Enza Gandolfo - The Bridge

On her second day in Portarlington, Laurie and Sue drove her to Drysdale and she bought a cheap phone. She sent her mother a text letting her know that she was okay. Five minutes later, there was a call from a number she didn’t recognise. She ignored it. A minute on, a text: It ’ s Sarah Cascade . I need to talk to you now .

Jo hesitated before pressing ‘call’.

Sarah wasn’t angry. ‘I need to know where you are. It’s part of the bail conditions. The police need to be notified of your new address, and you’ll need to go to the police station and report to them.’

Jo told Sarah where she was staying. ‘Please don’t tell my mother. I don’t want her or my grandmother to come.’

‘They’re worried.’

‘I know, and I’m sorry, but I’m fine. I need a break. I can’t be at home at the moment.’

‘You need to talk to your mother.’

‘I can’t, not now.’

‘Okay, well, you’re an adult. It’s your choice. But you need to promise me that you’ll send your mother a text every couple of days to let her know you’re okay, can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you need to promise that if I ring and tell you to come home, you’ll come home. Court dates can be shifted with little notice.’

‘I promise.’

‘Okay.’

‘Can I work? I have a job in a restaurant.’

‘Yes, that’s fine.’

‘I don’t want anyone to know… I mean, will the police here tell people?’

‘No, as long as you stay out of trouble.’

On her way to The George, Jo went to the police station. Nervous and shaking, she reported to the front counter. They were expecting her, and they had her sign a form with the date. Of course she signed Jo Neilson . Would they find out she was using Ash’s name?

When Sarah walked, she watched her feet, waiting to avoid a fall. When she walked, she saw only what was caught in her peripheral vision, in side glances. She looked up momentarily in reaction to a car horn or a shout, to follow the smell of curry or pho, to move around oncoming pedestrians. She should wear a neon sign above her head — obese woman walking — so people knew to avoid her.

Even though she walked regularly, she didn’t lose weight. You walk too slowly , her mother said, and without purpose . It was true Sarah didn’t power walk like other women; their determined striding made her wince. They circled the botanical gardens, and sometimes even the streets of the city, in pairs, with leg and arm weights. She did wear her runners, and sometimes she took her iPod. But no matter what she did, she would never look like them. She walked because walking was how she thought, how she found her way around life. If she didn’t walk, she became stressed and overly anxious and smoked and ate too much. Besides, her one-bedroom apartment was tiny. And the balcony was narrow — no room for a table, just one chair and one plant, a tall prickly cactus that survived both her lack of care and the city smog.

On the street, she was part of the city, not alone. As she strolled, she looked in windows. Sometimes she went into shops, or through parks. Sometimes she walked in circuits around the city centre. Occasionally she ventured down to Southbank, making her way along the Yarra towards the casino. The river, brown and thick, was a long stretch lined with restaurants and bars. She liked the city best at dusk, when the lights came on and the river reflected the city back on itself, when people transformed into indistinguishable silhouettes and holograms.

She thought about the phone call with Jo earlier that afternoon, and her reluctance to ring her mother. She liked Mandy; they were becoming friendly. It was the first time since Ada died and Laine left that Sarah had felt the possibility of friendship. But Mandy was Jo’s mother, and Jo was a client. She’d considered passing Jo on to one of the other lawyers, but that felt like a betrayal of both mother and daughter. And it wasn’t, Sarah told herself, as if she was sleeping with her client, which had happened before in the office — though not to her, of course. It wasn’t even as if she was socialising with Jo or Mandy, not really; she and Mandy just talked. Mostly they talked about Jo and the accident, but increasingly they were confiding intimacies, stories and dreams. And Sarah had warned Mandy that Jo would likely go to prison and there was nothing she could do to prevent it, so it wasn’t as if she was making false promises or setting herself up as some great lawyer who could perform miracles.

‘There are lines,’ an old boss had said once, when they discovered one of the lawyers they worked with was having a relationship with an ex-client. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to see where the lines are, other times the lines are clear but people ignore them.’

Sarah turned into Flinders Street and headed down towards the station. It was dark now, and the streets were busy. In Federation Square, there was a band playing jazz, their images projected on the large screen. A crowd had gathered, some standing, some sitting on steps and on the ground, others lounging in deckchairs. A group of children danced and laughed and chased one another in circles. Sarah crossed at Swanston Street, walked past Young and Jackson, and headed down to Elizabeth Street.

Outside Lord of the Fries, two teenage boys stood smoking and drinking. ‘Look at that fat lump,’ one boy said as she approached, loud enough for her to hear. ‘She’s bigger than your sister.’

‘Shut the fuck up about my sister, arsehole.’

Both boys laughed. In their tight jeans, their legs were twig-thin. Sarah blushed and walked faster.

‘Hey, you,’ the boy with the sister shouted. ‘You should try going on The Biggest Loser .’

‘Hey, loser,’ the other one screamed after her. ‘They’d reject you ’cause you’re so ugly.’

They laughed again. Sarah bent her head down and watched her feet persistently. They weren’t following, but their voices were like heavy hands on the base of her spine, pushing her forwards. She remembered being with Ada once, long ago, when they were in their teens. A couple of boys much like these had called her names — fatso and fat face and ugly bitch . They were on a gravel path, and Ada had picked up a handful of rocks and thrown them at the boys, yelling, dickheads, fuckwits, arseholes . The boys had run away, laughing and calling them ugly bitches . Ada chased after them. But Sarah, terrified, called her back.

To shake the boys’ voices, to shake Ada’s disapproval, to shake her own shame at her lack of courage, she quickened her pace and crossed Flinders Lane. She was almost at Bourke Street before she slowed down again. In front of a judge and a jury, acting on behalf of her clients, she was strong and articulate, but on the street, she could so easily be reduced and belittled by a couple of drunk adolescent boys. It wasn’t her body she was ashamed of, it was her inability to ignore the judgements and abuse, and to stop those judgments and that abuse interfering in her life.

To keep herself from spiralling into useless self-pity, she refocused her thoughts on Jo and Mandy. Jo was going to prison. None of them, Mandy, Mary, or Jo, were prepared for the moment when the judge handed down the sentence. None of them were prepared for being in the courtroom with Ashleigh’s family, or the fact that their very presence would put pressure on the judge to hand down the longest possible sentence. For Ashleigh’s family, no sentence would be long enough, and of course for Mandy and Mary, any sentence was too long.

Portarlington was the quintessential sleepy town, even in the lead-up to Christmas and the holidays. Jo fell into an easy routine. In the morning she woke up early and went for a long walk along the Esplanade towards St Leonards. This way she avoided the other residents in the dorm. She was also worried about Laurie and Sue, whom she was finding herself gravitating towards as if they were her own grandparents. They were generous with their invitations to lunch and dinner on her days off. They invited her to go with them on their weekly shopping trip to Geelong and their occasional excursions to ocean beaches and wineries. But with the increasing intimacy, the guilt of what she was keeping from them, of the lies she was telling them, festered like a persistent sore.