Mother Undone — Part Fifteen
A Psychological Thriller That Explores The Dark Side Of Motherhood
The story so far…
Johanna, a woman haunted by guilt over the death of her children, tries to make a fresh start in a new city in a house inherited from her grandmother. Later, she discovers that one of Australia’s most famous poisoners, Martha Needle, used to live there.
When Johanna decides to write a book about Martha with her new friend, Kate, she discovers that Kate has betrayed her in the worst way possible.
Despite this setback, Johanna is determined to push ahead and put the past behind her.
The letter from my grandmother’s lawyer, was brief, formal and direct.
The headstone of the late Ida Falland was to be erected in South Australia, he wrote. Would I like to see it? Also, the Martin Luther Nursing Home still has a box of my late grandmother’s belongings. Can I please collect it?
I’d agreed and rearranged my work schedule so I could fly into my hometown on the Friday, spend the weekend with Marion and leave on Monday morning.
For one, crazy second I considered ringing Kate to ask if she’d drive me to the airport. She’d jump at the chance, I was sure. So far, I’d maintained a stoic silence since receiving her grovelling email. Even though a tiny kernel of me wanted to forgive Kate and resume our friendship, an invisible wall remained between us, one I doubted could ever come down.
Because if we did meet again, what would I say? I forgive you? Except it’s not really your fault… but I can never explain why it’s not?
The departing jet taxied the runway, gathered speed and lifted off the tarmac. I dozed, only opening my eyes forty minutes later when the plane thumped onto the tarmac. The engine roared like an angry elephant as it decelerated and slowed to a stop outside the terminal. Rain spattered the cabin windows. I peered outside. Everything looked damp and grey and unwelcoming.
I was home.
If ever a cemetery could be described as ‘boutique’, my grandmother’s final resting place fitted the bill, I decided as I parked my rental car in the tiny, gravel-covered enclosure just outside the entrance. Set at the top of a hillock, a cluster of pines lined the rear of the graveyard. The other sides were hedged with olive trees while, in the valley below, rows of grapevines stretched between the hills, as neat and even as corn braids in a head of hair.
The sky was bright and the sun shone, but a fierce, bitter wind made me glad I’d worn a heavy overcoat. I pulled it around me as a strong tailwind propelled me across the ground and down a shallow incline towards Ida’s gravesite. The earth was muddy and soft from recent rains so I stopped to wipe the bottom of my boots on a lone patch of grass.
I hadn’t attended Ida’s burial. I couldn’t. It was too soon after my own tragedy. Yet, despite the prickling of tears behind my eyelids, right at this moment, I felt serene and peaceful.
Maybe I’d even be able to visit my own children’s graves one day.
I located Ida’s headstone. The epitaph was simple:
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. Ida Falland, beloved of all her family, rests here in the hands of God.”
I couldn’t recall Ida being especially religious, but her stern, Lutheran upbringing had instilled in her a rudimentary, unquestioning belief in God and a willingness to entrust her fate into his hands. It seemed only fitting that, in death, she remained in them.
I checked my watch: ten minutes to three. The nursing home was expecting me. I began the uphill trudge until something caught my eye.
In the furthermost corner of the cemetery was a row of ancient tombstones, set apart from the others in a rectangle of earth surrounded by a rusted, wrought-iron fence. Dated in the mid-to-late 1800s, some were leaning, one had even fallen over. The mounds, now covered in grass and weeds, had hollowed and sunk back into the earth like the bodies of their inhabitants. A century of rain and wind had flattened and nearly erased the engravings on the pale marble and the names on the tombstones, covered by moss and lichen, were almost illegible. But I was able to read three names.
One was the grave of Louis Juncken, brother ofOtto and the last of Martha Needle’s victims, murdered by arsenic poisoning. Next to it stood the grave of his father, Henry, who had died four years before his son in 1890. In 1913, Margaret Juncken, mother of Louis and Martha Needle’s fiance, Otto, was laid to rest aged seventy-eight.
