Laying Ghosts

The text message arrives while I’m home alone, enjoying a glass of wine. Andrew’s at a conference – a resort in Vanuatu where the accountants get to swap their neckties for mai tais – so the next four days are mine. He’d booked me to go with him as an accompanying delegate, but I’ve feigned the flu all week to get out of it. I’ve got a phobia about beach resorts and he knows it. Which is why he insists.

He warned me before he left, “Don’t suddenly start feeling better, Elkie,” – he’s never called me Selkie, the name my mother gave me – “and decide to meet up with any old friends.”

“What friends?” I murmured.

He’s turning me into an agoraphobic: ‘Andrew adores that girl so much he won’t let her out of his sight.’ Lately I’ve wondered if he could have stooped to putting a tracking app on my phone.

The text message makes me jump.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

Rina? I stare at her name. How long’s it been? Four years without a word. Marina Polivanova. Rina for short. We used to joke that even though I’m afraid of the sea, I chose a best friend called Marina. Spooky. And then she abandoned me to chase after that creep Frank. I was gutted. Still am. She was a kindred spirit who understood my issues with Andrew. And I was worried about her, worried what Frank would do to her. After she left there were a few texts, boasting that they were on their way to London with his band, then they were getting married. Then she stopped writing altogether.

Now other memories flood back, bringing a surge of affection. We met at university when we were thrown together on a project: ‘Feminism in the 1970s’. Over bottles of cheap wine we created a post-modern play, laughing and crying at our clever monologues that contrasted the reasons for the choices women make. Ironic that we both flipped from feminism to living under the close control of our men.

Hey, babe, I text back. Long time. Welcome back. How did you guess I’ve got a free weekend? Spooky.

We were always saying that: spooky. Especially when we ended each other’s sentences like twins. It reminds me just how much I’ve missed her.

The reply is swift.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

The same words again. Spooky is right. It’s as if some troll has hacked my phone. Is the message from Rina at all? And why Crystal Cottage, the scene of that unspeakable weekend? Unless some real estate agent is getting creative with his holiday promotions. But I haven’t been browsing Crystal Cottage. No way. What happened there still gives me nightmares.

Crystal Cottage. A weekender at Pearl Beach. Four years ago it had just been renovated, so the owners asked Frank to live there while he created an outdoor oasis to complement the new interior.

“I’ve got the run of the place,” he told us. “Come up and party like nobody’s listening. Because they’re not.”

Andrew wasn’t keen. For a start Rina was my friend – she called me Selkie which made her ‘subversive’ – and the few times Andrew had met Frank he’d found him crass. But we ended up going because I didn’t want to go – not a beach house, not a house on the beach. Andrew’s crazy about the sea and always pleased to push me towards my greatest primal fear. As if his ego isn’t already the size of Texas, he needs to make me look inferior.

Four other people were invited. A really tall guy – Stork – who used his altitude to peer down the front of my top. A nerdy guy nicknamed Lute – I remember him because of the role he played. One of the women was Jules. And there was a redhead whose name has disappeared into the ugly blur of that night.

My screen’s gone black. When I illuminate it, the text hasn’t changed.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

Why would it change? Stupid thought. But there’s something about it. Something ... spooky.

It’s what we said about the cottage itself. Crystal Cottage sounded like a café that did psychic readings. But then we saw that all the streets in Pearl Beach are named after gems: Diamond Road, Agate Avenue, Tourmaline Street. Not spooky, kind of quaint. Until Frank ruined it.

Is Rina back because she’s finally given up on Frank? I wish. Anyone could see that he was bad news, that a gorgeous woman like her could do so much better than the charismatic, part-time musician who drank too much and turned ugly. But when he asked her to marry him and go on tour to the UK, she was gone like a shot. In spite of what he did to her at Crystal Cottage.

I’ve only taken a sip of wine. It’s Friday night. Andrew’s away. Rina’s back. Why not glug down this glass, then another?

Because I’m going to do what the message says: help Rina. I’m going to drive to Crystal Cottage, the house opposite the strand at Pearl Beach. A place I never wanted to see again. Am I mad? It’s six p.m. With daylight saving I can be there before sunset.

On way. See you soon, I text back.

After tossing a few things in my little red suitcase and the wine in a cooler bag, with Andrew’s warning to stay home buzzing in my ears, I’m backing out of our driveway. Pearl Beach is a tiny resort north of Sydney, with a calm ocean beach and a lagoon nestled behind the main street. It’s only accessible by a long slow road, with development limited by the conservation area around it. It means it’s remained a sleepy backwater although the trend for designer beach houses is gradually relegating the humble old cottages to history.

I’m enjoying the freedom of the open window and the wind in my hair on this steamy late spring evening, but beneath my excitement at seeing Rina something feels wrong. How does she know my phone number? Surely I’ve changed it since she left. And what’s she doing back at Crystal Cottage of all remote places? For the first time I panic that Frank might be back too.

In spite of how we parted, I did try to track her down on social media to make sure she was OK. I figured if she married Frank, she’d have been quick to lose her Russian name Polivanova – a name she always had to spell while also inspiring the nickname Pollyanna – and adopt his. Green. The colour of his thumbs, Frank used to say – and, I thought, the puke inspired by his jokes. I googled his name and various combinations of both their names with no luck.

