35. Alicia

BEFORE

"Miss Fairchild did that to me," Jessica whispered. They were in Jessica's bed, lying side by side like a row of sardines under the blankets in their shorty pajamas. Jessica was in the middle and Alicia and Norah each rested a head on her shoulder. "In the pool. She ‘taught me to swim.'" Jessica grimaced as she said the words. "She told me she would catch me. She promised. Then she let me flail around under the water until I blacked out."

Alicia felt a tear from Jessica's face hit her cheek. It invoked a swell of fury in Alicia. She clenched her fists.

"That's fucked up," Norah said.

"Yes," Alicia agreed wholeheartedly. "So fucked up. It's child abuse. It's… it's attempted murder."

"She wouldn't have let me drown," Jessica said. "Or Amy. She would have grabbed her eventually."

"Jessica!" Alicia cried. "Tell me you're not still defending that woman. Who cares if she would have saved her—or you?"

Jessica's expression was tragically, desperately uncertain. "I guess you're right."

"We have to tell someone," Alicia said. "A teacher. The police."

"She'll just deny it." Jessica sniffed and propped herself up onto her elbows. "And even if they do believe us, what then? We'll have to leave Wild Meadows. We could end up anywhere. What are the chances that they'll let us stay together?"

They'd talked about this before, of course: and each time they decided to keep quiet out of fear of being separated. But this time was different. They all knew it.

Alicia glanced at Norah, who stared determinedly at the ceiling.

"It's a risk we have to take," Alicia said. "I know it's scary but…"

Jessica wiped her face with her forearm. "Just slow down, Alicia. We just need to keep a closer eye on Amy, that's all. Maybe we can take turns to stay home with her, like we did with the other babies?"

"And if she doesn't let us stay home?" Alicia said. "What then? We can't protect Amy if we're not here."

Alicia looked at Norah again. Her face was carefully blank, but Alicia saw the effort it took to hold back her emotions. They all knew there was no one more terrified of them being separated than she was.

"I agree with Alicia," Norah said, her gaze still fixed on the ceiling. "We have to tell. We've already waited too long."

Amy's face lit up when they entered the kitchen for breakfast the next morning. She dropped the piece of toast she'd been smearing all over the tray of her high chair and began waving her hands about.

Miss Fairchild huffed. "Great. Now she'll never eat her breakfast."

"Hello, Amy," Norah said brightly, picking her up out of her high chair and spinning her about. Amy giggled hysterically.

"Norah," Miss Fairchild cried. "I'm the only one who—"

"Wheeeee!" Norah cried, ignoring her and spinning Amy faster.

It would have been funny seeing Miss Fairchild's confusion, had Alicia not worried it might tip her off that something was wrong. Jessica must have had the same thought, because she chose that moment to say, "We'd better go, guys."

The moment she said it, Amy broke into heartrending sobs. "Nooooooo," she cried, betrayed. "No go!" She looked at Norah and Jessica imploringly, her face desperate.

"We'll be back after school," Alicia said, as the child put her chubby arms around Alicia's leg. When Alicia put a hand on her head, it felt warm and sweaty. By the time they'd brushed their teeth and got their bags, Amy was a gasping, snotty, red-faced mess.

"That's enough," Miss Fairchild said, prising her away. "For goodness sake, what a fuss!"

"Bye," they said to her inadequately, then they hurried from the house so quickly that Jessica forgot her schoolbag and had to run back for it.

As Norah and Alicia waited for her, they consoled themselves with the fact that with any luck, after today, they'd never have to do this again. Of course, if they were wrong, it meant they'd be making things worse for themselves. And not only that, they'd have made things a whole lot worse for Amy.

They didn't talk at all on the way to school. Not one single word. What they were doing felt too important. They needed to focus.

Norah walked with her head down, somber and stoic, like a prisoner on her way to death row. Jessica fought tears, and occasionally shed them. As Alicia walked alongside them, the idea that they could be separated today finally settled upon her chest. The last couple of years hadn't been happy, not at all. Compared to her life before that, with Grammy, they had been a nightmare. And yet. At least she'd had these two—her sisters. As Norah said the day Alicia found out Grammy had passed away, it wasn't nothing. On the contrary, Alicia realized now, it was everything.

"Should we go to our lockers?" Jessica asked, when they got to school.

Norah shook her head, pointing toward the principal's office. "Let's just get this over with."

They had to wait for Mr. O'Day for nearly twenty minutes. He was on the phone, and from where they sat in the small reception area, they heard every word of his side of the conversation. It might have been interesting had it not been about funding for new sporting equipment. Mr. O'Day had been the PE teacher before he'd become principal and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he didn't have much interest in any other subjects, or anything about education in general.

Finally, he ended the call and ushered the girls into his office—a small brown room with white venetian blinds and a framed picture of Shane Warne on the wall. Opposite his L-shaped desk was a cabinet filled with sporting trophies.

He only had two seats for visitors, so Alicia remained standing.

"I've got five minutes before I'm due to judge the year two art show," he told them, with a glance at the clock on the wall. "So, what's this all about?"

Mr. O'Day didn't make it to the year two art show. Instead, he called the police, and the rest of the day's appointments were canceled.

Two police officers arrived at the school promptly, and joined them in Mr. O'Day's office.

"Hello, girls," the older cop said, pushing Mr. O'Day's chair toward Alicia. He had white hair and kind eyes. He sat down on the corner of the desk. "My name is Sergeant Grady, but everybody calls me Max. This is my colleague Constable Hart." He pointed to the other cop, who was young enough to be his grandson. "You can call him Robbie. I understand your names are Norah, Jessica, and Alicia?"

They nodded.

