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Discover other titles by C.A. Larmer:
Murder on the Orient (SS): The Agatha Christie Book Club 2
Evil Under The Stars: The Agatha Christie Book Club 3
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This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to other people. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Larmer Media, Goonengerry,
NSW 2482, Australia
E-book ISBN: 978-0-9924743-3-1
Cover design by Stuart Eadie
Edited by The Editing Pen
& Elaine Rivers (with heartfelt thanks)
About the Author/Connect online
This one’s for Charlie.
It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you
Walter Gold, John Gluck Jr., Herb Weiner, Seymour Gottlieb
There’s a bullet in my head, and it’s really messing with my hairstyle. Blood is trickling through my ash-blond highlights, and there’s a smattering of something egg-like caught up in my diamanté tiara, which doesn’t bear thinking about.
It’s a tedious thing, but I’m guessing I’m dead, and that’s not even the tedious part. I’ve quite clearly been murdered, executed gangland style—one bullet to the noggin and a smoking gun lying on the rug beside me. Seriously. The gun still has the whiff of smoke about it.
How ridiculously cliché.
Except this shouldn’t be happening to me. My name is Maisie May. I’m twenty-seven. I work for a Sydney law firm, drive a Mini Cooper, and live in the ’burbs. A different sort of cliché, I suppose.
In any case, I shouldn’t be dead. I should be dusting off my midnight-blue jumpsuit, reapplying the lip gloss and heading back towards the pool, where there’s a party going on. My party, in fact, and it’s still going on, despite all this. Nobody’s cottoned on yet. Which is a worry, right? The longer it takes, the less chance they have of kissing me back to life.
Oh who am I kidding? That bullet wound looks particularly nasty, and the way the blood is coagulating while I float above speaks volumes. The very fact that I’m floating at all is a dead giveaway, if you’ll excuse the pun.
I’m here but not here, a ghost of myself, a carbon copy minus the carbon. Get it?
I feel no physical pain, in case you’re wondering, and who would blame you if you were. You’ll be dead eventually too. But my emotions are a little wrought, and I can still imagine my limbs and my stomach and the weight of my heavy heart, and the truth is it’s getting heavier by the second. I’m starting to feel a little disappointed, a little, well, ripped off, to be frank. I don’t want to be dead. I didn’t ask for this, and I certainly didn’t ask for those creepy strangers who are waving enthusiastically from the sidelines, like I’ve just popped out for their lunch orders.
Because yes, to add insult to injury, I can now see dead people. Terrific. This night just goes from bad to worse.
Can you see them, just over yonder, near that blinding light? They don’t look real good from this angle. Hasn’t anyone ever told them how unflattering fluorescent light can be? Perhaps if they installed a warm, diffusing lampshade they wouldn’t look so garish and I might be enticed across.
Beyond the glare, there’s a dark tunnel and I’m no fool. I know exactly where that leads. A feeling of dread creeps down my nonexistent spine. If my life is over—and I’m not sure I’m quite ready to accept that yet—there is no way I’m going down any dark tunnels with that mob. I don’t know those people! Have never seen them before in my life.
Where’s my lovely grandma? She died yonks ago. Where’s Uncle Bob? Why aren’t they here to beckon me across? I thought your deceased rellies held your hand when you croaked it, not a cast of strangers with creepy smiles. Besides, I’m not ready to say goodbye to the living just yet. The party’s still pumping, and I intend to enjoy it.
Will you keep me company?
Will you hang out with me for a bit?
I know we’ve only just met, but I promise to make it worth your while. There’s frothy cocktails down there and gallons of champagne and a table laden with party nibbles, courtesy of my guests. Granted, most of it has been demolished, but there are still some miniquiches, a few luridly decorated cupcakes (purple icing? Really?), and a whopping great bucket of hummus—if you can ignore the corn chips floating about like shark fins inside. And in the midst of it all, the remains of a rather gooey sponge cake that’s dripping strawberry jam onto Mum’s best tablecloth. A little like my blood has dripped onto the creamy carpet where I lie prostrate, a bullet wedged in my otherwise perfect head.
A sudden, piercing scream gives me false hope.
I glance back towards my messy self, but no, I’m still sprawled there utterly forgotten. It’s just my buddy Tessa in the pool, screaming and splashing about. She was always such a screamer. And that’s Roco, my boyfriend, laughing by her side. He sounds sinister. Do you think he sounds sinister?
I can’t believe they’re still swimming like they’ve got all night. Tessa is wearing a bikini two sizes too small, Roco in boardies so bright they could win a spelling bee. And around them, dozens of revellers laughing and splashing and having far too much fun, considering the circumstances. They have absolutely no clue I have just been murdered. Or at least they’re pretending they don’t, because if you think about it logically, at least one of them must have killed me, right?
How’s that for a brain spaz?
One of my “friends” must have done me in. Notice those quotation marks? Notice the earlier puns? I was always very good at English. Better than Tessa, who used to cheat off me. Kind of like she’s cheating on me now with Roco. And they think I don’t know. Ha. Ha. Ha.
But let’s not get distracted.
You must be wondering why I can’t recall who killed me. It’s a very good question. Why, indeed? When it comes to my murder I have a big black nothing. I recall getting a text on my mobile phone, I recall stumbling away from the pool deck and heading inside, and then I recall floating above my body having a very bad hair day.
Of course the killer could very well be a stranger, a psycho who just happened by. And now that I think about it, I do have a vague recollection of a shadowy figure, a man, yes. Something in his hands… Something strange by his side but…
Nope, sorry, it’s gone.
Bit like my memory, which is shot to pieces (lol).
Why have I forgotten that last bit, the most important bit? The whodunit bit? Did the bullet wipe out the hippocampus? That’s the memory part of the brain in case you can’t remember. (Okay, now I’m just showing off.)
Or does it go deeper than that?
Is it too traumatic? Do I have amnesia, perhaps? I’ve heard of people who don’t recall some horrific event like, say, a car accident. They’re just merrily zooming down the highway and then Bam! They’re waking up in hospital saying, “WTF?” Some don’t even recall the last week of their life. Some the last year! I’ve heard of people who wake and don’t even recognise their husband and kids. Or was that just in a movie I saw once?
Anyway, the point is, I’m luckier than some. I may be cactus, but I do recall the time leading up to my murder; it’s just those crucial final minutes that are blah. Maybe that’s why I’m still lingering here, annoying you while ignoring those weirdos at the light (because, yes, they’re still there, in case you thought they’d shuffled off).
