A Little Bird Read online

  PRAISE FOR WENDY JAMES

  “Australia’s queen of the domestic thriller . . .”

  —Angela Savage, Books and Writing, ABC Radio

  “A master of suburban suspense.”

  —Cameron Woodhead, The Age

  An Accusation

  “Both gripping and timely, An Accusation’s sharp narrative will demand your attention from page one. Wendy James spins a web of mystery that will leave you feeling upside down, in the very best way. Highly recommend!”

  —Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, authors of The Two Lila Bennetts

  “An Accusation will grip you from page one . . . Intelligent, suspenseful, and masterfully paced, with a killer twist in the tail, An Accusation is domestic noir at its best, perfect for fans of Adele Parks, Caroline Overington, and Liane Moriarty.”

  —Better Reading

  “James brilliantly takes this historical true crime and updates it for the internet age.”

  —Sydney Morning Herald

  The Golden Child

  “James invites the reader to consider a set of close relationships in all their intricacy as those involved hurtle towards an inevitable disaster. This is domestic noir at its most intelligent and sharp.”

  —Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald / Melbourne Age

  “It takes forty-eight hours to pulse through Wendy James’s roller-coaster twenty-first-century story about parenting, which begins with navigating the trick-or-treating dilemma—to accompany or not?—but climaxes with the question, What age is my child legally responsible for criminal actions? . . . A chilling novel of our time, with a truly shocking twist.”

  —Australian Women’s Weekly

  “This book is utterly brilliant. I just don’t know where to even start with a review—it was compelling, it was tragic, it was clever, it was frightening, it was heartbreaking, it was shocking, and it gave me shivers, and it made me question myself as a parent.”

  —Nicola Moriarty, author, Goodreads

  “An engaging and intimate read that will appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Jodi Picoult, with nods to Lionel Shriver and Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap . . .”

  —Australian Books + Publishing (4 stars)

  “The Golden Child is a gripping novel that transports the reader into the insidious world of cyberbullying and poses confronting questions about parenting.”

  —Weekly Times

  “Why we love it: it’s a hot topic right now—teenage girls, bullying, and the perils of social media—a topic nailed by Aussie author Wendy James in her latest novel. The Golden Child is a disturbing yet funny look at the age-old problem of teenage girls and the very modern problem of cyberbullying.”

  —Better Reading Book of the Week

  The Lost Girls

  “A wonderful, unputdownable story by a great Australian author.”

  —Liane Moriarty, Australian Women’s Weekly

  “The novel is nothing less than compelling . . . The Lost Girls grabs hold of you and doesn’t let go—the sort of book you find yourself still reading long after you intended to put it down. In short, everything you want a novel of this kind to be.”

  —Weekend Australian

  “Wendy James has again demonstrated her flair for suspenseful diversion, buttressed by her not inconsiderable literary talent.”

  —Australian Book Review

  The Mistake

  “The Mistake is a moving book that relentlessly hits the mark.”

  —Sue Turnbull, Sydney Morning Herald

  “James . . . won the Ned Kelly award for first crime fiction six years ago—and she tells not just a tense and involving story, but also raises important questions about the role of the media, as the missing baby story becomes a runaway train. The Mistake, credible and accomplished, also asks what happens when family members begin to doubt each other, to wonder how well they know each other.”

  —The Australian

  “Compelling, well paced, and suspenseful to the end.”

  —Courier Mail

  “James is masterful at seamlessly ratcheting up the tension . . . Unputdownable.”

  —Good Reading magazine

  “With strong characterisation and a whack of psychological suspense, it is the kind of novel that will have you second-guessing your own reactions and skillfully exposes the troubling expectations we resort to in the absence of hard evidence.”

  —The Age

  “James’s pacing of her plot is masterly. From less than halfway through the novel the reader has to fight an overwhelming urge to flick to the end, to take a quick test of their intuition and to assuage the escalating suspense. Resist the temptation: the end has its poignant surprises, and James knows exactly where and how to reveal them.”

  —Adelaide Advertiser

  “The Mistake is a knockout read . . . with a plot that will haunt you long after the final pages.”

  —Angela Savage, broadcaster

  “The Mistake is an expertly written, compulsively readable novel that repays the reading with rich reflection. There are no easy answers here and the multiple ‘truths’ of the novel are continually called into question. Everyone is culpable. There are plenty of parallels between Jodie Garrow’s life and those of other real-life women who have been caught up in a media frenzy and judged based on appearance. Nevertheless, the psychological implications go beyond a political statement. This is a powerful book with broad appeal.”

  —Maggie Ball, Seattle PI

  “Within its suspenseful narrative, The Mistake has important things to say about how we think about motherhood, how the media views women, and how, when it comes to ‘the natural relationship between mother and daughter,’ few can be neutral.”

