Luca lived in a grimy old terrace in Newtown. The floorboards of the balcony out front were cracked and curled with the weather, the iron lacework peeling and rusted in spots. Alison parked on the street, in a one-hour zone, deciding to risk the fine to save walking too far in the night. She could hear university students laughing and arguing and drinking up on King Street. It was still hot, sticky on her skin like the residue of a Frosty Fruit eaten too slowly. She smoothed her hair and straightened her rumpled clothes. Her palms were red, angry where there was sand in the crevices. She needed to soak them.
Alison stepped over a trike and a pink rubber ball on the tiled patio out front, raised her hand to knock on the door. Before she could Luca opened it, one finger to his lips.
“Sh, Ally, girls are asleep.” He smiled at her. Looked the same as he always had.
“Sorry, traffic was murder.”
“No worries, come in, come in.” He ushered her past him, pointed down the darkly lit hall toward the lights glowing brightly in the kitchen. Alison tried to keep her footsteps soft as she picked her way through the girls’ toys to the back of the house. Luca followed close behind, the only sound their breathing. His calm and measured, hers erratic, apprehensive. She noticed it now, in the inky heat, the way it slipped in and out in ragged jags, couldn’t be regulated properly, couldn’t be calmed. In the kitchen Alison sat at the table as Luca pulled the door shut behind them. He beamed at her. Made her get up for a hug, held her tight too long, then held her out at arm’s length, like a proud grandmother at Christmas lunch.
“You look like shit, Alison. What’s going on?”
“Gee, thanks, I’ve been driving all day. You look like you haven’t gotten a haircut in months. What’s your excuse?”
Luca laughed. “Kids.” Alison smiled at him, grateful he was the same as always. That their exchanges could still sting but not bruise. She liked the honesty. He busied himself in the fridge, emerged with two beers and some pasta tossed with roasted tomatoes. “You hungry?”
“Starving.” Alison gratefully took the beer from his hand, pressed her palms against it, the cold soothing her inflamed skin.
“What happened there?”
“I fell over on a beach track when I took a break today. Nothing major, but they could use a soak in some Dettol, I reckon.”
“You always were a klutz. No problem, I got the full first-aid suite these days.”
They drank in friendly silence while Luca heated up the pasta in the microwave, grated some Parmesan over it, a twist of black pepper on top of that. He slid the bowl across the table, Alison catching it with the back of her wrist. She ate, faster than she intended. He sat down across from her. She could feel his scrutiny. He let her finish before he began asking questions.
“So, what are you really doing here?”
“I’m on my way to Cairns. Haven’t been back for a while, thought now’s as good a time as any.”
“Bullshit. You think I don’t read the paper? That bushfire is big news.” He paused, waiting maybe to see if Alison would volunteer anything. “And I read about your place. About the woman in the driveway. Your name was in the papers.” He went over to the recycling bin, dug through the stacks, and pulled out what he was looking for. It was a piece by Chris Waters in the Sydney Morning Herald. A chat with Simone’s parents, the details of the initial autopsy, the speculation about why Simone was there. A quote from her. “Resident Alison King was asked if she knew Ms. Arnold. She replied, ‘No comment.’ ” Bloody Chris Waters. Nothing about Gil, though. “What’s going on, Ally?”
Alison sighed, took a deep breath, and tried to spin Luca a story about how she wanted to get away from the journalists and the speculation and everything else about the town. She told him she needed to get away from all that sadness. From the blackness that stretched across paddocks and the lots where homes used to stand. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either.
“I get it, it must have been awful.” He spoke gently, but with an intensity she knew he rarely employed. “But, Al, I don’t think that’s really why you’re here. Tell the truth.”
Alison sighed. She knew there wasn’t any reason to keep any of this from Luca. And he was far enough removed from both her current life and her former one with Gil that there wasn’t any reason to think he’d be on anyone’s side but hers. He was a good friend. One who had only ever been there for her when she asked him to be. And he was helping her out when he didn’t have to.