Perhaps it’s not the party I crave so much as the truth. Perhaps if my memory kicks back in, I’ll have a little closure and be closer to “moving on.”
Will you help me do that?
Please, I implore you. Will you help me solve the mystery of my murder before I vanish forever wondering why someone I loved so much hated me just enough to put a gun to my head, pull the trigger and leave me lying all alone while they went back to their Fluffy Ducks and their sickly cupcakes, and that stupid, bloody sponge cake?
It’s not my birthday, interestingly, and the party wasn’t even my idea. It was Una’s. Another stupid Una idea; she’s the queen of them. Una Conway is an old friend from work, and by “old” I mean she’s actually a year or so younger than me but we’ve been friends for five years and remain friends even though I’ve now left the job and moved back home and live on government handouts.
Una thought I needed cheering up.
“It’ll be fun,” she said. “Everyone’ll come,” she said.
And she was right about the latter, at least. Everyone did come. Everyone and their dog. Seriously, there was a dog out there, an Australian cattle dog I believe, and at least two kids last time I looked. I spotted them clambering over the pool fence earlier tonight. The little blighters. I had to screech for their mother to rescue them.
Who would bring animals and kids to a grown-up pool party? What kind of idiots did Una invite? My parents would have a fit.
They’re away at the moment, in case you’re wondering (Mum would have heard the gunshot; she would have come running). They’re currently out the back of whoop-whoop, tending to Gramps. That’s Aussie slang for “in the middle of the countryside looking after my grandfather.” He’s the one who’s supposed to be dead, not me. He’s just gone into palliative care, is a million years old. Well, ninety-five to be precise. It’s his turn, dammit. It’s been his turn for some time. In fact, it’s almost my father’s turn. He’s a late bloomer, just turned seventy-four, although you wouldn’t know it. The fact that Gramps isn’t standing near that tunnel, below that horrifying light, makes me think he must still be clinging on for dear life. The lucky bastard.
Anyway, I digress.
So Una says, “Let’s put the party on Facebook,” like no one’s ever lived to regret that idea. Next minute there’s a hundred people here and they’re wrecking the house even though we’re all too old for that kind of nonsense. Most of us are in our late twenties, for goodness’ sake. Mum was bogged down with two kids by that age. I was the afterthought that came much later, the “mistake,” but there’s no point dwelling on that now.
Back to the revellers.
We’re not keen on growing up these days, have you noticed that? I blame The Hangover, an inexplicably popular movie series about grown men behaving badly, over and over again. It set off a chain reaction. Now no film is complete without the “drunken mayhem” scene where perfectly reasonable adults/FBI agents/beauty queens ingest enough tequila to keep the Mexican army legless, dance about like deranged idiots, destroy/shag/snort everything in sight, then dust themselves off and head back to the office/altar/beauty pageant looking sparkly and fresh, like they were sipping mineral water all night.
No wonder we have a drinking problem in the West, let alone no energy to grow up. I glance outside. That lot will be lucky to make it to the nearest toilet bowl to throw up. For now though, they’re on speed dial. Someone is simulating sex with a plastic blow-up flamingo, someone else is standing on the brick barbecue, pouring shots down someone’s throat. And what the hell is Mattie Constance doing with my mother’s tennis racquet?
The stereo is blaring. It’s been hooked up to someone’s iPhone, and I’m pretty sure it’s on repeat because what idiot in their right mind would play that Justin Bieber track three times?
This party has been heading south for hours, and it’s almost hit the Antarctic. I did try to stop it at one point. Maybe that’s how I ended up in this predicament. It’s worth contemplating, I guess. I recall getting quite tetchy, I recall telling Una to clear the party out, and then I recall fighting with Roco, who told me to “just chillax, babe, you really need this” and Leslie who told me to “stop being a drama queen” and Tessa who said “She always gets like this.”
Like what, exactly? What do I always get like? I’m not yet thirty for goodness’ sake. I haven’t had a chance to develop lifelong habits—I’ve barely had a bloody life. And now it’s over because one of them decided to rob me of it so they could keep the music blaring.
Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. I don’t really believe that, but I’m still a tad cranky that they’re all out there whooping it up while I lie inside, hole to the head, bleeding into the rug.
Okay, deep breaths, Maisie. Get your shit together, says a voice inside my head.
A voice I haven’t heard in a while.
Perhaps I should take this opportunity to set the scene. I know how these things work. It wasn’t so long ago that I was writing creative essays in Advanced English class.
So here goes…
My full name is Maisie Leanne Theresa May. I live in a modestly sized McMansion on the upper north shore of Sydney. That’s a pretty posh part in case you don’t know, but not as posh as some. This house was once a gaudy monstrosity, complete with Fanta-coloured bricks and imposing Roman columns, but my folks bought it, rendered it, and camouflaged the cheesy columns with creeping vines.
Now it looks pleasant enough. Now it blends in nicely with almost every other house in the street. That’s what we like to do here. We like to blend in. It’s easier that way.
My bedroom is on the second floor. It doesn’t blend in. I recently painted the walls lime green and added silk magenta curtains, knowing they clashed and not caring one bit. I have a small single bed that’s swamped with throw cushions—no, really, there’s so many cushions you can barely see the bed—and there’s a tacky dream catcher hanging overhead, which is so not me. I got it on a recent trip to Byron Bay. That’s a hippie enclave to the far north of Sydney that’s actually full of hipsters and tourists pretending to be spiritual. The hippies left a decade ago. They could no longer afford the skyrocketing rents, and their hovels have since been turned into “rustic getaways” on Airbnb. I guess it’s hard to afford anything when your main source of income hasn’t yet been legalised.
So I bought the dream catcher. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought it’d provide some answers. It certainly failed to do that.
You might be wondering why a twentysomething is still perched in the family nest, but it’s not that unusual, not in modern Australia at least. Almost half of us now live at home well into our twenties, either because we have it too good and can’t imagine ourselves in a rat-infested share house, or we have it too bad and can’t afford a share house, even the rat-infested ones, especially if we’re also hoping to save enough to put a deposit on that overpriced rat’s nest.