I remembered that Otto and Louis once lived in my hometown before they relocated to Melbourne. What if they had stayed? Then they would never have met Martha Needle and Louis might have lived to the same ripe old age as his parents.
I tried to imagine the relentless stream of visitors to Louis’ grave during Martha Needle’s trial, the famous victim of the notorious Richmond Poisoner, her crimes covered by every newspaper in the country. Now the untended graves were silent and cold, bereft and forgotten.
A sudden gust of wind made me shiver. I checked my watch again. I had to leave now.
The Martin Luther Nursing Home was a horrid, modern, two-story structure made of cream bricks and glass sliding doors with cheap catches. I strode along the path, smiling at the residents sunning themselves on the outside benches. Their eyes met mine but their faces stayed blank.
It was already five minutes past three so I ignored the invitation to sign the Visitor’s Book and made my way purposefully down the glaring white corridor. After a hasty introduction to the Matron on duty, I was escorted into a small waiting room and furnished with a dented, vintage metal trunk containing the last possessions of my grandmother, Ida Elizabeth Falland.
At the top of the trunk was the Order of Service for Ida’s wedding and, attached underneath, another for her husband’s funeral in 1978. My stomach lurched when I saw a framed photograph of my own family. I placed it face down on the chair beside me. Next came a pile of books. I glanced at the covers: The Forsyte Saga, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Madame Bovary. I recognised them from Ida’s bookshelf in the nursing home.
Ida had loved to read before cataracts clouded the lens of her eyes. When her vision failed, I’d read Madame Bovary to her from beginning to end. Bound in cracked leather and missing some pages, the book had once belonged to Ida’s mother, Anna. The book was part of Ida… part of me.
I returned to explore the trunk. I had nearly reached the bottom when my hand closed around something small and soft. I lifted it out.
A small box covered in navy blue velvet with an ancient, tarnished catch nestled in the palm of my hand. I opened it. Inside lay a locket on a tiny bed of stained, ivory satin. I picked it up carefully, tenderly. It was very old and made of beaten silver, heart-shaped, and engraved with an intricate floral design. This I recognised. It belonged to Anna, Ida’s mother. Ida had worn it around her neck for as long as I could remember.
I opened the tiny catch. Inside was a lock of auburn hair. I closed the locket and fastened it around my neck feeling strangely honoured. Here, next to my heart, lay a genetic relic of my past. If I took a test, my own DNA would closely match the DNA contained in these tiny strands of hair.
Warmth spread through my body as tears filled my eyes. I took a deep, grateful breath.
I was here… today… a living reminder of all who had gone before me. Didn’t I owe it them — as well as to myself — to make the best of the time I had left?
I had one thing left to do before I returned to Melbourne.
And here I was, finally, standing beside my children’s graves. The late afternoon sunshine trickled through the leaves of the overhanging gum tree, sprinkling my arms with dappled light. A black and white magpie warbled a throaty solo.
Why had I ever been afraid to come here? It was so beautiful… so peaceful… so calm.
I stayed for an hour then crossed the road and entered a park. A playground lay before me. My breath caught, my shoulders tensed. Could I do this now? I lifted my chin and unlatched the safety gate.
Children were everywhere: running, screaming, crying, crawling, dangling, swinging. A toddler hurtled down the slippery-slide and fell face first into the sand. He yelled for his father who scooped him up and cradled the child’s chin in one hand while the other brushed sand away from his face. The father was young and handsome. He saw me watching and grinned. I flashed back a complicit smile because I was a parent too.
Once.
“They never stop, do they?” The young father’s eyes shone as he watched his tiny son scamper towards the roundabout. “I need a second pair of eyes in the back of my head.”
“I know the feeling. I’ve got three.”
He stared at me. “Do I know you?”
I wanted to run but I smiled instead. “I don’t think so.”
“You look familiar is all — Adam! Come here!”
