On the Jellicoe Road

I stop for a moment. “Do you want me to remind you what happened last time? I don’t ever want to be that angry with you again, Jonah. I just want to get past Yass this time and find her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

“Oh, so you were reading her mind back then, too, were you? Is that why you called your school?”

“No, but just say I was reading yours and it was kind of saying, ‘Whatever I find out there is going to kill me a bit inside.’ And I know what you’re thinking now. That if you can find Ha

“You’re wrong,” I say, but I walk back to him and we take the track that leads to the garage.

And he is wrong. Because I was thinking the exact opposite. If I find my mother, it will lead me to Ha

Once we get off the Jellicoe Road, we stop at Santangelo’s and text him to meet us outside. He comes out, barefoot and bleary-eyed, holding something in his hands, and Griggs gets out of the car to greet him. They talk for a while but I don’t want to join in. I’m scared that everyone’s going to try to talk me out of this. Santangelo comes to my window and pokes his head in.

“Soon as I got home I burnt you a CD,” he says, handing it to me.

I nod.

“Take this,” he says, putting some notes in my hand. “It’s the Club House share. GI Joe won’t take it.”

“No.”

“Yes. Pay me back later. The petrol alone will cost you a fortune and I can’t promise this car will last.”

Griggs opens the car door. “We’ve got to go.”

Santangelo leans through the window and hugs me. “Raffy will kill me,” he whispers.

He goes around to Griggs’s side and they do that awkward thing where they can’t acknowledge that they actually have a friendship. After standing around for a moment or two, they shake hands.

“You know shit’s going to hit the fan, all in your direction,” Griggs says to him as he gets into the car.

“I’ll deal with the sergeant. But I’ll tell you this. I’m giving you three days. If you aren’t back in three days, I’m going to tell them exactly where you are.”

“Fair enough,” Griggs says, and I nod.

Chapter 22

Somewhere on the highway to Sydney I begin to cry and it’s like I can’t stop. Griggs reaches over and touches my face, then reaches down and takes hold of my hand. We stay like that for a while in silence. Like that time on the train, I feel whole and again it surprises me that I can feel so together when I am revisiting the most fragmented time of my life.

We listen to the CD that Santangelo burnt for us. A bit of Guns n’ Roses and Ke

We don’t have much of a plan. An easy option would be to stay at his house but he knows his mother will call the Brigadier as soon as we arrive and he has promised me three days without voices of reason or authority. So the next seventy-two hours are in my territory with my rules. But remembering is difficult. Living with my mother meant we moved at least eight times, because she was obsessed with the idea that someone was after us. Once, I remember falling asleep in a squat in Melbourne and next morning I woke up in Adelaide. Another time I stayed with a foster family. I’m not sure how old I was but I remember kindness. I remember another time, waking up in a police station when I was about seven years old. I don’t know how I got there, except that the trip back to my mother seemed a long way and now, when I think of it, I realise that police station was the one in Jellicoe.

My first clear memory of time and place was being in a hospital when I was four because of my asthma. The walls were painted with animals and trees and as I stared at one of the trees, I could swear there was a boy hiding in the branches. I didn’t see that boy again until I got to Ha

I sleep, one of those crazy sleeps where you think you’re awake but it ends up being like you’re in a time machine and you look at the clock and it’s three hours later. The morning sun is blinding and there’s a foul taste in my mouth.

“You were dribbling,” Griggs says. He looks tired, but content.

“Thanks for mentioning it.”

“Anson Choi dribbled on my shoulder the whole way down,” he says. He looks at me for a moment and I know he wants to say something.

“What?” I ask.

“We passed Yass about half an hour ago.”

I smile. Three years on and we’ve moved forward, past the town where the Brigadier found us.

“If you weren’t driving, I’d kiss you senseless,” I tell him.

He swerves to the side of the road and stops the car abruptly. “Not driving any more.”

All I remember about the Sydney of my past is the last place we lived in near the Cross. At one stage we’re on a road with four lanes of traffic on each side, in the middle of morning peak-hour traffic. I see a Coca-Cola sign in the distance and I’m amazed at what comes flooding back.

“We lived somewhere around here, to the left. Once we lived just behind that sign.”

I’m impressed with Griggs’s ability to drive in the city. I feel claustrophobic and caged in. Drivers beep their horns impatiently and there are so many signs and arrows. We drive around for ages, trying to work out where to park the car. Everywhere we go there are parking meters. Griggs decides that we need to park the car in a quieter street just outside the city.

“Do you know where?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t want to be seen too close to home. Everyone knows everyone.”

“Where’s home?”

“Waterloo. About five minutes from here.”

“Waterloo. Is it a tough place?”

“No, but some people have tough lives. I’ll take you there one day.”

“Turn left,” I tell him. “There have to be some streets down here without parking meters.”

The car isn’t doing so well and I feel bad for Santangelo because he probably knew that a seven-hour trip would wipe it out but he let us have it all the same. Just thinking of him makes me think of Raffy and of how they would all be getting ready for school at the moment. I wonder what they’re thinking. I left a note saying that I’d be back in a couple of days and for a moment I miss them all: Raffy and Jessa and Ben, and even Mr. Palmer and poor Chloe P., and the other seniors of the House and the year tens, whose energy I love. I even miss Richard.

After we finally find a car park, Griggs is pragmatic and goes into sergeant-major mode. I can tell that he’s already wound up tight. This is a world he can’t control the way he does the territory wars or the guys at his school.

“We begin with people you remember, places you remember. Houses you lived in, corner shops. Restaurants.”

But I have no idea where to start because I recognise nothing. Even when we come across a playground that looks familiar, I see that the units and terraces around it have been renovated. They look expensive and trendy and I feel as if there is no way that we could ever have lived here and it begins to confuse me. The redevelopment around here is mind-blowing. Restaurants and cafes and a massive international hotel.

“Where did the other people go?” I ask Griggs. “The people with nothing but their plastic bags and shopping trolleys filled with everything they own? What did people say to them? ‘You can’t afford to be homeless here?’”