The Shadow Girl Read online

  For my children Chantelle, Damian and Gabrielle, and of course to the girl who rode the trains, wherever you are. I hope you’re well. I hope you’re safe.

  Contents

  Act One

  Chapter 1: The End

  Chapter 2: CAFE

  Chapter 3: Miracle in Central America

  Chapter 4: CAFE

  Chapter 5: My Parents

  Chapter 6: CAFE

  Chapter 7: The Night They Went Away

  Chapter 8: CAFE

  Chapter 9: The Thrashing

  Chapter 10: CAFE

  Chapter 11: A Visit in the Night

  Chapter 12: CAFE

  Chapter 13: The Forest

  Chapter 14: CAFE

  Chapter 15: God Sux

  Act Two

  Chapter 16: CAFE

  Chapter 17: Darwin Sux

  Chapter 18: My Paraguayan Aunt

  Chapter 19: Freedom Vomit

  Chapter 20: CAFE

  Chapter 21: Death Valley

  Chapter 22: CAFE

  Chapter 23: Weekender

  Chapter 24: CAFE

  Chapter 25: Bleak House

  Chapter 26: CAFE

  Chapter 27: Ape Creature

  Chapter 28: CAFE

  Chapter 29: Herr Gel

  Chapter 30: CAFE

  Chapter 31: Room Service

  Act Three

  Chapter 32: CAFE

  Chapter 33: The Ghosts and Mrs Bennet

  Chapter 34: Back to School

  Chapter 35: CAFE

  Chapter 36: Epilogue

  Chapter 37: CAFE

  Chapter 38: Last Train to Kathmandu

  Act Four

  Chapter 39: CAFE

  Chapter 40: Happy Birthday

  Chapter 41: CAFE

  Chapter 42: Nullum Fatum Est

  Chapter 43: CAFE

  Chapter 44: Goodbye Tiffany-Star

  Chapter 45: Aunt Flo

  Chapter 46: CAFE

  Chapter 47: My Emo Fairy Godmother

  Chapter 48: CAFE

  Chapter 49: From the Cradle to the Grave

  Chapter 50: CAFE

  Chapter 51: The Ivy Principle

  Chapter 52: Home

  Chapter 53: CAFE

  Chapter 54: The Raven

  Chapter 55: CAFE

  Chapter 56: CAFE

  Chapter 57: CAFE

  Chapter 58: Like Father, Like Daughter

  Chapter 59: The Beginning

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Resources

  Imprint

  I’M LYING IN THE BATH SHAVING MY LEGS BY THE DIM GLOW OF candlelight when the doorbell rings.

  In most houses this wouldn’t be a biggie. Someone else would get the door or, if it was a salesperson on foot or God-botherers or whatever, you could keep quiet or hide or say you were with Optus or atheists or something. But things are different in my house. No one lives here. Not even me.

  The thing that surprises me most is that the doorbell actually works. Of course I’d seen it there by the battered and warped screen door. A big old clunky wooden thing with a weather-beaten brass button in the centre. But I figured it would have seized up by now, or gone to doorbell heaven, or whatever it is that doorbells do when they haven’t been used for decades.

  So it’s the doorbell itself – its resonating dong seeking out every cobwebbed nook and cranny of the house – that jolts me upright in the bath, rather than any intrigue about who might be on the other side of it. I drop my razor, which sinks poetically to the bottom, taking my happiness with it. Actually it doesn’t. It’s one of those yellow plastic el-cheapo ones, so it just bobs on the surface like something bobbing on top of something else. It’s hard to be poetic and construct complex metaphors (okay, similes) when you haven’t enough money to afford decent razors that sink when you drop them.

  I take a breath and lower myself deeper into the bath so that just my eyes are above the water, like a sort of suburban crocodile.

  The doorbell dongs again. Louder this time. Or so it seems. I imagine it’s like sonar: the sound waves cannoning into the bathroom, vibrating off my chest and giving away my location.

