Mr Romanov's Garden in the Sky Read online

  ‘Yeah,’ said Davey. ‘You do.’

  ‘You look incredible too, by the way.’

  Davey shifted the sunglasses down onto the tip of his nose and looked over the thick white rims.

  ‘So the old me wasn’t any good,’ he said. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No, Davey. I’m not saying . . .’

  ‘Oh, I think you are. Why do I have to shave my head, wear a cap and sunnies to look incredible? I was incredible before, you know?’

  ‘Yeah, Davey. I know.’

  We’d skipped breakfast again and lunch had well and truly arrived. Mr Romanov needed food and coffee, and we needed fuel, so we stopped briefly at a 7-Eleven roadhouse at Pheasants Nest. We decided it was best to send only one person in, so when Mr Romanov pulled the Merc up to the petrol bowser, I took the orders and went inside for the food and drinks. The makeover hadn’t sunk in yet. I knew I looked different. I looked totally different from the way I did before, but the truth was nothing had changed, not really. I’d spent so many years being me, being this boyish puzzle that people tried to work out, it was hard not to feel like a fraud. But all of that vanished when the lady behind the counter looked up.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘Loving that dress, just quietly.’

  I hadn’t expected more compliments. I glanced down my front and tugged at the dress against my thigh.

  ‘What, this old thing?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that. And the boots too.’

  ‘They’re leather,’ I said. ‘Had them for yonks.’

  ‘Gorgeous.’

  I smiled at the lady and forgot for a moment what I was there to do.

  ‘So, what can I get you?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh right, sorry. What kind of things do you have for lunch?’

  She pointed to the cabinets on the counter stocked with sandwiches, pies, sausage rolls, muffins, doughnuts and banana bread. Rather than risk stopping again, I thought I should add a few extras onto the order. There were now a few people waiting to pay for petrol, so I stood off to the side while I grabbed what I wanted then rejoined the queue. I caught sight of a TV screen on the wall nearby. A serious looking man in a suit was watching a sports story on the midday news. There was no sound coming from the TV so I kept my eyes on the scrolling headlines along the bottom of the screen. After a string of useless information, the headlines I’d been fearing suddenly appeared.

  POLICE WIDEN SEARCH FOR MISSING TEENS AFTER SIGHTING IN GOULBURN.

  As the words shifted left to right, the sport story ended and a familiar face appeared on the screen in front of a microphone. It was the lady I’d met in the line at the supermarket, the one who’d given advice about dying my hair. I tried to read her lips, tried to follow what she was saying but a voice called out behind me.

  ‘Can I help you now, darling.’

  The lady behind the counter had her eyes on the TV. As I walked towards her, I prayed that my photo didn’t appear in the time it took me to get to the counter. I watched her face and waited for something to register but halfway there she dropped her eyes and made a tut-tut sound with her mouth.

  ‘Horrible business that,’ she said.

  I screwed up my face and pretended not to know what she was talking about.

  ‘Those two young ones,’ she said. ‘The boy and girl from Melbourne. God, I’d be beside myself if it was my kid.’

  I nodded politely as if I was none the wiser, and after paying for the food and the petrol, I gathered my things and craned my head towards the door.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ I said. ‘My mum’s waiting in the car.’

  As soon as I rounded the far corner of the 7-Eleven, I began to run.

  Davey saw me coming, and when I approached the Merc he opened the front passenger door and waited.

  ‘Someone spotted us,’ I said. ‘Actually, they spotted me. At the supermarket, in Goulburn.’

  I off-loaded some of the food and drink to Davey and jumped into the front. We closed the doors and Mr Romanov began to drive.

  ‘So what’s that mean?’ asked Davey.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘The sound was off on the TV so I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying but I recognised this lady I spoke to in the supermarket.’

  ‘Why did you speak to her?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was in the line. I just did.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Hair dye,’ I said. ‘Hair dye and Danny Fitzpatrick.’

  ‘Who the hell is Danny Fitzpatrick?’

  ‘He was a boy she liked.’