I fall into neither of those categories, however. I’m a returnee, what they call a “boomerang kid.” I did move out at the first chance I got, but then I lost my job, and well, what choice did I have? I’ve only been back six months, but it feels like six years. My mother clearly has dementia because she’s completely forgotten my age and is treating me like a ten-year-old. Insists on doing my washing. Cooks me mushy meals. Looks alarmed every time I leave the house.
My father just stares at me glumly. I think he’s disappointed. He’s always been a man of few words, but since I moved home he’s become positively mute. Although he can get chatty when my girlfriends are over. He’s such an insatiable flirt. They find it amusing. Me, not so much.
And as for my two brothers, Peter and Paul (yes, Peter, Paul and Maisie, and yet my parents never clicked), they just roll their eyes and can’t believe I’m back.
“I’d rather kill myself,” says Paul, who lives just a suburb away so really can’t talk.
“I’d rather kill Mum and Dad,” says Peter, who lives on another continent altogether, which, given that sentiment, is probably just as well.
So yes, we’re a delightful lot.
Both my brothers were meant to be here tonight, but Paul couldn’t make the party. Something about a sick kid and a cranky wife, or was it the other way around? Don’t get me started on Jan. Peter, who’s back on holidays from his swanky London life, was here for a while, but I haven’t seen him since the cake came out. He’s probably snuck off to bed—and I’m not talking the lumpy mattress in the spare bedroom upstairs. Nor am I talking alone. Pete’s been staying at the ritzy InterContinental. Of course. He always stays somewhere posh. I’m not sure if he’s showing off to the chicks he drags back there or to us.
So neither brother is here. That’s been substantiated. It’s just me and thirty or so remaining guests who are in better spirits than me. Still.
How come no one’s found my body yet? Was I this invisible when I was alive?
And how the hell did no one hear the gunshot?
I told you how I carked it, right? A bullet to the head. How absolutely extraordinary! I mean, guns are a really big deal Down Under. Unlike some parts of the world, we don’t have a lethal weapon in every glove box, undies drawer and disgruntled student’s backpack. If that’s not a whopping clue, I don’t know what is. Although there’s something about that gun… Something I should mention…
We’ll get back to that in a minute. I haven’t quite finished this scene-setting business, and I don’t want to get you muddled up. You see I’ve given you the macro setting, but let’s zoom right in. Let’s inspect the crime scene. Let’s check out the corpse!
I’m lying facedown on the carpet in my dad’s study. That’s just what posh folk call an office. It’s a decent-sized room, with a large window that looks out to the front driveway, but the curtains are drawn and I have to wonder about that. Were they always like that, or did the murderer swish them shut? There’s two doors to this study, one that’s currently concealed behind the curtains and the one leading into the hallway of the house. Both appear to be closed, which helps explain why I haven’t been discovered yet, I suppose.
I mean, apart from the odd stray—including Una, earlier tonight, now that I think about it—there’s really no reason for anyone to wander down to this wing of the house. The office sits to the right of the front door, down the hallway, past Mum’s sewing room and across from the guest toilet. But most people are probably using the facilities out the back or just urinating straight into the pool now I think of it, and I wish I hadn’t.
So the study door is shut; the light is off. It’s actually quite dark inside. I can barely see myself let alone Dad’s desk. It’s little wonder I’m yet to be discovered. Then it occurs to me that perhaps I’ll lie there undiscovered for days. It’s Saturday night. My parents aren’t due back until Tuesday. It’s a possibility, right?
I give my ghostly self a shake. No need to turn maudlin; I’m sure it won’t come to that. I just hope whoever finds me is up for the job. I read once how post-traumatic stress disorder can really affect first responders. Can haunt them for life. I’m hoping it’s the tall, dark, handsome stranger I was half flirting with earlier tonight. He doesn’t know me, not at all. And, outside of a missed opportunity for a quick party fumble, I don’t think he’d care. He certainly wouldn’t be traumatised. He looks far too composed for that, with his black topknot and steel-rimmed glasses and wanky velvet vest.
For all their sins, I do hope Tessa and Roco and Una aren’t the first. I’m not sure how they’d cope. Tessa’s still living at home for pity’s sake. Okay, that sounds a bit harsh, considering my circumstances, but I am a little different. At least I moved out once. Back when I had a purpose.
I tell people I work—worked—in a law firm, but the truth is I was just a lowly PA who happened to work in a law firm. It could just as easily have been a dog food factory or a bank. PA is short for personal assistant, in case you don’t know, and that’s a euphemism for personal slave. I located missing files and organised urgent meetings and switched schedules and fetched coffees and dashed to the nearest drycleaner when the boss’s blouse got sweaty under the armpits, which it did surprisingly often, although you didn’t hear that from me. I took calls and diverted calls and played pit bull at the front desk, and, well, you get the picture. I know the three partners liked to think they ran the show, but deep down we all knew—the partners, the clients, the accounts people, the guy who brought the muffins—that I kept the curtains open and the music playing. They may have been the balls, but I was the juggler, if you’ll excuse the sloppy metaphor.
I loved my job. Really loved it. And I was bloody good at it. Before.
I have a distant memory of a cup smashing on the polished concrete floor, of eyes wide and horrified, all gasping at me…
I shake it off. That’s beside the point. We have a mystery to focus on.
So, the doors and curtains are closed, that’s confirmed, but my dad’s office computer is switched on and is lending the room an ominous flickering glow. Now that’s intriguing. Dad’s retired and not one for the internet. His idea of a web search is to get out the insect spray. Did I switch the computer on? Did my killer?
I sneak a peek at the screen. I see a Facebook page is open, but I can’t quite read the content. It’s as though it’s written in another language, completely illegible to me. Now that’s just annoying. And, again, kind of intriguing because there’s no way my dad left that page open (see aforementioned comments).
There’s one more thing I’d like you to note. Dad’s chair, the office chair, is not by his desk where it should be. It has been wheeled across the carpet to the internal wall and sits just below two hooks.
That makes me want to shudder. They’re the hooks that once held my dad’s pistol, the vintage single-shooter that now lies a metre or so from my head.
And so the plot thickens.
Perhaps it’s time to return to the murder weapon. Dad’s gun. I did mention it was his, didn’t I? It’s lying just out of reach of my body and looks almost theatrical. Like someone has carefully placed it there. Maybe it’s the mere presence of a gun that feels a little hammy. Like I said before, it’s unusual to own a firearm in this country, legally, at least. There’s generally two types of Aussies who possess guns—country folk and crooks. You can guess which camp my dad falls into, or I hope you can.
