Meeting 1
The first time I saw Julia Milner was in the Origins section of the Auckland Museum. She was staring, mesmerised, at a projection screen displaying a rotating sphere of tightly bound, metallic fish.
“It’s a paradox isn’t it?” she said, as ripples of reflected light shimmered across her face. “I know the bait ball is a defensive measure aimed at scaring off predators but it’s so beautiful and glittery, surely it also attracts them?”
I had never met, nor expect to meet in the future, anyone with such a potent tendency to go off-topic. I hoped that this was a stand-alone foible and not an indicator of batshit craziness. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at her oversized T-shirt, festooned with cartoon kittens sipping cocktails.
The jury is out.
“I’m Marsha Goddard. You said in your email that you would like me to help find your sister,” I said.
“Hmm, yes that’s right,” she muttered and handed me a sheet of paper before turning away to squint at the display again, “I received this email a few weeks ago.”
Hello Julia i got your work email address on a hospital web page. I hope you don’t mind. When i saw your dad’s obituary in the paper the memories came flooding back. I had a look online for u which i do every so often just to check u are alright. I cried when i saw your latest photo for work. You look so much like Mum. I just wanted to tell u that i am here. Do you remember me? Do you remember Mum’s death? Being a few years older than you i remember it as an awful time. i went off the rails. Your dad sent me away he was mad with grief & he couldn’t cope. I closed off that part of my life. i feel like a genie let out of the bottle now & I don’t like this feeling but i couldnt resist getting in touch with u now he has gone.
I don’t know how much u remember about Mum’s death. here’s what sticks with me more than anything. the day she got her diagnosis your dad sent us to bed early but i came back down and sat on the stairs. I could hear the two of them talking and just about see Mum through a crack in the door. she said to your dad that she told the doctor she was panic stricken because she was a mother and was worried about the sadness she would leave behind. the doctor told her she shouldn’t worry about that because ‘young children forget easily’ and she wouldn’t be remembered. Can u imagine? and your dad took her hand and said maybe that was for the best. I thought, no way. i will never forget my Mum. NEVER.
She was ALIVE once and she loved u & she loved me.
Julia, i just want this to be one way. it would not be good for u to get to know me. I can be honest with u if i stay hidden. Don’t reply, i will block any mails from u and will change my account. I have taken steps to make sure u can’t find me but iTHINK U SHOULD KNOW THESE THINGS>. Sorry. Didn’t mean to leave the caps on for that last bit.
“Julia, I always ask clients this question at the beginning of a missing relative search—just to manage expectations. What is it that you want to achieve through the search? Would you like to locate your sister and know a bit about her life or go further and make contact?”
Julia turned her head away from the screen and faced me with an incredulous expression.
“Make contact obviously,” she said, on the verge of laughter. “My sister wouldn’t have emailed unless she wanted me to contact her.”
“Yes … um … except there’s a bit in the email where she says she wants to stay hidden,” I pointed out.
Julia raised her eyebrows and took a long breath.
“I think she sounds lost. I want to support her,” she said in a slow, clear voice, as if speaking to someone with limited English language skills.
Keep your distance.
“Right,” I said nodding, “right.”
The bait ball was now under attack by common dolphins.
“Shall we go to the café?”
Julia tucked into an almond croissant between noisy slurps of hot chocolate.
“Tell me a bit about your family background,” I said. This should be interesting.
She chewed methodically before glancing with pity at my soy latte.
“My mother died when I was six years old. We lived in Wellington at the time. After her death, my father brought me up in Christchurch with the help of his parents. My dad never mentioned another daughter. But then he didn’t talk about my mum either. He wasn’t the kind of man that spoke a lot anyway, he was a maths professor,” she said by way of explanation and wiped invisible crumbs off her peach-coloured culottes. “You know—he did talk, but not about personal stuff. It was a lonely existence at times but I married young. My husband is very good to me and I have a wonderful son.”
The distant look in her eye was replaced by alertness or perhaps curiosity.
“Did you grow up in a big whānau?” she asked.
I imagined she was assuming from my appearance that I am part of a large extended Māori family, so I trotted out my rehearsed response.
“Medium sized. Mum is Pākehā. She and my grandparents raised me. I’m what some people call an Oreo,” I replied. Julia tilted her head to the side and locked eyes on me like a bemused cat looking at its own reflection in a mirror.
“Black on the outside but white on the inside,” I clarified.
