Small Spaces

This edition published by Fourteen Press in 2022

First published by Walker Books Australia in 2018

Copyright © Sarah Epstein 2018

All rights reserved. This book remains the copyright of the author. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. Electronic versions of the book are licensed for the individual’s personal use only and may not be distributed in any form without compensation to the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without express permission from the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

This story is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design, hand lettering, and internal design: Sarah Epstein

Cover images: @Ravven, Depositphotos; @anocha98, Depositphotos

ISBN 978 0 64533 224 7 (ebook)

ISBN 978 0 64533 225 4 (paperback)

YA fiction. #LoveOzYA.

Find out more about the author and her books at

sarahepsteinbooks.com

A guide for international readers: This book is set in Australia, and therefore uses British English spelling. Some spellings may differ from those used in American English. Please see the back of the book for a guide for international readers.

For Tony, Hugo, and Harvey.

Contents

1.NOW

2.THEN

3.NOW

4.THEN

5.NOW

6.THEN

7.NOW

8.THEN

9.NOW

10.THEN

11.NOW

12.THEN

13.NOW

14.THEN

15.NOW

16.THEN

17.NOW

18.THE CARNIVAL

19.NOW

20.THEN

21.NOW

22.THEN

23.NOW

24.THEN

25.NOW

26.THEN

27.NOW

28.THEN

29.NOW

30.THEN

31.NOW

32.THEN

33.NOW

34.THEN

35.NOW

36.THEN

37.NOW

38.THEN

39.NOW

40.THEN

41.NOW

42.THEN

43.NOW

44.THEN

45.NOW

Thank you for reading

A guide for international readers

Glossary of Australian terms

About the author

Also by Sarah Epstein

Also by Sarah Epstein

NOW

A lot of people have a fear of small spaces.

Elevators, photo booths, changing rooms in clothing stores. Hedge mazes, enclosed water slides, narrow staircases, walk-in wardrobes. I mean, I get it – I avoid those things too. I can’t even lie in a bathtub without thrashing like a netted salmon. But sometimes I think the small space I fear most is the one inside my own head.

You’re freaking out, aren’t you? says my best friend Sadie. She’s been in enough of these situations with me to recognise the fidgety hands and repetitive swallowing. She’s more than familiar with my foot-to-foot shuffle as my eyes hunt down anything resembling an exit. In the eight years I’ve known Sadie she’s talked me down off the ledge at least a hundred times. She’s my own personal claustrophobia negotiator whether she wants the gig or not.

I’m not freaking out.

Sadie snorts, suppressing a smile. Mmmkay. You’re gasping like a goldfish there, champ. Deep breaths. She keeps her eyes on the shop’s display counter, at the twenty flavours of ice cream beneath the glass. Hold it together for thirty more seconds, you got me?

New negotiation tactic: mild threats, apparently.

I close my eyes and work on slowing my breathing. The last thing I want is to hyperventilate somewhere as public as the Seaspray Kiosk. It was practically empty when Sadie insisted we come inside, until a large group of Port Bellamy High girls followed shortly after us. The tang of body odour and coconut oil seeps into the available oxygen like black ink into paper towel.

I’ll have you know, I manage through clenched teeth, I’m as chilled as your precious mint choc-chip.

Sliding me a dubious look, Sadie struggles to hold her ground as more bodies press in behind us. She’s shielding me from them, carving out a small arc of free space, enduring catty elbows and dirty glares for her trouble. Above me, blowflies snap and crackle as they meet their fate inside the insect zapper, and I try to ignore the warm air sliding around my ankles from beneath the Coke fridge by the wall.

Just breathe, Tash.

Hold your shit together.

Mind over matter.

But if we’re relying on my mind as a touchstone, we’re really in trouble.

You and your damn crush, I mutter, and we both glance at the redhead behind the counter. Alice, her name badge tells us. She’s willowy and timid-looking with a crumpled apron and flyaway hair, the polar opposite of my strong-shouldered and self-assured best friend of Māori descent. You know she’s probably into guys, right?

Sadie turns to me in mock surprise. "Natasha Carmody, you are cold, woman. Don’t be such a spoilsport."