He’s as straight as an arrow my dad. Never even smoked a joint. A country boy, originally from an outback property called Nevercloud, northwest of Dubbo (which is pretty much northwest of anywhere that matters). The property is aptly named. There are no clouds there, and I mean that quite literally. I don’t think it’s rained in a decade.
Dad grew up on the dusty, ten-thousand-acre cattle farm with his slow-talking, no-nonsense parents and three older brothers who wore matching moleskins, riding boots and Akubra hats like a uniform. There’s just two of them left now. One brother, the aforementioned Uncle Bob, got killed in a quad-bike accident decades ago, the other scooted off to Western Australia and has never been heard from again. (I gather no one’s worried or surprised.) The third, Simon, still lives on the property, but he wants out, preferably before he gets his wish gift wrapped in a wooden box.
He’s tired, Dad says, almost as tired as Gramps was eight years ago when they finally convinced him to hand the farm over to Simon. Gramps adored the property but was too old and too rickety to work it properly. Gee, what a nice problem to have! I recall feeling so sorry for him once. Old? Urgh! That’ll never happen to me! And I guess I was right.
Grandpa May was installed in a stinky nursing home after that, and again, I recall smug sympathy when it happened. Now I’d settle for a urine-scented common room at Autumn Lodge any day.
Along the way, for whatever reason, Dad took possession of one of Gramp’s guns. Not the old rifle he used to shoot stray kangaroos and the odd cattle dog who took a fancy to the fowl. This was a rare vintage pistol, a collector’s item, more likely to have been pointed at someone’s head by a feisty bushranger than a farmer living in the bush. Or at least that’s what Dad told me when I stumbled upon it about six months ago. He was just standing there in his office, holding it in one palm as though weighing it up, considering his options. Freaked the fudge out of me.
Was he going to kill himself?
“No,” he said, chortling like the idea was hilarious. “Just reminiscing is all. My dad got it off his dad, and God knows where he got it from. It’s a beauty, hey?” He stroked the glossy wooden butt, fingered the silver inlay. “I think I might hang it up. This has good memories for me.”
A gun has good memories? That’s like choking up at the sight of a dentist’s drill. That’s when Dad told me about his love for the bush and his desire to go back one day and blah de blah de snore. He’s leaving his run a bit late. He might be in terrific shape for his age, but he’s not that far off Autumn Lodge himself. Not that he’d ever agree to that dive. I think he’d take the pistol to his own head if we ever so much as glanced at an application form.
But the point is, I knew about the gun, so who else did?
My brothers, I guess. It’s the kind of thing men share with their sons, right? But I can’t really see them turning it on me. We had our issues but…
As for my mates? Other than Una’s little visit tonight—I will get to that, it may have some bearing—I don’t recall any of them spending any time in my dad’s study, and I certainly never told them about the pistol, but I guess I must have. Or maybe—and here’s a whopping clue for you Miss Marples out there—maybe I took it to scare the guests into clearing out, and I don’t know, someone spotted me and scared the life out of me instead. Literally, right. You got that metaphor?
I told you I was good at English. I might have written a book if I’d lived long enough. Of course no silly little murder mysteries for me. I would’ve written something more useful than that, a How-To book, perhaps, one bursting with handy information and facts. Or at least the old me would have done that. The new me would have struggled to get off the couch.
But I wanted to be useful once. I wanted to do incredible things with my life other than endless admin and digital filing and fetching flat-whites for frantic clients. Now my only use will be as click bait for online news sites. The very thought makes me sad.
Anyway, back to the gun. The more I think about it, the more it blows the case wide open (again with the puns!). The damn thing was hanging on the office wall, for goodness’ sake. Anyone could have stumbled into the study, plucked it from its perch and wreaked mayhem on my brain.
Maybe I caught them by surprise and it went off by accident? Maybe they did it deliberately, luring me in with that text?
You remember that text I got, right? If only my memory was as sharp, I’d recall exactly what it said. If only my limbs still worked, I could reach down and pluck my iPhone from the pocket of my jumpsuit and tap on the square marked Messages. Maybe the answer rests inside a cartoonish green speech bubble.
I wonder if I can zoom in now and take a closer look. I’m still trying to determine how this whole death thing works. It’s all a little random, to be honest. I can see through gabled tiles and plasterboard, but for some exasperating reason I cannot see through a flimsy cotton jumpsuit. And it’s frustratingly inconsistent. I can’t see through every wall now that I think about it. The two ground-floor toilets are out of bounds to me—not such a bad thing, I suppose—and the spare bedroom upstairs is one big black splotch. I have no idea who’s in there or what’s going on. Maybe that’s where the killer is lurking.
It makes you wonder, right?
And if I stretch my neck, I can only see as far as the end of the street. I’m glancing outward now, and the farthest I can get is the T-intersection just past the McGee’s house. After that, it all starts to fade into oblivion. I wonder if someone’s smashed out the street lighting—
“Pssst!”
I glance up and back towards the tunnel.
Oh dear, the creepy dead people are getting more persistent. One woman is waving at me like a windsock. She has something in her hands, but I can’t focus on that. All I can see are the purple shadows under her eyes, the blue tinge on her lips, and oh dear, is that drool trickling down her cheek?
“Go away!” I say irritably. “Just leave me alone.”
I’ve seen the movies. I know what they want, but it’s not my job to settle old scores or impart soppy messages to their freaked-out loved ones.
“I’m busy!” I yell back, then glance downwards just as someone calls out “Hey, is it time for speeches?”
Goodie, I think. Let’s see what the living have got to say for themselves.
I notice that most of the remaining guests are now in the pool or straddled along the sides, and there are at least four or five people lolling on the Balinese-style daybed that sits under the nearby pergola, so entwined in each other it’s hard to count, and a little icky if I’m being honest. (What’s Helen Thing-a-me-bob doing with Kyle What’s-his-name’s foot?)
“What do we want speeches for?” says someone else, Roco I realise, watching now as he downs the dregs of a South Pacific Ale.
I am crestfallen. That was one of my favourite drops. I haven’t had it in ages.
“It’s not Maisie’s birthday,” he adds matter-of-factly.
“Then why the party?” asks Mattie, now air-guitaring the tennis racquet while standing in the shallow end. If Mum saw that, she’d be livid. Imagine what it’s doing to the precious wood.
