“Do you need the number?” asked the nurse uncertainly, holding the piece of paper toward her.
“No, no, of course not,” said Jess. “I’ve got it.”
And then she took the lift to the ground floor, struggling to remember the last time she had spoken with her mother.
In the end, Jess didn’t speak with Polly that afternoon, either. She rang from the back of the taxi, but her mother’s voicemail picked up, so she left a brief message explaining that she’d only just arrived in Sydney, that Nora’s condition was improving and they hoped to have her home soon. She said she was staying at Darling House and then left the phone number before hanging up. Immediately she chided herself, because of course Polly had the number; she’d lived at Darling House for longer than Jess. It was only that she’d removed herself so completely from Nora’s world in the intervening years that it was easy to forget.
Back at Nora’s place, Jess held her breath as the taxi driver took payment from her debit card. The card was attached to an account she hadn’t touched in years—ever, really—liberated that morning from an unopened envelope in the dressing table drawer in her childhood bedroom. Nora had established the “Birthday Account” when Jess turned ten, making a deposit each year so it would be there “in the future” if the need arose. What constituted a “need” had never been spelled out, but having had to rebuild her own life once, Nora was adamant that Jess should have something saved for a rainy day. “It might not put a roof over your head, but it’ll buy you a nice umbrella.” It had long been a point of pride for Jess that she hadn’t had reason to access the account. The driver handed back the card with a receipt, and Jess thanked him for the ride.
Inside, she made herself toast with avocado and sat at the kitchenbench, notebook and laptop both open before her. She read through her article for the travel magazine, shifting the cursor from line to line, paragraph to paragraph, looking for a spot to break in, to add clarity—perhaps even (dare she hope?) some panache—but every sentence she added just made things worse.
She couldn’t concentrate. The business of coming home was interfering with the task of writing about it. Things were rather more complicated than she’d expected.
Jess was still pondering Nora’s secrecy, wondering about her relationship with Isabel Turner. Her plan to ask her grandmother about the other woman hadn’t worked out, but she was eager to know more. They would have been of a similar age; Nora had adored Thomas... Had her affection extended to his wife?
Jess drummed her fingers on the benchtop and then, with the nudge of an idea, picked up her phone.
Mrs. Robinson answered on the second ring. “Hello?” She must have had the Darling House number programmed into her phone, for she continued: “Is that you, Jess? Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes, it’s fine. I’ve just been to see Nora; she’s doing well.” Jess took a deep breath and decided that the direct approach was best. She explained briefly what she’d discovered and why she was calling and said at last, “I’m wondering if the memories are part of what’s upsetting her. But there are so many things I don’t know. I hoped you might be able to tell me about Nora’s relationship with Isabel?”
There was absolute silence at the other end of the line and Jess began to wonder whether the connection had dropped out. “Hello?”
“I’m not at home, Jess, I’m at the shops. I can’t talk about this now, not over the phone.”
“Could we speak later, then? It doesn’t have to be by phone—I could meet you somewhere. I’ll be back at the hospital between three and five, so anytime after that?” When Mrs. Robinson didn’t reply, she added, “I’m only asking because I think it might help Nora.”
Mrs. Robinson sighed heavily and named the park with the playground farther along the peninsula. “I’m going to be taking my afternoon walk at six. I can meet you there at half past.”
Once lunch was cleared away, Jess settled in for a spot of time traveling. Through the State Library of South Australia’s Trove portal she could access and explore the newspapers of the period, starting with the earliest reports on Christmas morning 1959.
She read the first few articles before sending them to the printer, relishing, as she always did, the ability of the written word to transport. The period typesetting, the formality of the style and the voices of the people quoted caused time to collapse in upon itself so that Jess could see and feel and smell the scenes described. She could picture the readers of the day opening their newspapers at the breakfast table or on the tram home from work, straightening their horn-rimmed glasses and pouring their evening Scotch over ice as they settled down to read the latest news. She felt a sentimental pang for a time in which the press had occupied an unassailable position as the conduit between current events and a well-informed citizenry.