  Lying there, with the water getting colder by the second, I try to come up with a list of who it might be:

  The owners – Possibly. Though according to Miss Taylor, the house has been abandoned for years. And besides, owners tend to use keys. They wouldn’t ring their own doorbell, surely. Not unless they were expecting to find someone in. Squatters, maybe. Me.

  Delivery guy – You would need to have the mental capacity of a rabid rabbit’s dropping to deliver your pizza to a house that has no lights and is practically boarded up and slowly rotting back into the earth.

  Friends – Don’t have any. Not close, anyway. Although I’m tight with my group at school, they live in ivy-covered houses with swimming pools and atriums and vestibules and generally a full complement of parents. I could never bring them here.

  Flowers – It’s my fifteenth birthday – I’ve already celeb- rated with fish and chips, a cupcake and a Bacardi Breezer, which was just too disgusting for words and ended up down the sink – but who would send me flowers?

  Creepo – Ditto on the doorbell ringing.

  Homeboys looking for a derelict house to plan their next gang war or play their DOOF DOOF music – God I hope not, especially considering what I’ve got on. But I suppose ditto with the doorbell ringing again. I’d rather it was the:

  Police – Bloody nosey old bag next door. The house wasn’t doing anything. Just sitting here. Unloved. Neglected. Rotting. If I’d been a rat, or a cat, or a possum, she wouldn’t have said anything. But I’m human, so I’m not welcome.

  My heart leaps up my throat and I feel my intestines coil around each other like mating pythons when I hear the murmur of voices and the clatter of footsteps coming up the side of the house.

  I realise almost too late that my lavender and ylang ylang scented candles are going to give me away. Even through the frosted glass of the bathroom window, whoever or whatever it is that’s lurking about out there will surely see the flickering glow of the candles.

  I reach out and pull them into the bath with me. The sizzle of the wicks hitting the water sounds as loud as the dong of the doorbell and I’m certain the game is up.

  There is a heavy knock on one of the bedroom windows along the side of the house. Who knocks on windows?

  ‘Is anybody in there?’ A gruff voice. Definitely authority figure. Police. Social worker. School principal. Vigilante.

  I hold my breath and try not to blink, figuring that the sound of my eyelids banging down will give me up.

  The flicker of torchlight illuminates the bathroom window and I know for sure that it’s either the cops or one hell of a persistent pizza delivery guy.

  ‘She’s in there, all right.’

  My stomach lurches when Gruff Voice says this.

  ‘Can you smell that?’

  ‘Marijuana?’

  ‘Smells more like lavender.’

  And then they’re gone. Not back down the front, unfortunately, but around the back.

  They say that if you lose one of your senses, your others become more heightened to compensate. So here I am, lying in the bath in the pitch-black with everything but my eyes set to hyper-alert mode. I can hear the clump of their boots on the back verandah. I sense they’ve stopped at the b
ack door. Feel that my life is about to change. Again.

  I pray to God that I’ve locked the back door, but then I remember that I’m not religious and, from what I remember, God doesn’t bother with piddly little stuff like locking doors anyway. Miraculously locking back doors so that cops can’t spring teenage girls having a candlelit bath on their birthdays might prove His existence – and we couldn’t have that now, could we?

  Oh shit! I didn’t lock it. I remember. My hands were full when I came back from the shops and I made a mental note to go back and lock it when I got myself organised. Note to self – stop making mental notes.

  Then, barely audible above the pounding of my heart, the back door creaks open. I can hear and feel the vibration of their voices. They’re in the kitchen, checking out the evidence of my dinner.

  Thanks, God. You couldn’t just do that for me? Give me one minuscule break and lock the friggin’ back door? It wouldn’t have even proved your existence. I would’ve just assumed that I’d done it myself. And maybe that’s the point. He knows that I wouldn’t have given him credit for it so now he’s sulking.