“Why not?” Roco replies, but Tessa has stopped smiling.
She’s looking around and frowning. “Where is Maisie, by the way? Anyone seen her lately?”
Well, stone the crow. Someone’s finally noticed.
A few people follow her gaze while others shrug as if they couldn’t care less, like it’s not my house and it’s not my pool and my whereabouts are irrelevant. I can’t help feeling a flood of anger and despair.
It’s been ten minutes, people! Maybe twenty. Wake up!
And then as if on cue I get my wish.
A cry so deafening it could wake the dead echoes through the house and out towards the pool. I glance back to my dad’s study. Hottie Hodder is standing at the doorway, not looking quite so hot. His face is ghostly white, his lips agape.
I smile.
Grab your trench coats and magnifying glasses, people. It’s game time.
Fancy Jonas “Hottie” Hodder finding me. I could not have scripted it better. Jonas is a lovely guy, really, a friend of a friend. Well, maybe a little more than that. We do have some history, a certain “incident” two winters ago, so he kind of owes me one.
Good. Plus he’s close but not so close he’ll be too traumatised. Or at least I hope not.
Jonas (I don’t use the nickname; I don’t think he’s that hot) is still holding the light switch he’s just flicked on, the other hand spread weblike towards my body as though reaching out. I’m not sure if he’s trying to grasp me or just hide the sight of me behind his outstretched palm, but it’s a dramatic gesture. His voice is even more compelling, his cry now a raspy bellow.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh Goooooood!”
It’s a little late for divine intervention I think snippily as the revellers look around startled. Some leap out of the pool in a fluster, others appear from various parts of the house, one woman pulling her shirt down over a twisted purple bra. Oh, it’s my acupuncturist friend Arabella. What’s she doing half-naked?
“What’s going on?” calls the first person to make it down to Jonas. It’s Leslie, a work friend of Tessa’s. She has an open bag of chips in her hand and halts just behind him at the office door, letting out her own cry, chips spluttering everywhere before others crowd in behind her.
And then “Jonas! Oh my God! What the hell have you done?”
This is Tessa, dripping wet in her bikini, one of my mum’s oversized beach towels wrapped tight around her squishy belly. She pushes past them and into the study. She dashes for my body and drops down to my side, screaming the words over and over and over again.
“What have you done? What have you done? What the hell have you done?”
Jonas has both hands up now, backing out in the opposite direction but butting into stunned partygoers instead.
“I didn’t do it!” he cries. “It wasn’t me!”
Tessa is not hearing it. She is now cradling me in her arms, sobbing tears into my face, and crying, “My God, my poor baby, poor, poor lamb…”
As she brushes my bloodied hair back, she manages to smatter my own blood across my forehead, messing me up further. I really should be pleased by her outpouring of raw emotion, but all I can think is, Back off, Tessa, you’re messing with the evidence.
Is she doing it deliberately, do you think? And why would she assume Jonas had a hand in my death? Is it purely because he was first on the scene, or does it have something to do with that aforementioned incident? I wouldn’t have thought that was of any consequence, but let’s add Hottie Hodder to the suspect list. (Have you officially started one yet? It would really help me out.)
For now, let’s keep watching. It’s all rather entertaining, don’t you think?
Una has appeared and looks like a stunned rabbit, eyes wide, mouth even wider. That’s also interesting because she’s usually quite good in a crisis.
“Tessa! Leave her,” says someone else. Roco again. He’s also pushed through and is hovering over both of us, pulling at Tessa’s elbow, but she refuses to budge.
“I’m calling the ambulance!” screams somebody.
“Don’t bother,” Roco mutters. “It’s too bloody late.”
How does he know that?
“Call the police,” says someone else. Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome from earlier tonight. He’s pushed past Roco and is now leaning over Tessa, one hand on her shoulder, another reaching down to feel my pulse.
I knew he had his shit together. I knew he’d be a good one to have about, although he better be careful or he’ll get blood on that fancy waistcoat, which is now unbuttoned, one corner dipping precariously close to my wound.
“Why do we need the police?” demands Roco, who is sounding more suspicious by the second.
Tall, Dark and Handsome ignores him, reaches for his own phone and stabs in three zeros.
“Leave that!” he yells when someone goes to pick up the gun. “Don’t touch anything. Everyone. Get back.”
I don’t know who died and made him boss, well, apart from me of course, but they do as instructed, the entire party of horrified revellers squeezing back out into the hallway, some still clutching champagne flutes, most soggy from their swim. Mum would have a fit if she saw them dripping on the carpet.
I spot the two children amongst the throng, and now I’m horrified.
What are they doing here? Get them out!
Their mother must finally work it out because she suddenly yanks them by the arms and drags them down the hallway, their expressions startled, their little brains traumatised.
Good one, Mum. Great work, woman! That shit can’t be unseen.
I am furious at that. I am suddenly furious with everyone—the gawkers who can’t seem to tear their eyes away, and Una and Roco who look about as useful as a condom at a convent. And that slimy stranger in the shiny vest who is now perched on the edge of Dad’s desk, one hand spread out casually behind him, messing up all the papers, the other holding the phone to his ear, having a good ole chinwag to the emergency services department, like he’s chewing the fat.
But most of all I am furious with Tessa, who keeps trying to straighten my hair down and readjust that stupid, gaudy tiara she insisted I don last night. If she didn’t kill me, she’s sure acting like a suspect.
The police arrive extraordinarily fast. It feels like a matter of minutes, but maybe I’m getting confused. Is time different when you’re dead?
There are no paramedics. Tall, Dark and Handsome must have told them it was pointless, and I am glad of that. Two less people to be traumatised by the spectacle. Just because they’ve seen it all before doesn’t make them immune, or at least that’s what I’ve read.
Two uniformed officers quickly take over. Tessa has been dragged to her feet and away from my corpse where she should have been all along. She now stands huddled in Roco’s arms, bloodied and wide-eyed, splattering me all over Roco’s bare chest, and there’s a delicious irony in that but we haven’t got time to be clever, I need to keep reporting.
I see Una moping behind them, hand now at her mouth. I’m not sure she’s said a word in ten minutes.
“I’m so sorry,” I hear Tessa say. No, think. Her lips haven’t moved. It’s coming from inside her brain.
Well, what do you know? I can read minds! I like the sound of that.
