The Secrets in Silence

Nicole Trope

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781925576160
• Subtopic: Women in Fiction
• Index: Literature

There was so much anger brewing in the child that sometimes Alicia feared for all of them. And now she had gone and done this terrible thing. This terrible, terrible thing. Tara has lost her voice. She knows there was pain and fear but she cannot remember anything else. Now she can only answer the questions with silence. Minnie has buried her voice for years, losing herself in silence and isolation, keeping her secrets safe and her broken heart concealed. Liam finds refuge in silence; it is a place to go to when he cannot get the words out. Kate cannot speak for herself just yet. People are only separated from each other by moments, by fate and coincidence. One teenage mistake, one shocking choice and one terrible night will lead to courage found, voices raised and the truth finally spoken.

Summer

24

‘I don’t know, Tara,’ said Minnie. ‘Perhaps you should just come with me and walk Kate around the city in the pram?’

Tara shrugged. Minnie kept talking to her like she would open her mouth any minute and say something, but Tara had learned early on that Minnie was quite happy talking to people who never replied.

‘Yes, I know, the city is not really a place for a baby—but are you sure you’ll be all right here with her? I’ve never left you alone with her before, not really. I mean I’m always in the other room, aren’t I?’

Tara watched Kate grasp the coffee table and pull herself up to stand. It was her new trick and Tara clapped and praised her for it when they were alone.

She wanted to tell Minnie to watch her daughter but Minnie was pacing the room muttering, and Tara knew that meant she was either praying or talking to her mother.

She had noticed Minnie’s habit of talking to her mother the third time she had babysat Kate. Minnie had been in the kitchen making tea when Tara heard her ask, ‘So do you think I should tell him about the missing money, Mum? I don’t want to get anyone into trouble but I am the bookkeeper and I need to tell him what I’ve found.’

Tara hadn’t heard the doorbell ring or anyone come into the house. She knew Minnie lived alone with Kate because there were only two bedrooms.

She checked Kate’s position on the mat and then got up quietly and went to the kitchen to see Minnie’s mother. At the door she glanced quickly around the small room and then focused on Minnie’s back.

‘I suppose it is my job, Mum, isn’t it?’ said Minnie.

Tara looked around the room again and she even glanced under the small round wooden table in the centre.

‘Oh,’ said Minnie, flushing and smiling slightly. ‘I was just, you know . . . I lost my mum some time ago and, well, you get used to people being around, don’t you?’

Tara felt a flash of panic. Was Minnie like Sasha?

‘I know she’s not here, but people are never really gone, are they? I still feel her here. She lived here her whole life so I know she’s still here.’

Tara had nodded and smiled. Lots of people talked to the dead.

Minnie talked to her mother and she prayed. She didn’t preach at Tara or anyone else; as far as Tara could see her mother and God were just part of the family. Lots of people talked to God. Talking to the black angel made you crazy but talking to God and your dead mother made you . . . eccentric.

Neither Minnie’s dead mother nor God told her to cut up photo albums and stab people.

Tara didn’t find Minnie strange anymore even though she looked a little crazy in her giant clothes. Minnie seemed a little thinner every time Tara saw her. She claimed not to have time to eat and Tara thought that was just bullshit, but she was always starving when she got home from babysitting Kate. For such a small person she took up an enormous amount of time and energy.

Even Minnie’s shoes were too big for her. At home she walked around in a pair of stretched blue canvas flats that made her look like a child trying on her mother’s shoes. Tara wanted to laugh at the way she looked in those shoes but found the image comforting somehow.

Today Minnie was wearing old-lady heels and the same brown dress she had worn the first time Tara babysat. It was probably the only thing she had that still fit her smaller body. Tara wanted to take her shopping and get her hair done but Minnie wasn’t her mother or part of her family.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Minnie. ‘Please tell me what to do.’

Tara had tried praying. In her bedroom at night when the house was silent she pulled the covers over her head and asked God to help her. She whispered into the darkness, hoping that God would take pity on her and give her the answers everyone was looking for. She could whisper to God. She could barely hear the sound she made but she knew her lips were moving.

Kate didn’t care if she spoke or not and Tara was willing to bet that God didn’t care either. She prayed with her hands held tightly together and she begged and begged for the memory to return, but the idea of the lost baby was still just a bunch of words everyone kept repeating. Some days Tara thought they might have made it all up, that they might be trying to drive her completely insane. That they wanted her to be like her mother.