The evening peak has dwindled, the Friday night exodus of commuters returning to an affordable house. As the dusk descends the memories return in a rush.

Frank greeted us at the door wearing a pair of shorts and a serious tan. His rugged good looks were marred by a sly tongue and a cocky manner. We followed him into the stainless steel kitchen where Rina was putting roast chickens in the oven, still in their takeaway bags.

“Can’t get takeaway round here,” Frank said, “and the touchy bitch at the general store said not to bother coming back. ‘Suits me,’ I said. Jeez. I only mentioned that she might like to stock some real food and not bloody brie and paté and fruit paste. We had to drive to Woy Woy for supplies.” He opened the enormous fridge, showing shelves stacked with beer and salads in takeaway containers. “Good though. Found something else up there, eh Rina? To get the party going.”

Rina grunted and I sensed she was upset. She’d said ‘hi’ without turning around, and now she was halving giant bread rolls with intent, wielding a state-of-the-art bread knife – its mates gleaming from a block – before slathering the rolls with butter and putting them back together. So the menu was chicken rolls and beer, with a few token shop-made salads. Frank’s answer to gourmet.

Andrew helped himself to a beer from our cooler, then followed Frank outside to inspect the progress on the garden, leaving me alone with Rina.

“Are you OK?” I asked, brushing her blonde hair off her shoulder.

In response she turned and buried her face in my neck. “He’s got porn,” she said, her voice muffled.

“What?”

She lifted her head. “Porn. He got some videos in Woy Woy and he’s going to play them. Tonight.”

I suddenly felt trapped and a long way from home. “That’s gross.” This was plumbing new depths, even for Frank.

“He said it’ll get the party going.”

“What kind of party? Are the others into porn?”

She didn’t know what the other guests did in their own homes.

“Private’s different,” I said. “But eight people watching sex together – people who don’t know each other – that’s meant to lead to one thing, isn’t it?”

An orgy.

It made me want to run. Being paired with Andrew since my teens meant I’d led a sheltered life. No lovers. No experimenting with substances. No orgies. A few years back Andrew did bring home the occasional video – soft porn, titillating and funny. After my initial horror, and a few glasses of wine, it excited me and gave me something else to think about during sex. Otherwise I was an innocent, even avoiding X-rated movies because I couldn’t face the violence. But I remembered a movie based on the Profumo affair in 1960s London. A graphic scene came back, showing what the politicians were getting up to with the callgirls at weekend house parties. More than pillow talk. I remembered a hazy room full of boozed people draped on sofas in various states of undress and coupling. It was obscene.

I shook the image from my mind and poured us both a glass of bubbly.

“Andrew won’t stand for it,” I said, imagining a confrontation.

For all his faults, Andrew wouldn’t let anyone near me. He supervised my clothes and how I wore my hair, but even though his possessiveness was stifling at times, it had a protective benefit – he would keep me safe. But I wasn’t at all sure about Rina.

It was obvious that Rina had fought with Frank about the videos.

“Did he hit you?” I asked, making sure he was still out of earshot. Her face was red, but it might have just been from crying.

She avoided a straight answer. “He started drinking in the car on the way back. That’s when he said if I love him I should trust him, let him show me how to be the woman of his dreams.”

“By having group sex?”

When Frank was sober he had a rough charm, but I’d once seen the way he treated her at the pub. We’d gone there after work to listen to his band, and he’d tried to unbutton her shirt and show off the sexy bra he’d bought her.

Rina took me upstairs to the room Andrew and I would be sleeping in. I was wondering what to do about the video situation when we heard another couple arriving. Jules and Stork.

“Hey Pollyanna,” Stork said when Rina greeted him. He bent to kiss her on the cheek then tried to move to her lips.

She pushed him away. “I’ve told you not to call me that.”

He laughed and winked at me, getting a steely look that matched Rina’s. Was there a collective noun for more than one creep? He shrugged, and conversation turned to squeezing their grog into the fridge, putting a bottle of champagne in the freezer, then opening packets of chips. No mention of plugging their sex toys in to charge. I decided to relax. There were plenty of guest rooms on the new upper storey, each with its own bathroom. If nobody wanted to watch the videos, Frank would be on his own.

When the other couple arrived – a redhead in a retro frock and the nerdy guy with a button-down shirt and glasses called Lute – Jules and Redhead helped tear the chickens apart and put them on a platter. Then we carried the food to the outdoor table that overlooked an empty pool and a garden full of holes.

“Got a rabbit problem, Frankie?” Stork joked.

Frank snorted. “I could use a few bunnies round here, mate. A guy gets lonely. Nope, I dug ’em myself. The owners have paid serious money for the palms.”

Beside each hole was a large palm tree ready to be planted. I winced. The local flora consisted of low coastal trees and the occasional Norfolk pine, giving a feeling of bushland with nestling houses. A garden of imported palms was another kind of pornography – a travesty of the real thing.

“Almost done,” Frank added. “Just waiting on the pagoda.”

“Pergola,” Andrew said. “A pagoda is a temple.”

“An orna-fucking-mental pagoda,” Frank said, slugging down another beer and losing his charm by the nanosecond. He tossed the empty can into one of the holes and Stork clapped.

