Sam sounds the word out. ‘What do you reckon it means, Mum? Resist what?’
‘He’s probably not well, darling,’ she says, the words bitter, traitorous, in her mouth. She is glad they cannot see what she sees when she looks back in the rear-vision – the medic moving in, the flop of the man’s body as they drag it into the van.
It is better this way. She and Ben had decided together that the kids did not need to know the details of the society they were growing up in. Not yet. Did not need the specifics of what BestLife had become or how it operated or how their uncle had come to die under their watch. Essie could not even remember him. But fear has its own signature, and even with their careful sidestepping, the kids know, joke in the playground – You’ll be sent to BestLife – understand that something is being hidden from them, and they want to dig it up but keep their eyes closed at the same time.
The graffiti will be gone by the time she drives home.
All the same, she’ll know it is there. Underneath.
Resist.
That’s what her brother Michael had once said, too.
* * *
Arriving at the school, she swipes to get through to the drop zone, watches the kids tousle in the line to hold their palms to the security pad as they enter the grounds. They run from there and they don’t look back. She sees Essie point towards some of Sam’s friends, the way she touches her little brother’s shoulder before he runs off to join them.
Michael used to do that for her. Her eldest brother Steve never did. But Michael, just two years older than Mim, and gentle, so gentle (Soft as the inside of a strawberry Freddo, she once heard her dad say, not kindly) that his own eyes might glisten if she ran to him, crying at recess, with scrapes and tales and squashed sandwiches. The way the protective shadow of his arm enclosed her closest friend Heidi too. Until later, when they’d had to turn around and protect him.
She shakes her head, trying to loosen these images of her brother. There is no time for this now. For pain and guilt and what-ifs. For the treacherous voice whispering that she is a coward, that she has let his death go unremarked, that she has not stood up, that she has been found wanting.
The screen on the dash lights up. Incoming call. Unidentified. She answers quickly, hope high in her chest.
‘Miriam Elliot?’ A woman’s voice.
She slumps back in the seat. ‘Yes?’
‘My name is Raquel Yu, I’m a journalist with The Advocate.’
‘Sorry, I can’t –’ Mim goes to end the call.
‘I’m an Australian based in Canada,’ the woman continues, undaunted. ‘The Advocate is an independent news organisation peopled by correspondents from around the globe and funded by citizens who want the truth.’
‘Sorry, I’m in the middle of something. If you’re looking for donations –’
‘No, no.’ She laughs. ‘It’s not that, although if you’re offering…’
Mim grits her teeth, annoyed at her inability to just hang up. ‘Sorry, I really have to go.’
‘I’m actually after your husband, Ben? Are you able to give me his contact details?’
She startles at Ben’s name. ‘What’s this about?’
‘I’m currently looking at the Golden Arc project and the unprecedented Chinese–Australian collaboration on the mine. I’m keen to speak to Ben about his work there with GeoTech?’
Mim doesn’t speak.
‘Are you there, Miriam? Have I got that right, GeoTech is his employer?’
‘Mim,’ she says, ‘and yes, GeoTech, but he’s not…’ She thinks that perhaps if she doesn’t say the words they can continue to exist somewhere else, a place of parallel possibilities. She wants to refuse the reality of them.
‘He’s not working there anymore?’
‘He’s missing.’
‘Sorry?’
‘They called me yesterday. He’s gone missing from the mine site.’
‘Oh, god, sorry, is that…?’
Mim’s voice is tight. ‘Probably nothing to worry about, I’ll get him to call you when he gets in touch. Ben’s not one to give up a chance to get his face in the news.’ She attempts to laugh but the sound does not work.
The woman says she’ll send all the contact details, apologises for calling at this time. She had no idea, she says.
‘It’s fine,’ says Mim, but her stomach flips over as she hangs up. Why is a journalist poking around the Golden Arc project? The international controversy was all over years ago once China acquired the island. And the domestic row was over before it began. ‘Unprecedented investment opportunity for Australia.’ Everything was unprecedented by then anyway. Keen to speak about Ben’s work there – but what was so special about Ben’s work? Mim rakes back through the messages, the conversations, that last video call in her mind. Had he seemed more stressed? Secretive? The calls were always monitored so it’s not like he could have told her if anything was wrong. She shakes her head, separates the two events in her mind. She is conflating them for nothing. Coincidence that the woman called today, that’s all. Strange and unsettling, but nothing more.
Ben will be home. Ben will be home and everything will go back to normal.
2
There is a grey Department SUV parked outside her house. She brakes suddenly, breathes, then guides her car into the garage, buying herself time to calm down before she greets them.
‘Mrs Elliot?’
‘I said I didn’t need a visit.’
The woman’s face is pleasant, not pretty. She ignores Mim. ‘Okay if we come inside?’
Mim sees Kevin across the road peering around the edge of his curtain.
‘Of course,’ Mim says and swipes them in.
* * *
She makes them tea. Alexis and Ian. Ian introduces them, is obviously the soft to Alexis’s hard.
He takes the cup and thanks her. ‘How are you feeling? What a shock, huh?’
‘Yes, I suppose, it just, it hasn’t really sunk in.’
‘Of course. And the children, how are they taking it?’
Alexis has a screen out, tapping, but keeping her eyes on Mim. Warm and wary. It’s a well-rehearsed look.
‘I haven’t told them yet, Ben isn’t due home for another couple of days, I’m just waiting for some more information, I mean, is that what you – can you tell me something more?’
Ian sighs, smiles almost sadly. ‘Not at the moment, but what we can do is work with you to put in place a bit of a plan for the next little bit.’
‘A plan?’ Mim furrows her brow. ‘To find him?’
‘That’s not our area. We leave that to the professionals, don’t we?’ He looks at Alexis and she nods.
‘Sorry, what is your area?’
‘We’re in Asset Protection.’
‘Right.’ What’s the asset? she wonders.
‘So, it’s our job to make sure you and your kids aren’t hassled by media and are given a chance to tell your side of the story, if and when that’s appropriate. We look at all the options available to you and advise you on the best way forward.’