I want to be a good wingwoman, I just wish Alice worked somewhere twenty times larger. The Seaspray is a weather-beaten shack at the end of Port Bellamy Pier, where the boardwalk meets the breakwall. Once well-maintained and a drawcard for tourists, it’s now perched here like a discarded toy, salt-chewed and clinging to memories of its heyday. Which, when you think about it, pretty much sums up our entire town. Travel websites call Port Bellamy a hidden gem of the New South Wales mid north coast, with its sandy beaches in close proximity to sprawling national parks. But likening it to a precious jewel is far too generous. A rough diamond more like, with flaws you can spot without squinting.

Our turn next, Sadie assures me above the din of our classmates, a cluster of Year Twelve girls we’ve known, and barely spoken to, since primary school. Alice hands change to the girl next to us and finally turns our way. Sadie manages an overeager Hi! before Rachael Han elbows her way to the front.

Raspberry sorbet in a cup, she says, tapping the glass with a glittery fingernail. Make sure you fill it to the top this time. It’d be nice to get my money’s worth for once.

Sadie turns to Rachael, shaking her head in disbelief.

Yeah, hi? Earth to Rachael? Way to cut in line.

Rachael barely looks our way, and it’s difficult to imagine how the three of us were inseparable when she first moved here from Melbourne. We invited Rachael to sit with us at lunch because we thought it must be tough moving to a new school, especially when her twin brother was immediately embraced by the IT club crowd. And while Rachael readily accepted Sadie’s chatty confidence, it felt like she merely tolerated my clumsy attempts at conversation. I remember eleven-year-old me feeling so grateful that this pretty girl, with her trendy clothes and plane trips to her grandparents in South Korea, forgave me for being so dumpy and small-town.

I’ve been waiting forever, Rachael says now, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear. It’s my turn.

Ahh, no? Sadie folds her arms. You weren’t even here when we came inside.

Rachael takes a long moment to look Sadie up and down, from her faded Sex Pistols T-shirt to her surgically attached purple Chucks. Alice is already serving somebody else and I’m more than ready to cut our losses and get out of here.

But Sadie, being Sadie, is just warming up.

Mmm, sorry. What was that? she says, cupping her ear. Sounds like somebody owes us an apology.

A groan escapes me because I know how this is going to end. I mean, don’t we get enough of this at school? There are only a few days left of summer holidays and I’d planned on slipping into my final year of school undetected. If I want to prove to my parents I’m capable of looking after myself, I need this year to be incident-free.

And yet, I spend all my time with the most confrontational person on the east coast. Clearly, I haven’t thought this through.

Rachael’s friends press in closer, surrounding us like seagulls at a picnic, waiting for Rachael to throw them a scrap they can scrabble and squawk over.

Oh, I’m sorry, she says, that was rude of me. I didn’t realise there’s an express line for dykes and whackjobs.

And there it is.

Great, I mutter to Sadie. Can we leave now, Dee?

The word whackjob slips under my skin and sets it alight. I wince at the word dyke too, though I know Sadie couldn’t care less. She’s learned to ignore this town’s small-minded gibes about everything from her skin colour to her rainbow pride T-shirts. She’s like Teflon and always has been. I’m a sponge.

Come on, Rachael, Sadie says, leaning in and arching an eyebrow. I think we all know why you invited me to so many sleepovers.

She winks like she’s flirting but there’s no humour in it. Sadie’s distracting the seagulls away from me by offering herself up as a French fry. Rachael’s not taking the bait. She smiles coolly and drums her fingernails on the counter.

Well, gee, if we’re talking sleepovers—she glances over her shoulder, ensuring her audience is captive—then maybe Tash can explain to us all why she peed in her sleeping bag like a two-year-old.

Titters ripple across Rachael’s posse and the shop’s humidity wraps around my throat and clings there. Mrs Han made Rachael promise she’d never breathe a word about my little accident five years ago. It seems promises have expiry dates when Rachael’s short on ammunition.

And the way she talked in her sleep, Rachael says, addressing Sadie but looking at me. Calling out for her little imaginary friend.

Shut up, Rachael. Shutupshutupshutup.

Oh, Sparrow, she whines. Help me, Sparrow! I’m so afwaid of the daaaark.

She scrunches her fists like a helpless toddler. I want to grab them and ram them into her face.

I never said those things in my sleep. I know I didn’t.

Did I?

Sparrow is the last person I’d ask for help. I never wanted him to exist in the first place.

Did I?

I didn’t.

I don’t.

Never again.

You’re so full of it, Rachael, Sadie says, reaching for my hand. She tugs me towards the exit, ramming her shoulder into those too slow to move. We stumble outside through the plastic ribbon curtain, the sea breeze grabbing fistfuls of our hair.