“You’d better go before he gets into trouble.”
The man moved towards the toddler then turned. “I don’t suppose you want to get a coffee? I could use some parenting tips from an expert.”
“I don’t think I’m the right person to ask.”
“You look okay to me.”
But I waved him farewell and escaped in the opposite direction.
The lamp above my seat was a laser beam boring into my skull, way too harsh for six-fifteen in the morning. Equally inhuman was the blast of freezing air hissing from the vent and raining directly onto the back of my neck.
I eyed the fresh-faced flight attendant with her immaculate upsweep and groomed eyebrows as she greeted the arriving passengers with a two hundred and fifty watt smile. How did she manage to look so perfect so early in the morning? Even without a hangover, I’d never manage a turnout like that. Red-eye flights on Monday mornings should be banned as cruel and unusual punishment under the Geneva Convention, I decided, even if the fault lay one hundred percent with me.
I’d allowed Marion to throw me an alcohol-fuelled dinner party last night where she introduced me to her new love, Tabitha. I was delighted for them both. Their love was palpable, obvious. They’d even adopted a fur-child — Humphrey — a huge ginger tomcat, who, from the day he arrived, requisitioned Marion’s favourite chair as his own, rarely leaving it except to wolf down enormous meals of tinned fish.
I stared out the porthole window. The tarmac was black and shiny from the pelting rain. The brief spell of sunshine had disappeared and it had rained for the rest of the weekend. More passengers spilled into the plane and flowed down the aisles.
A middle-aged woman with frosted hair wearing a suit approached my row. She stopped and studied her boarding pass. With a sigh sounding like a tyre deflating, she heaved her suitcase into the overhead compartment and eased into the aisle seat immediately saturating the air with Fendi cologne. She threw me a smile and adjusted her earphones. Then she retrieved a Woman’s Weekly from her handbag and began to read.
The plane was nearly full and it looked like I’d have an empty seat next to me. The two aspirin I’d taken at the airport with my coffee were finally kicking in. I closed my eyes. I’d try and sleep until we touched down at Melbourne Airport.
In that trippy, somnambulant state between wakefulness and sleeping, the airplane noises were distinct but soothing: the snap-click of the overhead compartments opening and closing, the voices and laughter of my fellow passengers, the rustle of papers and magazines, the crackle of the loudspeaker. Then, cutting through the pleasant haze, a man’s voice boomed an apology as he stepped over the woman in the aisle seat and lowered himself with a grunt into the middle seat beside me.
Damn, I thought groggily, twisting my body towards the window. If I kept my eyes closed, maybe I wouldn’t have to talk to him.
The man sighed as his knees brushed the seat in front of him. “Bloody economy seats,” I heard him mutter under his breath.
His voice sounded familiar. I opened my eyes. A pair of dark blue eyes in a tanned face framed with short-cropped dark hair met mine. We both laughed.
“Johanna?”
“And you’d be that nice policeman who helped me out when I was desperate… Detective Inspector Kerr if I’m not mistaken?”
”What are you doing here?” we asked together.
“Ladies first,” he said.
“Family business,” I replied. I told him about my grandmother’s grave and my visit to the nursing home to pick up her belongings.
He pointed to the locket around my neck. “Is that hers?”
“How did you guess?”
“An ex of mine loved antique jewellery. She was always trawling through eBay to find it.”
“The librarian ex? Or another one?”
He grinned. “This one was years later. Can I have a look at it?”
I unfastened the catch and handed it to him. “Open it,” I said. “See that lock of hair? It belonged to my great-grandmother.”
“That’s incredible,” he said, handing it back.
“It is.” I re-fastened the locket around my neck. “How about you? What are you doing here at this god-forsaken time of day?”
Kerr gave a rueful smile and ran a hand through his hair leaving a tuft sticking up in the middle of his head. “Interstate prisoner extradition arrangements. You would not believe the red tape I’ve had to wade through to organise this.”