Some of us started making our chicken rolls. I whispered to Andrew, “I wouldn’t mind some brie and fruit paste,” and received a rare chuckle. Should I warn him about the porn? If it didn’t happen, he’d mock me about it for weeks.

We drank like we didn’t have to drive. It eased the interaction of our odd mix of strangers. Behind us the beach front was wave free, protected by a wide bay, and I forgot about my phobia. And as the conversation buzzed, I started to forget about the videos.

Then Frank produced some hash cookies from a tin, boasting that he’d grown the stuff and baked them himself. Everyone except Rina and me gave them a go – our tension about Frank’s agenda was back. Stork ate several and was soon stripping down to his jocks, climbing into the empty pool and singing. I told myself it was harmless. Then a cold breeze came up straight off the sea, so Stork covered up and we all moved indoors to the circle of sofas.

“Any requests?” Lute asked, looking through the music collection. He’d told me he was the new bass player in Frank’s band. But Frank had us where he wanted us. He dimmed the lights.

*

I turn off the freeway and take the long road towards Woy Woy, then another turn-off and the long narrow road to my destination. There’s some traffic, no doubt local commuters lucky enough to live in Pearl Beach and holiday makers grabbing a weekend in paradise. I wonder how many are responding to a strange message from a long lost friend. My phone has buzzed, but I haven’t checked it. When I stop outside what I think is the right house, there are two more identical texts from Rina.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

And one from Andrew. What are you doing on the Central Coast? So he’s tracking me and doesn’t mind if I know. The bastard.

Helping Rina at Crystal Cottage. Then I sign off, Selkie. I’m so powerful when he’s away.

There’s a light on inside the house. As I approach, my emotions swirl – excitement tinged with anxiety. I haven’t seen Rina for four years and our last conversation ended in tears. My tears. Now her face pops into my mind, her pale skin and blue eyes, and I can’t wait to give her a hug. I raise my hand to knock, then stop. The view through the front door, down the hall to the tiled sunroom, brings everything back. I haven’t seen Frank for four years either. What if he’s here too – and the reason Rina needs my help?

*

“Cop a load of this, ladies,” Frank said.

In preparation for his big moment he’d fast-forwarded to a graphic scene. The TV took up most of one wall, so the image that assaulted us was huge – lurid close-ups of the tools-of-the-trade of several players, with plenty of glossy lubricant and a soundtrack of grunts. Frank turned up the volume.

Redhead started laughing hysterically, but she was mesmerised by the screen. Everyone else ‘copped a load’ in stunned silence. You could almost hear each mind wondering what this party was really about, and whether they were up for watching it – or joining in.

“Come on Jules,” Frank said. “Teach us a few tricks. You know you want to.”

Redhead’s hysteria was starting to sound like hyperventilation as her struggle for breath matched the fake orgasms on the screen.

“Not tonight,” Jules said. “These lovely people might like it with the lights off. And I’ve got a nasty touch of you-know-what.”

“Jeez,” Frank said. “Now you tell me.” He scanned the rest of us women, dismissing Redhead and me. For now.

I wanted to leave, but I wasn’t going to abandon Rina. When the video started she’d disappeared, but now Frank was pulling her out of the kitchen. She dropped to the floor, but the tiles made it easy for him to drag her into the centre of the room. No one else moved.

“Let’s show everyone what you like, Rina. It’s been my little secret, but I’m a generous guy.”

*

Over the years, I’ve tried to push the scene that was about to unfold from my mind, but the horror of it – and my powerlessness to prevent it – never fades. But a few days later Rina was texting to say she was following Frank to London and getting married. It still doesn’t make sense. I might be trapped with Andrew, but he’s my husband – he keeps me safe. Rina had choices. Has she finally realised that and come back to the scene of the crime – to lay a few ghosts with the help of her best friend?

I knock. No answer. I call her name through the door. Silence. There are no cars in the driveway. How did she get here?

I try the door handle. It’s locked. This is Crystal Cottage, so where’s Rina? The light inside could be on a timer and this could be a wild goose chase. But when I turn back to my car, my phone beeps.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

Why keep repeating the same message like a broken record? The sense of something odd is back, now overlaid with urgency. The breeze off the water makes me shiver. I try to phone her number, but it doesn’t ring.

I’m at the front door, my text says. Are you running late?

As I wait for a reply, I consider the possibilities. Rina is trapped in some way. She might have been kidnapped and she’s only able to send the same message. Perhaps she finally ran away from Frank and he’s caught up with her. This would be a great place to hide someone.

I swallow the lump in my throat and consider my chances of finding her. None, if I drive towards Woy Woy like a coward and find a motel. Better, if I sleep in the car with one eye open. Best, if I break in and search.

It’s a holiday cottage, so there’ll be a hidden key. I once read a Wyatt story by Garry Disher, where the anti-hero systematically inspected the perimeter of a house until he found the secret key. Easy when you know how. But it’s dark, and I’ve only got my phone for illumination. As I sneak up the side path and around the back, an automatic spotlight blinds me. When my eyes adjust, eerie shadows reveal glimpses of Frank’s masterpiece: the garden. Beside the back door there’s a lock box high on the wall, but I need the code. Shit. Wyatt didn’t have to deal with this. Then a sudden inspiration makes me stand on my toes and feel along the top of the box. Bingo. The code confounded someone, so they left the key on top.