I wriggle free of Sadie’s grip and stride down the pier towards the beach.

Tash, she calls. Aww, c’mon. Wait up.

I bristle at her voice, at the boats in the marina with their ropes clanging against steel masts. Somewhere, a fisherman has his tinny radio up too loud. The sky is tainted with the brown haze of bushfire smoke from a national park twenty kilometres away. It encroaches from the west like an omen.

Sadie catches up to me where the boardwalk meets the shore.

Hey, you’re okay, right? she says to my back. You’re out of there now. I’ll never drag you in there again.

She thinks this is about my claustrophobia. I whirl around to face her. We could have just let Rachael order her damn sorbet.

Her mouth drops open. No, we couldn’t. You can’t let people walk all over you. You can’t say nothing and let them get away with it. Life doesn’t work that way.

It does for me. The more forgettable I am, the better. The stigma that’s followed me around since childhood is finally waning. Without panic attacks and psychiatric appointments I’ve become bland and unimportant, another forgettable face in the school corridor cattle drive. Sadie can be brash and provocative and have people talking behind her back, but it’s the last thing I want for myself.

The slumber party, Dee. Did you have to bring that up in front of Rachael?

She holds up her hands, apologetic. I wasn’t thinking. If I could take it back, I would.

Yeah, well, you can’t. And now I get to kick off the school year with a bedwetting rumour circulating the quad.

I avoid mentioning Sparrow, and Sadie knows better than to bring him up.

Come on, Tashie. You know I’d never deliberately draw attention to that stuff.

My sandal bows as I stub it on the boards, my aqua toenails looking like I’m trying too hard. I know …

Carmody. Sadie looks at me sternly. Who’s got your back?

Huffing, I glance at the horizon where broody clouds are gathering out at sea.

Carmody …?

I sigh and mumble a begrudging, You.

Huh? You’ll have to speak up. I couldn’t hear you over all the sulking.

"You’ve got my back."

Damn straight, sister. She hooks an arm around my shoulders and bumps me to her hip. I’ve also got your front, your sides, those weird knobbly knees, and that big complicated head of yours too.

This time it’s my turn to snort. Great. My own best friend thinks I’m a head case. What hope do I have of changing anyone else’s mind?

Sadie waves a dismissive hand. Let them think what they want. Those losers at school made their minds up about us years ago. It’s your parents we’ve gotta convince, right?

Exactly. The only chance I have at applying for a photography degree at a Sydney or Melbourne university is if I can convince my parents I’m capable of looking after myself. It would mean moving out of home and living on campus – not exactly something my mum will be doing cartwheels over. I mean, the woman doesn’t even trust me to load a dishwasher properly. She thinks I can’t hear her restacking it after I’ve gone to bed.

Listen, Sadie says. My mum’s got us another waitressing gig if you want it. A couple of hours and fifty bucks cash in hand? She wiggles her eyebrows, wanting to make things right.

There’s no denying the money comes in handy for professional photo printing, and I need to save for a smart-looking folio to display my work for university interviews. Plus, it’s hard saying no to Sadie’s mum, Kiri, who’s worked so hard to establish her catering business as a single mum with no help from family back in New Zealand.

I slump against a wooden post painted to look like a swarthy seaman. When and where?

Sadie’s shoulders drop an inch, relieved I’m letting it go. As blunt as she can be, I know it rattles her when she upsets me.

Next Saturday on Banksia Avenue, she says.

I release a low whistle. Banksia Avenue is where all the old brick bungalows are being knocked down and replaced by modern homes with concrete rendering. Most of them have glossy timber gates and high walls lined with palm trees, not to mention views of the ocean.

Fancypants, Sadie agrees. Some big welcome back party for a family returning to the port.

"You mean they actually got out of here and they’re choosing to return?"

I know, right? Sadie tugs her wavy brown hair into a top knot and wrestles an elastic around it. Not renting either. They bought that two-storey house with the kooky porthole window. Mum says she’s catering for a hundred people.

Popular family.

We wait to cross Marine Drive as cars inch out of the beach car park, reluctant to leave the warm afternoon behind. Across the road, daytrippers linger outside the fish and chip shop, loose T-shirts over damp swimmers and sandy feet in rubber thongs.

And I suppose Rachael’s wangled an invite, I say, just to make us really earn our money?

