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When the bus drops me into the bustle of Honolulu, I still feel out of place. As if I belong beyond this melange of commerce and craving. It matches the message about passing through, but when I turn into Merchant Street, the sight of my building grounds me with its red-brick incongruity. I even remember to check the street for journalists.
Upstairs, Derek is keeping an ear out. Before I reach my door, he’s out of his. He’s been holding the fort while I’ve been missing.
“Thanks for everything, DD. Now I just need some time alone.”
In my office. The only space that’s still mine.
“Sure. But there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
“Don’t freak out. You’re about to have...a visitor.”
“Not a journo.”
“No. I’ve sent one guy away with a flea in his ear. What a nerve.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know her name.”
“You sent the journo away, but you told a strange woman I’d see her – after I’ve just crawled out of the sea and look like it – without finding out what she wants?”
He sighs. “It’s complicated.” He bustles me into his cubicle and drops his voice. “She turned up here the day after you left, said she wanted to see you. I told her you were away and I couldn’t say when you’d be back, so she asked if she could wait.”
“Wait?”
“I put a chair outside your office. She waits from one till two every weekday. Her lunch hour, I guess.”
A shiver of something makes me suddenly cold. It could be a blast from Derek’s dodgy aircon, but since arriving in Hawaii I’ve been forced to pay attention to these ‘feelings’ that my stepmother spent my childhood suppressing.
“What time is it now?” I ask.
“Twelve fifty.”
“Shit, DD, I need some time in my office. Alone. A meeting with this woman is out of the question.”
“Tell her you’ll meet her tomorrow.”
“Waiting every day...it’s creepy. I might not want to see her at all.”
“What if she’s a client?”
He’s right. After two weeks without an income, I could use a few of those.
“What does she look like?”
Derek thinks. “Thirties. Attractive but not beautiful. Spends time on her hair and makeup. Inexpensive clothes but her style’s good.”
“What’s your gut feeling about her?”
He’s pleased to be asked and takes his time. “Not what she seems.”
That makes two of us.
The prospect of meeting this mystery woman stifles me. I can’t breathe. It’s like Wanda’s flat – an intruder in the space where I should be. There’s a pattern here. And it’s got everything to do with Coral’s pronouncement. Ala. Nowhere to settle, nowhere to belong, nowhere to be normal after disappearing. Passing through.
Derek watches me as I try to decide what to do. Cringe in his armchair until the woman’s gone? Flee down the back stairs and skulk back later? Or confront her and find out what the hell she wants?
He doesn’t try to persuade me either way, but I still feel like a coward as I take the fire escape to the back lane. When I reach the corner of our building, a woman is opening the front door. It’s just a glimpse, her image reflecting in the glass, but Derek’s description is perfect. Soft brown hair twisted up with a comb. Low heels. A simple skirt and blouse, muted florals. An office worker would be my guess, well-groomed and unspectacular.
There’s a sushi bar across the street – my regular lunchtime haunt. They’re pleased to welcome back their best customer, so I take a table behind a potted palm and plug in my dead phone to charge. It’s a great vantage point and two guys with cameras and predatory looks soon turn up, their eyes fixed on the entrance opposite.
After I’ve consumed an hour’s worth of sushi, my visitor emerges right on cue and I’m ready for her.
Click.
When she’s gone, air rushes into my lungs. Exhilaration. Relief. Running away wasn’t cowardly. I’ve given myself some power. This woman knows who I am and I want the same advantage.
Her photo goes to everyone I know – Davina, Wanda, Derek, Nigel, Alister, Curtis at the coffee cart – with the message: Who is this woman?
***
The heat has driven the paparazzi away, but I return via the lane just in case. When I open my office door, I feel a rush of something like gratitude. A tiny space that’s still mine. Immaculate, thanks to Derek, with the mail stacked in a basket and a vase of orchids on the windowsill. After I give him a hug, he leaves me alone with my laptop and the backlog of seminar requests.