  Davey made a growling noise.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to keep a low profile, stay off the radar so to speak, and you start chatting to a total stranger in a supermarket checkout about hair dye and boyfriends.’

  ‘He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was a creep.’

  ‘Lexie . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I know, Davey, but she bailed me up. I didn’t think.’

  ‘Well, you’d better start thinking and you’d better do it now. Do they know about the car?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Right, at least that’s one thing. That policeman worries me though.’

  ‘But he didn’t see me. As far as he knows, it was just you and Pops.’

  ‘Clearly you don’t watch CSI, Lexie. If you did, you’d know that the police are actually trained to investigate things, to make connections and solve crimes. They know where we’re headed and they’ve got photos . . .’

  ‘Davey . . .’

  ‘Don’t interrupt, Lexie . . . And although I deserve an Academy Award for my convincing role as a cancer victim back there, sooner or later he’s going to put two and two together. I’m not sure what my mum told them about the little I said, but I think we have to assume they’re still of the opinion we’ve been abducted by a psycho Russian with a gun – no offence, Mr Romanov – so makeover or not, if you want to get to Surfers Paradise there’s to be no more chatting with strangers.’

  I waited for a moment in case Davey had anymore to say.

  ‘Have you finished?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Davey. ‘I’ve finished.’

  ‘So what about tonight, then? The overnight stay?’

  Davey slid his glasses down to the tip of his nose.

  ‘Tonight, people, we sleep rough.’

  It was kind of sad to leave the Hume. Luckily there were signs, lots of signs, and with Davey’s expert navigating we somehow managed to follow the motorways through the endless houses and factories of western Sydney until, with relief, we finally connected with the Pacific Highway and continued driving north. Mr Romanov’s extra-large coffee worked a treat. He picked up the pace a little and the towns seemed to flash by quicker than they had before. Bach was getting a little stale and with the radio on the blink, I searched for something to do, to fill the time on the last leg of our trip. When Davey began to hum the Brianstormers theme, I got an idea. I went back over all the nights, over the hundreds of books I’d read when my mother ventured out and left me in the apartment alone. When I turned around, Davey had his head in Norton’s Book of Interesting Facts.

  ‘Watership Down,’ I said.

  Davey looked up from the useless fact he was reading then lifted the Yankees cap and replaced it backwards on his head, homeboy-style.

  ‘Say what?’

  I threw him a look, something to let him know I wasn’t impressed.

  ‘I’m reading about the gangs in Los Angeles,’ he said. ‘It’s unbelievable. Did you know there are seventy-two Hispanic gangs in LA alone?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, Davey. And to be honest I don’t really care. Can we get back to Watership Down? It’s a classic. Basically it’s a story about rabbits. Who wrote it?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘It was Richard Adams.’

  ‘Lexie, I know what you’re doing and I really don’t think . . .’

  ‘What about Wuthe
ring Heights?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, please.’

  ‘Who wrote it, Davey?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘It was Emily Brontë, as it happens. She had two sisters who were writers as well. Anne and Charlotte.’

  ‘Well, good for her.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll do a modern one . . . let me see . . . what about, The Fault in our Stars?’

  Davey raised his right arm up then stuck two fingers out as if his hand were a gun. He pointed it my way and pulled the trigger.

  ‘Bam, sister. John Green with a cap in yo arse.’

  For some reason, Mr Romanov began to laugh beside me. I stared him down, wiped the smile from his face then turned my head back to Davey.

  ‘A what? In my what?’

  ‘A cap in yo arse,’ said Davey. ‘It’s gangsta talk.’

  ‘You’re not a gangster, Davey.’

  ‘So? I don’t have cancer either.’

  If there was one thing Davey wasn’t short on, it was confidence in his ability to remember things. He was brilliant when it came to subjects like history, geography and science, even sport, but the weakness in his armour was books. I don’t mean facts. He adored books filled with facts. He ate non-fiction for breakfast. But as far as Davey was concerned, the novel was the brussells sprout of books. Normally that wouldn’t have worried me but the kids on Brainstormers were smart, really smart, and if he was to get bundled out on a book question then it would be his own stupid fault.

