Chapter 37
THE LAST TIME I had seen my mother had been on the street corner outside my apartment in Pyrmont. Her hands had been wrapped in bandages, and her hair had been a thin, burgundy nightmare. A fresh tattoo on her neck. She’d wanted to live with me. I’d had to turn her away. She’d stayed overnight with me before, but I’d awakened to find all my valuables and cash gone and my front door wide open.
I didn’t know what to say to her at first, now that she was on the phone. I had tried to contact our mother when Sam was first arrested, but she hadn’t responded. I’d wondered if she was dead. There was not a centimetre of the Australian landscape that wasn’t saturated with the media coverage of the Georges River Killer and his dramatic capture. I looked at the stars and sighed.
‘Are you there?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How can I help you, Julia?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Julia,’ she said. ‘It’s bad manners.’
‘Is there something that you need?’
‘I don’t need anything, baby. I’m calling to see how youse are. You and Sam.’
Why don’t you take a guess?
‘We’re fine,’ I lied. ‘Was there something else?’
‘I tried to go to the courthouse today, but I was too late. They’d shut the doors. I want to visit Sammy but I’m not on his visitors list. Can you get him to put me on?’
‘You’re not worried you’ll be arrested as soon as you walk in the door?’ I asked. ‘You’ve still got warrants out.’ My mother’s crimes of choice were burglary and car theft. She was wanted in four states.
‘I need to see him.’
‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘you could give it a shot.’
‘I’ve been crying for days and days,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s been hard to contact youse both. After I saw the headlines, I was just fucking out of it. You know? I just lost it, mate. I went to bed and I pretty much haven’t been up in months.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I can’t believe this. Any of it. How has this happened?’
‘That’s what we’re all trying to work out.’
‘Well, I’m ready to do my part now, ay? I’m ready to help you both through this. It’s the least I can do.’ She drew a deep breath, allowing me to prepare myself for the grand show of generosity that was about to come. ‘They’ve asked me to do a spread in Her Weekly. It’s paid. I want to donate some of that money to Sam’s legal fees.’
‘You …’ I felt heat rush up into my mouth. ‘You what?’
‘Some magazine lady called me. They want to do a four-page spread on my story. It’ll be me and some photos of youse when youse were kids. Some stories about raising you both.’
I was speechless.
‘They’re offering forty thousand dollars,’ she sniffed. ‘So I thought, you know, five or ten grand of that could go to you and Sam, help out with the lawyer or whatever.’
‘You can’t do this,’ I said. I was standing now, my mouth opening and closing, the words failing to come. ‘You just … can’t, Julia. I mean, what the hell are you going to say? Sam and I … we were practically toddlers when we left your care.’
‘Harry, it’s not like I didn’t have any say into how youse were raised. I always knew where youse were. I called. I called dozens of times.’
I couldn’t breathe.
‘Harry, are you there?’
‘Julia,’ I said. ‘Listen to me very carefully. Her Weekly isn’t interested in how you raised us and what lovely children we were. They’re not going to paint this as some beautiful tragic tale of a misunderstood woman and the perfect little angels who were stolen from her by evil Child Services. They’re going to represent you as an irresponsible junkie and the two of us as institution rats with violent backgrounds.’
‘No they’re not.’
‘Yes, they are.’ I gave an angry laugh. ‘Anything else would be a lie!’
She was silent. In the background of the call, I could hear a television playing, a man shouting.
‘Julia, they’re going to sit you down and wave money in your face and get you to confide in all the awful stuff you’ve done over the years. And then they’re going to use that as evidence to suggest Sam is guilty.’
‘Harry, my life is really hard right now. I don’t expect you to understand, you being a fucking copper and all. You’ve been trained to hate people like me.’
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’m hanging up now.’
‘I need that money, Harry. I’m going to use it to start again. I’ve met someone, and we’re going to start a business together. This is the one, Harry. I can feel it. He’s not like the others.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘I have always loved you, Harriet.’ She gave a sharp, furious sigh. ‘I have always loved your brother. Doesn’t that count for anything? Jesus Christ, I don’t know how you ended up such an ungrateful bitch. I’m doing my fucking best here.’
I hung up, gripped my hair. I wanted to howl into the night. It was like my brother was sinking in quicksand. Every time I thought someone was coming along to help me free him, they only kicked more sand at him. The more he struggled, the deeper he got. I knew if too many people joined the crowd trying to bury him, I’d never get Sam out alive.