The next step involves only a few seconds of soul-searching. Rina is here somewhere, trapped and disabled, or she’s going to join me and tell me what’s happened. Four years ago I was powerless to help her. Not this time. As my tension mounts, I slip the key in the lock and open the back door.

The living space is just as I remember: an open plan kitchen and sunroom stretching across the whole back of the house, with the TV area forming an L-shape. Modern coastal white-on-white décor with touches of blue – casual and expensive. But as I step inside, I’m aware of the shell of the old house – invisible, but I can sense it breathing. It must be because I’m spooked. Where the hell is Rina?

Desperate for the loo, I lock the door behind me and cross the room to the toilet in the laundry. Then minutes later I’m checking every room on the lower floor. The mirrors on the built-in robes startle me with my reflection – crumpled clothes, furtive eyes. The cupboards contain what you’d expect.

As I climb to the upstairs addition, visions of what I might find make me hold my breath, but all the doors are open, except one. I approach it with caution. Locked. It’s the perfect place to imprison someone – a storeroom where the owners stash personal items when they’re letting the house – but I’m sure it was locked last time.

I whisper through the door, “Rina?” Then louder, “Rina, it’s Selkie.” No answer.

I sense she isn’t in there, but she might be gagged.

If you can hear me, I text, send the message.

Nothing.

What else can I do? Then I remember the backyard – and the outline of a shed.

On my way outside again I check the fridge. It’s well-stocked, which could mean someone’s staying here and has just popped out for the evening. Could it be Frank? For the first time I wonder if the text was designed by someone else to lure me here. If so, it’s worked.

*

When Frank dragged Rina into the centre of the room, no one moved. It was that terrible impotence that comes from fear. And a misguided notion that what goes on between two people is their business, even in public.

“I won’t have sex in front of everyone, Frank,” she said, getting to her feet. Her voice was thin and shaking. “Don’t ask me to.”

“Who said anything about asking?”

“Let’s take the video upstairs later, and have some fun in private.”

“Rina, I’ve told you what I want – a woman who wants what I want, when I want it.”

Behind them on the wall the porn continued in sickening close-up.

“Don’t do this, Frank,” Lute said. “Nobody else wants it.”

“Speak for yourself,” came Stork’s slurred comment. He’d had too many cookies and his limbs had collapsed like a broken umbrella into an armchair opposite the screen.

“Leave Rina alone,” a voice squeaked. Mine.

Beside me Andrew shifted, about to shut me up, but Frank beat him to it. “You,” he said, jabbing the air with his finger, “can shut your fucking face, you frigid bitch.”

Lute tried to grab the remote from the coffee table, but Frank snatched it.

“This is between me and Rina,” he said, contradicting his expressed desire for a group grope. “Stay or leave, whatever, but Rina’s my girl and she’s going to show it.”

“I’m in,” Stork added. “Sharing is caring.” I doubted his prowess, but his eyes were dancing.

What happened next unfolded in slow motion. Frank had let go of Rina’s wrists to grab the remote, sliding it across the floor and under a bookcase. Then he dropped his shorts, revealing his readiness for action, before lunging for her again. But she’d slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans and was waving something shiny. A knife from the block in the kitchen.

“Don’t make me cut you,” she said.

The nightmare that plagues me still is how I froze, watching my best friend ward off a brute she thought she loved, in front of six passive observers. No one was going to intervene now and risk getting stabbed. I couldn’t breathe.

Frank laughed. “That’s more like my Pollyanna. Danger makes me hornier. But I’ll be the one with the knife.”

*

The houses on either side are in darkness, so I risk turning on the outdoor lights. Tiny path lamps peep from the edging beds and around the pool, and the ornamental pagoda is lit up like a wedding cake. In the far corner, hidden by the shadows of the palms, is the shed.

Terrified now, I lock the back door behind me before stumbling across the yard and hissing through the padlocked door, “Rina, it’s Selkie. If you’re in there, make a noise.”

Silence.

There’s a small window at the side. Even in the half-dark, shelves of garden tools are visible. She’s not here. I turn back towards the house and whimper, “Where are you, Rina?”

My phone beeps.

Help me at Crystal Cottage. Rina.

On an impulse I say it again. Louder. “Where are you, Rina?”

That’s when I hear it. The softest strains of music. And words I can’t quite understand. Someone is singing. A song of deep sadness. It’s seeping between the surrounding houses and swirling around me like a fog.

“Where are you, Rina?” I’m almost shouting now and running along the paths, trying to warm my sudden chill and ward off a sense of dread.

The music is filling my ears, but its source is elusive. Although I can’t make out the words, it’s speaking right to my soul. Emotions of loss and regret spin around me in waves. Where’s it coming from? I’ve heard that in a valley distant sounds can seem close. Could it be blowing across the lagoon?

Then I’m drawn to the pagoda, set into a corner where it’s playing the role of a folly – the word pops into my head – a classical-style building designed to catch the eye with its extravagance and give pleasure in its beauty. Is the music coming from there?

There’s a circular seat inside it and the window spaces offer vistas of the garden. I sit down and try to hear the words. Is someone singing about the folly? It doesn’t make sense. I stay for a while crying, the music is so poignant and so sweet in its sorrow, but I’m not learning what I need to learn. Where’s Rina?