"It's very nice to meet you. Your principal tells me you've asked to speak to us—is that correct?"

"Yes," Norah said. "Our foster mother is abusive."

"That is extremely concerning." The sergeant's bushy eyebrows knitted together. "You did the right thing by coming to us."

It was probably part of his standard spiel, but Alicia couldn't help but find it affirming. They'd done the right thing! Alicia couldn't remember the last time someone had told her that.

"We're worried about Amy," Jessica said.

"Amy?" Max glanced at his colleague briefly. "Who is Amy?"

"She lives with us. Miss Fairchild adopted her six months ago. She's two."

"I see. And you've witnessed your foster mother being abusive toward her?"

"Yes," Alicia said. "And it's getting worse."

Norah sat forward. "We're worried something could be happening to her right now!"

Max held up a hand. "We've already sent a car to Wild Meadows. Our officers will probably be there by now. We can get a message to them to check on Amy's welfare."

He nodded to Robbie, who left the room. As Alicia watched him go, relief mingled with heavy dread at the idea of the police car pulling up to the door. She could picture Miss Fairchild's polite, concerned face covering up her white-hot rage at being questioned like a criminal.

"Is this the first time you've reported the abuse?" Max asked, when Robbie had gone.

"Yes." Alicia felt a pull in her chest. "We should have reported it earlier but…"

"What's important is that you've reported it now," Max said. "Unfortunately, I'm going to need you to tell me a little bit more about the abuse. I know it might be upsetting, so take your time. Mr. O'Day is waiting just outside in case you have any questions or are uncertain about anything."

"Well," Alicia said. "Yesterday was what brought it to a head."

"All right," Max said. "Let's start there."

"We arrived home from school to find Miss Fairchild in the pool. Amy was in the pool too, but her head was underwater. We ran all the way from the gate, which would have taken nearly a minute and her head was under the whole time. She did the same thing to Jessica when she was a child. It's a punishment for not loving her enough."

"She'll say she was teaching her to swim," Jessica said, "but she's only two years old. You don't let a two-year-old flounder underwater for a whole minute."

The policeman nodded, but he didn't look as horrified as Alicia had expected. "And have there been other instances of… abuse?" he asked.

"Miss Fairchild dropped her on the high chair and she hit her head," Norah said.

The policeman raised his bushy eyebrows. "She dropped Amy? On purpose?"

"Amy kicked her in the face as she was putting her in the high chair," Norah said. "Miss Fairchild let her go and she hit her head hard. Then Miss Fairchild wouldn't let us comfort her. She said she had to realize there were consequences to her actions."

The policeman nodded. "I see."

"She barely feeds us," Alicia said.

"She's obsessed with cleanliness and makes us clean for hours every day," Jessica said.

"She drinks," Norah said. "At night she roams the halls and sometimes comes into our rooms and wakes us all up."

The did their best to report each incident in detail, and Max paid close attention, taking notes and asking questions, but an hour went by and Alicia could see that they hadn't given him nearly enough. Miss Fairchild had been clever. None of her abuse had been clear-cut. In every case, there was a way for her to spin it as discipline or an accident or lies. They didn't have any tangible proof. It was their word against hers. The whole thing came down to who the cops chose to believe.

"What else can you tell me?" Max said.

"She went through a period of fostering babies through respite care," Alicia said. "When she tired of them, she left their care to us. Check with the school. Our school attendance would have been fifty percent at best. It was because we were looking after the babies that Miss Fairchild fostered."

Max made a note of this.

"And there was one day she made me take Amy down into the basement when the social worker came to visit. She locked us down there for nearly an hour. That was kind of weird."

There was a knock at the door.

"Phone call for you, Sergeant Grady," Mr. O'Day's secretary said.

The police officer assured the girls he'd be right back and left the room.

"Do you think he believes us?" Jessica said.

"It's hard to tell," Alicia said. "But he'll have to investigate. He can't just ignore us without looking into it."

The door opened again. As Max reentered the room, Alicia noticed a difference in him. There was something slightly stiff about his movements, a kind of pervading tension.

"Sorry about that," Max said, resuming his seat on Mr. O'Day's desk. "That was my colleague. He's at Wild Meadows right now."

Norah was already on her feet. "Is Amy okay?"

"Don't tell us we were too late," Alicia said.

Jessica was trembling, as if she'd already decided the worst had happened.

Max didn't reassure them. His face was perplexed, his brows so tightly furrowed they almost touched. "The police at the house conducted a thorough search of the house," he said finally. "They didn't find Amy."

Alicia looked at Norah and Jessica in horror. "But where else would she be? Miss Fairchild never takes her anywhere."

"Did they check the basement?" Norah asked.

"She must be somewhere," Alicia said.

Max shook his head. "They didn't find any sign of a toddler at all. Not a nappy or a high chair. Not a single piece of baby clothing. Nothing."

He waited, perhaps hoping they'd have an answer for this. But they all just stared back at him, bewildered.

"That doesn't make sense," Alicia said finally. "She was there this morning when we left for school."

"Is it possible someone tipped her off?" Max asked.

"But no one knew," Norah said. "No one apart from the three of us."

There had to be an explanation. Had Miss Fairchild packed Amy up and taken her somewhere? It was possible, of course, but it didn't make sense. Why didn't she tell them what she was planning? And why pack all Amy's stuff away?

Jessica and Norah looked just as perplexed as Alicia.

"There's something else," Max said. "My colleagues have spoken with social services. The records show three children in Miss Fairchild's care. You three. There's no record of a toddler being placed for adoption or foster care at Wild Meadows." Max stood from the desk and paced, tired or frustrated or both. "According to our records, Amy doesn't exist."