12.

Tuesday 2 April, 3.15 am.

When the remains of the cocaine conquered the oxycontin in her blood, Ca.s.sie Jackson rolled over and woke.

Christian sat naked on the lounge, his skin painted blue by the videogame he played on the huge plasma TV. The volume was low.

'What time is it?' she murmured.

'Ah, three, I think.'

'Don't you have to work?'

'Yep, breakfast meeting. Might as well stay up now. Hungry?'

'Not really.' She sat up and winced, feeling a dull ache in her bottom. She searched for the memories of what she'd done before pa.s.sing out, but everything was a big smudgy blur.

'You ever done shabu?' he asked.

'I don't think so.' Ca.s.sie stared at him. 'Do I look like I smoke ice?'

Christian laughed. 'No. Do I?'

'So you use ice?'

'Oh, every now and then. What do they say sometimes when you have lobster every day, you feel like a little hamburger?'

Ca.s.sie reached for a cigarette and the remainder of Christian's wine.

'Oh, what the h.e.l.l. Could be fun,' she said. 'So, what do we do?'

'Oh no. Can't you find someone else? I've just done eight hours.' Gabriella Marmon leaned her head against a part.i.tion at the nurses' station, the phone cradled on her shoulder. Her buddy, Georgia, made faces at her from the other side of the desk. 'But you know I hate the graveyard shift . . . yes . . . and there's no one else . . . okay, then, all right, yeah.' She slammed down the phone.

She stared daggers at Georgia, who capered about. 'Don't you start.'

'It'll be fun. We've ordered pizza.'

'Fun. I'm exhausted. And you look like one of the bipolars, dancing around like that. You better stop it before Radisson sees you.' She picked up her nurse's badge and pinned it on again, dropped her bag back into the drawer at her feet and locked it. 'So where's the pizza?'

Gabriella stood to begin her second shift for the night. Four am. They could be lucky. Even though it was St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, it was only a Tuesday morning, and Tuesday was usually the quietest night of the week.

And then she heard the screams from the end of the corridor.

'You coming?' asked Georgia.

'Yeah, I guess. Just tell me when the fun starts.' She walked tiredly from behind the nurse's station and followed her friend down the hall.

'Hey, Gary, what have we got?' asked Gabriella, moving forward to help the ambos restrain a young woman who was struggling in his arms.

'No idea. We found her down near the truck out the front.' The tired-looking man moved calmly, but he used full force to restrain the girl. She wore a man's business shirt and nothing else, and she was screaming at the top of her lungs.

'Another one dumped.' Gabriella and Georgia stepped aside as two orderlies rushed to take over from the ambulance officers. When they threw the girl into a wheelchair, the screams died down to a low moan and, as they strapped down her arms and legs, Gabriella leaned over and shouted, 'What have you taken?'

The patient opened her eyes, stared straight at Gabriella and screamed hysterically.

'h.e.l.l, I don't look that bad,' Gabriella said to Georgia, who was trying to take the girl's pulse. 'My name is Gabriella,' she tried again. 'Can you tell us your name?'

'They'll kill me! Let me GO! LET ME GO!'

'Can you see any ID?' she asked Georgia.

Georgia rolled her eyes. 'Can you?' The shirt could not cover the woman's body completely as she thrashed and struggled, and Georgia and Gabriella had already seen every part of her.

'I'll order the blood work,' Gabriella said.

'Already done. Gary called it in on his way out,' said Georgia.

Georgia suddenly gasped. 'Don't look now, honey,' she said to her colleague. 'I told you you were going to be glad you worked tonight. Guess who's coming down the hall?'

'He is not!' Gabriella blushed.

'Yep. Sergeant Scott Hutchinson and he's heading our waaay.'

'What's he doing here?'

'On the job, I'd guess unless he's coming to see you, of course.'

Gabriella quickly smudged her finger across the front of her teeth and surrept.i.tiously flicked out her hair. Within a couple of strides, Scotty was by their side, beaming. Gabriella's smile was pretty wide too until she saw the look of horror cross Scotty's face.

'Oh my G.o.d!' he said. 'That's Ca.s.sandra Jackson!'

13.

Tuesday 2 April, 10 am.

Seren sat on her hands in the waiting room of the parole office, staring straight ahead. She'd been out of that h.e.l.lhole for just an hour, but the view wasn't much better yet. Posters on the wall advertised free needle exchanges and women's cottages for survivors of domestic violence. The only reading material on the pockmarked coffee table consisted of a Bunning's hardware sales catalogue, a flyer for the latest Maserati, and a discarded Streets Cornetto ice-cream wrapper. She couldn't afford any of those things at the moment. She had a cheque for her first week's rent, a fifty-dollar Salvation Army food voucher, and fifty dollars cash, for which, she had been told at the gaol, she had a debt to the Department that she would have to pay back from her first month's pay.

A floor-to-ceiling metal part.i.tion separated the waiting room from the balding man behind the desk in front of her. At least I'm not the one in the cage anymore, she told herself.

Needing to stretch, she stood and walked over to the water dispenser in the corner of the room. On a wall above the unit was a fly-speckled mirror. Seren filled a plastic cup slowly, staring into the reflection of her eyes.

The woman who stared back always surprised her. At twenty-five, with a ten-year-old-son, she half expected to see the image of a forty-year-old in the mirror. At other times, she imagined the gla.s.s would reflect back the little girl she remembered from her dreams. But instead, she saw this person.