Tessa continues, thinking, I’m sorry this had to happen, Maisie, honey. I’m so, so sorry I didn’t protect you.
She’s clearly talking to me, but what does she mean by that? Why did it have to happen and whom did I need protecting from?
What the hell have you been up to, Tessa? I think, for the second time tonight.
After such a delayed discovery, I am startled by the rapid response. The two officers have morphed into four, no, make that six. One of them, a burly bloke with a buzz haircut, has corralled the guests into the living room and is now giving them a lecture. Something about providing statements, contact details, that kind of thing.
The young mum steps forward and barely says a word before she and her boys are ushered to the side and then very quickly out the door, past the pool and through the back garden gate. She can give her statement tomorrow, and thank goodness for that. Her kids should be tucked up safely in bed, not witnesses to a homicide. The youngest kid’s four, maybe five. The oldest looks barely six and particularly stunned, like he’s just seen a ghost. But really all he’s seen is an empty carcass. He’d be more freaked out if he realised the ghost hovers above his head, scolding his mother for keeping him out so late.
As they take off, the other guests start giving their statements, and I try to listen in, but there’s lots of hand wringing and head shaking and “sorry but I never heard a thing.” I guess we can blame Justin Bieber for that.
I notice one uniformed officer interrogating Una and Jonas, who are providing my details rather than their own. He’s scribbling it all down in a spiral notepad, his sticky-outy ears bobbing up and down as he writes. Jonas’s hands are now fists at his side; Una’s arms wrapped tight around her torso. Unlike many others, she’s fully dressed, yet she looks colder than all of them. She’s shivering beneath her cream linen jacket.
There are now four squad cars out the front, and another two officers, these ones in baggy blue overalls and chunky black boots, are hovering over me, swallowing back their smiles, like I’ve made their night. I’m almost expecting them to turn and high-five each other.
“Mickey’s on the way,” says the man, young, pretty, with wiry blond curls and thick blond eyelashes. He looks like he’s just dropped off a wave and has left his board out the back.
“Thanks, Kelly,” the woman says. She’s shorter, stockier, and looks more suited to a footy field. She has an air of authority about her and is obviously the one in charge. Or at least I hope she is. I’d put money on her over the surfer dude any day.
“Pretty, wasn’t she?” the woman says, casting her eyes from my face to the diamanté tiara and back, and I can almost feel myself blush.
“Looks high maintenance to me,” comes the dude’s response. Ouch.
The woman smirks. “Sorry, I forgot. You prefer them to sit quietly on the beach, holding your towel, right?”
He doesn’t get a chance to respond. A uniformed officer is now standing at the study door. “Suspicious circumstances?” he asks.
It’s the policeman with the Prince Charles ears, and Kelly snorts at him, then darts his eyes towards the gun and then back at the gaping hole in my head.
“What? I’m allowed to ask,” comes the officer’s sulky retort.
“You’re supposed to ask,” says the woman, shooting Kelly a frown. “That’s your job, mate. Never make assumptions. Never take anything for granted. So, yes, I’ve declared this a crime scene; let’s get on with it.” She turns to look at him. “You’re one of the first responders?”
He steps forward. “Yes, ma’am. Constable Craig DeWill from North Sydney Police St—”
She cuts him short. “You’re with my team now. I want you reporting directly to me, got it?” His beam intensifies. “So, talk me through it; what have you learned?”
Big-eared Craig produces his notepad and clears his throat. “Right, so… the er, victim’s name is Maisie May, aged twenty-seven. Currently resides at this address, which also happens to be her parents’ house.”
“Bit old for that, isn’t she?” says Kelly. I’m hating him more by the second.
Craig ignores this. “Discovered about twenty minutes ago by a man named—” He refers to his notepad, looks lost for a moment, which earns him a snigger from Kelly. Finally he stabs at the page and says, “Jonas! Jonas Holder… no, Hodder. Aged thirty-one. Says he was on his way out.”
“Out of the party?”
“That’s what he said.”
“So, what? He mistook the office for the driveway?”
Good point, I think, but Craig is shrugging like it’s a moot point. “He appears to be quite intoxicated, ma’am, as do most of the witnesses. And I’m not just talking alcohol. The first responders located some cannabis in a bowl in the kitchen, and on the living room coffee table what appears to be MDM—”
“I really couldn’t care less what party treats these people were into, Craig,” the boss says.
She is still staring at me intensely, and I wish I could open my eyes and smile back at her. It’s so good to see she has her priorities straight, although that’s certainly not a word I’d use for my friends. They really were reenacting The Hangover tonight.
“The vic was pretty sloshed too, or so a few of the guests say. She was falling about a bit, slurring her words.”
Goodness, how embarrassing. I know the cocktails were delicious, but I can’t remember drinking that much.
“Any word on the parents?”
Craig clears his throat again. Is he nervous? Is this his first corpse, or is it the fact that he’s just been recruited to the homicide squad that’s making him rattle? He glances back at his trusty pad.
“David and Mandy May. Visiting relatives in Dubbo, I’m told, but the vic’s best friends don’t seem to have a working contact number for them. One of them’s tried a few times, and there’s no response. No one has any idea where they might be staying.”
“Bugger,” she says.
He nods. “There’s two siblings, as well, two older brothers apparently.”
“Apparently or is that a fact? Seems like a pretty easy one to substantiate.”
He blanches, looks a little flummoxed again. “Er, yes, she definitely has two older brothers, but again, no one knows where they are or has a contact number for them either. One lives locally; one’s out from the UK.”
“Any of them here tonight?”
“Affirmative. One brother was here earlier apparent—” He catches himself. “He was at the party, but he must have left.” He coughs, blushes. “He did leave. Sergeant Tanner—that’s my boss, ma’am.” He hesitates. “I mean, my normal boss. You probably need to talk to him about me working for—”
“Get on with it, Craig.”
He clears his throat. “So, yes, Tanner has already had the premises searched, and there’s no sign of the siblings. No next of kin anywhere, just friends.”
The lead detective sighs heavily. “Dammit. Where is her family when you need them? Has anyone thought to check local hotels? Didn’t you say one brother is visiting from overseas?”
“Yep, and the other one lives locally.”
“So look him up. His details must be on file.”
Craig grabs a pen from a pocket and makes a note. “I’m onto it.”
“Good. What else have you got?”