  What sort of previously unclassified subspecies of idiot am I? How many fifteen-year-olds living by themselves would come home, have a little birthday party, go for a nice, relaxing candlelit bath and fail to lock the back door? I’ll tell you how many – one. Me. The idiot actually still in the bath.

  They’re clomping down the hallway now, towards the lounge room. I can sense their torches on my sleeping bag, my backpack, my clothes, my books. My life.

  ‘Hello!’

  Don’t move a muscle. Don’t even breathe.

  If I had my clothes in the bathroom with me, I could quietly slip them on and then slide out the window.

  ‘We only want to talk. You’re not in any trouble.’

  So why are there police in my house?

  Oh crap! My clothes. They’ll see my clothes lying there and know someone’s here.

  Slowly, almost sloth-like, I ease myself up and out of the bath. The water cascading off my body sounds like Niagara Falls in the rainy season, but I have to risk it.

  I clear the water just in time. They’re clomping over towards me now. I can see the approaching torchlight under the door. Thank God (or Buddha, Allah, Krishna or some of the lesser known Indonesian deities) that I’d closed the bathroom door.

  ‘Hello.’ There’s a gentle tap on the door, the sort you might make if your grandmother is in the bath and you’re sent in to tell her that dinner’s almost ready or to make sure she hasn’t drowned.

  I hope to my non-existent God that I haven’t locked the bathroom door because then they would know for certain that I’m in here. That would be pure genius, wouldn’t it? Leave the back door unlocked but deadbolt the bathroom.

  The door swings open and their torchlight fills the bath- room. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at the world, I suppose) through years of neglect I’m actually as skinny as an anorexic broomstick and there’s room for me behind the door, which they obviously think is hard up against the doorstop.

  ‘Well, she’s not here,’ says Gruff Voice.

  ‘She has been, though. The water’s still in the bath. Kind of creepy in a way. Like that yacht they found in the middle of the ocean with the coffee still warm in the mugs but no one on board.’

  Their torchlight plays upon the water but they don’t seem to notice the bobbing candles and el-cheapo razor. If they shine their torches on the floor, they’ll see my footprints and the water dripping off me and then I’m gone.

  ‘Neighbours don’t want squatters,’ says Gruff Voice.

  There’s a pause. I’m on tiptoes so my feet couldn’t get wedged under the door and scraped back to the bone when they opened it. I will my heart to stop, my lungs to still, so as not to give away my position. I use thought control to stop any more water dripping off my body and under the door. I even stop my spleen from doing whatever it does that spleens do. I’m a ghost. A wraith of atoms. A shadow.

  ‘Er, yeah, yeah,’ says the young female cop. ‘She’d better be gone in the morning or we’ll come back with the sniffer dogs.’

  There’s a snort from Gruff Voice. And then the torchlight fades and they’re clomping down the hallway and out through the kitchen. The back door closes and they’re outside.

  ‘Sniffer dogs,’ laughs Gruff Voice as they make their way back down the side of the house. ‘You’ve been watching too many American cop shows, sweetheart.’

  ‘Don’t call me sweetheart.’

  ‘Hey. Don’t burn your bra just yet, darling. You’re still on probation.’

  ‘What century are you living in, Sarge?’ laughs the female cop. ‘Bra burning happened in the sixties. The nineteen-sixties. I suppose you were just getting your sergeant’s stripes then.’

  The banter continues all the way down the side of the house until they’re out of hearing range.

  When my pulse has settled, I slide out from behind the door. I remove the plug halfway so that the water drains slowly and doesn’t make that strangling sound at the end. Then I dry myself and, still in tiptoe mode, creep out to the lounge room.