Probably, Sadie admits. We turn at the milk bar and head up the hill away from the shops. Has there ever been a party in Port Bellamy that she hasn’t got herself invited to? And anyway, Rachael’s mum sold this family the house, so the Hans will be the official welcoming committee.

We cut up through Banksia Avenue and I see that Sadie’s right: a real estate sign with a life-size photo of Francine Han in a blue blazer is attached to the wall at number eight. The cream-coloured home, with its sleek plantation shutters and sandstone driveway, has sat empty for almost eight months. Now there are wicker chairs on the deck and matching topiary trees on either side of the front door.

My attention drifts along the driveway where it stretches past the house to a large double garage at the rear. Something ripples in the back of my mind, lurking under memory’s surface like a scent you recognise and can’t quite put your finger on.

Up on the cream house’s second level, a shadow moves across the round porthole window. A sheer curtain hitches up, then quickly falls back again.

Back again.

Back again?

Who did you say lives here?

I didn’t, Sadie says. I saw the booking on Mum’s wall calendar. She squints in a bid to recall. Beachy-sounding name from memory. Waters or Sailor or something?

The world suddenly speeds up, then slams on its brakes. My next word is like balancing on tiptoe.

Fisher …?

Yeah! Fisher. That’s it. You know ’em?

My mouth goes dry and I don’t trust myself to speak. I manage a vague shrug, but my mind is spinning.

All right, I’d better motor, Sadie says. Promised Mum I’d help her make seafood fritters. She moves towards the corner where we need to part ways until she realises I’m not following. She takes a hesitant step back, fingering her studded belt nervously. So, we’re okay, right? You still look kind of upset.

Yeah, I croak, we’re cool.

Hug it out?

She comes at me with a hopeful smile and open arms, hooking me around the shoulders the way I hug my little brother when he lets me. I peer across the road at number eight, Banksia Avenue. There’s no movement at the window now, but I know she’s in there somewhere.

Mallory Fisher.

The girl he took instead of me.

THEN

The Mid Coast Times | Archives

Section: News

Date: 13 January 2008

GREENWILLOW, NSW – A missing child alert has been issued for six-year-old Mallory Fisher.

Local authorities say Mallory went missing from Greenwillow on the New South Wales mid north coast on Saturday, 12 January. She attended the Greenwillow Carnival on Summit Road with her parents, Daniel and Annabel Fisher of Port Bellamy. Mallory became separated from her eight-year-old brother, Morgan, outside the public amenities building at the southern end of the carnival site shortly after 2 pm.

A search of the site was conducted by Mallory’s parents and carnival staff before police were called at approximately 2.45 pm. The search was extended on Saturday evening into surrounding rural properties and nearby bushland.

Mallory is described as an outgoing and inquisitive kindergartner who may have wandered off and become disorientated. She was last seen wearing a yellow and white checkered sundress, a pink short-sleeved cardigan, and white canvas shoes. She is approximately 112 cm tall and is described as Caucasian with shoulder-length blonde hair and blue eyes.

If you have any information about Mallory Fisher’s whereabouts, contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

NOW

If you google images of Mallory Fisher, the same three pictures turn up over and over again: her kindergarten photo, a snapshot with her brother at a campground, and a cropped section of a blurry family Christmas photo. The first two were released to the press by her parents and graced the short-lived circulation of MISSING posters. The Christmas photo was probably supplied by some well-meaning relative who’d been doorstepped by a pushy reporter.

Perhaps if she hadn’t been found alive there would be dozens more. Mallory as a baby, Mallory’s sixth birthday party, Mallory riding the Greenwillow carousel. There may have been photographic renderings of how she’d look older – as a ten-year-old, as a tween, as a pretty teenager. Her age-progressed image might be circulating Facebook as we speak.

Instead Mallory Fisher stumbled out of a hiking trail, filthy and dehydrated, her scalp bleeding in raw patches where her blonde hair had been torn out in chunks. Mallory Fisher disappeared for seven days and when she resurfaced, the once-chatty six-year-old never spoke another word. The MISSING posters came down and the Fishers left Port Bellamy, seemingly for good.

The general consensus among locals is that Mallory had been abducted, most likely from Old Meadow Lane, the first road she’d come upon after wandering away from the carnival. A crime of opportunity people called it – someone had taken Mallory on a whim, then got scared or bored or grew a conscience, eventually dumping her in Barrington Tops National Park to fend for herself. Newspapers reported that suspects had been questioned but no arrests were ever made. Leads were followed up and eliminated, and unreliable witness statements were debunked.