Another glance at the pad. “Right, so, the party’s been going since about six this evening, give or take. Peaked around eleven and most of the guests cleared out by the time the vic was discovered—”
“Can we call her by her name, please?” The woman interrupts. “She was a person, yes? A human being?”
Kelly snorts, Craig blushes, and I become even fonder of the lead detective. I think she’s a keeper.
“Sorry, ma’am. Yes, Ms May—”
“Maisie. Let’s stick to that, shall we?” She glances down at me. “I reckon she’d be cool with us using her given name.” Oh how I really wish I could smile.
“Of course, yes, um, so the party for Maisie was put on by some of her friends to ‘cheer her up.’ That’s a direct quote.”
“And why would Maisie need cheering up?” the boss asks just as an elegantly dressed woman steps into the house.
It’s like a soap star has strayed onto the wrong set. With her flowing silk dress, undulating auburn locks, and a face so meticulously made up she could do a Revlon commercial, the woman doesn’t look anything like a detective, but she earns the reverence of one, and I watch as she sweeps straight past the uniformed officers and down the hallway. She has a large black carryall in her hand and turquoise plastic gloves already in place. At least she got the props right. Must be the forensic pathologist I decide, watching as she slips off her kitten heels and pulls two matching plastic slippers over her feet before she enters the study. Oddly, the booties complete the look.
“Michaelia!” the boss says, helpfully. “Hello.”
“Hey, Ruth, thanks for dragging me away. I didn’t really want to finish that mascarpone trifle anyway.”
The detective—Ruth, it seems—chuckles. “Sorry about that. Hot date?”
“Didn’t even get past simmering stage. But the food was to die for.” She doesn’t stop to apologise for that woeful pun, just looks down at me through false eyelashes and says, “So what grief has come of this fair night?”
Ruth gives Craig the nod, and he begins repeating everything he’s just said, so I take a moment to focus on the living room—or the living, to be precise.
Tessa is now being questioned by the officer with the buzz cut, and she still looks stunned and distraught. She can’t be acting, surely? She never majored in Drama.
“I should have hung out with her more tonight. I could have been with her. I might have stopped…” She glances around the room, then holds a fist to her mouth.
Like she could stand between me and a killer with a loaded gun.
“And where exactly were you when your friend was shot?”
“In the pool,” she says, talking through her fist as though hoping to muffle the truth. “I was in the pool, can you believe it? I was swimming and having fun. How could I do that to her? How could I let her down, how could I…”
And then she breaks into sobs again, her fleshy shoulders shaking so much it causes the towel to unravel as she falls back into Roco’s arms. He glares at the officer like he wants to thump him.
“And you, sir?” the officer says. “Where were you when the shot rang out?”
“I… I didn’t hear the shot. Did anyone?” He makes a show of looking around. “First I knew of this was when Jonas starting screaming like a baby.”
“He’d just found poor Maisie!” Tessa gasps, shaking herself free of him and reaching for her towel.
I can’t help but smile. Maybe my death will be the unmaking of them.
“I’m just saying,” Roco continues, “if I had heard the shot, I would’ve tried to help, tried to save her.”
“And what’s your relationship to the deceased?” the cop asks, and Roco hesitates.
“We’re just friends,” he says stiffly, before turning his gaze back to Tessa.
I’m sorry, but what? Just friends? Is he for real?
He might have been playing tonsil hockey with my bestie, but we hadn’t officially broken up. Or had we?
The way Tessa is struggling to meet his eyes now makes me wonder.
Roco and I had a pretty solid relationship. Or at least I thought we had.
We met at a glittering charity event about eighteen months ago. I was there to raise awareness for some bleeding-heart cause. He was there to pick up, or so he liked to joke whenever anyone asked.
The truth is he’s got a bigger heart than he cares to admit. If a mangy dog strayed across his path, he’d scoop it up and take it home before I even got a chance, and that was my forte, that was my domain.
I wonder now if I was the mangy dog. Is that why he took me in? Or was I the one doing the rescuing? It all feels so muddy now.
He is a bit like a meaty bulldog my Roco (or at least he was my Roco once). He’s well under six foot, with a mop of dirty-brown hair and dark stubble on his beefy cheeks. I know he hits the gym and does weights, and I guess it keeps the fat at bay, but fully clothed he looks more Arnott’s Biscuits than Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he’ll have to keep up the exercise if he wants to avoid the fate of his forefathers (his dad’s the size of a garden shed). There’s a lot of Greek in him, I believe, and that includes regular helpings of his mother’s mouthwatering moussaka.
There was a lot of love in him too. He ran a bubble bath fit for a queen, gave the best massage this side of Kamalaya—complete with scented candles and classical music—and we never left the house without him checking I had my phone and my jacket. He would make a terrific dad, I think now, and now my heart flags.
It’s only just occurred to me: I’ll never get to be a mum. I’ll never get to nag someone to remember to take their jacket…
Sorry.
Give me a moment.
Okay. I know you want to get back to my murder. I realise you’re probably bored senseless with all this. But I wonder if it has any bearing. I wonder if it can shed some light. Did I stumble in on Roco and Tessa together? Did a fight ensue? Did things get out of hand, somehow out of control?
The police officer clearly doesn’t think so because he’s moved away from Roco and is now talking to Constable Craig. They are flipping through matching notepads and shaking their heads like something doesn’t add up. Then the former calls the crowd to attention, clapping his hands loudly, and I soon realise what it is that’s troubling them.
“Ladies and gentleman!” he yells out. “People! Attention please! This is very important. If anyone has any information regarding the May family and their whereabouts, I need you to step forward immediately. We need more information on the next of kin, particularly the two brothers.”
They still haven’t tracked down my family. I almost feel relieved. My folks are still snoring somewhere, blissfully ignorant of the hell that is about to unfold. It gives me some solace, although I know they’ll have to wake up eventually.
“As for the rest of you”—the officer is still speaking—“we need to get all your details before the SOCOs get here, so please bear with us and we’ll have you out of here as fast as we can.”
“SOCOs?” someone asks. Leslie, I think.
“Scenes of Crime Officers,” whispers Tall, Dark and Handsome, like he’s an expert.
“I can’t believe they haven’t found her parents yet,” says Arabella, and there are sombre nods all round.