Eventually I hear approaching thunder. And there’s more thunder as I run for the house. It’s a relief to lock myself inside and escape the music, it’s so surreal. I pour myself a glass of wine to numb my mounting fear. As heavy drops start to fall and lightning cracks the sky, the temperature drops. I wrap myself in a throw and huddle on the sofa, but the sight of the TV only brings everything back.

*

As Frank reached for the knife, confident that she’d give it up, the champagne in the freezer exploded – and Rina overbalanced.

“She cut me,” Frank screamed as he dropped to the floor.

“Rina stabbed him,” Jules shrieked.

To this day I’ll swear she didn’t.

All the bravado drained from Frank. Blood poured onto his shrivelling penis and spread across the white tiled floor. He howled.

Rina was holding the knife in freeze-frame until her face crumpled and she started to sob. The cacophony from the TV hadn’t let up, Redhead was screaming about blood, and now two more people were wailing.

Lute was the first to move, rushing to Frank’s side, while I raced over and took the knife from Rina before helping her into an armchair. Her face was so white I put her head between her knees. Frank had assumed the foetal position, and Lute was wrapping a handkerchief – nerds are great in a crisis – tightly around what turned out to be Frank’s only injury: a bloody finger. The porn sounds were intolerable, so Andrew crossed to the bookcase, retrieved the remote and turned off the TV. Redhead fell silent with it, so now the only moaning and shrieking was coming from Frank.

“I’ll have to take him to Gosford,” Lute told everyone. The nearest big town. He was the only one who was sober enough. “If you want to play guitar again,” he said to the sobbing baby who used to be Frank, “you need stitches or something. What else did you use that knife for, Rina?”

Lute’s commanding manner brought Rina to her senses. She lifted her head. “Chicken.”

“So maybe a tetanus shot,” Lute added.

He ordered us around. Stork managed to get an uncooperative Frank into his clothes. Redhead recovered and got busy wiping the floor while Jules went in search of a first aid kit.

“He’s lost the tip of his finger,” Lute informed her. “See if you can find a dressing that won’t stick to it.”

She came back carrying a plastic box with a red cross on the side and a bowl of warm water. As Frank lay prostrate on the floor, whimpering now – Redhead had put a cushion under his head – Lute washed and dressed the wound. Then Andrew and Stork helped him to his feet and he staggered between them through the front door to Lute’s car.

“We may be all night,” Lute said on his way out.

Frank would have to wait his turn with the other Friday night casualties.

But when Andrew and Stork returned to the house, Lute turned back and made an announcement, looking directly at Jules: “What happened here was an accident. Frank was cutting chicken and the knife slipped.”

*

This is a serious storm. Unusual this early in the season. Normally they don’t bother me, but I’m already spooked and the thought of wild waves just across the road is making my heart race. What if the house goes underwater? I remind myself that these houses have been here for a long time, that storms are normal, that I can go upstairs if there’s a flood. For a distraction I look at the DVD collection. I never thought I’d be choosing to watch this TV again, but I’m grateful to see an episode of House of Cards.

Even though I turn up the volume and try to concentrate, my eyes won’t stay open. It must be exhaustion acting as an antidote to my fear. The voices on the screen create a layer of numbness between me and the cacophony outside, but when I hear the music again I wake and remember where I am. The character Frank Underwood is singing to his wife. His voice is faint, but he seems to be singing the song from the garden. I try to tune into the words.

“Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, you’ve stolen my heart,

My mind is to marry and never to part.

Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, you must come with me,

Before we are wedded, there’s something to see.”

He led her through valleys and forests so deep.

At length Pretty Polly started to weep.

“Oh Willy, you’re angry, it makes me afraid.

I fear you are planning my life to betray.”

I’m just rewinding it to listen again when a wild wind starts whipping the tree branches towards the sky. The last thing I see before the power goes off is debris flying. If the roof might go, I’ll have to stay downstairs, so there’s nothing to do except pull the throw around me. But I can’t stop thinking about Rina.

*

After Lute took Frank away, Jules didn’t stop glaring at Rina. And Stork kept saying over and over, “Good one, Pollyanna.”

They had work to do, cleaning up their exploded champagne.

“I want to put the video back on,” Stork complained. “It was just getting wicked.”

“Shut up,” Jules said.

I took Rina upstairs and put her in the bath. That’s when I noticed the bruises, in places hidden by her clothes.

“You can’t stay here with Frank,” I said. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning. Come with us.”

She didn’t answer. Since the knife incident she’d been completely mute. She let me dry her like a child and tuck her into bed in one of the single rooms upstairs.

After Lute brought Frank back in the early hours, he locked himself in a downstairs bedroom. Then in the morning when the rest of us, except Rina, were breakfasting in silence, Frank didn’t emerge.

Rina let me in when I knocked on her door.

“We’ll go when you’ve packed your things,” I said. “Frank’s hiding downstairs, so you’re safe.”

“It’s OK, Selkie. I’m staying.”

“What? If you’re worried about him hanging around your flat, stay with us till you get a new place. I’ll help you.”

But Rina was shaking her head. “Last night was a stupid accident. He was drunk. I was drunk. I can’t believe I hurt him.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “Of course it was an accident, and the whole thing was stupid, but why did you get a knife? That’s the part you’re ignoring.”

