Told in three parts, Please Don’t Leave Me Here by Melbourne writer Tania Chandler begins with the story of Brigitte – mother of twins and married to policeman Sam – a normal wife and mother, with a secret.
Part I, ‘Come as You Are’, set in 2008, is the present, after Sam and Brigitte have met while she was in hospital recovering from a car accident, a meeting connected to Sam’s investigation into both the accident and the death of Eric Tucker, a music promoter. The injuries Brigitte sustained affect her physically to this day but something about the accident has also cast a mental shadow over both of them, and their relationship is faltering. There’s much about that night that Brigitte knows and is either unwilling, or unable, to pass on:
It’s another slow-news day by the look of the Age online: Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard condemns the binge drinking of a football player; celebrity chef Nigella Lawson hires a personal trainer to help keep her famous figure in shape. Brigitte sips her coffee, yawns and scrolls down further. Victorian cold-case detectives to reopen 1994 investigation of slain concert promoter, Eric Tucker. Her heart stops. The missed beat catches up and hammers on top of the next one. She glances over her shoulder, shuts down the computer, and stares at the blank screen while Kitty figure-eights around her ankles.
The dread that Brigitte feels over the reopening of that cold case becomes even more palpable when Sam’s colleague Aiden, the detective assigned to it, moves into their bungalow as a paying lodger. After a sexual encounter that Brigitte instigated and only slightly regrets, the family’s life gently and inevitably starts to slide out of control. It’s increasingly obvious to the reader that there is a lot more to this story, and to Brigitte’s background, than the first part of the novel is prepared to spell out.
Part I of the novel is thriller-like, with much being hinted at, and some small reveals, drawing out Brigitte’s difficult life and personal insecurities. Aside from the obvious problems with the marriage, there’s also something oddly sinister about her relationship with her husband. Sam seems part husband, part minder, part mistruster, although given Brigitte is obviously so unreliable the reader is left with doubts and questions about everybody, including the lodger.
In Part II, ‘About a Girl’, we go back to 1994 and the events leading up to the accident and Tucker’s death. This is not just about Brigitte but also her family, her much-loved grandparents and the brother she is still close to in the present. Now the reader starts to discover the story behind the hints, and the darker, less domestic and controlled side of her early life:
It’s a ten-minute walk to work. The cool darkness of the Gold Bar wraps around her like a security blanket. She pulls back her shoulders, sticks out her breasts, and swings her hips as she leaves stupid, awkward Brigitte at the door, and sexy, confident Pagan takes over.
The author explores Brigitte’s reinvention and how difficult that becomes when someone is also trying to conceal more than just a socially questionable background. Because Brigitte is struggling with both guilt and cover-up, and feelings of abandonment and self-loathing, and the reader is experiencing everything from her point of view, it’s frequently uncomfortable. It’s also difficult to experience the number of unrelenting psychological batterings she takes as this process evolves.
In Part III we return to ‘Come as You Are’, 2008, and the short, sharp delivery of the truth: ‘Sleeping tablets, painkillers, Valium. And alcohol. Large quantities …’
Somewhere in the middle of Part 2 the novel declares its colours firmly as more psychological study than thriller. It’s not really a who- or how- or even a why- dunnit. It’s more about the damage and fallout from youthful events; a call to consider the implications of cover-up and denial. How readers respond to this most assured and unusual debut is going to depend totally on what they feel about Brigitte.
Please Don't Leave Me Here
Kurt Cobain stands at the top of the stairs, wearing the brown sweater. ‘Please don’t leave me,’ she yells up at him. But it’s too late; he’s turning away as the tram slows for the stop out on the street.
Then she’s lying on the road. Car tyres are going past, slowly. Somebody is screaming. A siren howls.
Sweet voices of little children are singing ‘Morningtown Ride’.
Is Brigitte a loving wife and mother, or a cold-blooded killer?
Nobody knows why she was in the east of the city so early on the morning she was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver. It was the Friday before Christmas 1994 — the same day police discovered the body of a man beaten to death in her apartment.
Fourteen years later, Brigitte is married to the detective who investigated the murder, which she claims to have lost her memory of in the car accident. They have young twins, and seem to be a happy family. Until the reopening of the cold case.
Please Don’t Leave Me Here is about loss, love and lies. It is about pain, fear, and memory. And, above all, it is about letting go.
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