The Family Doctor Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE FAMILY DOCTOR

  ‘The Family Doctor is a compelling thriller—fast-paced, gripping and frightening. But is more than that because it is a story that draws desperately needed attention to domestic abuse in this country, to institutional indifference, to the devaluing of women’s lives. The Family Doctor is a cry for change.’

  Sofie Laguna, Miles Franklin Award-winning author of The Eye of the Sheep and Infinite Splendours

  ‘Brilliant. So compelling on so many levels.’

  Chris Hammer, author of Scrublands, Silver and Trust

  ‘Debra Oswald is always deft at capturing the nuances of female friendship and romantic attraction, but this time she brings them to a pitch of pulse-racing intensity. Delving into the dark world of domestic violence and society’s abject failure to protect those most vulnerable, she has produced a gripping thriller, brimming with heart and intellect.’

  Geraldine Brooks, author of The Secret Chord

  ‘Mesmerising and heart-breaking. A perfect story for this moment in time.’

  Sarah Bailey, author of Where the Dead Go

  ‘The Family Doctor brings urgent news, taking the reader into suburban battlegrounds kept private by the threat and actuality of violence. In crystal-clear prose, Debra Oswald unveils an all-too-believable world of love and loyalty stretched to the limit, with agonising consequences when the best people are forced to do the worst things. When is it justified to fight fire with fire? The moment you finish this novel you will want to find someone else who has read it, and talk all night about the vital questions it raises.’

  Malcolm Knox, author of Bluebird

  Debra Oswald is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and author of the novels Useful (2015) and The Whole Bright Year (2018). She was creator/head writer of the first five seasons of successful TV series Offspring. Her stage plays have been performed around the world and published by Currency Press. Gary’s House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were all shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences—Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. Her television credits include award-winning episodes of Police Rescue, Palace of Dreams, The Secret Life of Us, Sweet and Sour and Bananas in Pyjamas. Debra has written three Aussie Bites books for kids and six children’s novels, including The Redback Leftovers, Getting Air and Blue Noise. Debra has been a storyteller on stage at Story Club and will perform her one-woman show, Is There Something Wrong With That Lady?, in 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2021

  Copyright © Debra Oswald 2021

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 778 1

  eISBN 978 1 76106 117 2

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Luke Causby/Blue Cork

  Cover image: WikiCommons

  FOR DALE DRUHAN AND SHELLEY EVES

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  BODIES ARE VULNERABLE PARCELS, SO MUCH SOFT TISSUE held in place by bone and skin. Walking around in them is a precarious business, considering their delicate physiological systems, prone to self-inflicted damage, susceptible to blows from the outside world and blows from other people. Not to mention the risk that the body could betray from within, suddenly, unpredictably.

  Paula Kaczmarek had never been the kind of doctor who ruminated on such dangers excessively. She got on with doing the best that could be done for her patients—identify their problems, offer sensible remedies, chivvy them into treating themselves a little better. No nonsense, pragmatic. But underneath all of that, she felt an achy tenderness towards every one of those vulnerable bodies.

  Just after five o’clock she smiled goodbye to Jemma on the front desk and headed out the door of Marrickville Family Practice. She fished out her phone and saw two missed calls from her friend Stacey, thirty and thirty-two minutes ago. During patient consultations, Paula always kept her phone on silent, zipped inside her handbag. It was disrespectful to be distracted by a caller ID flashing up on the screen at the same moment her hand might be probing some intimate cavity in a person.

  In the car park, she tried to call Stacey back but it went to voicemail. On Tuesdays, Stacey took her kids to soccer training and Paula would usually be doing a few aged-care visits at this time. But she’d visited her current batch of old ladies yesterday, so this evening she was free to drive straight home.

  Five months ago, Paula had offered Stacey a place to stay for as long as the family needed. Stacey had moved into the small room that used to be a study and the kids—Cameron was ten, Poppy just turned eight—shared the spare bedroom, next door to Paula’s. It was the first time Paula had ever lived with children in her house. These days she found herself thinking a lot about what to cook, which dishes might appeal to kids. She had discovered that if she made any foodstuff sufficiently crunchy, Cameron and Poppy would happily eat it. Tonight, she bought the ingredients to make chicken schnitzel, sugar snaps and roast vegies with enough chopped pecans and parmesan sprinkled on top to make them crispy.

  Paula and her husband Remy had bought the Californian bungalow in Earlwood years ago, and just as they’d finally finished renovating it, he got sick. Now, after Paula’s long quiet stretch living there alone, she was enjoying having Stacey and Cameron and Poppy in the house, relishing the voices bouncing up the hallway. She’d developed a fondness for the earthy, tangy smell of grubby kids and their school clobber.

