Chapter Sixty

Havermouth, Present Time

Aislen’s alarm buzzed at the unbearable hour of five, and she grumbled as she turned it off and rolled out of her childhood bed, testing her feet on the floor. The pain was not as raw as it had been, more of a bruised feeling.

She showered and rubbed ointment over the tattoos that she could reach, as well as her three piercings, handling them gingerly, slightly disgusted by them, their movement within her flesh making her stomach queasy. Would they just heal if she took them out? She wondered. She’d have to search it on the internet and try to work it out.

“Fucking Triquetra,” she muttered under her breath, realizing she couldn’t wear any of her corsets or bras, as they’d rub against the tattoos. “Fucking fucker fucks,” she muttered, as she pulled on a camisole and tore open the costume packaging, shaking out the velvet dress. “Alright, that’s sort of cute,” she held it up against herself.

She wriggled it on and pulled on a suspender belt and stockings, grimacing at the state of the soles of her feet, hoping that the freshly sealed abrasions wouldn’t bleed in her shoes. “Can’t be helped. Play postman and then back home for a feed and more sleep,” she decided.

There were no cars on the road, and very few lights on in the houses as she passed them. “Good,” she said to herself. “Not entirely sure if this is legal, but very sure someone will want to stop me.”

The town center was a grid of six roads. She parked and began making her way up one side of the first road applying the wheat-paste or staple gun as appropriate - plastering the street with her message.

There were posters of the mayoral applicants, and Heath smiled with bright charm from many, handsome and clean-cut in a suit. She sighed, and tore one down, tucking it into her bag. “Stupid, fucking sentimentality,” she muttered under her breath.

She finished the three crossroads, and was on the central road, when she saw the florist setting out for the day, watching her with curiosity as she made her way up the road towards her.

“Good morning,” the fresh-faced florist was the same woman who had bought Aislen coffee. Lauren, Aislen remembered, or Laurel, maybe. “This is an interesting look.”

“Well, I thought that seeing as I am technically littering, I should make an effort at subterfuge,” Aislen posed in her Halloween costume and mask.

The woman laughed. “If this is your idea of subterfuge, I’d love to see what you look like when you’re trying to stand out. What is it that you have there?”

“Ah, shh,” Aislen passed her a flyer. “It’s a secret. Talking about, seeing as this town appears to get up abominably early, I’d best be off before my secret identity becomes too public knowledge.”

She finished the last road as traffic began to pick up and she could see shop keepers staring at the poster in bewilderment. She paused by Rhett’s tattoo shop and pushed the wad of remaining posters through his letter box, watching through the glass as they scattered on the floor.

She returned to the house and shoved one of her father’s frozen meals into the oven. Whilst she waited, she opened her sketch book and refreshed herself on where she had left the comic. She began to work, interrupting herself to eat, before resuming, and then breaking off to begin a new idea.

“Damn it,” she muttered, as she sketched in Rhett’s twisted triangle. “Might as well make money off the fucked up-ed-ness.”

She finished eating, changed out of the costume, and removed her makeup before falling back into her bed and sleeping, waking only when the doorbell went. She staggered down the hall to open the front door.

“Oh,” June said, embarrassed. “I woke you.”

“That’s okay, I needed to get up, and look, your brought coffee and food, so now we’re best friends. Kitchen is down the hall, make yourself at home. I’ll just go to the bathroom and join you.”

When Aislen joined June in the kitchen, the other woman looked up from Aislen’s sketch book guiltily. “I’m sorry… it was open…”

“That’s okay, it’s what art is for, after all – to be looked at.”

June’s eyes returned to the page. “You… umm… draw people having… ah.”

Aislen snorted her laughter. “I draw sexy anime comics, yes. Specifically, boys love.”

“Wow. There’s like, money, in that?” June wondered.

“Sometimes,” Aislen replied, grabbing the takeaway coffee from the table and moaning as she took a mouthful. “Fuck, I’ve missed you,” she said to the brew. “I make a decent living,” she added to June. “But my overheads are also fairly small. The plus side is that I can work anywhere I like, from home, and on my own schedule.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“What do you do?” Aislen wondered.

“Teach,” June smiled sweetly. “Primary school, part time. Today is my day off.”

“Yeah, that fits,” Aislen commented sitting at the table and turning her sketch pad towards her as June sat across from her. “So, what have you got in the bag?” She looked expectantly at the brown paper bag.