  —Linda Funnell, Newtown Review of Books

  “As in the public narratives we devour with tea and toast in the morning, there is nothing to convict Jodie upon except our own judgment of her character; we relish or condemn her according to our sense of moral distance from her. We take part as armchair jurors, comfortable in our own safety, never suspecting that buried secrets of our own may one day be uncovered.”

  —Canberra Times

  “An amazing book that had me hooked from start to finish . . .”

  —Great Aussie Reads

  “Brilliant, haunting, and disturbing, with a twist that will leave you gasping, this is both a subtle and closely observed portrayal of a family under stress, and a gripping thriller that leaves you guessing to the very end.”

  —Sophie Masson, author

  “It’s sneakily challenging, disconcerting, compelling, car-crash fascinating, and probably one of the best fictional reminders I’ve had in a while that public and media opinion should never be mistaken for the justice system, regardless of the ultimate outcome.”

  —AustCrimeFiction.org

  “It’s hands down one of the best endings I’ve read in a book, possibly ever.”

  —1girl2manybooks

  Where Have You Been?

  “Where Have You Been? is a novel you’ll not want to put down.”

  —Australian Bookseller & Publisher

  “The narrative’s power and cumulative suspense call to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.”

  —Sara Dowse, Sydney Morning Herald

  “Wendy James’s third novel is structured like a symphony . . . Skillful structuring, fine, flexible writing, and suspense that comes to a satisfying, if not limitingly cut-and-dried, conclusion, make this social-realist novel as hard to put down as any thriller.”

  —Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser

  Why She Loves Him

  “Emotionally astute, vivid, and eloquent, underpinned by eroticism, James’s fiction traces the contours of her characters’ lives as they grapple with responsibilit
y, freedom, and love, propelled by multifarious desires. These fresh, sensuous stories are by turns witty, perceptive, and coruscating, many with a delicious wry twist.”

  —Felicity Plunkett, critic

  “Absolutely amazing . . . There is something for everyone in this fantastic book.”

  —Australian Bookseller & Publisher

  “From single-page tales to the long sequence that ends the book, James’s sure hand leads us through sometimes-harrowing, sometimes-redemptive moments in her beautifully rounded characters’ lives.”

  —Who magazine

  “A penetrating picture of our life and times . . . a knockout.”

  —Sara Dowse, Canberra Times

  “What quiet confidence, what an honest setting down of things as they are, nothing extenuating . . . This is a gifted storyteller, and these are unusually arresting stories.”

  —Robert Lumsden, Adelaide Review

  Out of the Silence

  “A work of intelligence and talent informed by a deeply humane sensitivity . . . If Wendy James aspires to be our national novelist, she is on her way. In equal measures intellectual and sensual, Out of the Silence is a brilliantly cut literary gem sparkling from every angle.”

  —Sydney Morning Herald

  ALSO BY WENDY JAMES

  An Accusation

  The Golden Child

  The Lost Girls

  The Mistake

  Where Have You Been?

  Why She Loves Him

  The Steele Diaries

  Out of the Silence

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Wendy James

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542026482

  ISBN-10: 1542026482

  Cover design by Faceout Studio, Lindy Martin

  To Mark and Marie—always transcendent.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

  —Ecclesiastes 10:20

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  Arthurville, 1994

  My mother took the Mini—a ’74 model with squeaky brakes, balding tyres, and 120,000 miles on the odometer. Our “good” car, a fifteen-year-old Falcon station wagon, was out of action. The lights had been left on overnight, the battery was dead, and there was no spare cash to replace it. Dad was on an out-of-town shift and didn’t like to leave Mum without a car, so he’d cycled to the station on his dodgy old bike.

  I left for school just before eight thirty. I was running late (I was always running late) and was glad to escape the noise and the mess and my mother’s irritability. Amy was crying (Amy was always crying), she needed feeding (she always needed feeding), and my mother’s goodbye had been perfunctory (as her interactions always were since Amy had arrived): a distracted wave, See you later, have a nice day.

  According to the initial police report, Bev Ryan, who lived across the road, was walking into town for a cut and colour at nine thirty, and had passed by just in time to see Mum close the front door, carry the car seat to the rear of the little pale-blue car, and clip it in. Bev had said hello, peered at the sleeping baby through the window—What a sweet little thing, all that gorgeous hair—and walked on.

  Lionel Perkins, who had the garage on the corner, had seen her drive past not long after. He’d admired her profile—she was still a looker, despite the two kids—as well as her smooth gear change. You could always tell a farm girl.

  She’d waved to Val Darrow, who was sweeping the pavement outside Martin’s Newsagency. Val had seen the greeting but ignored it, for reasons that even she couldn’t fathom. Ray Yee, stacking apples out the front of Yee’s Olde Fruit Shoppe, had seen her turn left onto the main road, heading towards the highway. He’d waved, but too late for her to wave back.