Including mine.

It makes me cringe when I think about what I told the police I saw that day. It had all seemed so real at the time.

Who’s that?

I slam the laptop closed and Mallory’s images are swallowed up in one jarring bite. My brother Tim peers around my bedroom doorway, craning to see what had my attention.

Hey. Whatcha doin’, Timber?

He slumps against the doorframe and picks at an old paint drip. Mum wants her laptop back. And you’re not allowed to call me that.

"Call you what, Timber?"

Stop it, he says with a flash of nine-year-old surliness. Mum says you’re not allowed to call me that anymore.

Yeah, well, Mum says I’m not allowed to do pretty much anything. So maybe you can cut me some slack in the nickname department.

Tim considers this for a moment, then shrugs his approval. He can’t work out why the name is suddenly banned either. When he was a baby learning how to walk, he’d plop onto his backside and I’d call out "Timberrr!" like he was a tree falling in a forest. He’d giggle every time, so the nickname stuck. It was perfectly acceptable until two weeks ago when Tim tried his new skateboard for the first time.

"Don’t call out Timber whenever he falls over, Natasha, Mum scolded. You’re drawing attention to his failings. It will scar him psychologically."

Which basically translates as: One child in this family with issues is plenty, thanks very much.

Not issues, Dr Ingrid would remind her. Challenges.

What were you looking at? Tim asks, glancing past me at the laptop. I roll my chair in front of it and his eyebrows dip in suspicion. Who was—?

Hey, what are Mum and Dad bickering about?

I usher him back into the hallway, slipping the laptop under my arm. Our long-haired tabby, Mouse, springs off my bed and pads after us.

Dunno, Tim says, his hand going for the computer. I’m too quick for him and hold it above my head. They were okay before Dad’s phone call.

We pause at the top of the stairs. What phone call?

I answered it – she asked for Dad. She said it was Aunty Ally. Tim glances up, all big blue eyes and tiny freckles. He has a narrow, refined face like Mum, nothing like my pudgy cheeks and deep dimples. Do we have an Aunty Ally?

Yeah—I chew the inside of my lip—we do.

His eyebrows lift. Are you sure? I’ve never heard of her. Is she, like, really old? Like a granny? Or a rich person?

I chuckle quietly and bring a finger to my lips, keeping one ear trained on the voices below. No wonder my parents are arguing. It’s what happens when Ally drops into their lives, like a grenade in a goldfish pond.

We tiptoe halfway downstairs and plop ourselves on the listening step. From here you can watch TV, eavesdrop on the kitchen, and spy on the front yard, all without being seen.

Aunty Ally’s four years younger than Dad, I whisper to Tim. So she’s not old. And definitely not rich.

Dad’s sort of old.

He’s forty-nine, T.

He’s got grey hair, Tim whispers, indignant. "No one else in my class has a dad with grey hair. No one else’s dad is nearly fifty." He shakes his head like he can’t believe this escaped my notice.

Well, you were a surprise, you know that. Mum and Dad thought their baby-making days were over. Maybe Dad was so shocked it turned his hair grey.

I bug my eyes at Tim and his mouth drops open. He touches light fingertips to his sun-kissed hair. Can that happen? How scared do you have to be?

He tickles Mouse’s ears absently as his mind wanders, and I wish I could crawl inside his head and see the scenarios playing out in his mind. A broken Xbox, the angry dog next door, Mum smothering his hair with goop to eradicate head lice. Sweet, innocent nine-year-old stuff – the sort of thing kids’ fears should be made of.

Mum’s voice drifts into the hallway below.

You said she was in Byron Bay until February. Christ, Richard! There goes our element of surprise.

It doesn’t matter, Dad replies. Showing her a real estate appraisal won’t sway her in the least. She won’t budge.

"I know she won’t budge, Richard. Mum says Dad’s name like it’s a dirty word. The whole point of getting the property valuation done while she was away was so the estate agent could get through the door. Francine Han said your sister threw a bucket of water at her!"

Beside me Tim slaps a hand across his mouth to stifle a giggle. He’s probably thinking whoever this old and penniless aunt is, she sounds quirky enough to be cool! And I suppose Ally is cool in her bohemian art-hippy kind of way. Last time I saw her she’d shaved her head and planned to paint a huge wall mural down the middle of her house. Only problem is, Willow Creek House is technically not just hers – it belongs to both Ally and my