I like to get my history out the way at the start, otherwise people assume I have magical knowledge of Kiwi flora and fauna or can speak Te Reo Māori. I always seem to disappoint them.
“My daughter is interested in her Māori heritage. I am finding my way back through her. Our iwi is Ngāpuhi,” I said, mainly to fill the silence because Julia looked distracted now and was over-stirring her hot chocolate.
“How long have you lived in Auckland?” I asked.
“Five years. Before that we were still living in Christchurch. We moved after the 2011 quake,” she said.
“You were there when the quake happened?”
“Yes. I’m a theatre nurse, we were just coming to the end of an operation at the main hospital when it struck.”
“I can’t imagine what the surgical teams had to deal with in the aftermath.”
“I wouldn’t know, I ran away,” she said and tucked a strand of lank hair behind her ear.
“What?”
“Well, there was the massive quake. Then I found myself outside, running away, in my scrubs. Casualties were being driven towards the hospital. People were screaming ‘help us’ out of car windows so I ran back towards the hospital … I almost went back in … and then I turned around and ran away again.”
“What?”
“I was running like Forrest Gump for about 5K before I realised where I was going. I was being pulled like a magnet. I’m not a natural runner, Marsha.”
“Where were you going?”
“Have you ever heard the classic funk track Runaway People? That was playing like an earworm in my head as I ran. It’s a great song … but I can’t listen to it any more.”
“Where were you going, Julia?”
“To my son’s school. It’s 10 kilometres from the hospital. I was knackered when I got there.”
“How old was your son at the time?”
“Seventeen. He should’ve been running towards me.”
“Was he okay?”
“Thankfully, yes.”
She looked downwards at her lap and when she rolled her eyes back towards me I could see that they were wide open; pale blue irises, constricted pupils.
“How do you feel about it now?”
“You just can’t imagine what it was like … smoke spewing, shattered pavements, broken buildings. It was like running over the surface of another planet. When I dream about it, I just run and run, I never reach Jasper,” she said squeezing her napkin.
She lifted her mug towards her mouth but her hands were shaking slightly so she placed it back on the table.
“The shame of running away from people in need … well ... it’s something I don’t expect to ever get over,” she said in a reflective tone, adding after a pause, “I have a bit of respite now and again by getting totally caned when I am away from home for work. You can’t really dream if you pass out drunk.”
I cleared my throat and said, “None of us know how we would have reacted.”
Keep your distance.
“I think that a good place for us to start the search would be to obtain your sister’s birth certificate from Births, Deaths and Marriages. Do you know your sister’s full name and birth date? You were very young but do you have any specific memories of her?” I asked.
“Not really. The name Shirley rings a bell, I don’t know if she had the same surname as me or not. I don’t know her birthday or anything. I have only ever had very fuzzy memories of my mum but I have begun remembering a couple of events that include Shirley since my dad died. The email has re-ignited something ... in the first memory, I am walking down a garden path with a woman I assume was my mother and a bigger girl that looks a bit like me. An old lady opens the door. She is wearing a black dress. She is calling out as we walk down the path, ‘You can’t do this today, love’. The old lady says something about going out. She seems flustered but not angry. My mother leaves us on the doorstep and walks away, hand over her mouth, shaking her head. The old lady is calling out, ‘Come back Roberta, love, please. I can’t do this today’.
“Then I remember playing in the living room of that house, sitting in a big cardboard box with some things from the kitchen—you know, wooden spoons, pots. The old lady and her husband sat watching from their couch. I don’t think they really knew what to do with us. The bigger girl was standing over the box in a protective way and I distinctly remember trying to ... I suppose ... put on an act. I was acting as if I was okay but I was terrified for some reason.”
“BMD can search a range of dates—so we can assume perhaps that Shirley was approximately nine years old when you were six years old. We can work out an approximate date of birth plus or minus a year. But a surname is crucial. Shirley is your older half-sister, most likely born before your mother married your father. She may have been given her father’s surname or your mother’s maiden name at birth depending on the circumstances. I can find this out by looking into your mother’s documentation and working forward.”
“Dad left me mum’s birth certificate, I will scan it and send it to you. Her full name was Roberta Mary Sloane and she was born in England. My paternal grandmother said that she came to New Zealand as a teenager alone after some falling out with her family. I suppose that explains why I never knew them. She would have been in her twenties and living here when she had Shirley and I.”