Word has got around about Being Sleek – the seminar about seals that crept up on me and wrapped me in its spell – and I’m in danger of becoming an overnight success. There are so many queries I could fill a room twice over. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of, making a name for myself on the seminar circuit. A dream that gave me the courage to try for a green card, to walk out on a bad marriage, leave Sydney and start a new life. Then Being Sleek presented itself and my future success looked assured. Now it’s something to hold onto in the face of all the uncertainty.
As I reply to each enquiry and sign them up to my Moonshine blog, the rhythm of the work anchors me. Until the phone rings, and I almost jump out of my skin. It’s a sound I haven’t heard for a while and the last person I expect. Alister.
He reads, “Siren’s Seaside Striptease.”
I hiss. “That journalist.”
“You won’t like the story either. Or the close-up.” He reads out the lurid fantasy, which ends with me sprawled on a black sand beach wearing nothing but a girdle of seaweed.
“And you accused me of setting this up!” I say. “You keep telling me how well you know me – better than I know myself – and then you misjudge me like that.”
“I was angry. Paparazzi bring out the worst in me.”
“I wasn’t too thrilled either. Not that I got the chance to say.”
“I know. It was unforgivable.”
“At least we agree on something.”
He chuckles, then gets serious again. “I’m really ringing about Genevieve.”
So his ex has broken her silence. “What’s she done now?”
He misses a beat. “She’s the woman in your photo.”
Genevieve. The woman scorned. The woman for whom Alister’s money isn’t enough. Shit.
I tell him about how she’s set up camp outside my door. “Do you know what she wants?”
“No, but I don’t want you to meet her, Selkie. I saw her while you were...away.” He didn’t tell me that this morning. “We discussed the settlement...over dinner.”
“And?”
“She was emotional in a way that shocked me. Angry. Bitter. She accused me of humiliating her, even though our relationship was so private no-one else knew. Waiting outside your door like that is completely out of character. I’m worried she might be...dangerous.”
Bloody hell.
“You were with her for over a year, Alister. Didn’t you notice what she was like?”
Alister, who could have any woman he wants. Except me. And so rich he can’t trust anyone in case they’re dazzled by the dollars instead of him.
“She was...unusual. Serious and quiet. She wasn’t trying to schmooze me like so many other women I meet. She’d lost her husband, given birth to the twins on her own. I made allowances and didn’t question why she was so...unemotional.”
There’s more, I can tell. I wait.
“She also craved privacy, which meant I could get away from the spotlight...and be with her kids.”
There’s the truth of it: the instant family. He told me he’d never loved her enough. But he’d got in deep with her boys.
“Emotional or unemotional,” I say, “without staying away from my office every lunchtime, I don’t see how I can avoid her.” At least she doesn’t know where I’m staying. “I get the feeling she’s a woman who doesn’t give up.”
His laugh is rueful.
“I need to sort this out,” I add. “Hear what she has to say. For her sake and mine. I’ll make sure Derek’s around, OK?”
He doesn’t like it but there’s nothing he can do. After we hang up, he texts me the link to the news item, but I’m already all over the online bulletins. Then the calls begin.
After no-commenting three journalists, I turn off my phone. It must be a slow news day if my mystery dip in the Pacific is this newsworthy. I know from my PR training that you deal with adverse publicity by ignoring it. “This too will pass,” the Buddhists say. It’s the same for bad press.
Derek is standing in the doorway, staring at me in the mirror above my desk. I tell him about Genevieve.
“Does Alister know what she wants?” he asks.
“No, but it can’t be good, can it? He’s worried about her motives, thinks she’s emotional, angry. He told me not to meet her, but this is a public building so she can loiter all she wants. And she’s obviously the tenacious type.”
“Are you going to tell her that you know who she is?”
“I’m not sure. It was good that I ducked out today. I’m better prepared knowing who she is. Are you around tomorrow at lunchtime?”
He grins. “If I cancel my table at Jimmy Ho’s.”
I grin back. Derek never eats at Honolulu’s top restaurant.