Over the years, many news reports had been written relating to the Turner family, but Jess was short on time. Reluctantly, she started hitting print without reading first. The majority had been published in the seven months between December 1959 and July 1960, when the coroner’s inquest had been held, but the story had made regular resurgences in the popular imagination, with a flurry of articles at the one-year, five-year, and ten-year anniversaries, culminating in a huge amount of coverage at the twenty-year mark, coinciding as it did with the discovery of baby Thea’s remains. Thereafter, the Turner Tragedy seemed to have been largely forgotten, mentioned only occasionally in lists of other cases whose notoriety had earned them capital letter status—the Somerton Body, the Pajama Girl, the Beaumont Children.
It took almost two hours to reach the last article, and Jess was pleased when she collected the pages from the printer to find that a large pileawaited. Later, she would read it all thoroughly and draw up a timeline of the police case. She felt enlivened at the prospect. It had been a long time since she’d worked on a proper investigative assignment, and she’d missed it. The possibility of uncovering the source of Nora’s recent upset lent the enterprise an even greater sense of purpose.
Jess had a quick look around the office in case the letter from the South Australian lawyer was there; Nora received a lot of correspondence and her bookkeeper, Anita, came in once a month to pay bills and sort mail. But Anita kept a very tidy system, and it didn’t take long for Jess to ascertain that the letter had not been filed with other business paperwork.
The library was a personal domain, and thus the more likely repository. Jess went upstairs to check. She turned up nothing of note on the desk or in any of its drawers. She looked among the pile of books on the coffee table and between the pages of the display book on the sideboard in the entrance. Nothing. Maybe, she thought, Nora had taken the letter to her bedroom.
Jess felt a pang of nostalgia as she entered the fruity green haven of the Pimpernel-papered room. She half expected to see Nora propped up in the bed, cup of tea in hand as she read the news of the day: “Listen to this, Jessica, you won’t believe what those clowns in Canberra have done this time.” Jess checked inside the colonial cedar chest and the drawers of the small writing bureau but found nothing. The surface of the bureau was empty, too, but for the framed photo of Thomas Turner that Jess had first seen at his funeral. He was striding through the city of London (as she now recognized it), the dome of St. Paul’s rising above the Blitz rubble behind him. She wondered whether the hint of someone else’s coat on the left of the frame, the suggestion of a hand, were evidence of Isabel, and whether the photo had been cropped before or after the events of 1959.
Jess turned slowly to take in the rest of the room. She was running out of places to look. Her gaze came to rest on the door to Nora’sdressing room, modeled from a small adjoining anteroom after Polly outgrew it as a nursery. Without much hope of success, Jess took a cursory look inside. She felt mildly uncomfortable, going through her grandmother’s things, but told herself the ends justified the means. She checked the pockets of the larger coats and had a peek inside each of the Polaroid-labeled shoeboxes. No letter.
Out of ideas, Jess sat on the edge of the bed and glanced through the leadlight window. Nora’s attachment to this room was easy to understand. The view over the garden she’d created was beautiful. Jess leaned forward to unlatch the casement and was met by a wash of warm air and the soporific hum of bees in the flowering wall-climber. A wave of dizziness overcame her. She was very much aware that she’d been awake since three.
There was still an hour or so until she was due back at the hospital for afternoon visiting hours. Jess slipped off her shoes and lay down on Nora’s bedspread. She would close her eyes, just for a minute. She felt herself dissolving. The smell of the linen was so familiar she ached. She rolled onto her side, balling the down-filled pillow to fit beneath her head...
There was something hard and sharp-edged inside the pillowcase. Jess fished it out. It wasn’t the letter she’d been searching for; it was a book. A small, worn hardcover with blunted corners and a tattered jacket, yellow with a pale pink banner for the title and author name.
Jess let out a long, steady breath.As If They Were Asleep. Daniel Miller’s book.
She scrambled to a sitting position. A brief introduction provided the history of Tambilla, including an account of the house that Mr. Wentworth had built. His love story, albeit tragic, Jess skimmed. Similarly, the first chapter of Part One, which she realized she’d already met in the form of Daniel Miller’s essay.
When she reached Chapter Two, though, a shiver crept up her spine, for here, at last, was Isabel Turner.
As If They Were Asleep
