It had been many years since Roxy Parker had taken an international flight on a large jumbo jet and she would have been impressed were she not so strung out with a sickening mixture of worry and dread. Worry that Max really was in trouble, and dread that Oliver was right, and they were flying 16,000 kilometres for nothing.
“My God, there’s over a thousand entertainment channels, would you believe?” squealed Caroline beside her, jabbing at the small screen in front of her seat. “And look, it says there’s 150 movies! How on earth could you ever watch that many?”
Roxy tried to feign enthusiasm but couldn’t manage it, nor was she too enthusiastic about Caroline joining her on the journey to Berlin, but then she was Max’s flesh and blood. Plus, she was paying for the flights.
“I absolutely insist,” Caroline had said when she’d broken the news to her later that Friday night.
Roxy had tracked her down at yet another dance party and, to her credit, Caroline had deserted “the hottest event of the year” to join her at Oliver’s place to start planning. She wasn’t at all convinced they should be heading for Berlin but a late call to her mother had put paid to that.
“She’s now in a complete lather and says I simply can not let you go alone. She’s convinced that text message Max sent really is a cry for help.” She had stopped then and stared at Roxy with a strange mixture of awe and alarm. “Your mind really does work in strange ways, doesn’t it? I mean, SOS? Who else would’ve picked that up? Anyway, thanks to Mum it looks like you’ve got company.”
“Really, that’s not necessary—”
Caroline held a finger up to stop her. “It’s not a biggie. Besides, I’ve always wanted to visit Berlin, I hear it’s the place du jour.”
“Seriously, Caroline, there’s no point both of us going. I can look for him myself.”
“I beg to differ! Four eyes are better than two.”
Oliver opened his mouth to say something and Roxy glared at him. “Don’t even try,” she said, pushing her thick glossy black Ray-Ban spectacles into place.
He shrugged, disappointed by the lost opportunity to make fun of his favourite client.
“Anyway, like Mum says, you shouldn’t have to do this alone, Rox. Nor should you have to pay for any of it. He is my brother after all and, unlike you, I am earning obscene amounts of money on my stocks at the moment. I can help.”
Roxy wasn’t convinced Caroline would be any help at all, but she appreciated the company and could do with the financial assistance. Caroline was right. Ghostwriting other people’s stories wasn’t exactly a road to riches. She made a decent income, managed to meet the mortgage repayments on her tiny inner-city pad, but with the Edward Stray bio now complete, her diary was terrifyingly empty. There wasn’t even a vacuous freelance article waiting in the wings.
“You do have some spare time at the moment,” Oliver mentioned, clearly reading her mind and looking as guilty as he could manage. As her agent, he should have lined up another book by now but he was finding it increasingly difficult to convince people to employ a professional to write their life story. These days everybody had a blog, website and their own Facebook page, and considered themselves a budding author just waiting to be discovered, a la Elizabeth Gilbert or David Sedaris. Roxy’s particular skill had become devalued and it would cost them both dearly, but that was a conversation for another day.
And so the two women had booked themselves on the first available flight to Berlin that Saturday morning, Roxy turning up in comfy black leggings and red and white striped top with a small suitcase and red leather handbag, Caroline in quite the opposite. She was dressed to kill in skinny, baby blue jeans, a spangly silver top and strappy creamy wedges that looked about as comfortable as a smack in the head. Her Burberry designer suitcase was large enough to clothe a family of four and God knows what she was hauling around in that enormous matching handbag, although Roxy did spot several glossy magazines, a large makeup case and a full-sized iPad.
Caroline was tapping away at it now as they slowly worked their way through a tasteless yellow blob the flight attendant had euphemistically referred to as “omelette”.
“I got an e-mail from Mum and she says to thank you big time for doing this, Rox. She still hasn’t heard anything from Max, or from the bloody flatmate for that matter. Says she’s left something like ten messages on his home phone. How hard is it to call back?”
Roxy thought of her own mother then and felt the familiar twinge of guilt. She had called her very early that morning, giving her as brief an appraisal of the situation as was possible before the hysteria had kicked in.
Why was she going? What on earth was she thinking? How could that Max Man ask this of her? How dare he, for that matter?!
Roxy shuddered and pushed her mother’s shrill voice from her mind and said, “What about your dad? Does he think we’re overreacting?”
“Maybe a little, but as he says, it’s one thing for Max to ignore his messages, or mine for that matter, but he’d never ignore Mum’s.” She delicately peeled the lid off her juice packet. “I can’t help thinking that maybe his phone has just run out of power, you know? He might have left his charger at home and doesn’t realise we’ve been trying to get in touch.”
“So how does that explain the weird text I got last night? Plus, hasn’t he got another gadget? Like an iPad or something? Surely he would have responded to your e-mails or Facebook messages by now.”
“Yeah, he’s got the iPad mini I gave him for his last birthday, but maybe he left that in Berlin.”
“Then how did he post those mountain pictures on Facebook last Monday? They’re obviously of Mt Pilatus.”
Caroline rolled her eyes at Roxy. “You sound like my inept parents. You can do that on any smartphone these days, Rox.”
She eye-rolled her back. “Hey, I’m no Luddite. I’ve got the latest iPhone, don’t you know!” She reached for the seat pocket in front of her and pulled it out, Max’s face dancing to life on the screen.
“Max is your screensaver?”
Roxy blushed. “Well, we need a picture of him, just in case.”
“Sure, that’s the reason he’s your screensaver.”
Roxy ignored this and stared at the image of Max for a few moments. It was a closely cropped photo, his brown fringe flopping down, almost covering one eye, his smile wide and wolfish and tugging at her heartstrings as it always did. She pushed her so-called breakfast away.
“Did you talk to your folks about the Consulate-General in Berlin? Getting them to check with the airports?”
“Dad says no way; too early to call in the Big Guns. Max isn’t officially a missing person yet, is he? He’s due at work on Monday. He may show up, darling, making fools of us all.”
“Well, if he does, brilliant. But if he doesn’t then your dad has to call the Australian Embassy. We need to check with passport control in Berlin and Brazil, find out if he ever arrived there.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that. Oh, and did I tell you I tried Max’s flatmate again, before we left?”
“Anything?”
“Zip.”
Roxy considered this. “I wonder where he’s been all this time. What do we know about this guy, anyway?”
“Not a whole lot. Max found him through some online classifieds when he was looking for a flatmate. He has a great apartment, apparently, but it’s large and pricey and he needed someone to help out with the rent. So he took Jake in.”
“Musician, right?”
“Yes,” Caroline replied just as the flight attendant appeared with the coffee pot. They both held their cups out to be filled, Roxy grabbing a few extra sugar satchels at the same time. “In fact,” continued Caroline, “because he’s a muso, I think he’s been pretty slack with the rent. Last I heard Max was thinking of booting him out. I guess he hadn’t got round to it.”
“Or maybe he had,” Roxy said.
“Oh, right, you think that’s why Jake’s not answering? He’s moved out?”
Roxy’s thoughts were actually a lot darker than that and she couldn’t help wondering whether Max’s disappearance had something to do with unpaid rent. Caroline had clearly cottoned by now because a tiny worry line appeared above Caroline’s eyes.
“You don’t honestly think this flatmate has done something to Max?”
“No, of course not. I’m just chucking theories out into the universe. Ignore me.”
The worry line turned into a scowl. “For goodness sake, Roxy, people don’t go around killing people over unpaid rent, you know.”
“Hey, settle down. Nobody’s killing anybody, okay? Max is okay. No one is dead.”
Little did she know, as she sipped her sweet, murky coffee 30,000 feet above the earth, those words would soon come back to haunt her.