We wandered up to the Weird & Wonderful section where Julia pointed to a kangaroo skeleton and said, “We camped in Queensland once. We saw kangaroos grazing at dusk on the lawns—the grass was watered by sprinklers, so green and lush. My son Jasper, who was seven at the time, was fascinated. I remember he went really close to a large male. I noticed that one of its eyes was swollen and oozing. I thought, that’s not very scenic. So I called out, ‘Careful, darling’. When I got closer, I noticed tiny black specks bouncing on its fur. Yes, utterly infested with fleas,” she said, nodding at me conspiratorially as if I had already guessed, which I hadn’t.
“Then off it hopped,” she continued without expression, “and started mating with a nearby female in front of us.”
Oh Jesus.
I was wondering if she was even in the vicinity of a point when she sighed and said, “Life is very unpredictable.”
In the Wild Child section we encircled the taxidermy Indian elephant Julia insisted on calling Roger despite the fact it was clearly labelled Rajah and then milled around in companionable silence for a while, perusing the surrounding displays of childhood artefacts; an immeasurable number of scout badges, lethal looking lead-painted toy vehicles and invariably terrifying dolls.
Julia pointed at a particularly demonic-looking baby mannequin draped in antique christening robes and said, “Aw, I always wished I had a little girl to dress.”
Something in Julia’s demeanour told me she was an overly conscientious parent—a bit unusual back in the day but all too common now. Rationed screen time, zero sugar and intensive tutoring. Where have all the bad mums gone? I took an interest my daughter’s education but I wasn’t past leaving work early and having a Chinese takeaway and a snooze in a lay-by before picking her up from the childminder.
“Yeah, they are cute when they are little but my sixteen-year-old is something else now. She is a good girl but very … assertive,” I said. In actual fact, she has transformed into some kind of tyrant. Putin in a miniskirt. Even worse is that now she is semi-adult, I have begun to care if she actually likes me. I do ingratiating things to please her.
I realised that I needed to leave soon as I had promised to meet her at the art gallery to view the Māori Portraits.
I said goodbye to Julia and we arranged another date to meet. I didn’t mention that the email, although plausible enough, may not have been sent by her sister at all but by a crackpot imposter or some chancer about to ask for money, but that was a conversation for another day.
Meeting 2
As she saw me approach, Julia flounced around on a sofa in Weird & Wonderful, jabbing her finger at a sheet of paper. There was a wildness in her manner that made my stomach flip.
“I told you she was in trouble. I knew it. Shirley needs my help,” she said. She was wearing a top emblazoned with a stylised wolf howling at a gigantic moon, a long pleated denim skirt and a pair of flower-patterned Crocs. Where does she buy that stuff?
As I sat down she shoved the paper towards me.
I am so glad i got in contact with u Julia i hope you feel the same. i feel like i can tell u anything. There is a massive black hole in your heart growing up without a mum isn’t there? Even if u have a family of your own u feel like you are acting as a ‘mum’ because u are never sure you are doing anything right because u have nothing to go by. Then there is this odd thing or feeling that u don’t even know the name for—a sort of loneliness that never leaves.
i am about to offload on u but i hope you will understand. i am just tired of feeling out of control and being too ashamed to tell anyone. Being our age is a bit like death isn’t it. Invisible middle aged women—old age around the corner. Other people must feel like this too—they run marathons, go travelling or change jobs to feel like they are still alive. But that’s not my thing. Im not proud of this but number one on my bucket-list is hooking up with randoms for casual sex. Have i shocked u? I don’t mean to. i am still with my husband but I felt like I would go mad if i never slept with another man before i die. It isn’t that i want to feel attractive or maybe that is part of it—but the biggest part is that i feel as if i visit a different country with every man. Being close to another soul, each one different from the next is exciting. u wouldn’t believe how grateful they can be and how lonely they are, just like us. But i know it is dangerous & i wouldn’t be so worried about it if i thought i could stop. but i can’t. I don’t want to burden u. i want to tell you to make it real. To admit to myself what i am doing. Who else could i tell?
I looked directly at Julia and delivered the words as gently as I could. “Julia, I am very sorry to say that I can’t find any evidence that your mother had another child—she only ever gave birth to you. She didn’t adopt or foster. There’s no evidence that she was married to anyone other than your father.”
Julia’s mouth hinged open and a confused, dejected look washed over her face. “No, no. I remember her,” she said.
“I checked and according to the records, you are also your father’s only child. Is it possible that Shirley could be a more distant relative or a friend?”
“Look again!” she cried and stood up.
“Julia, I am so sorry but honestly, we are not going to find a sister.”