“Oh, croissants,” June opened it and handed one to Aislen, who devoured it. “Wow,” June’s jaw unhinged. “You’re hungry.”

“You have no idea,” Aislen replied. “So, when’s this hearing and what’s the process?”

“It’s next week,” June replied. “It’s his third review, and each time they’ve turned down parole. If they do it again, I just know… Well,” she shook her head slowly. “It will break him.”

Break him, Aislen thought grimly. There was that phrase again. “Well, we can’t have that,” she decided. “No breaking of people around here. What do we need to do?”

“They have a review board and ask for people to testify for him. You just have to show up on the day and tell them that you knew him back then, and what you know… What do you know?” June wondered. “He says that you knew what they were going to do, and that Lucy told you…?”

“Yeah, I know some things,” Aislen picked up her pencil and added lines to the paper. Lucy was dead, so she wasn’t going to dispute what she’d told Aislen, she reasoned. Technically, she wouldn’t be lying if she told what she knew, Lucy had told her, in a way. “I don’t know what difference it will make though.

“The baby wasn’t Guy’s. It was Rohan’s. She said that she was too afraid to tell Rohan, and I don’t blame her – the jocks were arseholes. She just wanted an abortion and she and Guy had decided that after this last attempt, they were going to get it done properly.”

“It wasn’t Guy’s,” June repeated, watching as Aislen sketched. “He said that, but everyone thought that he was just… trying to prove his innocence. The baby wasn’t his, so he didn’t have anything to gain from an abortion, or, at least, not as much… It’s not like he’d be stuck paying child support for the rest of his life… That might… It might make a difference.”

“Maybe. It doesn’t change what happened, I guess,” Aislen replied. She sighed heavily. “I told them not to do it. It was stupid. I was pretty fucked up with my own shit at the time, and I guess…” She winced. She hadn’t trusted her vision and so she hadn’t done anything to prevent them from doing it – like telling someone who could have prevented it. “At that age, you tend to keep secrets. I told them not to do it and thought that was the end of it. I didn’t tell anyone.”

“You’re not responsible,” June said softly. “You were just a kid then too.”

“I barely knew them, to be honest, and that brief encounter didn’t even really register with me,” Aislen admitted. “I just happened to be in the toilets when Lucy was vomiting. We went down the creek at the bottom of the school for a smoke together. I told them not to do it. The recess bell went, and I was in a hurry. I left them, and forgot about it until Saturday, when I was in town getting groceries and we found out what happened.”

“You really are good,” June murmured, as Aislen’s sketch took shape on the paper. “It’s amazing that just a few lines can communicate so much. That looks… just like him.”

Aislen tore out the sketch of Lucy and Guy by the creek, holding cigarettes and looking shocked, and passed it to June. “That’s what they looked like when we were talking. That’s how I remember them.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’ll give it to Guy when I visit him this afternoon. It will give him hope that you will do this, that you remember.”

“I guess,” Aislen shrugged awkwardly, rising as June did.

“Did you hear, by the way?” June began to ask, as they walked to the front door. “About what happened in town this morning? Everyone at the coffee shop was talking about it?”

“Oh?” Aislen’s stomach lurched. “What about? I’ve been asleep.”

“Apparently someone’s gotten pissed off with the town. They wrote this… poem, I guess, and plastered the town center with it. Guy was on there, which is what made me…” She paused on the porch and a smile spread slowly. “It was you.”

Aislen blushed and cursed her pale complexion knowing that the rise of colour would be noticeable. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I can’t remember the words… But it said something about fruit… Who was the father of the fruit. That’s what you meant… Guy wasn’t the father… You are the only person other than Rohan… If he even knows. You were… Thank you,” her eyes filled with tears, and she reached out and gripped Aislen’s hand, her gratitude flowing through the connection. “You are already trying to change things for Guy by making the town realize that he wasn’t the father… Thank you, Aislen. You are a good person.”

“I don’t know about that,” Aislen shrugged. “Being a good person, I mean. Perhaps I should have done more at the time, and then Guy wouldn’t have been in prison for five years, I don’t know… But I am going to do better now.”

“It’s like knowing a superhero’s secret identity,” June said. “Don’t worry,” she added as she stepped off the porch. “I’ll keep the Secret Keeper’s secret.”

“Fuck,” Aislen sighed under her breath. She knew better than anyone, that secrets did not stay that way.