  ‘Yo, dog.’

  Davey’s pathetic gangster talk was getting on my nerves. I didn’t want to encourage him, so rather than turn around I flipped the visor down and angled the small rectangular mirror so that I could see him.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’ I asked.

  ‘Hell yeah, dog. I appreciate, like, your concern, but I is fine, you know?’

  ‘You’re not fine, dog. You’re an idiot . . . you know?’

  Mr Romanov seemed to be enjoying Davey’s barrage of interesting facts. He laughed his head off when Davey told him that in 1929, researchers at Princeton University successfully transformed a cat into a functioning telephone.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t find it so funny. I zoned out, gazed out the window and lost Davey’s voice in the hum of the engine and whirring of tyres. I tried to find colours in the landscape outside, but the cotton balls of grey in the sky took me back to the commission, to our tiny apartment on the sixteenth floor. I saw little things at first – the patchy lino on the kitchen floor, the buds of mould in the corner of the shower and the crack in the glass coffee table, compliments of my mother when she collapsed one night and passed out.

  ‘Home sweet home, hey? I’ll give her three days, a week tops. She’ll get back on it. They always do.’

  Shut up, Miranda.

  ‘Round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows.’

  I would never let on, of course, but Miranda was right. For the last year or so, living with my mother had always felt like that. It was as if the two of us were on some giant merry-go-round that never stopped. Up and down and round and round. Despite what Davey had thought, I’d been upset by the news of her overdose. I hadn’t let on but after the initial shock had disappeared, I’d felt the pull of my mother and an ache in my heart. Still, I’m not sure it would have made much difference had I gone back. I could have sat beside her hospital bed and held her hand, and maybe just being there would have meant something at least. But I’d seen too much already.

  The thing was, this person wasn’t just someone up the road or in the apartment next door, it wasn’t even a cousin or a friend, it was my mother. I’d lost count of the times I’d put her to bed, wiped up her vomit or cleaned the toilet when she’d missed the bowl. See, people don’t think about that – the day-to-day things. Sure, most people feel sorry for me when they hear about my mother, some of them even cut me some slack, but they don’t actually see the mess that comes with it.

  Of course I was glad my mum was alright. I was happy and relieved and grateful, but mostly I was scared. As soon as Davey told me, I was scared. I was scared because it might happen again.

  We drove for hours, through what seemed like hundreds of towns, stopping a few times for Mr Romanov to have a rest and more coffee. We drove in the dark until Mr Romanov couldn’t drive anymore. At a place called Coffs Harbour, Davey finally caved in, and when Mr Romanov eased the Merc up behind a bottleneck of cars, we slowed to a crawl and began looking for a place to sleep. With everything that had happened along the way, we’d had no choice but to ditch the itinerary, and now that a motel was no longer an option, we needed to find a place that was dry and warm.

  As I consulted Davey about the possibilities, Mr Romanov called our attention to something further up the road.

  ‘I think we have trouble,’ he said.

  I craned my head left and then right and I saw a police car parked by the kerb about fifty metres ahead. I stiffened in my seat, threw a hand out and gripped Mr Romanov’s arm. A policewoman in a high-vis vest was standing in the middle of the road, peering through car windows as they pulled up beside her. A red sedan crawled to the front of the line and was immediately guided into a corral of orange cones where two more officers were waiting.

  ‘They know,’ said Davey. ‘They know it’s red.’

  I felt sick. My heart sank in my chest and something in my throat began to burn. I felt Mr Romanov’s fingers around mine.

  ‘It’s over,’ I said. ‘All the kilometres, everything we’ve done and it’s come to this.’

  Tears began to pool in my eyes.

  ‘It’s not over,’ said Davey. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It’s over, Davey, we’re trapped. We have nowhere to go.’

  ‘It’s over for us, Lexie . . . but not for you.’

  I turned my head to Davey behind me.

  ‘I’m not going without you two,’ I said.