She remembered a long time ago at a party he’d leaned in close to her while they’d sat on a roof, waiting for the ecstasy to kick in, and told her he’d fallen in love. For a moment she’d thought maybe her daydreams were about to come true, but then he’d told her all about Christine, and how he knew he’d marry her. About how she smelled and laughed and felt and thought. And Alison had listened. Her mind racing around in circles as she tried not to cry, tried not to blurt out every feeling she’d held inside, and then, as she began to chew the gum in her mouth faster and faster for something to do, Luca had pulled her by the chin so their noses almost touched.
“You’re the best, Al.”
She felt the flips and turns in her gut as though they were happening at half speed. “Sounds like Christine’s the best actually,” she’d replied, trying to keep it light, and definitely failing. But he didn’t hear the heaviness.
“Yeah. Hey, listen, promise me something?” He didn’t wait for her to reply, just motored on, fueled by MDMA and nicotine. “No matter what, we’ll always be honest with each other. We can tell each other anything. Even if, like, you killed a guy, or I did, we’d help each other out. No bullshit, no secrets.”
Luca was right. During her years with Gil she’d pulled away from all her friends, or he had pulled her away, and she hadn’t really managed to take back the relationships because doing so required conversations like this one, where she had to admit things she’d rather forget. “You want to make a murder accessory pact?”
“It’s not like I have a list of people to kill, Al, I just mean, you and me, we get each other, we’re the same kind of person. We’re . . . I trust you with everything, I know you don’t judge me . . . I’m not explaining it properly.”
She caught his hand in hers, like she was going to shake it. “No, I get it. You got a deal. No secrets, and help hiding the bodies.”
They had shaken hands, Luca laughing. And then he had spied Christine in the yard below, winked at her, and climbed back through the window and out of Alison’s reach.
No secrets.
Luca couldn’t help her if she didn’t tell him the truth. She sighed and took a deep, steadying breath. Then she described the interminable wait under the blanket, finding Simone in her drive, stupidly sleeping with Billy, and finally, the hardest thing of all to admit to someone else, how ashamed she felt that she’d survived and Simone hadn’t.
“I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams,” Alison said. “Nothing feels good anymore. Nothing makes sense. Everything I do is the wrong thing, the wrong choice. I survived, but I don’t know what that really means.”
Luca didn’t say anything. He got up from the table, found the Dettol on the high shelf in the pantry, made up a bowl of warm water that clouded milky white when he added it, and passed Alison cotton balls to clean the pads of her hands. While she worked, Luca rummaged on the booze shelf until he found the Chivas, tucked right in at the back, and poured them each a double. The antiseptic stung her cuts in that satisfying way, and she sipped the scotch, warmth spreading through her blood. “Thank you, Luca,” she whispered as she began to relax a little.
He shrugged. “I got you.”
She was buzzed enough, secure enough, to take a risk. “You promise?”
“Of course.”
So she told Luca about the scrap of paper. About Gil. About the texts he’d sent. About the phone call.
“He knows you’re with me?” Luca seemed alarmed.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know where you live, Luca, it’s fine.”
“I’m in the bloody book, Alison.”
“You’re in the phone book? Is there even still a phone book? Why?”
“What do you mean, why? I’ve got a landline, it’s in the book, and yeah, the book is online now, but it still exists.”
“Who has a landline?”
“This is what you choose to focus on?”
“He probably doesn’t even know your last name. He only met you that one time.”
They considered it. Luca began to relax. He got up, poured them more scotch. As he sat back down in his chair, someone began to knock gently on the front door. Alison looked at her phone. Nine forty-three p.m. Too late for someone selling something. There was a break, and then the knocking started again, louder this time. Upstairs, one of girls woke up, called out, “Daddy!,” her voice disturbing a sister, who then began to wail.
“It’s not going to be him, Luca.” Alison was pale.
“Only one way to find out.”
Luca stood up, waited for Alison to follow his lead, then opened the kitchen door and moved quickly back into the hallway.
“It’s OK, girls. I’m here, I’ll be up in a minute,” Luca called up toward his daughters’ room.
The glass in the front door rattled insistently with each rap. Luca first, Alison following behind. Safety in numbers, she thought, feeling absurd. Luca put all his weight behind the door, cracking it open a slice, keeping his body in the way of any attempt by whoever was there to push into the hall. Alison stretched her neck, craning to see around him, to see who was on the other side.