  They haven’t touched my stuff. They could have taken it. Thrown it out or confiscated it. But they didn’t. They were nice. They knew I was here. Hiding. Somewhere in the house. They probably sussed that I was behind the door. That whole ‘sniffer dog’ bit was for my benefit. Luckily they didn’t realise that I was a kid. I’d be sitting in the back of their car now if they had. Off to a hostel. Or to emergency foster care. Or back to that sack of shit uncle’s place. I slip on my tracksuit and jumper and two pairs of bed socks. Then I crawl into my sleeping bag. I pick up my old friend Bleak House. But I decide not to read tonight. My mind’s too churned up with wondering what I’m going to do in the morning. Where am I going to go?

  A tear rolls down my cheek. I lick it off, enjoying its salty tang.

  I was happy here. The happiest I’ve ever been. I could read, do my homework, cook (I replaced the fuses after I’d spoken to a bearded guy in an apron at the hardware store), sleep, have candlelit baths, breathe. Live.

  That haggard old sow next door. I’ve seen her pottering around her garden. I wasn’t hurting her. There’s no reason she had to call the cops.

  The light from the passing cars steals in through the curtains (my curtains. I paid for them myself) and briefly illuminates the ceiling. I love the sound of cars as they pass. The Doppler effect, I think it’s called. An incomplete Doppler means that someone has pulled up outside. Potential trouble. Like tonight. But a full Doppler means I’m safe. The car has gone on its way. I love full Dopplers.

  You’d think that the ghosts in the walls would visit me tonight. To say goodbye. But they leave me alone. There’s just the sound of the dying gum tree scratching on the tin roof to get in. The comings and goings of the possums in the ceiling. A storm brewing to the south.

  Sleep creeps up on me slowly, like hypothermia at sea, and I’m happy to be carried away. This will probably be the last good night’s sleep I’ll have for a while, so I better make it count. Tomorrow I’ll be back. Back on the trains.

  OKAY, THAT WAS YOUR LAST NIGHT IN THE HOUSE. BEFORE WE GO any further, though, I need to ask you a question. Why me?

  I don’t understand. Why not you?

  That’s not really an answer. There are loads of writers around who could do this . . . so why did you choose me?

  You don’t remember me, do you?

  [Pause]

  It’s okay if you don’t. I tried to be forgettable. That’s how I survived.

  We’ve met?

  You gave me a book. Signed it too. I sold it on eBay.

  Really? How much . . .?

  I’m joking. I’ve still got it at home. You came to my school for an author talk and w
orkshop when I was in year eight. I’d only just started there.

  Which school?

  Out west.

  I do a lot of school talks. Where out west specifically?

  Just out west.

  Look, if we’re going to do this, you have to be honest with me.

  I will. Mostly.

  I gave you a book? I don’t do that very often.

  I think you felt sorry for me.

  I hope I didn’t embarrass –

  No, you didn’t. But you saw through me. You saw me. So I thought if I ever survived this . . . this shit, I would find you to see if you were interested in, well, writing about it. I tried doing it myself but, I don’t know, it wasn’t working too well.

  I remember now. You went to [deleted from transcript] High.

  That’s right. But you can’t put that in.

  When I told my daughter about you she cried. Said I should have brought you home to live with us.

  I would have liked that.

  Schools generally don’t approve of visiting guests taking students home with them.

  You knew I was a street kid?

  Not really. I sort of remember your librarian saying something.

  Mrs Lee.

  She told me you were doing it tough. She didn’t say anything about you being homeless, though.

  But you forgot me.

  I meet thousands of students each year. I guess I figured you would be okay because you were so smart . . . and I was right.

  It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

  What are you now, eighteen, nineteen?

  Something like that.

  And how old were you when you found the house?

  I was in year nine; so, fourteen.

  We need to go back. Before you found the house. I’m interested in how you came to be . . . on the trains in the first place.

  You can say it.

  Say what?

  Homeless.

  Okay. When you were homeless.

  [Pause]

  Wait a minute. Is the bit about the house and the cops and everything going to be, like, the epilogue – I mean, prologue?

  It might. I haven’t decided how I’m going to structure it yet.