  At the start, Paula had to forbid Stacey from saying ‘Thank you’ and ‘Sorry for invading your house’ ten or twenty times a day. They’d been friends since they were twelve, for God’s sake. If Stacey was in trouble and Paula could help, then the solution was simple and there was no reason for I-don’t-deserve-this gratitude. But Stacey’s old buoyancy had been so eroded that the impulse to apologise for herself would overcome her. Paula would turn to find Stacey looking at her with tears oozing up, stammering out more embarrassed thanks. So they developed a jokey system whereby Stacey would add pen-strokes to a post-it on the fridge, like a prisoner marking off the days—a pen-stroke
for every time she felt the urge to apologise or gush her appreciation. Paula agreed that, down the track, they could convert the tally into some appropriate Festival of Gratitude—a fancy weekend away or whatever.

  Once she moved into Paula’s house, Stacey pulled things together remarkably quickly—or at least, she threw herself into the practical processes with determination, even if she was still fractured below the busy surface. She made sure Cameron and Poppy were settled at their new school. She found Cameron a good counsellor. She took on a fill-in maternity leave contract as a teacher at a preschool and there was already talk of a permanent job. She was sorting out her finances and legal mess. She signed up for sessions with a psychologist herself.

  To see Stacey now, to measure the change from the fragile woman her friends had found in the Ballina motel—well, Paula was relieved and surprised and bursting with admiration for her.

  At night, after the kids were asleep, the two women would stretch out on the sofa and talk about what the future might look like. Paula was sometimes tempted to say, ‘Stay living here for the next ten years,’ but she resisted. That would be selfishness. She wanted to see her friend get on her feet, grasp her independence, maybe find a new partner eventually. So the fact that Paula loved having them here—the place humming with energy again—that shouldn’t enter into Stacey’s plans.

  Anyway, for the time being, it was good. For the first time since Remy’s death, Paula looked forward to coming home from work to this house.

  As she swung her car into the driveway, she saw Stacey’s old red Subaru parked outside. They were back from soccer training. So right now Stacey was probably in the process of hustling the kids through the shower and into pyjamas.

  There was an unfamiliar white hatchback across the street, with a sticker from a car rental company on the back window. Most likely an interstate visitor at the Lees’ house.

  Both the kids’ soccer boots were on the front porch, positioned precisely. Cameron would’ve done that. That boy had a commitment to tidiness his mother and sister lacked.

  Paula unlocked the front door and drew in the breath to sing out hello, but with the intake of air her mouth was suddenly filled with a teeth-jangling sensation. She knew it very well—the brassy smell of blood.

  ‘Stace? You okay?’

  Two picture frames had been knocked off the hall table, scattering broken glass across the floor. That probably explained the blood smell—one of the kids had cut their feet.

  But then in the living room, the coffee table was tipped on its side and the carved granite bird from the mantelpiece was lying in the middle of the rug.

  The skin prickled up Paula’s arms, chest, neck, and she could hear her own rapid breaths, her throat stinging with the metallic blood smell. She spotted Stacey’s mobile phone on the floor, its metal carcass bashed out of shape, the screen splintered into a white cobweb. Then she saw a woman’s feet, and taking one more step around the sofa, she found her friend sprawled out.

  Stacey’s long hair was sodden, soaking up some of the pool of blood around her head and shoulders. The wound in her neck was meaty, with ragged edges, as if the skin had been torn apart by an animal. Paula had seen gunshot wounds like that—years ago, when she worked in emergency departments.

  She knew Stacey was dead, but still her impulse was to lunge down and kneel by her friend, check for a pulse, find some way to staunch the bleeding. It was only once she was crouched low, facing the other corner of the room, that Paula had a sightline into the dining room.

  She could see Poppy hunched in a tight ball where she’d squashed herself against the skirting board. Cameron had curled his body around hers, as if trying to shield his sister.

  ‘Cameron,’ Paula called out.

  Both children were very still.

  Paula stood up, but her knees crumpled and she steadied herself against the arm of the sofa for a second so she wouldn’t fall. It was a wrench to leave Stacey’s side. Paula felt she was abandoning her in this moment, even if that was illogical. But she needed to go to the kids.

  She hurried across the room to reach them, grabbing on to the corner of the dining table as a pivot point to swing herself around and down onto the floor beside them.

  That close, it was clear both children were dead, shot in the back of the head. Paula leaned over—she knew this was futile—to slip her hand inside the rucked-up collar of Cameron’s soccer jersey and search for a pulse. With her other hand, she reached over him to hold on to Poppy’s leg—the strip of bare skin between her red shorts and the top of the thick football socks. The impulse was to hold Poppy so she wouldn’t look so defenceless. Her skin was still warm.

