The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee Page A

a hut, a dwelling anyway. There’s talk of it, that Rose Lovell and Pearl Kelly went there. It was their place, their special place. A kind of hideaway place.’
    Edie still hasn’t packed away the makings of the dress. The black thread, the needles, the old lampshade, the confirmation dresses sans their petticoats, the tulle remnants scattered on the floor like bits of cloud. The newspaper pattern is folded up there on a chair.
    Glass looks at the blue quandongs in pickle jars.
    The peacock coverlet on the old day bed.
    The shadowy opening of the hall. He shivers.
    There in that house he knows suddenly the girl is dead. He’s felt it before in other cases, without warning. He feels the knowledge settle in him like a stone falling to the bottom of a pond. Yes, she’s dead. He shakes his head to clear away the thought.
    ‘They keep talking about it, that’s all’ he says, almost an apology. ‘All the girls. That and the dress.’
    ‘Of course I know the place,’ says Edie, watching him carefully. Watching the goose flesh rise on his arms. She’s sitting at the table holding a leaf in her hand. ‘My father built it for my mother in the year 1913. It’s near a waterfall. There were two men who helped him cut the wood but the rest he did himself. Carried the windows piece by piece. A hundred trips he must have made. It was when he could love, before the war knocked all the stuffing out of him. There’s nothing really hidden about it, you just have to know where to find it, that’s all.’
    ‘Did they go there, do you know?’
    ‘Yes, I believe they did,’ says Edie. ‘Until Rose burnt it down.’
    ‘Burnt it down?
    ‘Yes, she burnt it down. Shall I give you directions?’ says Edie, she pauses then, looks at the detective’s beer gut for effect. ‘It’s a bit of a walk.’

Fucking bananas,’ her father says on the way home from the dole office. ‘I knew it’d be something ridiculous like that.’
    The dole office always wants to see the child. It’s a technicality, before they start making payments again. He keeps turning up in different places, this Patrick Lovell, and there has to be proof that he has the child with him, hasn’t just left her at a truck stop somewhere.
    Rose has taken the day off school. The last thing she wants is for her father to arrive there to pick her up, for people to see the car, which has terrible suspension and bobs up and down like a ship at sea, and her bearded father like Moses at the helm.
    Rose couldn’t stand another day at school, anyway. Another day sitting in the circle talking about nothing. Pearl, all coconut-scented and crystal-shop sparkly, opening up her backpack and pulling out the latest romance novel, running her highlighter-painted fingernails over the cover.
    The dole office was in the next town. The dole office madam had a name tag on; it said Marlene.
    ‘Marlene,’ said Rose’s father, honey smooth, as though about to recite a poem. He stroked his beard, which has grown luxuriant.
    ‘You were in Brisbane last,’ said Marlene. ‘And before that Theodore and before that Mullumbimby.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Patrick Lovell.
    ‘Getting around?’
    ‘Like to be on the road.’
    It was endless that road. When Rose closed her eyes at night it stretched out behind her. Her father drove with one hand on the wheel and the other elbow out the window, a cigarette trailing a plume of smoke. He sang songs like ‘Love me Tender’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in a quavering baritone. He said, Where next Rose? We’re getting itchy feet, Rose. Sometimes he decided by tossing a coin. They would head inland or toward the coast. Follow that bird, he would sometimes shout at the top of his lungs, then turn down the highway after a hawk that would lead them to the next town.
    ‘And this is your dependant?’ said the dole officer Marlene.
    ‘Yes, madam.’
    ‘Enrolled in school?’
    ‘Yes, madam.’
    ‘Can she step up to the counter, please?’
    ‘Rose,’ said