Chapter 2
ABOUT RAINBOW
At the soccer pitch behind the Atherton primary school, Ronnie ran five and six-year-olds through a practice game. Getting them to play in two teams and track the ball without all following it in a pack felt like herding kittens.
Dozens of sweaty little girls in school uniforms, tube socks and hair bows, glowing with pride. For some of the youngest girls this was their first practice match.
Was ironic the word for this? Had it occurred to her that she was getting something selfish out of this job? Yes, yes it had. Was it funny that she was hero-worshipped four hours a day by every pre-teen girl in town but the one she had given birth to? Yes, yes it was.
After practice, she walked over to her bike in the car park, put on her jacket and checked her phone. Missed call from the American turtle biologist intern she had been hooking up with on karaoke night, not important. She zipped her phone into a pocket of her leather jacket and started her bike.
Atherton was the local metropolis with a grocery, department store, Burger King, and a main drag with shops on both sides.
At the purple house in Lionheart her stepmother was blasting ABBA again.
Ronnie tuned it out the way she tuned out her stepmother.
Both were inoffensive, sentimental and nostalgic for the 80’s.
She wondered what the lyrics of Slipping Through My Fingers meant to Blaise.
A mother watching a happy young girl grow up too fast, dearly loved but disappearing every minute.
Blaise had no kids. Maybe Blaise was sad about Ronnie’s daughter Rainbow growing up.
Thinking about Rainbow was uncomfortably close to missing Rainbow, which led to why Rainbow wasn’t here, which smelled of a stinking pile of shit guilt and possibly some kind of horrible joke some bastard cops were laughing at in a station somewhere in the past. No, she didn’t want to think about that.
Ronnie locked herself in the guest bedroom in preparation for the feelings incoming, scrolling through pictures she had taken that afternoon.
She wondered what Rainbow was doing now over in Gordonvale. She hoped it was wholesome, whatever it was. Her daughter was probably watching telly, playing computer games or texting her friends.
Ronnie sighed, spread-kneed on the edge of the bed. She inhaled carefully. Exhaled to a count of five. She rubbed her face. Should shower before she fell asleep. She could already tell it would be an early night. Nowhere to go from here but call it and try again in the morning. Do a reset tomorrow.
Matilda and Maya barked. She didn’t think anything of the arrival of another car until the knock on the bedroom door. Her chest hurt. A lump caught in her throat. She swallowed. Maybe they would go away.
Then again. Three loud knocks.
Three small soft knocks.
She blinked. The waterworks started, silent tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them away. “Come in.”
The door remained closed.
Fuck, she thought, this hurts, this hope business.
The door swung open, revealing Reg standing behind a nine-year-old girl with pigtails and skinned knees. Ronnie smiled. Rainbow was wearing the binoculars Santa had given her. She took them everywhere, even slept with them.
Reg whispered in Rainbow’s ear. The girl held up a cardboard sign that said YOU ARE THE BEST MUM! in pink magic marker.
Ronnie chuckled, opened her arms. Rainbow went to her without any more encouragement.
Ronnie closed her eyes and smelled her daughter’s head. “What are you doing here, angel?”
“Grandad brought me.”
She cupped Rainbow’s round cheeks and kissed her nose. “Did he kidnap you?” She feared he had.
He leaned on the windowsill. “Maude let me take her. She’ll fetch her Monday.”
Ronnie couldn’t breathe. She must not have heard correctly. “Monday?”
Reg nodded.
The longest Ronnie had ever had her daughter was two nights every other weekend. Two nights out of every fourteen. She struggled to count how many nights there were to Monday. She glanced over at Reg. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
She counted on her fingers, then pressed the back of a trembling hand to her mouth, not wanting to upset Rainbow. The girl was too young to understand.
Rainbow would never have to pretend not to miss her own daughter.
To pretend that a schedule was humane and bearable to protect a child from knowing what had been stolen from her.
It had been stolen from not just her but from four generations of her family one grey day ten years ago—a house of cards brought down by a single careless flick of the criminal justice system.
That was one of the lessons she had learned. Never let them know they hurt you. If they know they hurt you, they win.
She took her daughter’s hands. “Did you bring your things?”
A shy smile.
Ronnie grinned. “We are going to have so much fun! We’ll go to the park and ride bikes, swim at Lake Eacham, ride horses over at the farm… You can help me teach girls how to win at soccer! Are you ready?”
“Can I stay here with you and Grandad?”
“Until Monday. Unless the plan changes. I don’t make the schedule. You know that, right?”
Her daughter looked unsure. “Who makes the schedule?”
Ronnie met her dad’s eyes over the girl’s head. “Maude.”
“Oh.” Rainbow looked confused.
She squeezed her daughter’s hands. “We’ve talked about this before, babe. Did you forget?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“Who did you think made the schedule?”
Rainbow shrugged.
Ronnie had heard a story about a man who lived years with a piece of his left humerus missing and his arm in a splint.
With the splint, he was able to regain full range of motion in his shoulder and even lift small objects.
He lived a normal life. Except, when he took off the splint to shower, his arm hung at an unnatural angle.
