Portraits of Celina (5 page)

“Lots of girls out there,” he says, amused. “What does she look like?”

Warmth creeps up my neck. “A little taller than me. Dark hair. Curly. Kinda like me, really, only … ah … different and … you know … better.” I am rambling, trying to push fantasies of hooking up behind the barn as far as possible from my mind.

“Better, eh?” says Oliver. “No kidding.”

I don’t know what to say.
Loni, where are you when I need you?

“Oliver!” shouts Seth, and jumps off Mum’s lap.

“Hey, Batman,” says Oliver, then strolls towards our table.

My cheeks are radiating more heat than the air outside. “Gotta go,” I breathe.

Oliver turns back to me. “Yeah. Cheers.”

I flee.

Once out onto the scorching pavement, I glance up and down the street, and try to still my beating heart.

Amelia is nowhere to be seen.

I wait across the road until Oliver leaves, sipping on his takeaway coffee and carrying a white paper bag, before heading back inside the cafe.

Mum has ordered a bowl of wedges, which we devour quickly, then we split up to search for Amelia. Mum takes off up High Street, piggybacking Seth; I take the main street.

It’s not the first time I have had to help find Amelia. The last time, when she was finally located passed out on Wanda Beach at about four in the morning, lying in a puddle of her own puke, was the reason Mum up and moved us out here.

Amelia had been trouble for a while, but since Dad’s accident, she had ramped it up a few gazillion notches, and it had been scary to witness. This particular night though, it was Mum who was scary. Her fury was raw. And there seemed no end to it.

She cleared the kitchen bench of crockery in one fell swoop. Threw her favourite crystal vase against the wall with such force that the family photo collage jumped off its hook and smashed to the ground also.

It wasn’t until Seth appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes and wondering what was happening that she seemed to snap out of it. She dropped to her knees then, wailing, and I ushered Seth back to bed with some bullshit story that I can’t even remember myself.

When I returned, I felt as though I was in the eye of the storm. An unnerving calm had descended. Amelia was nowhere to be seen and Mum was bent over, plucking tiny pieces of blue patterned china off the tiles and tossing them into a box.

“Leave this to me,” she said reasonably, as if talking about cleaning up a spilt drink. “Go get some sleep.”

The calm lasted for weeks. And it made me feel far from calm. It rattled me. When Gran arrived with takeaway pizza on a Friday night, I knew something was up. Friday is Gran’s busiest night with the Soup Van she drives round the inner city, feeding the homeless and destitute. Gran missing a Friday night is serious business.

So during an ad break in a rerun of
The Big Bang Theory
, with us nursing pizza boxes on our laps, Mum announced her plan for saving the family. She got it out in a rush, told us we were leaving straight after New Year’s, and that it was what Dad would have wanted for us. Then she grabbed her car keys and headed off to buy celebratory vanilla bean ice-cream before the ad break had even finished. She left the three of us on the sofa, thunderstruck.

I was aware we were in some kind of family crisis and that Mum wasn’t coping, that much was obvious; the pressure had been building for months – I simply didn’t expect this particular escape valve. None of us did.

And Amelia’s role in it all infuriates me still, my anger festering with each step I take along the street.
She’s just selfish
. Fine to chuck a tantrum. Fine to be shitty with Mum. Fine to quit school if that’s what she wants. But why take off? Especially when she knows what a state it will put Seth in. It would serve her right if we left her behind.

My T-shirt sticks to my back and I regret my decision to wear Celina’s jeans. I feel like a furnace on legs. I poke my nose inside each of the shops lining the main street. The buildings look tired, and many are more or less empty and easy to eliminate with a glance through the window, but they make me wonder what kind of town Mum has brought us to. It’s as if the heat has sucked all the life out of the place, and it occurs to me that the chances of getting any kind of part-time work is about zilch – in fact, I reckon it’s a bit of a miracle Mum got that job at the Wok and Roll. What are we doing here? Thanks a bunch, Amelia!

There’s a decent-sized newsagency with a couple of aisles filled with magazines and cards and a separate post office agency booth. I wander down the aisles of magazines and peer into the back section of the store, which is chock-full of dusty stationery.

No sign of Amelia, but there is a large basket filled to the brim with slim notebooks with swirling silver patterns on the covers.
One dollar each
, a sign above the stack says. I find myself leaning over the display, leafing through the pages of one of the books, smiling as I remember the journals I used to keep. Before Dad. Before it became too painful to write.

I go to walk away, but for some reason I can’t. The empty pages seem to call me and my heart thumps against my ribs. Before I realise what I am doing, I have grabbed a bundle and am handing over some coins to the cheery man at the register.

“Bargain, eh?” he says.

“Yeah,” I agree, though I am unsure what is driving me to buy them. Beside the register is a display of magazines:
The Year in Design
. “I’ll have one of these too, thanks.”

I slip out onto the street, conscious that I am really not myself today. I scan left and right for Amelia. Still no sign.

The final corner of the main shopping precinct is home to some kind of New Age craft, gift and crystal store. I step inside. A heady mix of pan flute music and the aroma of scented candles assaults me. This place seems very un-Tallowood-like.

A tall woman with wild orange hair sits at a high front counter. Reading glasses on the end of her nose, she is absorbed in some kind of crafty project, wielding a glue stick over a double page of a book. She looks up and smiles – though the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes before her mouth flops open. She drops the glue stick and it clatters onto the tiled floor.