  She’d stopped at the BP on the outskirts of town, where Mervyn Ebsworth filled the tank for her. He’d offered to check the oil, the tyres, but she’d already checked them herself. Mervyn, a shy man, especially when it came to women, hadn’t said much, but he’d noticed the baby, still rosily asleep in her capsule, and told her that he and his wife had just had their fourth, about the same age, a boy, Timothy. She’d asked him to pass on her regards to Shirley.

  She’d passed Errol Simmons and his wife, Wendy, on the highway. They were coming in from Haringey to take Wendy’s mother to the hospital. It was the fourth emergency trip they’d made in the last two months. The other three had turned out to be indigestion, but better safe than sorry. Errol recognised the Mini immediately: he’d sold it to my father five years before for a bit too much—it had been his kids’ runaround, was well past its use-by date—and had always felt vaguely guilty about it.

  Phil Coombes, local stock and station agent, had been heading to town on the back road from Dalhunty. He’d seen Mum waiting at the intersection when he’d turned back onto the highway. He’d flashed his lights, grinned—he’d known her since they were kids, had worked as a jackaroo for her old man—but she hadn’t returned his smile, just lifted two fingers off the steering wheel in acknowledgement. He’d watched in his rearview mirror as she put the little car into gear and turned left onto Oxley Road. She was heading east, following the path of the river back towards its source.

  How was Phil to know that he would be the last person to see her that day? That he would be the last person to see her at all before she became a headline?

  There’d been no signs, no portents.

  Or none that any of us had seen, at least—not even me, not even in retrospect.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A LITTLE BIRD

  The community New Year celebrations were a great success—with hundreds of happy Arthurvilleans attending the big BBQ and stalls held at the showground yesterday. The nine-o’clock fireworks were spectacular, but the pony rides provided unexpected entertainment. Especially when Mayor Bob Swalwell went arse over tit on some poor little pony that he should never have been allowed to ride and landed right where he belonged, in six inches of horseshit. The vision of a certain well-known local personage (a high-ranking public official, no less) flying over the top of one reluctant pony’s head straight into six inches of mud provided the crowd with some unexpected entertainment.

  A Little Bird, Arthurville Chronicle, 1992

  Jo

  Arthurville, 2018

  The sky outside the car changes just as I get to the Wellesley Road turnoff—lowering and darkening as if an enormous cloud has settled overhead—and I wind the window down to smell the air. According to the weather report, there is no chance of rain, not for months, but perhaps miracles are still possible.

  Or maybe not. The blast of air that hits me is so hot, so cruelly dry, that it is almost impossible to breathe. I close the window fast and turn the air-con up a notch.

  No rain.

  No rain no rain no rai
n no rain.

  I watched that old Woodstock video at least a dozen times with my father. When I say I watched it with him, I mean we were there together in the room. On every occasion, he was at least half-pissed, barely aware of me curled up on the lounge beside him, trying to be companionable, hoping for a crumb of affection. A crumb that was never offered.

  I think about that guy in the documentary now—the one with the microphone. His optimism came straight from the pages of Peter Pan: Hey, if you think really hard, maybe we can stop this rain? And the crowd responded with appropriately childlike enthusiasm.

  No rain no rain no rain no rain.

  The chant worked its magic back then: the rain cleared, the show went on.

  The landscape on either side of the red-dirt verge—low grey scrub, yellowing paddocks—bears no resemblance to that muddy New York field. Here, there’s been no rain for months. If only the spell could be reversed. Perhaps the desperate chanting of half a million stoned and half-naked young bodies would do the trick, but there’s no chance of that happening out here.

  It will be a good omen if my return to Arthurville coincides with a downpour, if my arrival heralds the end of the drought. God knows I need something—some sign—to show that I’ve made the right decision, that I’m not just slinking back, tail between my legs, with nothing to show for all my time in the city—if not a failure, no great success either.

  And maybe, just maybe, if I bring the rain with me, the magic will transfer to my own life too.

  By the time I pull up in the driveway, it’s dark—the sky that deep purple-blue that you only ever see west of the Great Dividing Range. The air is perfectly clear, the innumerable stars close and bright. Maybe I imagined those clouds.

  I turn off the ignition and sit in the car for a long moment, enjoying the last of the cool air.

  Nothing has changed since I was home last. In fact, nothing has changed since my childhood either. A cracked concrete path neatly dissects the front yard, which is now completely bereft of any vegetation, including grass; the west-facing verandah still displays the cast-iron Italianate three-piece setting Dad inherited from my grandmother, and that no one, as far as I know, has ever used. The blinds are down and the front porch light is off. Well, why would it be any different? I didn’t tell him I was coming. I haven’t told anyone. What am I doing here?