Thea said, “Why not tonight?”

  Jane said she would check with Vic at lunchtime as he was working around the park today and would be back then.

  So, when he came home for lunch, she said it to him.

  Vic agreed with a wide grin, she suspected it was as much to please her as for himself, but he had told her before how he had loved going to the pictures with his friends when he lived in Alice Springs.

  So tonight they decided they would go to the picture theatre in Caloundra, just the two of them, and she felt thrilled. She said to Vic that, even though they had been together for months, it felt like a first date.

  When Vic went back to work she told Thea they would go and asked her for any suggestions about what to see. So, over a cup of tea, they sat down and looked at the paper together which listed the movies.

  Thea pointed to a movie called “Once”, saying she had seen it a couple years ago and loved it; it was a sweet romance about an Irish busker and a European immigrant. Now the musical of it was coming to Melbourne and the movie was being re-shown as part of the publicity. So Thea said she thought that perhaps Jane would like it. Then Thea pointed to a couple of other movies and said Vic might prefer them, they were more action movies.

  They each went their own way once they had confirmed arrangements. Tonight, once Vic got home, about half past five, Jane and he would get ready to go out. Thea would come to their unit at six o’clock to mind David and Anne in their own place; feed them and put them to bed once they were tired. Then Thea would bunk her children down on the lounge next to her while she watched TV until they got home.

  So Jane dressed up, washing her hair, putting on lipstick and perfume the way Thea had shown her. She felt happy anticipation bubbling within her.

  Then Vic was home and in fifteen minutes he was ready too. So they sat and enjoyed a beer until Thea came. Jane felt the excitement; it was her first remembered date. Tonight would be special, she would make it so.

  As they were finishing their drinks there was a knock on the door. Thea, with children in tow, came in. The children settled in front of the TV to play while the three adults sat and chatted for a few minutes.

  Then Thea stood and shooed them out, saying, “Go off and enjoy you night. Don’t hurry back; go out for some supper after. I will just fall asleep on the couch if I get tired.”

  As they walked out to his car Vic took Jane’s hand, which she really liked. He told her how beautiful she looked, which she liked even more. He asked, ‘Do you know what you wanted to see?”

  Jane said, “Thea had suggested a movie called ‘Once’ which is on at seven o’clock, but I am happy if you want to choose something else.”

  Vic said, “Once sounds great to me.”

  They parked the car in the town and walked up the road to the theatre. Other people were gathering in the foyer, creating an excited buzz. Vic went to the sign called ‘Box Office’, bought tickets, and handed one to her.

  She read; “Once – Cinema 3”. They walked into the dim room and she chose a seat towards the front, just off to the side, it was as if her mind had unconsciously known where she wanted to sit.

  She felt a thrill as the lights dimmed and watched with fascination as the advertisements for local businesses and a series of what turned out to be previews to other movies came on, all looked really exciting. Unconsciously she slipped her hand into Vic’s and snuggled into him, her head resting in the space under his neck.

  Then their movie was on and she settled into the story. There was a man sitting on the pavement playing music and this girl came along, drawn to him and fascinated by his talent. They went to a place to make music. Now they had started singing a song together.

  Jane was entranced and, as she listened to the words, she felt tears running down her cheeks. It seemed the song had been written specially for her and Vic.

  “I don’t know you

  But I want you

  All the more for that.”

  When it finished she looked at Vic through tears. “That was a song about you and me, especially about me and how I feel with you.”

  It is burnt into my brain and inside I am singing it just for you.

  She sang quietly in a voice that only he could hear.

  “Falling slowly, eyes that know me

  And I can’t go back.

  You have suffered enough

  And warred with yourself

  It’s time that you won

  Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice

  You’ll make it now”

  She continued speaking softly. “This song says what is important to do. Even though my mind does not know you from before I want you all the more for that. Your eyes look at me and know me and I can’t go back. We have both suffered enough, we will not war with ourselves. It is time that we win and have what we want. I will raise my hopeful voice and make a choice to have you and only you from now.

  “It means we must have our full life together from now. I choose to give you all of myself. I know you want to tell me who I am before I decide about us. But, as the song says, I don’t know you but I want you all the more for that. I don’t need to know anything that came before. It is sufficient to know where I am now. Being in this place with you is the only thing I want. I know that it is more than enough to have this.

  “So, from tonight, let there be no more talk of needing to know the past to decide. I know you now, I want you now. That is all that matters, that is enough for me.”

  Vic felt overcome by emotion, this beautiful girl, with no knowledge of her past had chosen him now. It was more than enough for him too.

  So they sat and shared the movie in solitude together. Others were there in the theatre too, but their world had only space enough for two.

  They went out for supper together. It was a crowded place, but again for Jane it was a place only with space for two. She sat snuggled into Vic, feeling total trust, knowing tonight she would discover the woman within herself with this man. She told him so.

  He said he was totally happy to just live in this place with her, to let the past take care of the past.

