Chapter 19
It isn’t the way I expected to spend the afternoon.
A camera is balanced on a tripod on my little round table and the room is full of nervous, expectant energy.
My home hasn’t held a lot of guests in the almost sixty years I’ve lived here.
I imagine the walls and windowpanes and ceilings feel as uneasy as the three of us.
It’s line-ball to tell who is the most uncomfortable out of me, Libby, and Adeem as we sit at my little round table, though I’d probably put my money on Adeem because his pale blue shirt is ill-fitting and pulled taut across his stomach, and the blind pimple on his nose is stretched so tight that the light is bouncing off it and making it glow.
“So,” Libby says. “What made you decide to speak with us?”
She’s a pretty little thing. Round moon face, masses of blond hair secured haphazardly on the top of her head with a green claw clip.
Sandals. Jeans. An oversized men’s business shirt.
She lifts her cup of tea to her mouth and blows on it.
I’d raised an eyebrow when she requested chamomile—because who on earth stocked that sort of nonsense?
—but then I stumbled across an individually wrapped tea bag in the back of my tea drawer that I think came out of a free goody bag from the “aging actively” festival at the library a few years ago.
Its discovery filled Adeem with a false sense of optimism because he went ahead and asked for green tea.
Green tea! Before I could even curl my lip and ask if he thought this was some kind of hipster tea establishment, he quickly added, “Or whatever you have is fine.”
It has to be said, the pair look too young to be drinking tea.
One of the (many) confronting things about being elderly is that to me, everyone looks like a kindergartener.
There’s something sweet about it when dealing with a cashier or tradesperson, but disconcerting when it is your surgeon and they are about to remove your gallbladder.
Had I been having my gallbladder removed today, I’m not certain I would have selected Libby and Adeem for the job, but for this particular role their youth makes them feel less threatening somehow.
More earnest about capturing the truth rather than jaded into “getting ratings” or however they measure it on YouTube.
“This is the first time you’ve spoken publicly to anyone,” Libby prompts gently, when I don’t answer. “Why now?”
It’s a fair question. After my call with Linda Raiti, I’d spent twenty-four hours weighing my options—what few remained.
Linda had been frank: Legal action was unlikely to achieve much, certainly not the thing I needed most—getting the media circus off my bloody lawn.
So, I did the only thing I had left. I opened my mouth and hoped the beast might lose interest once it had been fed.
“There was never any point talking about it before. What was done was done.”
“And now?” Adeem asks.
“Now I just want peace,” I say. “Even if I have to earn it the hard way.”
“You thought if you gave it something, it might finally leave you alone?”
“Yes,” I say. “I suppose so.”
Daphne had opted not to stay for the interview. That surprised me—and, in truth, unnerved me, even though deep down I knew this wasn’t her story to tell. She was part of it, yes. But the mess? The history? The consequences? Those were mine.
“Well, I sincerely hope it has that effect,” Libby says. “Last question before we start recording. Why us? I’m sure plenty of people were clamoring to talk to you.”
They were. Over the past few days, I’d had emails from respected journalists offering generous sums, podcasters flaunting their download numbers like poker chips, even one who claimed their last series got an innocent man out of prison.
I’d heard from a famous Australian author who’d built her reputation on solving cold cases—her latest was that fifty-year-old kidnapping of Ida McCabe, now reopened thanks to her keen investigative nose.
And I’d decided to go with Libby and Adeem, who look too young to be drinking tea.
“I thought you two would be easier to manipulate than those big film networks.”
“Full disclosure,” Libby says, “we can only be manipulated for large amounts of cash.”
“No problem. I’ll give you the coordinates of my treasure and you can dig it up after the interview.” I lean forward and lower my voice. “It’s buried with the bodies.”
The pair exchange a look, and I find that I’m smiling. I stop before they notice.
“Right,” Libby says, putting her tea on the table. “Now that that’s sorted. Any questions before we start?”
“My face will be blurred, right?” I say. “And no details of my whereabouts will be released? The whole purpose of this is to get rid of people, not attract more of them.”
“Absolutely,” Libby says. “And as we said, you will be shown the edited footage before it’s posted, so we’ll have the ability to cut anything you’re not happy with then.”
I nod.
“Mostly you will be talking freestyle about your childhood. We won’t interrupt unless we need something clarified. If I do interrupt, don’t look at me, keep looking at the camera—okay?”
I look at the camera, which isn’t, in fact, a camera at all, it’s an iPhone, propped up on its tripod on my dining table. Then again, an iPhone is a camera, isn’t it? An iPhone is everything. It even has a little buzzer that reminds me to take my pills.
“Okay.”
“But before we start, I’ll do my lead-in. Are you ready?”
I nod again.
Libby takes a deep breath, and Adeem counts her in. When the light goes red, she morphs before my eyes into another person. A mature person. It’s very impressive.
“In 1959, at just fifteen years of age, Mabel Waller became the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder.
The media interest around the case was enormous, due to the aggressive nature of the crime.
Rumors abounded that this was not her first murder, and this has remained the topic of debate for decades.
She is known around the world as Mad Mabel.
But is she mad? More importantly, is she guilty?
“In a world first, at the age of eighty-one, Mabel Waller is speaking.”