spring days, but the motel room was blessedly dark and cool. I ordered coffee and sandwiches from the restaurant and ran a bath. An hour later I thought I might survive the day and I rang the Johnsons’ number. Mrs Johnson was there and she said she would see me at two o’clock. That gave me a couple of hours to fill in and so I set off to walk down Lygon Street.
I’ve always liked Melbourne, particularly Carlton, where I used to spend school holidays sometimes with a pair of elderly spinster aunts. I’d hoped they might leave me their little sandstone doll’s house with its formal rose gardens, but of course they’d left it to the nuns. I’d got an astonishingly ugly set of amber jewellery instead.
It was years since I’d last been in Lygon Street and it had become even trendier than I remembered. Boutiques and shops full of expensive knick-knacks had replaced the old Italian tailors and shoe shops, and Tamani’s, where I was taken by my aunts for hot chocolate on Saturday mornings, had been renamed and its old owners had moved across the road to a large and modern restaurant. But the delicatessens and the shabby coffee lounges where the old men played cards and gossiped over lethally dark coffee were still there. So was Johnny’s Green Room, in a side street, and the Café Sport, I was pleased to see.
I browsed, bought a silk shirt that would just about break my bankcard and then on a hangover craving went up the cracked lino stairs to the Café Sport for osso bucco. By the time I hailed a cab to take me to Hawthorn I was ready for anything.
Chapter 9
The Johnsons’ house was one of the mellow red brick Edwardian mansions that area of Melbourne is famous for. Bay windows curved gracefully away from broad tessellated verandas decorated with wooden fretwork under a mossy slate roof. The lawn was lush and green, and established lilacs and camellias and roses burgeoned in the well-kept garden.
Carol Johnson, when she came to the stained-glass door, was a small energetic woman in her mid-thirties, with bright brown eyes. She led me into a room where pamphlets and envelopes and lists lay in profusion over all the surfaces. From a window you could see a golf course sweeping away to clumps of trees, like an English nobleman’s park. It seemed a far cry from the cheap suburban sprawl of Liverpool.
As if she’d sensed what I was thinking, she said, “We’ve done very well here. Frank has his own contracting business now.” She sighed. “He’s got very ambitious.”
She swept away some leaflets from a chair and apologised.
“I’m doing a mail-out,” she explained. “I run the newsletter for Parents Of Murdered Children.”
“Mrs Johnson,” I said, sitting down, “as I said on the phone, I’m investigating the disappearance of Beth Channing. I hope it’s not too painful for you to talk about it, but there are similarities with your own daughter’s case…”
“Oh, it’s not painful anymore,” she said, perching on the edge of a table. “In the group,” she gestured towards the papers behind her, “we talk a lot about our children. We laugh a lot, too — does that surprise you?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “Grief can be funny, too, you know. But it’s hard for others to understand — in the group we can let our hair down, without worrying about what other people think or expect. Now — what do you want to ask me?” She cocked her head like an intelligent bird.
“Well,” I began. I was slightly disconcerted by her, she seemed too articulate and bright to have come from the same background as the Kominskys and the Channings.
“Well,” I said again, “the girls were close friends, I gather? They spent a lot of time together?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’d played together since Beth was a baby. Kylie was two years older, but they were always together at home. Though,” she said thoughtfully, “they’d started drifting apart a bit before Kylie was
I’ve always liked Melbourne, particularly Carlton, where I used to spend school holidays sometimes with a pair of elderly spinster aunts. I’d hoped they might leave me their little sandstone doll’s house with its formal rose gardens, but of course they’d left it to the nuns. I’d got an astonishingly ugly set of amber jewellery instead.
It was years since I’d last been in Lygon Street and it had become even trendier than I remembered. Boutiques and shops full of expensive knick-knacks had replaced the old Italian tailors and shoe shops, and Tamani’s, where I was taken by my aunts for hot chocolate on Saturday mornings, had been renamed and its old owners had moved across the road to a large and modern restaurant. But the delicatessens and the shabby coffee lounges where the old men played cards and gossiped over lethally dark coffee were still there. So was Johnny’s Green Room, in a side street, and the Café Sport, I was pleased to see.
I browsed, bought a silk shirt that would just about break my bankcard and then on a hangover craving went up the cracked lino stairs to the Café Sport for osso bucco. By the time I hailed a cab to take me to Hawthorn I was ready for anything.
Chapter 9
The Johnsons’ house was one of the mellow red brick Edwardian mansions that area of Melbourne is famous for. Bay windows curved gracefully away from broad tessellated verandas decorated with wooden fretwork under a mossy slate roof. The lawn was lush and green, and established lilacs and camellias and roses burgeoned in the well-kept garden.
Carol Johnson, when she came to the stained-glass door, was a small energetic woman in her mid-thirties, with bright brown eyes. She led me into a room where pamphlets and envelopes and lists lay in profusion over all the surfaces. From a window you could see a golf course sweeping away to clumps of trees, like an English nobleman’s park. It seemed a far cry from the cheap suburban sprawl of Liverpool.
As if she’d sensed what I was thinking, she said, “We’ve done very well here. Frank has his own contracting business now.” She sighed. “He’s got very ambitious.”
She swept away some leaflets from a chair and apologised.
“I’m doing a mail-out,” she explained. “I run the newsletter for Parents Of Murdered Children.”
“Mrs Johnson,” I said, sitting down, “as I said on the phone, I’m investigating the disappearance of Beth Channing. I hope it’s not too painful for you to talk about it, but there are similarities with your own daughter’s case…”
“Oh, it’s not painful anymore,” she said, perching on the edge of a table. “In the group,” she gestured towards the papers behind her, “we talk a lot about our children. We laugh a lot, too — does that surprise you?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “Grief can be funny, too, you know. But it’s hard for others to understand — in the group we can let our hair down, without worrying about what other people think or expect. Now — what do you want to ask me?” She cocked her head like an intelligent bird.
“Well,” I began. I was slightly disconcerted by her, she seemed too articulate and bright to have come from the same background as the Kominskys and the Channings.
“Well,” I said again, “the girls were close friends, I gather? They spent a lot of time together?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’d played together since Beth was a baby. Kylie was two years older, but they were always together at home. Though,” she said thoughtfully, “they’d started drifting apart a bit before Kylie was
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