  They came home to a quiet house, five people asleep. Thea woke up and stumbled off back to her own house, Vic carrying one child and Thea with the other, asleep in their arms.

  Then it was just the two of them. They went and stroked and cuddled their children, both asleep in their own room.

  Then Jane said, “It is time. Now show me how to become the person who really is married to you, you have chosen me and I have chosen you.”

  So he brought her to their bedroom. He lifted off her dress. She stood there in the half light, wearing only her underwear.

  He said. “God you look beautiful, Take of the rest of your clothes too. I want to fill my eyes with you.”

  She nodded, self-conscious under his eyes, but her whole body tingling with an unknown feeling of aching desire. She turned her back to him so he could unclip her bra and then slid off her panties and turned to face him.

  He led her to the bed and she lay there while he took off his own clothes. Now they lay naked, side by side. Then he gave her a long and lingering kiss before he took her breast in his mouth and stroked and caressed all her body, until finally, when she could wait no longer, he came inside her.

  Slowly he moved and brought her to a place where her body was rising and falling with his, like waves in a sea. As he did she hugged him tight and kept her eyes, brimming with tears, locked on his. In that moment of pure adoration she felt him let himself go. His whole body shuddered in time with hers and as it did she was in a place of ecstasy too. It was like a first time for both of them. The physical pleasure was almost unbearable, but most wonderful was the joy she felt as their joining went on and on, she was riding on the crest of a wave in the ocean that went on and on forever.

  After, as she lay dreamy in his arms, she said. “Now I understand what a man and a woman do to give pleasure to each other. What we did was far more wonderful than anything I could ever have imagined or dreamt. Can we do it again, soon?

  “I am glad you showed me, it would be difficult to ask Thea about that. If this is part of being married to you, then I want this part most of all”.

  Vic did not answer; he just kissed her then made love to her again. After that they both slept until sunlight and children’s chatter woke them. It was good to be a complete family. As they lay together, with their children, Jane said, “I would like to know my parents, just as my children know theirs.”

  Chapter 13 - A Legal Minefield

  Alan had spent two months going round and round in circles with the lawyers and the police, trying to figure out a way to get somewhere with this case so that Susan could re-emerge without her whole world imploding.

  The judge who had heard the original murder trial was sympathetic, the police commissioner was sympathetic, as he knew there was lots of public sympathy for Susan following Anne’s program’s on TV. But the prosecution was playing hard-ball, there was a legal minefield in Susan’s conviction for murder that had never been overturned.

  Alan felt his life was more and more caught up in endless meetings with lawyers who all had opinions for sale and big egos about how their view of the world was correct. But none had a way forward to get this mess of legal process resolved, other than something like a new hearing and a retrial.

  He did not want to go there, even if he could get Susan’s or her family’s cooperation. Without her having memory of what had gone before the whole thing seemed futile. And that was without even considering the further damage it may cause to her if a trial reopened all those wounds again.

  Anne, using David’s money, had retained the best barrister that money could buy. He seemed to have the best ideas about how to unscramble this omelette, but even he seemed to have no concrete way forward.

  Then there were the ever present leaks that were coming out. There was a mole in a key place inside either the Police and or the Attorney General’s department, someone with access to not everything, but enough to keep stoking the fires of a campaign against this girl. It seemed to centre on one English tabloid or web-news service, where a black journalist, by-line Jake SS, whoever he was, seemed to keep digging up juicy morsels. that this girl had run away and gone into hiding to escape the consequences of her actions, that she was still the evil and conniving bitch as portrayed in the papers of a year and a half ago, when she had disappeared. This journalist was based in England, but he clearly he had an NT source that was feeding him.

  The one thing that Alan was pleased about was that he had been able to calm requests for a full scale search for Susan led by the Queensland Police, as it was believed she was living there. He had stuck to the line, which was true, that he had no direct knowledge of Susan’s location. He had just been advised by an intermediate source of her existence and the need to secure a legal guarantee that she would not have to return to jail before she or her family could agree to her return or giving assistance with inquiries.

  While she was technically guilty of murder and out on bail, with the conclusion of the inquest it was clear that she had no direct role in any murder other than that of Mark and, in his case that she had acted on the basis of a real fear for her life. So a retrial would almost certainly find self-defence now that these facts were known.

  But there could be no retrial without her, and no useful purpose would be served by one after all else that had passed.

  It seemed that the best legal option was to seek some form of pardon, which left the conviction stand but agreed that, in view of the circumstances, no sentence be imposed and she be free to resume her life in whatever form she chose. However there were plenty of problems with this option including her authorizing this request which required knowledge and understanding of what had gone before. At some stage it would need formal communication to occur between her and the parties of the government to arrange this. A pardon was also normally only exercised when an appeal had failed.

  In this case Susan had pled guilty of the crime, thereby agreeing with the verdict, so it was hard to see what basis there was for an appeal, and this was also made doubly hard when she now did not know what her crime had been or about her first decision to plead guilty.