***
He leaves me with my emails – offers for seminars in far-flung places have started coming in, from China, Europe, the UK. After an hour, my head is spinning and Derek suggests we call it a day.
“You need to sleep off the jetlag,” he says. “You’ve been in another time zone, remember?”
We walk to his car and try to beat the rush hour. Once we exit the freeway and start snaking up the mountain to Makiki Heights, the energy of the city clears, the taro hedges give way to an expansive sky, then we’re on top of the world.
Nigel greets us at the door and we follow him onto the deck of their white clapboard house. Honolulu spreads beneath us like a picnic rug covered in sprinkles. My fears about not belonging seep away as Derek fills Nigel in on my day.
First, Myrna.
“Stay as long as you need to, Selkie.”
“Thanks, Nige.” I don’t mention Coral’s prediction. “I’ll buy Chinese once a week.” The offer is out before I remember my bank account. Shit.
Then Genevieve.
“If Alister thinks she’s a tad unbalanced,” Nigel says, “then you need to be careful. If she blames you for being dumped – and she might have to demonise you, to preserve her opinion of Alister – she’s had time to plan her attack.”
The obsessiveness of that image ripples through the air.
“She might just want to vent,” I say. “She’d lined Alister up for a lifetime of happy families, all that security and comfort. Now everything’s ruined and she’s left to bring up the twins on her own.”
“Exactly. Revenge is an explosive emotion. You mustn’t meet her alone.”
“DD’s going to back me up.”
Nigel looks at Derek, the big softy around here. He won’t say it but he’d rather be there himself, all six foot six of him, with a black belt in aikido.
We start thinking about food. As usual I could eat a horse. They won’t let me help in the kitchen, so I turn on my phone. While I was away, Derek was so confident I’d be back that he updated my timeline so people in Sydney wouldn’t know I was missing. His posts are a little too eloquent, with a touch of the new-age and ever so slightly gay. Did anyone notice? But then I’d been borrowing much of my news from him these last few months, trying to give my mad dash for freedom a bit less madness and a bit more dash.
“I make a good virtual Selkie,” he says.
“Only if Gretel fell for it.” My sister. “She’s got an inbuilt radar for fake.”
He sniffs. “I’m not sure I’d like her.”
“You’d adore her, DD. And she’d adore you.”
Then I notice his emails to Andrew. My ex. For months Andrew’s hounded me with daily texts to ‘come home where you belong’ and ‘stop pretending to be someone’. Until he found Juliet.
“DD, a few fibs on Facebook are one thing, but you had no business writing to Andrew.” As Derek ducks behind the breakfast bar, I understand why. “My God, you’ve negotiated a settlement on our house.”
“Someone had to do it and I was dispassionate.”
“You didn’t sign anything, did you?”
“Forge your signature on a legal document? Puh-lease. I do have some standards.”
I want to be angry but I’m laughing. And I haven’t even started on the wine.
I read out a couple of the email exchanges and Nigel looks shocked.
“If you don’t agree to my terms, Andrew, I’m more than happy to wait for a property upturn. Then buying me out will cost you more.”
Andrew fired back with some well-chosen expletives to which Derek replied: “Forget the vocabulary, douchepants.”
“Douchepants?” I snort. “He’d have to know that wasn’t me. If you want me to sell now, you’ll have to do better than 50/50. Oh my God, he’s offered me 55 per cent.”
“His first offer,” Derek says, looking smug. “You rejected that. We’re up to 60/40.”
That’s when I smell a rat. My voice is shaking as I ask, “Whose valuation are you using, DD? On the house?”
He hesitates. “Andrew supplied it. From a certified valuer.”
“But I engaged my own valuer. Just before I disappeared.”
Derek hangs his head. “I didn’t know.”
When he tells me the valuation, it’s what I feared.
“You don’t know the Sydney property market, DD. He’s been screwing you. I’ve got no idea where he found his valuer – no doubt for a hefty kickback – but you can’t buy a tool shed in Sydney for that.”
Derek pulls a face. “It was fun while it lasted.”