“Don’t give me that. Don’t do it!” she said and snatched the paper from my hand. “I did a bit of my own detective work, some research on you. Oh yes, a psychiatrist no less, in your previous life,” she went on, her voice growing shriller and posher with every word. “A discredited expert witness in domestic abuse cases. Accused of leading the jury. Is that why you don’t practise anymore? Were you struck off? How do I know you aren’t crap at this job too? Hmmm? That you can’t find my sister because you are crap at what you do?”
The young woman showing a group of children a crocodile skull specimen gave us a concerned, bewildered look.
“Or maybe you have been analysing me all along and decided in your god-like wisdom that I am too emotionally unstable to deal with a reunion. Get out of my head Marsha Goddard,” she said before shouting inexplicably, “get back into your own head!”
Her neck and chest were sunset-coloured.
I stood up.
“Can I buy you an almond croissant?” I asked as I placed my hand on her upper arm.
She shook it off and growled “Nooooooo!” in an alarming, possessed-type voice that appeared to originate in her tail bone and travel up through her body into her ‘o’ shaped mouth. Or maybe it came from her vagina. Anyway, somewhere primordial and biological.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced breathily and clomped off in the wrong direction.
The school children dispersed and the young woman approached to ask, “Would your wife like a glass of water?”
“What? No. Uh. No. Thanks, she’ll be okay.”
After journeying through Land, Māori Natural History and Volcanoes, I spot Julia in Ancient Worlds.
“Did you find the toilets?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, scowling.
We pretended to study Egyptian pottery for a few moments.
“The Weird & Wonderful lady thought we were married,” I said.
Julia emitted a short snort.
“Look, I don’t want to get into that stuff. Everything you read about me is true … I think. Maybe I went too far but there wasn’t one man that I helped to convict that didn’t deserve it,” I said.
I looked her in the eye and attempted a reassuring smile. Instead of saying that it was probably best if we ended it here and now and admitting that, indeed, I was crap at my job because I find it almost impossible to extricate myself from other people’s anguish, I said: “Julia, there are a couple of other lines of enquiry I can follow. Like I said, I don’t think we will find a sister but a bit more digging might help solve the email mystery and explain your memories. Would you like me to proceed?”
Julia nodded like a chastened child.
Epic fail on keeping your distance.
Surveillance Report
Client Julia Jane Milner (J) placed under surveillance for the purpose of fully establishing case facts. Given the level of difficulty encountered regarding what should be, under normal circumstances, a straightforward enquiry, it was suspected that the client may be withholding or misrepresenting information (either intentionally or unintentionally) pertaining to the investigation.
16:15 J followed from her Auckland home to Hamilton, where she claims to work three days per month as a practice nurse in addition to an Auckland Hospital theatre post. The following audio notes were taken over the course of the subsequent eight hours:
18:09 J parks in The Willows Motel carpark, Hamilton. Retrieves bag from boot. Enters hotel.
21:17 J emerges from hotel alone and enters taxi registration number JKR1457
21:42 Taxi parks outside Spirit Nightclub in town centre. J enters Spirit Nightclub alone.
02:10 J exits Spirit Nightclub with unidentified male, approximately 6ft 2. White. Dark hair. Early 40s. Light coloured shirt. Jeans. Brown shoes. Enters taxi registration number XMB5672 with male companion.
02:17 hours, taxi arrives at The Willows Motel carpark. J exits taxi with same unidentified male.
I ran towards Julia and her companion as they were about to enter the hotel.
“Julia!” I called out.
She didn’t turn around. She strode towards the hotel doors perched on skyscraper heels, chest thrust upwards. The outfit consisted of a pair of skinny leather jeans and a fitted black and white candy stripe jacket; it screamed perimenopausal woman in heat. I wondered for a moment if I was doing the right thing and felt a spreading coldness across my shoulders. I got closer.
I could smell her perfume. Powdery, pervasive.
“Julia Milner,” I said once more.
The woman stopped, turned around and looked at me with genuine, utter blankness. It was Julia alright but a parallel universe version; the sheen of perspiration on her upper lip signalled a startling lasciviousness, late night shadows were emerging under her eyes. For a moment she looked like a lovesick teen.
“I think you’ve got the wrong person,” the woman said and her words floated towards me like dandelion seeds on the thin night air.
“I’m so sorry! You look like an old school friend. A few wines and I am seeing funny. Sorry to bother you guys.” I said, trying to keep the lightness in my voice.