  So it went on and on, round and round. This afternoon he thought he might go and see Rebecca, the personal assistant to the Attorney General. She seemed a bright young thing, quick and smart, as well as vivacious in a slightly boyish way, not exactly beautiful but with cute charm.

  She was a lawyer in her own right and seemed to have the ear of the big boss, the person who needed to cut a deal in the political world. After all she saw Mr AG every day. She also seemed sympathetic to Susan’s plight; both he and Sandy had casual conversations with her about the case in the earlier stages of proceedings when they had both attended meetings there.

  And she must be someone to trust; working in that high position she was privy to all her boss’s confidential papers, so it should be safe to talk to her off the record, just to see if she could use her legal brain and some influence to try and get some new ideas on the table.

  He wondered if he should go off to University and study law to figure out all this complicated legal manoeuvring properly. But that would take years and would not help him in the here and now.

  He felt like the meat in the sandwich, the go between separating his own friends from government. He had to walk carefully on both sides of the fence. He liked his job as a policeman with the freedom it gave him to run cases and investigations. He did not want to throw that away through this event. Yet his strongest loyalty lay to this girl and to trying to find a way out for her that let her quietly get on with her life.

  Well he would just have to chance it, to see if Rebecca would meet him for a drink after work so they could have an off the record chat about where to go from here. He knew it should be handled by the barrister David had retained but Alan thought his non-legal background might allow him to be more pragmatic in finding creative solutions, ones that passed a reasonable level of legal scrutiny, but most of all would work in the real world.

  So he decided that, in half an hour when he had finished the report he was writing about a minor burglary, he would take an early mark and head into the city and call to see Rebecca on spec. It would be around four o’clock when he go there, nearly knock off time on a regular day. He would see if he could get a chance to talk to her, hoping it was quiet in her office. Alan knew her boss was away in Melbourne at a conference about something legal. So, with a bit of luck, she would be there on her own with not much to do.

  He would ask her if he could have an off the record chat about this case, just to try and nut it out. Perhaps she would have time for a coffee break or an ‘after work’ drink. While they were not exactly friends they knew each other well enough for a conversation.

  He arrived and found himself the only person in the office, apart from Rebecca. He was not sure quite how to broach it,

  She smiled at him brightly, saying, “So, my favourite police officer has come to pay me a visit on a quiet afternoon, with my boss away and nothing else happening. Perhaps he will offer to buy me a drink in the local in a few minutes once I have logged off my computer.”

  As they walked outside from her office she asked Alan to call her Beck, saying Rebecca was too formal. He found she was easy to chat to as they walked; she had a manner that set strangers at ease, not flirtatious but earnest and interested.

  Alan bought them both a drink and they found a secluded corner in the bar which gave privacy. They exchanged pleasantries for a minute as they sipped their drinks.

  Beck struck Alan as a person with lots of intelligence who was used to thinking outside the box. He had niggles of reservation about giving too much away. But she would hardly be in her current job if she was unreliable, he had high level security clearance and hers must be even higher, considering all the sensitive ‘cabinet in confidence’ documents she dealt with.

  Beck opened the door to a more serious conversation with, “I am sure you did not come to visit me to flirt or pass the time, you are too focused for that, and I know that Sandy would cut your balls out if you made a pass. So I suppose you should tell me what it is you want to talk about.”

  He explained the nub of his problem, “I have been told by a friend of a friend that a person has discovered where Susan is. But she seems to have lost her memory and apparently she does not know remember anything from before she vanished. She still has a murder conviction and her bail was revoked when she disappeared though it is clear from all that followed, including the coroner’s findings, that what happened was self-defence. But still, if she surrenders herself she will be returned to custody in the NT.

  “So it is unclear how this can be resolved. Her time for appeal has long passed and, if she cannot remember what happened, how can an appeal be made, even if she is willing. I am told that when she disappeared she was in an extremely fragile emotional state, even suicidal. Her current memory loss seems to be the result of some sort of nervous breakdown.

  “So it is unlikely that she is in a fit state to stand trial. But yet, without a retrial, it is hard to see how she can have her guilty plea undone. To put her back in jail and let her conviction stand, or even for the judge to resume the case for sentencing and then release her, would mean that she would have to return to Darwin. If this happened she would become a huge sensation again overnight, the centre of enormous media scrutiny. That could be extremely damaging to her current mental state. So the people I have been talking to refuse to agree to any return by her to Darwin at this stage. As we do not know where she is we do not want to damage the current cooperation we have by acting in a way which appears to threaten her. If we do so we may lose our connection with her.

  “While we could seek to locate her independently and even arrest her or have her extradited if she is interstate, this is likely to be both harmful for her wellbeing and to cause extensive sensational publicity which will arouse very strong sympathy for her plight along with a bad public reaction to actions to bring her in, particularly if any harm comes to her.