This felt like that. She felt the moment something shifted. It wasn’t broken, exactly, but she couldn’t control it. A part of her suddenly separate and foreign, hanging by a string.
She studied the sensation the way the man must have studied his detached arm.
“Oh my god…”
“Steady, she’ll be right,” Reg said.
Reg was talking to Rainbow, shooing the girl out of the guest bedroom, reassuring her in a low voice and promising her favorite show.
Then Blaise was there telling Ronnie to breathe. Ronnie ignored her.
“It’s all right.”
“She thinks I did this… She thinks I did this on purpose…”
“She’ll understand when she’s older.”
“I’m a bad mum…”
Blaise shook her head. “You’re not a bad mum. She adores you.”
“I fucked up…”
Her stepmother clucked her tongue. “You did the best you could at the time.”
Ronnie reached for the empty trash can under the desk.
Blaise played with Ronnie’s hair while Ronnie leaned over the bucket. Nothing came up. She blew her nose. “I’m not all right… I’m not all right with this schedule.”
“Ask for a hearing. A judge will review the case.”
Fat lot of good that would do. Adoption was permanent. If she challenged it, she would be the bad guy. She had given up her parental rights.
“I want her so much…”
“We know. We want that for you, too.”
“This is a nightmare.” She sat with her head in her hands. Every time she left the house she feared losing what little she was allowed.
This was a different kind of prison, one nobody talked about.
She rubbed her eyebrows. Only nine more years of walking on eggshells. The girl was halfway to eighteen. Baby steps.
“I don’t know who to be angry at.”
She should have fought harder to keep her daughter.
Separation was too humiliating to name. Safer to set a lid on it and live with it, to pretend life started and stopped every other weekend.
Every other weekend soaking up toddler giggles, birthdays, school years and lost teeth to pretend she wasn’t missing time—to pretend Rainbow wasn’t growing up six times faster than the girls Ronnie coached.
When Ronnie was alone, the nine-year-old snuck back into the room and sat beside her.
She pulled her shit together in front of her daughter. Rainbow had not missed six-sevenths of her own life. Rainbow would be fine.
Ronnie blew her nose. “I feel better. Sometimes adults need a good cry.”
“Why can’t I decide who I live with?”
“I don’t know, baby. That’s a good question. Someday you will.”
“I want to live with you.”
Ronnie forced a smile, knowing she had to be careful not to say anything that her ex called ‘triangulation’ or ‘manipulation.’ If she admitted to Rainbow that she wanted custody, Maude might punish her for it later.
Maude insisted that they never trash-talked each other in front of Rainbow.
Good idea, in theory. They had to be on the same team. Consistent messaging mattered.
But she couldn’t lie to Rainbow. Well, she could, but if she did now, what would be the point of any of this?
She put her arm around her daughter. “I want that too, baby. I would take care of you and do everything for you if I could. You know I love you. We can’t change the past, only the future. Right?”
“Mum, focus. How would it work? Like, where would we live? If I lived with you where would I go to school?”
“If you lived with me it would be half of the time, and where you went to school would be up to Maude.” Don’t get her hopes up... She had never asked Maude outright to share custody with her, only dropped hints which Maude ignored.
She should probably swallow her pride and ask, otherwise nothing would change until Rainbow was a teenager, when Rainbow would have to go through the traumatic experience of petitioning a judge in a courtroom, potentially standing across from Maude and losing, which would send the girl off in a direction of teenaged rebellion that Ronnie knew all too well.
Ronnie would do anything to spare her daughter having to go through what she went through.
Even if it meant risking losing her.
Since Maude first let her babysit, Ronnie had never been late to pick-up or drop-off Rainbow.
After her parole ended six years ago, she had been careful not to get so much as a speeding ticket.
She had to stay squeaky clean. Easier said than done when all the police departments on the Tableland knew who she was.
“Can we watch Frozen and eat mac and cheese?”
Ronnie rubbed her daughter’s warm back. “Or we could pitch a tent in the garden and roast snags over a camp fire! Wouldn’t that be fun?”
The girl looked skeptical.
They watched Frozen and ate macaroni. Rainbow could read thick chapter books and could spell words like especially and inconceivable. She practiced her recorder before bed—a show both hilarious and baffling—and slept with a stuffed unicorn in her mum’s bed despite being too old for that.
Ronnie wasn’t concerned.
At bedtime Rainbow produced a glossy picture book from her backpack with a sparkly photo of a blue morpho butterfly on the cover. Rainbow began reading aloud.
Later, Rainbow closed the library book, clicked off the lamp and snuggled under the weight of Ronnie’s tattooed arm. Ronnie inhaled the smell of fruity shampoo and farts, then sighed contented. She had the best daughter in the world. She loved this little dork so much.
This was safe; bedtime was safe.
Ronnie could love things that didn’t happen every day. “Tomorrow morning what say we go to the farm?”
The girl nodded, small body a weighted blanket against Ronnie’s side. “Can I ride Brighty?” Her child voice rising, light and sweet.
“Yes, you can ride the pony.” She kissed the crown of her daughter’s head. Absence makes the heart fonder. That’s all love was: an urge to protect forever things that didn’t belong to you.