He won’t admit that he needed to pay Andrew back for the grief he’s given me. Over the last few months, Derek’s witnessed the daily abuse by text message and, if it wasn’t for his support, I might have lost courage and crawled back to Andrew’s bed of nails. Now Andrew’s met Juliet, so there’s only the house between us. Another home that’s no longer mine.
The meal is vegetarian because the boys were hosting a kirtan tonight – a group from the ashram that chants in Sanskrit, before tucking into Himalayan-sized portions of meat-free food. They cancelled it when I asked Derek if they could put me up.
“The last thing you need,” Nigel says, “is a bunch of blissed-out strangers quizzing you about Nirvana.”
“Er, why would they do that?”
Nigel and Derek glance at each other.
“You’ve got the look, Selkie,” Nigel says, “of one who knows.”
It’s what I saw in Wanda’s mirror, what I felt in my bones. But what do I know?
“I’d have nothing to tell them, Nige. My head has never been emptier.” It’s true.
“Exactly,” he says.
Beside me Derek mutters, “Those who say do not know...those who know do not say...”
“And those with empty heads,” I say, “eat.”
For the first time in several weeks, I get drunk. It numbs the reality of where I might have been and what I’ve returned to, and stops me from thinking about Coral’s prediction.
The boys put me to bed in their spare room and I plunge into sleep.
***
In the moments just before waking, a familiar voice bounces off the bedroom walls: Turn the tables on the troglodyte.
Shit. It brings back the first message I ever heard: Someone is trying to kill you. It was soon after I arrived here, and it sent me on the journey that ended at Bantry’s Bluff, looking for answers that I can’t remember.
“Turn the tables on the troglodyte,” Derek repeats over a late breakfast. “It’s getting cryptic, that voice of yours.”
“It’s always been cryptic.”
I took the killing message literally for a while, but the strange things that happened while I was missing can’t have been literal. Or I’d be dead.
“What do you think it means?” Derek asks.
I sigh. “The only troglodyte I can think of...is Andrew.”
Derek looks sheepish. “It fits but how can you turn the tables on him?”
“Upset his plans to undervalue the house. It was on my mind when I went to bed last night. Then I woke up with the message.”
“Upset his plans by going back to Sydney?”
He’s worried I might do something silly now I’ve been kicked out of Wanda’s.
“No way.” I don’t want to cross paths with Andrew. Or his new woman, Juliet. “There must be a way to do it from here.”
“Troglodyte,” he says. “It’s a weird word for the voice to choose.”
“Not really. Andrew’s behaved like a complete Neanderthal, but there’s a literal meaning too. When I first met him, he used to take me on bushwalks that always ended at a secret cave. He called it our special place.”
“That’s what predators always say when they lure girls to secluded places.”
“I wasn’t really a girl. I was sixteen.”
“But naive?”
I nod. “He wanted me so badly, it terrified me. But I felt powerless to run away.”
“You didn’t want him?”
“His obsession with me...freaked me out. Like he was crazy about some fantasy woman who wasn’t me. He was almost twenty-one, good-looking, going to uni.”
“Glamorous.”
“Yeah. All my girlfriends would have gone with him in a heartbeat, but he wanted me.”
“And you thought there was something wrong with you for not wanting him?”
It seems obvious now. “He said I just needed help with my...inhibitions. Until I gave in.”
“Rape by attrition.”
“Something like that.” Then I married him.
“That makes him the troglodyte,” Derek says, “in more ways than one.”
“The whole chapter with Andrew would be finished if it wasn’t for the house. And after your emails, DD, he thinks he’s conned me. I know him – his smugness will make him complacent. Maybe I can get a fair property settlement while he’s looking the other way. Then I’d be free.”
But the word has an undercurrent. Freedom needs to be grounded, and right now I’m on shifting ground. How can I cut my ties with Sydney when I don’t have a base I can rely on here? Ever since I woke up at Bantry’s Bluff, a crack’s been opening up beneath my feet – a chasm. If that’s the path Coral’s talking about, then I don’t dare look down.