“I got confused.” Her voice was dreamy. “He just wanted to show everyone how beautiful I am. Sexy and beautiful.”

“You didn’t think that when he got the videos.”

“It’s just porn. Porn can’t hurt anyone.”

I couldn’t believe the spin she was putting on it. Had the accident pushed her over the edge?

“It was going to hurt you,” I said. “Frank was using it to abuse you. That’s why you got the knife.”

“Frank will forgive me. He always does.”

“But he’s the one who forced you to protect yourself.”

“And he’ll be sorry. He’s always sorry.”

I’d been raising my voice, so I lowered it again. “Rina, look at me. I’m your best friend. I can’t let you bullshit yourself like this.”

“And Andrew’s perfect, I suppose.” The dreamy look was gone, replaced by a steely gleam.

“You know he isn’t. This isn’t about Andrew.”

She’d folded her arms. “If I break up with Frank, you have to leave Andrew.”

Bloody hell. “Rina, look at the facts. Frank was offering you up last night. Stork was licking his lips for his turn. There’s a word for that. Rape.”

But Rina wasn’t listening. “You’ve always tried to come between us, and I’m sick of it. It’s OK for you – you’ve got your husband and your house. But you’ve never wanted me to have the same things.”

“That’s not true.” To keep her image of Frank intact, she was flipping the blame to me. “Ask yourself if you want to be with a man who’d rape you in front of his friends. Who’ll probably try it again.”

“I know what I want.” Her voice was as steely as her eyes. “See you ... Elkie.”

She couldn’t have stung me more. With that one word I was demolished and dismissed. As I went to the door, I was fighting back tears. “Call me if you need a bolt hole. Or a friend.”

“I won’t.”

I haven’t seen her since.

*

The memory of that conversation is the nightmare I’ve relived over and over since that night. Frank’s finger was wounded along with his pride – he’d recover – but the real victims were Rina and me. Our friendship was over. That’s why I rushed here when I thought she needed me – to fill the hole she left in my life.

The wildness outside seems to be escalating in response to my spiralling emotions. I’m sobbing my heart out when an almighty roaring makes me leap off the sofa and run for cover to the laundry. Just as I shut the door there’s a thunderous crash behind me. Something has hit the house.

I huddle on the doormat waiting for the ordeal to end. As the heavens do their worst, I can’t stop thinking that Rina called me here to help her, but the storm has turned my quest upside down.

When I wake on the laundry floor, stunned that I finally fell asleep in the early hours, daylight is peeping through the window. I stretch my aching limbs. When I try the light switch there’s still no power, so I don’t dare move from this refuge. Powerlines could be dangling. Luckily my phone has still got some charge. There are several texts from Andrew, which I ignore, but none from Rina. Now I’m the one who needs to call for help.

Eventually two guys wearing fluoro stripes run up the side path. I call out and let them in. They warn me that the back of the house has been demolished by a falling palm. When they open the door to the sunroom to show me, I gasp. The sofa I’d been dozing on is totally flattened by the tree, the TV area covered in shards of glass.

“I was on that sofa,” I say, my voice shaking. “Then I heard roaring and ran in here.”

They look at each other. “Buy a lottery ticket,” the first one says. “You’re one lucky lady.”

“Anyone else here?” the other asks.

“Only me. I thought I was meeting a friend but ... she didn’t turn up.”

“We’ll check around, just in case.”

They permit me to creep into the kitchen and sit on a stool. But they don’t want me wandering about. My car is under a branch.

“How did you get through?” I ask, imagining the only road blocked by tree trunks.

“That’s the odd part,” one of them says. “That was a hell of a storm alright, lots of debris everywhere, but nothing big. Nope, this seems to be the only house that’s damaged.”

“Them palms don’t usually topple over,” the other says. “Specially a young tree like that. Looks like one of them willy-willies, a tiny tornado, blew up the beach, across that vacant block opposite, uprooted that palm tree and torpedoed it into the windows. Took the gazebo with it.”

I turn my attention to what I can see of the garden. Frank’s pagoda is on its side, tipped over by the uprooting of the tree. Frank’s folly in more ways than one.

“Weirdest thing,” the guy continues. “Must get a photo or the blokes back at headquarters will never believe it.”

There’s nothing to do but perch at the breakfast bar surrounded by the carnage, and try to eat some cereal. My hands are shaking as I pour the milk. I’d kill for a cup of tea.

My mind wanders back to last night, and I remember hearing the song just before the crash, the one Frank Underwood sang. Frank – an eerie coincidence. And in my disturbed state I linked it to the music in the garden. Something about Polly – Rina’s reluctant nickname. More proof I made it up.

There’s a shout from outside, and through the windows that haven’t imploded, I can see the rescue guys staring into the crater left by the palm. Now one of them is making a call. When they run down the side path I ask them what’s happened, but they only call over their shoulders for me to stay where I am. The police are coming.

In a flash I know what’s happened as the words of the song come back.

He led her through valleys and forests so deep.

At length Pretty Polly started to weep.

“Oh Willy, you’re angry, it makes me afraid.

I fear you are planning my life to betray.”

“You’re right, Pretty Polly, I’ve dug you a grave.

This is what happens when you don’t behave.”

A grave and, beside it, a spade did she see.