“Damn,” she says, sounding flustered. She swoops down to pick up the glue and knocks a couple of small bottles off the counter in the process. One smashes into tiny pieces on the tiled floor. “Lord, now I’m in for it. Break a bottle – misfortune’s your new best friend.” She flounces about picking up the shattered glass; all the while taking every opportunity to steal glances at me.

I give the woman a nervous grin and edge towards the nearest aisle, certain of a growing desire to escape.

“Go ahead, love,” says the woman whose eyes are now openly scanning me from head to toe. “Don’t mind me.”

My insides squirm. Something feels wrong. I head off down an aisle stacked high with sparkly beads and candles and knick-knacks, intent on getting out of this shop as swiftly as possible. But when I reach the end of the row, the woman reappears, blocking my way, her hair streaming behind her like a fiery mane.

She is flushed and breathless. “Sorry for staring, love,” she says. “You must think I’m rude. It’s just that scarf …” Her hand reaches out towards my head. I jerk away. “That scarf, it … it … it reminds me of something, someone … Actually, you remind me of–”

I don’t give the woman a chance to finish. I take a few faltering steps backwards, then hurry away.

“Sorry, love!” calls the woman. “I didn’t mean …”

I reach for the door and tug it open. But something makes me stop. I turn back to face the woman. “Celina,” I say, not knowing why. “It reminds you of Celina O’Malley, doesn’t it?”

The woman approaches. Her eyes are glassy with emotion. She stops a few paces in front of me and touches the scarf with shaky fingers.

“Yes.” Her voice is soft. “Celina … I tie-dyed and embroidered that scarf for Celina O’Malley for her fifteenth birthday.”

I pull the scarf from my head and pass it to the woman. She takes it with trembling hands and holds it to her nose. “Celina,” she says. Tears smear mascara across her face. She smooths out the scarf along the countertop and points to a tiny painted message along one edge.

Happy birthday, Celina. Love from Deb. Friends forever. XXX OOO

Deb
. Meeting Suzie and
Deb
in town.

I go wobbly at the knees, the woman catching me before I flop to the floor in a faint.

I sit on a stool in the tiny crammed back storeroom and sip at the spicy herbal tea Deb has made me.

“Get that into you. Should do the trick.” Deb is so anxious, she doesn’t seem to know whether to laugh or cry. “When you walked into the shop, I swear, I thought I was seeing an apparition. A bloody ghost. Do you have any idea how much you look like her?”

I shake my head. “She was Mum’s cousin. Both my sister and I have the O’Malley hair and skin and–”

“No, love. It’s more than the hair. You are a dead ringer. Celina’s double. Why, these clothes – they’re just like something Celina would have worn. Miss Hippy Chick through and through. Oh, how I miss her. Even after all these years.”

Deb blows her nose and wipes the mascara from under her eyes. I am too embarrassed to confess the fact that these are indeed clothes Celina would have worn.

“Where was this scarf? Fancy it still being around. Lord, I must have made that nearly forty years ago. Maybe more.”

“It was in a wooden chest in Celina’s old room.”

“Not the peace chest!”

“Maybe …”

“I can’t believe this. I felt some strange energy in the air today, the moment I got up, but this, this is too much.”

Tell me about it.

With one eye trained on the shop front, Deb quizzes me about my family and the house, the chest, the lake. She seems to absorb everything I say and despite a fair amount of mumbo jumbo about vibrations and omens and energy, I can’t help but warm to her.

“Oh Lordy,” says Deb. “Sorry about the language – you’re not religious or anything are you? Sorry if you are – I can’t help myself. Can’t believe this. It takes me back.” She draws in a deep breath. “It was so sad – so terribly, terribly sad …” Deb fans her face with both hands. “Sorry, love. You don’t need this.”

But curiously, I
do
need this – all of it: Deb’s emotion and memories and stories. They breathe oxygen into the enigma that is Celina O’Malley and send blood coursing through her shadowy veins. And I tingle with a growing new awareness; maybe I am here in Tallowood for a reason.

It is well over an hour before I leave Deb’s shop – a phone call from Mum to my mobile vaulting me back to the present and back to the search for Amelia.

Amelia, however, doesn’t want to be found. And I am not sure who is more frantic – Mum or Seth.

Around four o’clock, Mum is contemplating visiting the police station again, when Amelia moseys up, silent and sullen, to where the car is parked. She slips into the back seat without even a word of apology.

The car is filled with unvoiced anger. It is a long trip home.

Celina O’Malley was sixteen years old when she disappeared in 1975, presumed murdered. She was a hippy chick: flower power and peace and all that; a free spirit with a heart bigger than most, who brought a little sunshine into the lives of those who knew her. When she vanished, the world was left less shiny because of it
.

I stop writing and ponder for a bit – try to recall the other snippets of information I have gleaned from Deb. It feels good, writing it down, as if I am getting acquainted with Celina. And as wacko as it sounds, I like the feeling. I smooth out the pages of the notebook, pressing my palm firmly down the gutter, flattening it open.

Celina’s best friends were Deb and Suzie
.

Writing this sentence makes me jittery. How did I know about Deb and Suzie before I met Deb? With a shiver, I continue.

Deb was the crazy one who saw life as one huge opportunity for mischief and adventure. Suzie was more sensible. The one who kept them all in check. But the three were inseparable – a sisterhood of sorts: the Peace Sisters
.