Free Swimming on Dry Land by Helen Blackhurst Page A

face into a chipped expression I can’t make out, and because he stays silent, I go on.
    â€˜We searched everywhere, went through all the shafts twice, three times, kept thinking we’d missed something. No one leaves this town without being seen. There is only one way out by road, and his car was still here. We’d had no planes, no one driving in or out.’
    â€˜What did the police say?’
    â€˜They wrote a missing person’s report. We thought he’d turn up. It wasn’t like he was dead.’
    â€˜Did he take clothes? Food?’ Mike is growing agitated; his neck is a patchwork of reds. ‘What about friends, relatives?’
    â€˜Nothing. He wasn’t married.’
    â€˜You’re not married. Would you just up and leave without telling anyone?’
    â€˜Look, Mike, I don’t know. It’s a different world out here. People get crazy. Maybe he just couldn’t hack it and skidaddled. Haven’t you ever wanted to disappear?’
    Mike stares at me for what feels like a long time, and then he says: ‘We’re at least a hundred miles from anywhere. Anyone who tried to leave on foot would die of heat exhaustion if nothing else got them first. People don’t just disappear.’
    â€˜I would have told you eventually. You had enough on your plate. Anyway, we know Georgie fell down a shaft. Let’s not mix things up.’
    â€˜Why haven’t we found her?’ He steps forward and grabs the back of the nearest chair. ‘She’s not the kind of child to go racing through underground tunnels. Moni said her leg was hurt. She couldn’t have gone that far. We’ve looked within at least a five-mile radius. Where the hell is she?’
    I take a steady breath before I say: ‘Ted’s not the only one.’
    By the blankness on Mike’s face, he seems not to have understood. So I explain. ‘Last year a woman went missing: Shena Walker. Last February. Everyone knew her husband was knocking her about. She’d probably had enough. Only we couldn’t figure out how she’d left. Unless she’d hitched a ride with the food truck or the mail plane. I checked both. Denis – you know Denis, our pilot from Wattle Creek – he was in Sydney at the time, so there was no other way out. She didn’t take the car, obviously.’ Mike puts his hand over his mouth and lets it slide down his chin, and then he brings his fingers back up to his lips. I can’t tell if he is mad or just undone. ‘We thought she’d turn up….’
    I go on to tell him everything. Well, nearly everything. I leave out the fact that Shena Walker used to clean this house, once a week, on a Friday. She went missing on a Friday. I must have known before anyone else. When she didn’t turn up for work, I called down to her house. She’d left the radio on. I knew something was wrong. She wasn’t just my cleaning lady; we fooled around – nothing serious, not like Caroline.
    I wasn’t surprised when her husband arrived the next day. I told him she’d been to clean the house and left at four o’clock as usual. Don’t ask me why I lied. Once I’d said it, there was no going back. I didn’t want another mystery on my hands, so I carried on as if everything was normal. I kept leaving her envelopes underneath the counter in the shop each Friday, hoping she’d turn up. When her husband left, two weeks later, I gave him all the money. Within a month the bank had repossessed the house.
    Mike is shouting. ‘Do you think we’d have let the girls roam around like that if we’d have known? Georgie’s four. What chance has she got?’
    â€˜Calm down.’
    â€˜Calm down?’
    I understand why he’s angry, of course I do, but Mike has never been able to see the bigger picture; he always gets twisted up in some detail.
    â€˜I wanted to tell you when I was over last year, but