She cried, “Why must this be a bride-bed for me?”

Then she knelt down before him to plead for her life.

“Please let me be single if I can’t be your wife.”

“Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, that can never be.

Your recent behaviour’s humiliated me.”

It must be what happened after I left Rina here with Frank. I knew she wasn’t safe. He’d already dug the holes for the palms. I can see him completing the landscaping with cool intent, but leaving just one tree unplanted – for her. Then going overseas straight afterwards with Rina’s phone, and firing off a few texts as a smokescreen. Where is he now, the murderer? My rage is the only thing keeping me from total collapse.

And I don’t want to think about the texts that brought me here. Where did they come from?

After the police arrive there’s a lot of movement in the backyard, an endless procession coming and going. All I can do is watch from my front-row stool at the breakfast bar. Then two detectives press me about my reasons for being here and breaking in, and what I know about the skeleton buried under the fallen palm. At the word ‘skeleton’, reality hits me and I burst into tears. Then I tell them about Rina, spelling her full name just like she always had to do. They write it down and exchange looks. They tell me nothing, but they want to know everything I can remember about that weekend four years ago, about who was there and what happened. Realising now just how powerful humiliation is, I describe how Frank’s cred was totally demolished when his finger connected with the knife. A little blood, a little pain, and he flipped from bullyboy to blubber-boy before our eyes. None of us could ever look at him again without seeing the real Frank. When he locked himself in the bedroom the morning after, was he already plotting his revenge?

They want me to write it all down – and it’s the least I can do for Rina – so I use their laptop and record everything that’s happened since I got the strange text. A text from a dead woman, how do I explain that? I don’t try. The words flow, all my thoughts and fears, all my memories in detail until the battery is almost flat. Then they let me go.

My car is going nowhere without a tow truck, so one of the rescue guys who’s heading back to Sydney gives me a lift. My emotions are still raw. My detailed statement has given the police enough to track Frank down, and the forensic evidence should do the rest, but none of it will bring Rina back. I’ve lost her twice and, after expecting a reunion at Crystal Cottage, grief almost overwhelms me.

“You know who’s in the grave?” my driver asks, fishing for gossip.

“My best friend.”

“That’s tough. Strange storm, too. Uprooting that very tree.”

“And the pagoda.”

“Frank’s Folly,” he says.

I start in my seat. “Why do you call it that?”

“The sign on the pagoda. Frank’s Folly.”

In the dark I didn’t see it.

“It means some bloke named Frank,” he says, “did something stupid, I s’pose.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Something stupid.” He killed my best friend.

My driver insists on dropping me home and I’m glad Andrew isn’t around. I need to be alone, but the silence of another empty house feels eerie.

I plug in my phone, fearing the chirp of texts. There’s a whole string of them from Andrew, threatening all sorts of sanctions. I’ve been telling myself it’s what happens when you marry someone older – they get over-protective. Now I see it for what it is: control.

*

As Andrew and I drove back to Sydney that weekend, I had to say something to explain my tears. “I can’t believe Rina’s staying with him after what he did to her.”

“What he did?” Andrew said. “Rina stabbed him.”

“By accident.”

“What, she accidentally got a knife? Get real.” It was the tone he still uses when he’s belittling my opinions. “Rina doesn’t know the first thing about keeping a man,” he continued. “A good-looking woman like her holds all the cards – especially with an oaf like Frank who keeps his brain in his dick.”

“What should she have done? Let him rape her with an audience?”

“You’re so naive sometimes, Elkie, it’s embarrassing. It was Rina’s choice whether he raped her or not. She held all the power, a woman always does.”

“How?”

“If she’d gone along with it, it would have been fun. We’d all drunk enough to find it a laugh. Instead, Rina backed herself into a corner and lost her power. Instead of keeping Frank happy – and having him eating out of her hand – she’s humiliated him big time.”

I didn’t get it. “Eating out of her hand sounds like serving up his favourite pizza. We’re talking about sex. In public.”

“Pizza. Sex. A woman keeps a man by giving him what he wants.”

“But what if she doesn’t want it?”

Andrew laughed his patronising laugh. “Of course it’s her choice. She can always choose to be stupid.”

*

Now I’m staring at his texts with new eyes. He wasn’t talking about Rina. He was talking about me, confident that I’d learnt my lesson from her folly. Give Andrew what he wants, no matter what.

Bullshit. The realisation sends me spiralling into the exhaustion I’ve been fighting off all day. The empty bed feels symbolic. It’s a mild night, but I’m freezing. I wrap myself in a blanket and fall into a fitful sleep.

There’s an email when I wake up. And no more texts from Andrew. I can’t believe it.

‘Buy a lottery ticket,’ the rescue guy said. It must be my lucky weekend.

After an almighty row with Andrew a few months back, I responded to an email offering the lottery. When I didn’t hear anything, I forgot about it. Probably spam. It must be a rolling lottery – once your name is in there, it can come up any time.

Now I’m staring at the notification that says I’ve won a green card. All I have to do is pass an interview, and I can live and work in the United States. In defiance I even applied with my birth name: Selkie Moon. 

Unless it’s some kind of scam, wanting my mother’s maiden name and all my passwords and credit card numbers. But as I scroll down there’s a list of eligibility criteria. It looks legit. How can I check? Not till Monday. And if it’s true, then what?