The man looked relieved and steered Julia towards the hotel doors.
The final time Julia and I met was on the outdoor granite benches near the museum entrance. An erratic harbour breeze scuttled around us, making it difficult to relax. Earlier that morning, I had read the coroner’s report into Julia’s mother’s death and my head felt like a bell jar full of bees; sentences were swarming through my grey matter in an effort to be understood.
In the Coroner’s Court Wellington (in Chambers).
An inquiry into the death of Roberta Mary Sloane.
On the balance of probabilities, I find that Roberta Mary Sloane died Monday 12th June 1978 in her Wellington home (address supplied) between the hours of 11:00 and 14:00. It is likely that Mrs Sloane died of natural causes related to a pre-existing illness.
“Julia, you never told me about your second memory of Shirley,” I said.
She appeared to stare at the horizon, wind tugging at her hair and said, “I was sitting in class at school practising writing letters. Everyone was working quietly when there was a disturbance in the playground. I could hear my name being called out.”
On the day of her death Mrs Sloane discharged herself from hospital and was found by teaching staff on the grounds of her six-year-old daughter’s school exhibiting agitated behaviour consistent with the symptoms of advanced brain cancer.
“My teacher went outside and everyone else went over to the window. My classmates were saying things like ‘your mummy is here’, ‘she’s bald’, ‘she is kicking Mrs Carr, come and see’.”
Mrs Sloane demanded to see her daughter but this request was refused by the school’s headmistress, Mrs Angela Carr, on the basis that a meeting would be distressing for the child, who we understand was experiencing great difficulty coping with her mother’s illness. During the previous week Mrs Sloane’s physical and mental health had deteriorated significantly resulting in several episodes where, overcome with pain and anxiety, she had left her daughter unexpectedly with various neighbours.
“But I didn’t move, I sat bolted to my chair and continued to work. When I looked up Shirley was sitting opposite me. She reached across the desk and held my left hand as I wrote with the right.”
According to Mr Sloane, the couple’s only child Julia, a deeply imaginative and loving little girl, had a tendency to mirror her mother’s emotions. He said that his wife’s illness and death had taken a devastating toll on his daughter.
I had a vison of Julia, scrabbling over masonry, choking on smoke, the hospital shrinking in the distance behind her. Running. Running. Running.
When you thought you were about to die, your most deeply imprinted instinct was to be with your child just like your mother before you.
In an attempt to regain composure I gaze out towards the Hauraki Gulf, my eyes tracing over the soothing symmetry of Rangitoto Island. It doesn’t help.
Julia looked at me with her bemused cat expression once more and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Crying,” I said.
Excerpt from Missing Person’s Report by Private Investigator Marsha Goddard
I suspect that my client, Julia Milner, is suffering from a form of Dissociative Identity Disorder, a coping mechanism that may have begun in early childhood and manifested in the appearance of an imaginary protective, older sister named ‘Shirley’. This dissociative state was most likely developed in order to escape from the strong emotions experienced in response to her mother’s serious illness and premature death. It is likely that Julia subsequently experienced a long period of remission, however, the disorder may have been reactivated as a result of trauma she suffered during the 2011 Canterbury earthquake. Julia’s symptoms then began to include regular periods of dissociative fugue during which she would spend short periods away from home whilst adopting the memories and personality traits of her alter ‘Shirley’. Upon returning home Julia would immediately develop amnesia in relation to each episode, attributing the memory loss to blackouts caused by alcohol abuse.
More recently, Julia’s father’s death appears to have triggered episodes of ‘communication’—in the form of emails sent to Julia by Shirley. In my opinion, this is a subconscious effort by Julia to finally expose her disorder and to confront her mother’s death. In the light of these findings, I have ended the current investigation and recommended psychiatric treatment to my client.
My daughter and I now regularly attend events at our marae. A coming home she implemented largely via emotional blackmail, but which gradually transformed into a voluntary act on my part.
I think of Julia every time my eyes are drawn to the carving of Hinemoa, the noble young woman who was compelled, against her parents’ wishes, to swim across a vast lake to be with her beloved, Tūtānekai.
Where does love and attachment originate? What dictates the shape it takes?
Ehara i te mea
Nō ināianei te aroha
Nō ngā tūpuna
Tuku iho tuku iho
It is not a new thing now
that is love comes from the
ancestors handed down
through the passages of time
It is gifted to us through the conscious and the subconscious, the practical and the Divine.