As Darkness Falls

20

People began passing each other serving dishes of food. There seemed to be a habit to it, a familiarity, which made Sara think this was how meals usually were here. They all handed each other plates, passing them in circle around the table. Sara took the plates that were given to her, and served herself a little, and passed the plate on when she had. It was what Sara thought of as holidays food. Leftovers and cold meat and warm boiled potatoes with mint, the kind of thing her family had always had for dinner in the week after Christmas.

Everyone was passing plates, and serving themselves, and starting to eat. It was all strangely normal, Sara thought, given why she and Zoe were here.

It was all quite alarmingly normal, and for some reason that made Sara nervous.

While everyone was getting food, under the cover of the clattering plates, Sara leaned over and whispered to Zoe, “Are you okay?”

“Yep,” Zoe said, and smiled.

“Are you sure?”

Zoe nodded, and handed Sara a bowl of sliced beetroot, which she knew Sara loathed. Sara looked at her, but didn’t point that out. She just passed it on around the table to Faith instead.

“Are you really?” Sara said to Zoe.

“Yes,” Zoe said. “I promise.”

She gave Sara carrots, and Sara spooned some onto her plate, and then gave that bowl to Faith, too.

Zoe seemed fine, Sara decided, and her family seemed to want to talk to her, so Sara left her alone.

She took several slices of cheese from a plate in the middle of the table, because she didn’t really like cold meat. She sat there, cutting the cheese into little triangles, and eating pieces of potato. She sat there trying not to be angry, and trying not to feel out of place, and also trying to remember quite what had happened to who, just in case she saw anything odd.

It was Zoe’s two sisters there was uncertainty about, Sara knew from the police file. No-one was completely sure whether anything awful had happened to them or not. The investigators had been reasonably confident that Zoe’s brother Joel hadn’t been touched, for no actual reason other than all the videos they’d found had been of girls, but Beth and Faith they weren’t sure about. There were doubts about Mary, too, and how much she’d known. The sex-crimes unit detectives had written on the file, slightly cynically, that of course Mary knew, because the wives always knew, but were so trapped in codependency and emotional manipulation that they couldn’t do anything to prevent it. They couldn’t admit what was happening, even to themselves, but at the same time, the police turning up at their door was never actually a surprise.

Sara thought about that. It meant Mary was a victim too, she thought to herself. Less of a victim, perhaps, and a complicit victim, but somehow still a victim. Sara decided to try and remember that.

They ate. As they did, everyone else talked. Mary asked about Zoe’s job, and where she lived, and how everything was going in Sydney. She asked about everything except Sara, Sara noticed. Mary also said how long it had been since they’d all seen each other, and Sara realised that Zoe hadn’t been home in nine years, and hadn’t seen her family in all in that time either.

Sara had half-assumed, but she’d never actually asked. She remembered that too, in case it mattered later.

Mary kept calling Zoe her old name, Leah, and Zoe corrected her the first few times, then seemed to give up. Dean said Leah too, and Zoe ignored him, and others seemed to decide not to use a name at all, either name. They waited until Zoe was looking in their direction to speak to her, which Sara though was quite a clever way to avoid confrontation. It was similar to what Mary had done outside, and she wondered if it was some kind of church thing, or family thing. Something they all did without really being aware of it.

Or perhaps something about this family, particularly, Sara suddenly thought. Something to do with growing up with a predator.

Sara suddenly wasn’t sure, and began to wonder about that.

She wasn’t sure about a lot, here. She was still a little confused about what was going on. She couldn’t make up her mind if the rest of Zoe’s family were victims she should feel sorry for, or awful people she should despise. She had an urge to start a fight, to make trouble, to tell them what she thought. Instead, she decided to act like a cop. She looked around, and kept quiet, and listened, and let Zoe do the talking. Like a drugs investigation, she thought, or a reported robbery she suspected was an insurance scam. Keep quiet and listen and work out what was going on, but mostly keep quiet and listen, because the suspects knew they did it, and she knew they did it, but until she could actually prove that she had to make nice and talk politely. Then, when someone slipped up, then the arrests could start.

Not that she should be assuming anyone had necessarily done anything, she thought, or that there was anything particular being hidden at all. Not here, on a visit to Zoe’s family.

Except that perhaps she should, since that was why she and Zoe were here in the first place.

She decided she ought, and kept listening, and looking around.

Dean, Beth’s boyfriend, started giving Sara the eye, glaring at her across the table. Just like a drunk on the street in the Cross on a Saturday night, Sara thought. She noticed, and almost decided to ignore him, then changed her mind, and stared back instead. He wasn’t staring because of anything particular, she thought. He probably wasn’t trying to start anything with her. He was just a redneck, in his own odd way, and was probably just not used to being around people who weren’t exactly like him.

Sara stared, and then started grinning, and that seemed to make Dean uncomfortable. Misplaced grins worked on aggressive drunks too. Dean looked away, and started ignoring Sara instead, which was fine with her. She sat there quietly. None of the others seemed to want to talk to her much, either. Mary and Beth were mostly ignoring her, which was about what she’d expected, for no actual reason. Joel seemed quiet, and didn’t talk to anyone much.

Faith was the only member of the family who seemed to be trying to be nice to Sara. She kept passing Sara bowls of food Sara didn’t need, and refilling Sara’s water glass from a jug, and asking what Sydney was like and how the drive up had been. Sara was glad of that, and talked back to her a little. Neither of them really had much to say, but they both tried, and it was nice of Faith to bother. Especially when Sara had been a bit rude about the praying.

Sara felt a little bad about that.