Sliver Moon Bay: The Looking by Ivana Hruba

noticed
this giant jellyfish spread over the sofa, filling up the space
between it and the table, and blocking the way to the fridge, the
bedroom and the exit. So I guess we’re stuck here and we’ll have to
hear her out.
    ‘Chris has been arrested.’
    ‘It was just an interview when
they came for him this morning. What’s changed?’
    Lilian’s looking sharp for
once. She’s even asking the right question. I’ll bet she doesn’t
really want to know the answer. It can’t be good. I know I don’t
want to know. In my heart of hearts I know we don’t want to know.
But I’m ready.
    ‘It’s about Starling’s
dress.’
    ‘Yes.’ Lilian’s sounding flat
but impatient at the same time. Just spit it out, for Christ
sake’s, is what we’re both thinking.
    ‘There was blood on it.’
    Oh, dear. This is going to be
hard. Lilian’s mouth’s gaping, with indignation, at this woman
who’s insinuated herself into our nightmare for no good reason.
Lilian’s fuming and her big wet circle of a mouth looks like a
fish’s, fresh out of water and conscious of her impending
death.
    ‘We. Know. That.’ Lilian nods
emphatically. ‘They told us the day the dress was found. Why are
you telling me this now?’
    ‘The blood is Chris’s.’
    Okay. Okay. Okay. This is a
development worthy of our acknowledgment. I’m prepared to give it.
And here we go.
    So what are you saying, Silly
Bitch? That Chris did something to his little girl? That he got
hurt while he was doing it? Seriously, woman, how dare you? Get the
fuck out of my house!!!!
    Course, I say none of this. I
don’t have to. Lilian’s doing a good job of it herself. Silly
Bitch’s wriggling out of our caravan as fast as she can. Course,
you’d have to have been there to fully appreciate how that looked.
How long it took her to extricate herself from Lilian’s funky
breath which was right there in her blubbery dial; I swear it
singed her cleavage, but eventually Silly Bitch found herself doing
the Baldy, wobbling down the path as fast as her fat little legs
would carry her; and this without the kettle making an appearance.
Before the bend she stopped and looked over her shoulder, and we
locked eyes. Next thing she’s waving, at me. So I waved back at
her. She turns, waddles away, past the bend where I can’t see her,
disappears back into her own life. And I suddenly miss her.
    Poor Amy. Poor Lilian. Poor
Chris. And poor me, having to deal with their shit. I wish Starling
were here. She’d make it better. Bearable. But that’s no longer my
world. We have entered the un-bearable now. At least I’ve got
Sleepy back. I go inside and curl up on the bed with him.
     
     

 
    35
     
     
    ‘Lil’, I can explain this.
Listen!’
    ‘Can you, Chris? Can you? It’s
your blood! On her dress!’
    ‘Assassin bit me and I picked
up the dress and wiped my blood on it. That’s what happened,
Lilian. I swear that’s how it got there.’
    There’s silence behind the
partition now. I know she’s instantly convinced he’s telling her
the truth. It’s not hard. It sounds like the truth.
    ‘Where did this happen?’
    ‘In his shed. I came by to get
some weed and Assassin ambushed me. I swiped him and he bit me on
the ankle.’
    ‘And you had the pink dress
with you? Why?’
    ‘It was already there. I picked
up the first thing I saw on the bench and used it to wipe the
blood. I hit at the dog with a paddle but I missed and he came at
me again so I ran out and he chased me. It was only later I
remembered I saw the pink dress in the shed and that I wiped my
ankle with it.’
    ‘And you didn’t think to tell
me that your father had our daughter’s clothes in his shed? You
didn’t think that was strange?’
    ‘I did think it was weird. I
went back and talked to Drake about it. He denied any knowledge of
it.’
    ‘And you believed him?’
    ‘I didn’t know what to think.
But I told him that if I saw him around the kids again I was going
to kill him.’
    ‘You