“Can we go, Mum?” her daughter, Isabella, asked. “I don’t like it here.”
Lee-Ann nodded. How had suicide become something so attractive, so valiant, so glamorous? Did they do it not understanding they would die? Maybe believing they would be brought back to life like those strange events some time back; events to which she had some links. Obscure links, but links all the same.
Who was at fault? The rumours had already started. They said it was the teasing, the bullying at school. But Lee-Ann had a feeling it was something else. Something she was involved with.
“Is her Mum here, Isabella?”
Isabella shook her head. “She’s overseas, as always, most probably in France, but I’m sure she’ll be rushing back.” Isabella took her hand out of her mother’s and grabbed the wire fence with both hands. “They say her mum was some kind of spy. We teased her about that, and lots of other things too. I’m so sorry, Madeleine.”
Lee-Ann swallowed and touched her daughter’s shoulder.
As a mother, she felt Madeleine’s mum’s loss. How tragic. Indeed, how tragic.
<°)))><
Ava Perdu sat in the car looking at the people gathered. She closed her eyes. Guilt. Not enough time spent with her daughter. Always on her mind but always pushed back. No one had taught her how to be a mum. She was trained for other things. Well trained. And that was where her energy would go.
Her daughter gave up—surrendered. Ava would not contemplate such a thing.
A hand touched her lap. “Best we get this over with, Ava.”
She looked at her husband and nodded.
Both dressed in long black coats, they walked down the dirt path. A few heads turned towards them and bodies parted to allow them to take up their frontal position.
Ava believed that when the body died, the elements making up a body got absorbed back into the cycle of nature. She looked around the burial site. The trees were covered in a veil of blue morning mist. She stared and waited for her daughter Madeleine to emerge from the mist. The voice of the celebrant dissolved her vision. Madeleine was gone.
They’d chosen a direct funeral service, a small service at the cemetery on the outskirts of greater Melbourne. Not far from home and not far from their business.
She had watched the young people wander in, many with their smartphones held in their hands and different coloured earplugs dangling from their necks. Parents stood in the background, there to support their dear children if it all got too much. She saw that Rose child and looked around for her mother. She was in the background, dressed in a long black overcoat. She looked snug.
Ava returned her attention to the celebrant. He’d been told to keep it simple—there was to be no mention of afterlife or any deity. He understood and said that was common these days. That pleased Ava.
The celebrant said some nice things about Madeleine. There were readings. The Rose girl read a poem. How sweet. Ava watched the coffin being lowered; the final act. Someone turned on soft background music. Her husband had his head bowed. He was struggling. She squeezed his arm. Some offered their condolences, others would do that later. Ava understood these things had to take place but her preference was that they didn’t. Some would say the wrong things.
Ava watched as the mourners left and merged into the blue mist. She saw the Rose girl and her mother walk off, wrapped in long warm coats, so snug and so Christian. Ava nodded. In time, my Madeleine, in time.
3 – Plants and possums
Three years later
LEE-ANN ROSE NEEDED TO DESTROY SOMETHING SHE LOVED.
She drove past the street that led to the abandoned house. The street triggered some brief thoughts of the sad event. They lived in a small community just on the outskirts of Melbourne, not quite a country town but close enough to being one. With the death of her daughter’s friend, many cried together and comforted each other, but the girl’s parents distanced themselves from the grieving process. It had been some years but she still thought about it. The girl’s parents were of a different breed.
She was out in the countryside now, away from the street lights. With no lights and no city haze—light pollution, as some called it—the stars glowed but many were invisible because of the moon. She watched as clouds moved in and obstructed the light of the moon, and darkness ruled again over the paddocks. But she knew that up ahead the darkness would soon be replaced by a soft light.
They would often see the glow of the lamps as they drove past at night. The lamps were perched over rows of plants, artificially interrupting the hours of darkness to speed up the growth cycle, allowing the leaves to sense the light and produce the required hormones for growth. Her husband jokingly referred to the plants as ‘light bulbs’.
She turned into the dirt driveway. It was only a small plantation, and was known as a trial block. She had celebrated when the first shoots appeared from her secret plants, but now she had to do what she had to do.
There was no security. The lamps were automated and the plant parts required for the manufacturing process were harvested during the day. She wore a long jacket and carried a spraying device, its hose dragging on the ground and leaving a snake trail behind her. She paused and put on a disposable dust mask then pumped the cylinder the recommended number of times.
She proceeded to spray the plants. It was like a part of her was dying.
<°)))><
Lee-Ann cried as she drove home. Next she needed to contact the authorities.
She wiped her cheeks as the garage door slowly wound its way up. There was no room to park the car as its space was now occupied by gym equipment which her husband still used. Thankfully. She retrieved the spraying equipment from the car boot. The car lights lit up the garage. The spraying device was placed back into the steel cabinet in the overcrowded garage and the mask was thrown into a bin.
She had a sense of something and looked around the garage. There were pockets of darkness which she could light up if she turned on the garage light, which she decided to do. She walked over to the switch but a shuffling noise made her turn around. Nothing. Probably their friendly possum. She switched the light on and looked around. Maybe she was over-sensitive because she’d done something that she would never have dreamed of doing before. She sighed and decided she was overtired. She said goodnight to the possum and headed into the house.
The bed was comfortable but Lee-Ann Rose couldn’t sleep. She lay there, staring up at the dark ceiling, wishing it was glass so she could see the night sky. Seeking sleep was a waste of time, so she got up and walked over to the window on her side of the bed and rolled up the blind. She sat back on the bed and embraced the atmosphere the moonlight brought into the room, thankful there were no street lights reducing the moonlight.
Was that a noise? She turned towards the bedroom door. It was most probably the possum again. She calmed herself and left her husband in his dream world with the neurons dancing in his head—he needed his rest. Her long white dressing gown was folded over a chair near the ensuite. She wrapped herself in the gown and walked down the passageway, into the living room and over to the large bay window which overlooked the front of the house.
Her left hand held the drapes opened enough to allow a sliver of moonlight to filter into the house. She looked down at the driveway. Was that her imagination, or was a shadowy figure moving away from the car? Possums? Tiredness affected thinking. A pharmaceutical scientist, she knew more about how the brain worked than most people. It must have been her imagination, so she trudged back to bed, pulled up the covers, cuddled up in their warmth, and drifted off into a restless sleep.
4 – A shadowy figure
ANOTHER NOISE WOKE LEE-ANN ROSE. She leant over to touch her husband but he wasn’t there. The noise came again—it was her noisy husband in the kitchen. The smell of coffee was drawing her in that direction.
A small peck to lips and she sat down to join her husband. “Sleep well, love?’
“I did, Lee-Ann. I needed it. Did you?”
“A bit restless. Thought I heard something so I got up to explore.”