She'd always worn her platinum blonde hair short, but this was the shortest shave yet. Other than the slightly bloodied abrasion above her beestung lips, her skin was flawless. Her huge blue eyes appeared clear and unguarded. Although she stood barefoot at five eleven, her rangy body and open countenance made her seem smaller somehow, childlike. That helped and it hindered where she came from. Men wanted both to save her and punish her for her innocence, and women wanted her far from their men.

There was one man Seren was going to find as soon as she could. And when she did, he was going to pay. She walked back to the couch and sat, wanting to concentrate fully on her revenge fantasies.

'Mr Dobell, I know I told you to do Carson's file first.'

Seren turned towards the voice.

A thick-set woman stood over the man at the desk, although only just: although the man was seated, the dark-haired woman's face was just a head above his own.

'I had to finish the draft report for the meeting.' The man stooped his head a little, as though afraid to be hit.

'And I told you to do what?'

'Carson's file, but '

'And you did what?'

'I'm sorry. I'll do it now. I don't need to go to lunch today. I brought something . . .'

The woman stared at the crown of the man's head a moment longer as his voice trailed away. He seemed to scrunch lower in his seat.

The woman looked up. At Seren. Staring straight at her, she lifted the folder in her hands as though to read from it. Seren could see her name lettered in thick, black ink.

Without looking at the file, the woman called to the otherwise empty waiting room, 'Seren Templeton?'

Seren smiled, and walked towards the desk.

'Seren Templeton?' the woman repeated.

'Uh, yes. I mean, present. That's me,' Seren said.

The woman stabbed at a b.u.t.ton on the wall and Seren heard the click of the door to the part.i.tioned area. The door swung outward and the woman used her body to hold it open. She wore a knee-length chequered skirt and an egg-yolk-yellow silk blouse that could not contain its contents; Seren could see flashes of bra and skin between the b.u.t.tons. A big silk bow tied at the neck did its best to regain some propriety.

As she approached, Seren realised how tall she was in comparison. The woman had to tilt her head backwards to address her.

'Ms Templeton. My name is Maria Thomasetti. I will be your probation and parole officer for the next twelve months. You may call me Ms Thomasetti and I will call you Ms Templeton. Follow me, please.'

'You have some rights and you have some responsibilities out here, Ms Templeton,' said Ms Thomasetti from behind the desk in her office. 'I see that this was your first time in gaol, and so this is the first experience you will have had with Probation and Parole. You need to understand a few things very clearly.'

Seren alternated between wanting to sit up straight in the swivelling computer chair, and to slouch down so that she wouldn't tower over this woman so much. She settled for stooping her head somewhat, but she kept her hands in her lap and her eyes intent on Ms Thomasetti to indicate attentiveness.

'Firstly,' Ms Thomasetti continued, 'we can send you back to finish your sentence at any time. Your twelve-month probation is a privilege. You effectively remain in our custody and must prove that you are a fit and proper member of the community.'

She pushed a sheet of paper across the desk to Seren. 'Can you read?' she asked.

'Yes,' Seren told her.

'Can you write?'

'Yes.'

'Humph. Well, you should get to know these four points right here on this paper especially well. They stand between you and the cell you left this morning. Number one.'

Ms Thomasetti pointed with a pencil at a numbered line halfway down the page. Seren focused hard to distract herself from the dark moustache above Ms Thomasetti's lip. 'You will provide a supervised urine sample in this office each week. The presence of any non-prescription drug will send you back to prison to serve the remainder of your term. Do you understand?'

'Yes.'

'You were incarcerated for possession of crystal methamphetamine, Ms Templeton. That is an especially addictive drug. I would recommend that you attend an NA meeting as soon as you leave my office. A list of meeting locations is provided in this folder.

'Number two,' she went on. 'You must not consort with known felons. This is a discretionary point, Ms Templeton. We understand that you may have neighbours who have also been in trouble with the law. This cannot be helped. If, however, we feel that you are a.s.sociating too closely with known felons, and we suspect that you are at risk of engaging in criminal enterprise, you will return to Silverwater to serve the remainder of your term. Do you understand?'

'Yes.'

'Number three. You are to remain employed at all times. The Department has found a job for you. If you do not maintain this job, which includes having a satisfactory attendance and performance record, you will return to custody to serve the remainder of your term. Do you understand?'

'Ah,' Seren began.

'"Ah" is not an answer, Ms Templeton. Do you understand point three, or do you not?'

'Well, you know that I have a son Marco.' Seren couldn't help but smile with antic.i.p.ation. 'I can't wait to see him,' she said.

Nothing.

'I just want to make sure that I'm around to look after him when he's not at school. I need to know that I'm not doing night work or anything. You see, I don't have any family or friends who can look after him for me.'

'You didn't think much about that when you got yourself incarcerated, did you, Ms Templeton?'

'Hey, hang on a minute. I love my son.'

'And where has your son been for the past twelve months, Ms Templeton?'

Seren's eyes burned. Just speaking about Marco left a fist-sized knot of tears in her throat. It had been two weeks since their last visit. He'd had his tenth birthday out here without her. He'd been in two foster homes, sleeping in two different houses with people she'd never met. Over the twelve months she'd been inside, Marco had gone from clinging to her so hard that an officer had to intervene when the visit was up, to leaning away from her when she tried to hug him. This woman's comments were a knitting needle jabbed into her heart.

Ms Thomasetti pressed her. 'Where has your son been these past twelve months?'

'In foster care.' Seren sc.r.a.ped out the words.

'And why is that, Ms Templeton?'

A pulse began to beat in Seren's neck. Her nails made bloodred crescents on the palms of her hands.

'Can you hear me, Ms Templeton? I think we need to address this issue.'

'You know why my son was in foster care,' she said. 'You know why because that's why I'm sitting in here.'