  Paula heard the squeak of running shoes on the floorboards and Matt, Stacey’s husband, lurched into view. He glanced down at Stacey on the floor, then turned to stare at the kids. His eyes appeared solid black—pupils dilated—and his skin was moist and pale, like uncooked dough. He stood very still, feet planted solidly, but then Paula saw his hands were shaking as he lifted the gun.

  He raised his eyes to look Paula full in the face—he must’ve known she was there from the moment she came in the front door. He held her gaze for one second, then swung the muzzle of the rifle under his chin and fired.

  TWO

  ANITA WASN’T SURPRISED TO SEE THAT THE STREET OUTSIDE Paula’s house was jammed with vehicles, cordoned off with police tape and unnaturally bright from the crime scene LEDs casting a harsh, astringent wash over everything.

  She pulled her car to the kerb and texted Paula.

  I’m here. They might not let me come inside. A xx

  She’d been to ugly crime scenes—police rounds was her first job as a journalist—and covering the courts over the last six years, she’d seen plenty of photos of wounded bodies, blood-smeared kitchen knives, yellow markers numbering dismal objects strewn across a floor. She had a technique for looking at those images, blinking crisply so they couldn’t burrow inside her eyeballs in a permanent way. But she wasn’t sure she could manage this. She’d spent so many hours of her life in Paula’s house, so many long dinners, TV binge festivals, boozy dancing nights, backyard afternoons yabbering over many pots of tea, weeping sessions after some misfortune for Paula or Anita or Stacey. And now she knew Stace was lying on the floor in that house. Beautiful Stacey and her beautiful kids.

  Her phone dinged with a text: Okay to come in.

  Anita tipped her head in greeting to the cops outside as she threaded her way around their gear and through the front door, her shoes crunching on the plastic runners temporarily laid over the rugs and floorboards. She was ushered away from the living room towards the kitchen, but on the way past she glanced into the room to see the crime scene officers working in their blue coveralls and white booties. Their faces were held almost rigid, as if they could only get through this with a tight professional mask. Anita had seen those solemn expressions before, whenever cops were required to deal with dead children.

  As she moved one step further down the hallway, she caught a glimpse of Stacey’s body and the bloody blur of Matt’s scalp but she couldn’t see Cameron or Poppy. Maybe that was just as well.

  An officer carrying a tripod and an armload of camera equipment walked briskly towards Anita, so she ducked into a corner out of the way. From there, she could see through to the kitchen table where Paula was sitting, talking to a detective. Anita recognised him from a long murder trial she’d covered the year before. Detective Mehta. Rohan Mehta. She remembered thinking he was a good guy when they’d chatted in the courthouse corridors. And now she observed the gently respectful way he was treating Paula, leaning slightly across the table towards her, with a manner that managed to be tender without being intrusive.

  ‘Paula. Hi,’ said Anita softly, in keeping with the muted air in the room.

  On her way to the house, Anita had told herself that Paula could handle this better than most people. She was a doctor, robust, not easily flustered, and a woman who’d already experienc
ed the wallop of grief in her life, so she was someone who could be a strong centre for everyone else. But when Paula stood up, her movements were tentative, fragile. A papery version of herself.

  She was only wearing a camisole tucked into her red-and-blue-patterned skirt. The shirt she had been wearing was now stuffed into a clear plastic evidence bag sitting on the bench. Through the plastic, Anita could see large bloodstains on the sleeves of the white shirt. The brightness of fresh blood had already dulled to a darker red.

  Anita rushed forward to hug her, and it was reassuring to feel the warmth of Paula’s skin, the underlying sturdiness of her body. The two women held the embrace for a long moment but they didn’t look directly at each other. It might be too much. There was a risk this reality could hit with a force that would obliterate them.

  Detective Mehta waited until they broke the embrace, then he stood up and offered Anita his hand to shake. ‘Hello, Ms Delgado. We met on the—’

  ‘Yeah, on the Richardson trial. Please call me Anita. Gotta say I’m glad you’re the one here for—I mean, I’m relieved you’re the detective handling …’

  He nodded, so she didn’t have to struggle to finish the sentence. He made eye contact with such direct, pure sympathy that Anita had to drop her head and fuss with her bag. One more second of that sympathetic gaze and she would lose it.

  ‘I understand you were also a close friend of Stacey Durack,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ But Anita’s throat clamped tight and no more words would come out.

  ‘I’d like to get a statement from you, but it doesn’t have to be right away,’ Mehta explained. ‘Might be best now if you concentrate on looking after your friend. Dr Kaczmarek thought she could probably stay tonight at your—’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Anita jumped in, too abruptly and loudly. All her reflexes and gauges were off-kilter. ‘Come to my place.’

  The house was an active crime scene, so Paula wouldn’t be allowed to stay there, even if she’d wanted to. Mehta suggested Paula fetch a few items of clothing from her bedroom before she left.