A tree smashes a window and my whole world fractures into shards.

There are so many things to think about that I think about nothing. I clean the house. I wash every item of bedding and clothing, and hang them out on the line. I ring the car insurer and arrange repairs. I iron all of Andrew’s shirts. I sort my books and fill a box to go to the op-shop. I set up an online grocery account with a regular delivery. I wait for the phone to ring. It doesn’t.

In the afternoon I ring my sister Gretel and tell her everything.

“It explains why you never heard from her again,” she says. “She didn’t abandon you.”

“No.”

“What are you going to do with the green card?”

“I can’t think about that. Rina’s a skeleton, for God’s sake.”

“Nothing’s going to bring her back, Selkie. And she’d want you to think about yourself. Now, about the green card?”

I love Gretel.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I do.”

“What?”

“Leave. Right now. The universe is giving you a gift – if you’ve got the courage.” She drops her voice. “Look what happened to Rina.”

“That’s different,” I say. “Frank was a bully. She wasn’t safe with him. And Andrew will never let me leave.”

“So you haven’t heard the news.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of washing.”

“There’s a cyclone in Vanuatu. The storm we got was the edge of it. There are no flights in or out, so Andrew won’t be back for days. And they’ve got no power, so he won’t be sending any more texts.” She laughs. “You’ll have to make decisions all by yourself.”

“Shit.”

That’s when I look around and see what I’ve been doing.

Leaving.

*

Gretel and Barry are letting me stay for a few days while I sort out the final arrangements. It’s the only way I can do it. If I have to face Andrew when he gets back, I’ll lose my nerve. Now I’m sitting in a Chinese café at Central Station waiting for a train to their place, with everything I care about packed in my little red suitcase. In the end there wasn’t much – a couple of business suits, a pair of killer heels, a keepsake or two. When I closed the front door for the last time, it felt like I’d always been a stranger there, in spite of my efforts to make it my home.

Everything has happened in a blur. The interview for the green card could have taken weeks, but I got a cancellation. And passed. Then I went into work and gave them the news – my contract was due for renewal, so that was easy too. Everyone hugged me and wished me luck, and one of the techies killed the tracking app for me. But will I be able to survive in the US? On my own? There’s still time to change my mind.

The lunch special includes a fortune cookie. I’ve barely started on the spring rolls before I’m cracking it open and letting a paper strip decide my future.

There is no way to both stay and go.

Shit. It makes me laugh and cry all at the same time. The oriental wisdom is reading my mind.

Then my phone rings. One of the detectives from Gosford. I tell him I’ve decided to work in the US – one whole minute ago – and he says to keep in touch about my whereabouts.

“Have you found him?” I ask.

“We’re still following up leads.”

“I bet he changed his name.”

He pauses as if deciding how much to say. “Frank Green’s family hasn’t heard from him since he left for London four years ago, but they were never close. And the body could be anyone who stayed in the beach house around that time. Or it could have been opportunistic. Someone looking to dispose of a body, a freshly dug garden, an unoccupied –”

“I told you, it’s Rina.” My tears are back.

“We haven’t identified the skeleton yet,” he says carefully. “But I can confirm one thing ... it’s male.”

What? I almost choke on my spring roll as my head spins in total confusion. Not Rina? Does this mean she’s alive? Then who the hell’s in the grave?

That’s when the song returns, bringing the words I’d forgotten.

Then she knelt down before him to plead for her life.

“Please let me be single if I can’t be your wife.”

“Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, that can never be.

Your recent behaviour’s humiliated me.”

But Polly was smarter than he ever knew.

She’d brought her own knife and ran Willy through.

Now I see a terrified Rina sensing the anger under Frank’s cool charm and wondering desperately how to protect herself. But then I’m doused by a sudden chill. She knew how. The words that sliced through our friendship are back: ‘I know what I want. See you ... Elkie.’ She fabricated that bizarre conversation ... out of love. She wanted me out of the way. She knew she’d never be safe from Frank – unless she killed him.

But the chill deepens. Humiliation works both ways. Frank had humiliated her. Did the moment with the knife give Rina a sense of power, so she stayed to exact her own revenge?

I’m sobbing now. Rina made sure I was long gone when she finally got away from Frank, but thanks to my evidence the police have all they need to bring her in.

So why send me to Crystal Cottage? If the texts came from Rina. Surely she didn’t have a sudden urge to confess. The whole thing was so weird. There was nothing to see at the beach house. The truth was hidden – until the storm. Only that one palm was uprooted ...

“The reason I rang,” the detective is saying, “is to tell you about Marina Polivanova.”

As he stumbles over her name, I’m alert. “Yes?”

“She’s not our skeleton but there’s bad news, I’m afraid.”

Has she been arrested already? I’m suddenly cold.

“A woman known as Polly Vanova was crossing a London street on Friday morning when she was hit by a car.”

Friday morning. Friday evening here.

“She was in a coma for a few hours,” he says, “and they thought she’d pull through, but then her heart stopped. We’re still checking her full identity, but everything indicates she’s your friend. I’m sorry.”

A screeching of tyres, then she was gone,

But her soul wasn’t free, she had to hang on.

She’d an old friend to call, a secret to tell,

Before Pretty Polly ... could bid her farewell.

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