The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean

Author:Felicity McLean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 4th Estate
Published: 2019-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

We grew older and also younger at the party after that. We were scornful of our séance (‘What ghost comes back to play Monopoly?’ Laura scoffed), but we were spooked too. And I was adamant I wasn’t the one who moved the cup, but then, so was everyone else.

It was a relief when Dad came to collect us shortly before ten o’clock. When he arrived Hayley’s mum brought him to the doorway, where the two of them stood side by side, looking bemused while we crawled around on the cork tiles picking up paper money. While they watched us Dad told Hayley’s mum all the things she already knew. (That my sister and I had to go up the coast early in the morning. That the Van Apfel girls had to go to church. And that he was sorry to knock on their door at almost ten o’clock at night but that he didn’t reckon they’d be getting much sleep anyway.) And seeing Dad there and hearing his voice was the comfort I hadn’t realised I needed. I could feel the fear of the past few minutes falling away until it lay there spooled at his feet.

‘You lot ready?’ he said.

Laura and I nodded.

‘Ready, Mr Malloy,’ Ruth said, standing up. She hauled Hannah up by the arm.

‘Who’s missing?’ said Dad. ‘Shouldn’t I have five?’

‘Where’s Cordie?’

‘Did Cordie do the séance?’

‘What séance?’ said Mrs Stinson, alarmed.

‘Where’s Cordie?’

‘She was in the orange chair before.’

We all looked at the armchair that sat solitarily in the corner, its cushion sucked inwards like a rind. For several minutes there was confusion while we tried to work out whether Cordie was really missing.

‘How can you not know?’ Dad asked, mystified. ‘What’ve you girls been doing?’

Someone thought she might be in the bathroom but that turned out to be Hayley’s younger brother. ‘No chicks in here,’ he said sadly, exiting the bathroom.

‘I’ll get Mr Stinson to search outside,’ Mrs Stinson said in a tight voice and she disappeared down the hallway.

‘I’ll go too,’ Dad called after her. ‘Have you got an outside light here somewhere?’

‘You don’t need a light,’ a voice behind us announced. We wheeled around and there, standing in the doorway that led onto the verandah, stiff-necked and ashen-faced behind his dark beard, stood Mr Avery from 6A. He knocked awkwardly on the doorframe, even though the door was wide open. We’d never bothered to shut it the whole night. Next to him stood Cordie, who was still in her swimming costume. While he was fully clothed. He gripped his car keys like a badge and wore his laceless leather shoes. Her hair hung loose and limp and faintly chlorine green. And in the half-light of the doorway that sliced them front to back, the babyish swell of her stomach shone like a seal’s.

‘Can I come in?’ Mr Avery said, but he made no move to.

‘Cordie!’ Hannah cried.

‘I found her,’ said Mr Avery, ‘walking along the side of the road in the dark.’

‘Which road?’ Mrs Stinson said urgently.

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