Tara felt a small tug inside herself and knew it to be a longing for Sasha. She shook her head and went over to sit down next to Kate on the floor. She worked hard to avoid thinking about her mother as anything except the lunatic who had lunged at her father with a pair of scissors, but memories had a way of rising out of the darkness and pulling you in. Still, the idea of a mother who would worry over her and protect her was sometimes so sweet she could taste it on her tongue. ‘What would it be like to be loved like that?’ she sometimes wondered as she watched Alicia grab Ethan on his way through the kitchen and plant a kiss on the back of his neck despite his wriggling protest.

She waited while Minnie twisted her hands together and whispered to the unseen presence in the room and she drifted into a memory of her mother on the good days.

She could smell the scent of vanilla that greeted her when she opened her eyes and knew that today was a day for the good mummy. She would run downstairs and find the kitchen filled with treats. Her mother would have been up for hours already. ‘Good morning, sleepyhead,’ she would say, even though the sun had barely made its way over the horizon.

And then there would be pancakes for breakfast and collage-making and painting and more baking. But at some point during the day her mother would begin her pacing—usually when it was nearly time for dinner, and Tara knew it had to do with her father coming home. Another adult was a threat. Children could inhabit a make-believe world along with you but another adult would stand at the kitchen door the way Tara’s father did and shake his head at the sight of three cakes and plates and plates of pink-frosted cupcakes.

Sasha would pace back and forth and talk to the unseen presence. She would whisper and giggle and Tara could remember feeling excluded from the conversation and angry about that exclusion. She never told her father about the whispering because she had no idea it was significant. Only after Sasha had come to stay and had cut up the wedding album, blaming the black angel, had Tara remembered about the whispering. It was never clear to Tara who her mother was talking to.

She loved the activity, loved licking the bowl and helping pour the cake. She would watch in awe as intricate doll houses appeared from random junk as if by magic.

There would be times when her little hands frustrated her mother. She would break something or spill something and then there would be agonised screaming and more muttering.

Tara would find a space in the kitchen and wait for her mother to notice her and include her again. She would wait for her mother to come back to her. She longed for the arrival of her father in those moments, understanding that he would make the world safe again.

By the time he arrived home the conversation would be over. Her mother would become stiff and careful, protecting the voices in her head from another adult. ‘We’ve had a lovely day, haven’t we, Tarakins, just lovely,’ her mother would say and Tara would nod enthusiastically, pushing the fraught moments out of her mind.

Even at four Tara knew she had to protect her mother from her father.

‘He wants to take me away, my little bird. He wants to steal me away from our nest.’

Tara closed her eyes and breathed away the memory. Minnie’s muttering didn’t bother her as much.

She knew that if she just opened her mouth and told Minnie that she and Kate would be fine Minnie would feel a lot better, but the secret of her returning voice was something Tara was not ready to share. Only Kate heard her speak. When Minnie was home she always worked with the door closed and Tara would whisper songs and stories to Kate, who would watch her with her deep dark eyes. Kate didn’t care if she talked or not. Kate held out her fat little arms when Tara arrived on her babysitting afternoons and smiled her gummy smile.

Tara watched Minnie for a few more minutes then pulled out her phone and typed. We’ll be fine. I’ll take her for a walk and then give her a bottle and then put her down to sleep. I’ll have my mobile so I can text Alicia if I have a problem. She can be here in five minutes. I won’t let anything happen to her. I love her too!!!!!

Minnie read the message and nodded. ‘I guess I have to leave her some time, don’t I? You know I wouldn’t if I didn’t absolutely have to, but Mr Chalmers needs me to come in just for a short time so I can understand the business better.’

Tara nodded. Minnie talked about Mr Chalmers like he might explode if she didn’t do exactly as he asked. She was terrified to tell him ‘no’. Minnie’s clients were a bunch of schoolchildren who needed her to keep them in line. She indulged them and protected them.

Tara showed Minnie the phone again and Minnie nodded and went to find her bag.

‘Right,’ said Minnie, standing at the front door, ‘let’s get this show on the road.’ Tara smiled. Minnie was forever getting ‘the show on the road’.

Once she had watched Minnie pull out of the driveway, holding Kate up to the window and making her wave goodbye, Tara breathed deeply and relaxed.

‘Now, my little Katie,’ she said, ‘what about a walk?’ She coughed because she had only ever spoken to Kate in soft whispers. Her voice sounded strange to her.

A voice was how you told the world you were there. Tara felt her body click into focus when the words rushed out of her mouth. ‘Here I am,’ she thought.

‘Here I am, Kate. Here is Tara. My name is Tara and you are Kate and I have not been allowed to speak for such a long time.’

Kate flapped her arms...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• AUTUMN
• WINTER
• SPRING
• SUMMER
• OTHER BOOKS BY NICOLE TROPE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS