?
Shivering, I zip up my jacket, a chill racing over me as I walk through the doors of the church. Aside from the fact that it’s winter in Melbourne, I don’t like churches. I never have. It’s not that I don’t believe in God—I’m not sure where I stand there—I’ve just never left a church feeling happy.
The dislike probably stems from losing too many people close to me. I can count the number of times I’ve set foot in a church, and they’re all associated with somebody close to me dying. For me, they’re the ultimate symbol of death. They’re cold, lonely, and full of sadness.
Slowly, I walk up the aisle, the sound of my heels clicking against the wooden floor the only sound in the otherwise silent room. My heart pounds. I’m uncomfortable and keen to get out of here as quickly as possible. I might as well be standing in the middle of a cemetery at midnight, I’m so anxious.
“Hello?” I call out.
I walk up the front and step onto the platform. I look around, my hands buried in my pockets. I notice a room off the main room, so I walk over and stick my head inside. I call out again, feeling awkward, like I’m invading someone’s privacy. God’s, maybe? I stand there, at a loss at what to do. I can’t just leave without seeing Anna.
A few moments pass, and I’m still standing there, alone. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve got the wrong church. Digging through my pockets, I fish out the piece of paper and stare at the address. I’m at the right place. That’s something, I guess.
Walking outside, I wander around the grounds, looking for any sign of life, but the place is deserted. I take a pen and a bit of paper out of my purse and write a note, sticking it on the door. This last hour was all for nothing, but it’s my own fault for not calling first. I stalk back around the front, my mood matching the dark clouds above me. The rain begins to pour just before I reach my car.
This just keeps getting better.