The Gaps by Leanne Hall (classic literature list .TXT) 📕

I didn’t know you could still get it. Chunjuan moves to make it. I let my bag slump to the floor. There are bits of dried grass on it, from where I hid it on the banks of the oval during classes.

I looked through the stuff from Yin’s locker properly at home, finally, and what do you know, there was nothing to worry about, nothing too sinister or heartbreaking and no reason to avoid it. I held her things and I couldn’t tell if she was still the Yin I knew.

The kitchen is the same but different and Chunjuan’s face is the same but different. She pops the microwave door to heat the milk.

The walls are a different colour since I was here last, peach instead of tan. Every appliance is stainless steel and new, but the scrolls on the wall are old and the photos in the frames are too. There’s a picture of Chunjuan and Stephen on a cruise ship, studio portraits of Albert and Nelson, and Yin’s old school photo, the one they used in the first news reports. Maybe the police are holding on to this year’s photo now. I look away quickly.

‘You should have come earlier.’ Chunjuan places a mug in front of me and a plate of biscuits too.

‘I know.’ I burn my mouth on the hot drink and sneak a close look at her. Her jeans and cardigan flap loosely, her face is a hundred years awake. She doesn’t look like she hates me for being alive and well and sitting in her house instead of Yin.

‘How are your parents?’

‘Good.’

‘Your mum sent me flowers. Chrysanthemum. Very nice.’

‘I have to give—’ I start, but Chunjuan gets in first.

‘It’s good you are here, Natalia. The school wants to hold a memorial service for Yin before the end of the year.’

‘What?’

‘They say it will help everyone cope with their exams.’

‘That’s bullshit.’ It slips out of my mouth before I can stop it and Chunjuan gives me a disappointed look. ‘Sorry, but—it’s too soon. It’s not right.’

The police haven’t given up, at least I don’t think they have, so why should we? I don’t know what to believe anymore.

‘I understand why they want to do it. Maybe it’s good to close it off. To finish the year properly.’

‘No. It’s way too soon!’

Memorials are for remembering dead people, which is a way of saying that you plan to forget them really soon. The school acts like they want us to talk about our feelings, but really what they want is for us to pretend we’re only having nice pastel weepy emotions and concentrate on getting the kind of marks that will get us into law or medicine.

‘We’re not giving up. I will never give up.’ Chunjuan places a hand on her chest. ‘I still feel in my heart that she must be alive. I would know if she was gone. But it makes sense to do something to help you girls cope.’

Chunjuan reaches across the bench and catches my hand. She’s got proper surgeon’s hands, small and pale with long thin fingers, sinew underneath. I wonder if she’s still working or if Yin’s disappearance has cracked normal life apart completely. I can’t imagine her operating on people’s brains in the state she’s in.

I really, really want to believe that Yin is still alive and I’m afraid I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I want a church service.

‘Will you say something nice at the memorial? You know her best.’

It’s Chunjuan asking, with her cold hands and lined face, haunting her too-big clothes and I nod yes, even though I’m not the one who knows Yin best anymore.

The house is too quiet. ‘Where are Al and Nelly?’

‘Science camp. Yin was supposed to be skiing with Milla’s family this week.’ Chunjuan says it in a matter-of-fact way, and it shouldn’t shock me, but the thought of Yin going away with someone else’s family for the holidays makes my head spin with jealousy.

We talk, or I talk, because Chunjuan wants to hear inconsequential stories about Mum and Dad and Liv and some of the other girls at school, the ones that went to Junior School with Yin and I, and the whole time the television is on, muted, in the background with a cooking show.

When I leave I promise to visit again and soon, I promise that I won’t be a stranger and that’s when Chunjuan latches onto me like I’m a lifebuoy and she cries like she did during the first press conferences, crying like a child who’s fallen over and grazed their knees.

I hate being hugged but I let her lean into me, and I remember Chloe’s calm presence yesterday, and how much it helped, so I press my hands into Chunjuan’s skinny spine and I try to be solid around her until she cries herself out.

After she draws herself together, she gives me a plastic bag full of tights and hair ties, saying she bought them for Yin and never got to give them to her.

‘Please be very careful, Natalia. Take care and watch and protect your family,’ she says.

I can’t tell her about the bag of Yin’s things, so I leave it sagging on the kitchen floor and hope it won’t shock her too much when she finds it later that night.

DAY 44

‘It’s bigger than I thought it would be.’

Mum pulls in slowly at the kerb and we get out of Ron and Pearl’s car. The sky is pink and birds are wheeling overhead.

Dad and Jarrod’s house sits on a big block of grassy land, shedding layers of paint and roof tiles like an animal sloughing off its old skin. They bought the house from an elderly Maltese couple and there are fruit trees everywhere and a passionfruit vine over the carport.

‘More of a dump, don’t you mean?’ I pull Mum’s suitcase behind me, the one she bought to go back to Singapore for her dad’s funeral. I hand Mum a roll of paper