Page 82 of The Vanishing Place
Anya held the detective’s gaze, her head perfectly still, and for a moment the entire room seemed to pause. Morrow asked the question again, and Anya’s fingers uncurled from Effie’s thumb, but she didn’t respond.
Eventually, Anya dipped her head and returned to her drawing, gripping the pencil so hard that her fingers whitened. No one spoke as she wrote. When she finished, she dropped the pencil without looking up.
Anya had written two sentences, the letters scrawled in thick gray.
Mum broke his rules.
Mum wouldn’t say sorry.
Morrow pulled the paper toward her and looked across at Effie.
“Whose rules?” asked Morrow, turning to Anya. “Were they Four’s rules?”
Anya looked at the detective, her face and lips unmoving, then she held a finger to her lips.
Morrow looked from Effie to the picture and back again. Anya had added a third person to her drawing—a stick figure in the trees. The figure had long hair and a dress that hung to her ankles. Her eyes were marked with the same twoXs. And underneath, Anya had written a name.
Hana.
“This person here…” Morrow pointed at the figure. “She’s called Hana?”
The girl nodded.
“And,” asked Morrow, her voice soft, “is Hana dead?”
Another nod.
“Did Hana break the rules?”
Another nod.
“Was Hana a child like you?” asked Morrow.
“Shh,” Anya whispered. “No more questions.”
July 2005
“Lewis!”
Effie shouted against the wind, but it was pointless. The cold sea air bleached her words of sound, leaving her gaping like a mute fish. She stepped off June’s bike and threw it to the sand. The stupid saddle had thumped the feeling from between her legs, bruising her girl bits, and the bones in her butt ached.
“Lewis!”
Effie waved, flailing her arms this time, but he was too far down the beach to notice her. He was just a little red smudge, the only red smudge on the whole beach. There was just miles of white sand and icy gray sea.Bloody Lewis. Of all the days to go for a walk down the beach, he had to pick a day that was colder than the Arctic. Effie trudged along the never-ending beach with her hands tucked under her arms, the cold blowing through the broken zip of June’s jacket. She removed her sand-filled shoes, swearing as she stepped on a sharp twig.
“Ouch.”
She lifted her foot and rubbed at the stinging skin. There wasmore driftwood than sand, the beach half-made of dregs and dead things. And space, so much open space, like the beach and the sky might never end. In the bush, there was no space.
Effie chucked her shoes next to the carcass of a tree and picked her way through the labyrinth of twisted driftwood.
Lewis hadn’t appeared at June’s that morning. It was almost the end of the school holidays, and he had been teaching Aiden to kick his ridiculous egg-shaped ball. Lewis turned up outside June’s every morning with his rugby ball under his arm. Four joined in too, running after them and shouting, “Punt it,” whatever the heck that meant. June made them all eat breakfast—Lewis too—and put on shoes and jackets before they were allowed out. But that morning, Lewis wasn’t there, and Effie had cycled around for half an hour before she’d found someone who’d spotted him walking down the Haast-Jackson Bay Road.
Effie blew warm air into her hands, her fingers turned white in the biting salt breeze.
“Lewis!”
Effie splashed through the shallow water toward him. Lewis was standing alone, arms crossed, looking out at nothing. As if the winter air had frozen him there. On the sand behind him was his rugby ball, abandoned, and the approaching waves were threatening to scoop it up. Lewis was in shorts and his red Crusaders T-shirt, his pale skin the same gray-white as the sky.