  ‘You have to, Lexie. Remember what you said when I didn’t want to go in and see my dad? You said I’d regret it. You said if I didn’t go in, I wouldn’t find the answers. Well, this is the same. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted and we’re so close, Lexie. We’re four hours away.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You must, cowgirl.’

  Mr Romanov sounded tired.

  ‘I can’t on my own,’ I said. ‘We’re supposed to see it together. The three of us.’

  Something in Mr Romanov’s face seemed to change.

  ‘You will not be on your own, cowgirl.’

  He reached a hand up and unclipped Boris’s collar from the rear-vision mirror then passed it to me.

  ‘For luck,’ he said.

  Everything seemed to be happening without my consent. All of a sudden Davey climbed over the seat and dumped himself down beside me. He leant over and kissed the side of my cheek.

  ‘For luck,’ he said. ‘I would have given you Worf, but, well, you know . . .’

  We moved another metre forward. Time was running out.

  ‘I can’t do it, guys. I just can’t without you.’

  ‘Lexie, listen . . .’

  Davey angled himself my way.

  ‘This has been the best trip ever,’ he said. ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you were right.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yeah, you were right about the three us being important. I know I’m kind of hopeless with some things, but the best day ever was the day I met you . . .’

  ‘Really?’

  Davey made a noise with his mouth then glanced at Mr Romanov to his right.

  ‘And the second best was you, Mr Romanov. Meeting you, I mean. No offence . . .’

  After patting Mr Romanov’s arm, Davey came back to me, a little flushed.

  ‘Anyway, you have to keep going, Lexie,’ he said. ‘It’s not really a shithole, I made that up. I think it’s kind of nice, actually.’

  Davey nudged me with his elbow then he reached a hand out in front of h
im and glanced left then right.

  ‘Hands in,’ he said.

  I got there first and put my hand on Davey’s then Mr Romanov came in on top.

  ‘Surfers Paradise,’ said Davey.

  The three of us repeated the words together and when I looked up, I realised it was now or never.

  I chose now. I kissed them both roughly on the cheek and got ready to go. It took only a few seconds to stuff my things into the backpack at my feet, and before I zipped it closed, Davey grabbed the money from Gordo’s bumbag and handed it to me. We were seven, maybe eight cars from the police check and it wouldn’t be long before the policewoman zeroed in our car.

  ‘I’m thinking bus,’ said Davey. ‘They’ll probably take us back to the police station for questioning, but we’ll throw them off the scent as best we can. You need to get on a bus, Lexie. You ready?’

  ‘She’s going to see me,’ I said.

  ‘She won’t see, you, Lexie. As soon as she looks into the next car, you go. Don’t close the door, just keep your head down and go. You ready?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Go, Lexie. Now.’

  There wasn’t time for another goodbye so I opened the car door and bundled out. I was buzzing. I stayed low and crab-walked my way towards the footpath, expecting at any moment to hear a woman’s voice bail me up. But strangely enough, it didn’t come. To my surprise, the people in the car behind didn’t see me, so I slipped between two parked cars, straightened up to my regular height, then doubled back through the late dinner crowd that milled about outside the long line of restaurants and takeaway joints. I didn’t dare look back. I kept my head down and continued walking until I was sure I was far enough away. Outside a restaurant called Maria’s, I hid myself behind a family of sunburnt holiday-makers who were debating the pros and cons of having pizza two nights in a row. I couldn’t see the checkpoint from where I was, so I edged myself out and headed for the shops on the other side of the street. I wanted to see what would happen to Davey and Mr Romanov, so I walked quickly along the footpath, hugging the shop windows as I went. I pulled up on the other side of the road, level with the policewoman in her fluoro green vest. After speaking to the driver in a silver-coloured sedan, she waved it through then looked down the line of cars and spotted the Merc, four back. Her demeanour changed instantly. She whistled to her partner behind her, then marched quickly back along the road. I didn’t wait to find out what happened next, but the last thing I saw, the thing I took with me as I walked away, was the policewoman charging towards my two best friends with her right hand reaching for her gun.