“I seem to recall that red tape’s how we met… the Land Title’s Office, remember?”
He tapped a finger to his skull. “Right. Of course. My brain’s a bit scrambled this early in the morning. And I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Like what?”
“I’m moving back here in a couple of months.”
“For work?”
“Partly. I’ve had a job offer I’m considering. I’m over Melbourne. Too many people, too many cars, too much crime.” He grinned. “If I’m honest, it’s more of a lifestyle thing. I love the beaches, the food, the wine and getting where I need to go in twenty minutes.”
I leaned back into my seat. “I know. I used to live here once.”
“Really? For how long?”
“About ten years. I only moved to Melbourne a year ago. I like it but Melbourne’s so… frantic. Everybody’s competing for something… jobs… parking spaces… seats on trams… tables in restaurants. It exhausts me sometimes.”
Yuri nodded feelingly. “Same. After everything that’s happened recently, I just want a peaceful life.”
So what had happened in Detective Inspector Yuri Kerr’s life that he needed peace? The man was getting more intriguing by the minute.
I opened my mouth to ask another question but was interrupted by the captain’s voice on the loudspeaker exhorting us to fasten our seat belts and direct our attention to the safety lecture. The plane lifted off. When airborne, the flight attendants appeared with a trolley offering us coffee, tea or water. We both ordered coffee.
Yuri sipped his drink and grimaced. “Cripes… I thought the little café behind the station made the worst coffee in Australia. Looks like I was wrong.” He put down his cup. “Hey, tell me what you found out about your house after your visit to Land Title’s Office.”
I told him my discovery that a famous poisoner, Martha Needle, once lived there, and that I’d decided to do more research and write a book about her. I didn’t mention Kate — or her betrayal — fearing it might lead to questions I didn’t want to answer.
Yuri listened carefully, interrupting only occasionally to clarify facts. When I finished, he gave a long, soft whistle. “A hell of a lot’s happened to you since we last met!”
I nodded. “And if I hadn’t met you that day, I would never have found that old history book where I discovered Martha was the original owner of my house… which means I wouldn’t be writing this book,” I said, smiling. ”So… thanks, Inspector. I owe you one!”
“We’re not allowed to take gratuities… but I’ll be happy to see my name in the acknowledgements when your book gets published.” He winked.
The captain’s voice sounded again over the loudspeaker, announcing our imminent landing. When the plane shuddered to a stop, Yuri was first onto his feet. He opened the overhead locker and removed my suitcase before asking the blonde-haired woman if she wanted hers too.
“Thank you,” she gushed, beaming at Yuri like he’d just carried her out of a burning building.
“Do you always have this effect on women?” I whispered over my shoulder as we crawled, single file, down the aisle towards the exit.
He grinned. “She’s only human.”
I felt Yuri’s eyes on me as we trooped through the Arrivals lounge and into the main terminal.
“Johanna?”
I stopped.
“It’s just come to me. I knew I’d seen you before. You’re Johanna Fletcher… and your husband killed your kids a few years back. I’m so bloody sorry that happened to you.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a stepson… a teenager. He lives with his mother and he hates my guts. We’ve both said things to each other we regret… but if anything happened to him…” Yuri Kerr shook his head again. “I don’t think I’d ever get over it.”
What could I say? That I hadn’t either? That by some peculiar twist of fate, I was alive when I should have been dead and lying next to my children already? I kept my face blank. “I should go. I have to be at work soon.”
Yuri’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, sounding wretched. Then he hesitated. “I’d like to see you again… if you want to.” He thrust his card into my hand.
“I’ve already got one of those.”
“Take another. If you lose this one, at least I’ll know you have my number somewhere. Please?”
I smiled. “Okay.” I picked up my suitcase and turned to go.
“And make it soon,” he said softly.
I pretended I hadn’t heard and kept walking.
I had to get home. There was something else important I needed to do.
To be continued…
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