Tessa says, “I can’t believe I don’t know her brother’s home address. Paul only lives about five minutes’ drive away. To think she’s lying there while he…”
She trails off, and Roco scoffs. “Cops are bloody useless. Why don’t they just look him up? They have all our data on file now. Big Brother knows everything, so why can’t they find him? I could do it for them in five seconds! And I told them where they could find the older brother Peter. What’s taking them so long?”
Now there are universal shrugs, but Tessa is more interested in beating herself up.
“If only I could remember where the Mays stay when they visit the hospital. Can’t be that many hotels in Dubbo surely?”
“Why don’t they just call their mobile?” asks Roco.
Ha, ha, ha. I laugh at that one. We’ve been together for ages, and he still doesn’t know my folks are Luddites? I did get them a spanking-new Samsung Galaxy once, but I’m pretty sure it’s still sitting in its box in a kitchen drawer somewhere.
“If someone wants to chat, they’ll call us on the landline,” my mother always said.
“But what if they really need you and you’re not home?” I asked.
“If we’re not home, it means we’re out and busy so we’re not much use to them, are we?”
Can’t argue with that logic.
I see Una pull out her own phone and check her messages. “I’ve called David’s iPhone half a dozen times, left three messages, but it’s obviously switched off.”
Hang on, what’s she on about? Is she referring to my dad, David? I didn’t even realise he had an iPhone, let alone gave Una the number. It reminds me of something, but I can’t think what.
A sudden snaky hiss catches my attention. It’s coming from the sidelines again, from the crazy people near the light. It’s quite horrific to think they’re still there, watching me like stalkers.
“Go away!” I call out to them.
Why aren’t they getting this? I look nothing like Whoopi Goldberg; they can pass on their own creepy messages.
“Come to the light!” one of them calls out, and I balk at that.
Forget about it, folks. There’s no way I’m crossing over yet. Come on, Death, I need more time! The party hasn’t wrapped up, and my body’s not even cold yet.
Back in the study, Michaelia is crouched down low on one side of me, using what looks like a cocktail swizzle stick to prod my gaping head while Ruth crouches near the gun, staring as if mesmerised. She looks up as Craig approaches.
“Any word yet on the next of kin?” she asks.
He waggles a hand in the air. “We’ve been informed that the older brother is staying at the InterContinental, the one in Double Bay, but we still haven’t been able to track him down.”
“Not back in his room?”
“Not there at all according to the receptionist. Says he’s a frequent visitor, but he didn’t book in this trip. They haven’t seen him there since last Christmas.”
“Well that’s bloody inconvenient. And the other brother?”
“We’ve located his home address, on Dulwich Road, just nearby, but there’s no sign of life there.”
“He’s out? At this hour?”
“Not sure where he is, but there’s a Sold sign out the front of the house.”
“What does that mean?”
He doesn’t dare ponder a guess, and she looks even more irritated.
“Okay.” She blows a puff of air through her lips. “Keep on it.” Then she directs her gaze back to the weapon. “While you’re questioning everyone, find out if any of them know anything about this firearm. I want to know who owns it. We can’t make any assumptions yet. Oh and ask who has experience shooting. The shooter is an expert shot.”
That’s a brilliant idea! Most Australians wouldn’t know how to fire a gun even if their life depended on it.
Kelly rolls his eyes for some reason—it’s becoming such an annoying habit—while Craig returns to the living room (how apt is that name on a night like this?) and Ruth now stares at the hole in my head.
“It’s amazing the damage a bullet can do,” says Michaelia, reading her thoughts.
“Seen many?”
“Not enough. Hendo spent a month in LA a few years back. The wounds he saw, wow, amazing.”
Amazing? You’d think they were discussing a trip to Space Mountain, but Ruth is nodding like she gets it.
“So, gun to the temple? Pop?” She makes a fake shooting motion with her fingers.
Michaelia nods. “Looks like it.”
“Dare I ask?” Ruth says, and I get a creeping feeling.
Don’t do it, I think. Don’t go there, Ruth.
And then she does.
She says the thing I know you’ve all been considering.
“Suicide?”
The word hangs in the air like a disgusting stench.
Before Michaelia gets a chance to answer, Ruth redeems herself and adds, “Or could it be murder?”
The pathologist stares down at me as if weighing it up while I feel a flash of red-hot anger.
Oh give me a break!
I know it’s been the elephant in the room since this whole saga began, but it isn’t suicide, folks, I can assure you of that. I wouldn’t do that to myself. More importantly, I wouldn’t do it to my parents. I might have been in a low patch, but I wouldn’t take my own life, knowing how cruelly that would ruin the lives of everyone else. That’s not the kind of person I am. Or at least the kind of person I was. Now… well, now…
Thankfully Michaelia’s not so quick to judge.
“Wish it was that open and shut,” she says. “The proximity of the weapon certainly works, but it could be a setup. I’ve seen a few of those.” She takes my hand into her gloved fingers, and it feels like a touching gesture until I realise what she’s up to. “I’ll check for gunshot residue and call the blood splatter specialist in, but we may not know for sure for some time.”
Ruth nods. “Can you at least give me a time of death?”
Now Michaelia raises one thickly pencilled eyebrow. “Well, I’m not here for my gorgeous looks.”
I think Kelly might beg to differ. He’s gone suspiciously quiet since she arrived and has been watching her work a little too intensely. Either he’s considering a career change, or he’s got a major crush.
Mickey continues. “She’s been dead at least an hour, I’d say, maybe an hour and a half, max.”
Really? Time sure flies when your friends are having fun.
“You sure?” This is Craig, and it earns him another raised eyebrow from Mickey. I’m learning it’s her trademark—the raised eyebrow, a slight tilt of those luscious curls. One that says “You dare to question me, you vermin?”
“Sorry,” he says quickly, “it’s just that we only got the call through about forty minutes ago. So what were they all doing for the forty or so minutes before that?”
“That’s for them to know and you to find out,” she replies, her eyebrow dropping as she waves someone over.
It’s a tattooed woman in a blue jumpsuit who’s been hovering by the doorway. She has a digital camera in her inked hands.
“Get both angles of the head and the hands, thanks, JJ,” Mickey says.
“And I want the position of that gun before I bag it,” adds Ruth, who then turns to Craig. “When exactly was this called in?”
He checks his notes. “Twelve seventeen p.m.”
“Caller still here?”
“I believe, er, yes. Yes he is.”
“Get him in here now.”
Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome strides into the room, the confidence of a police commissioner in his swagger. It seems odd that he’s such a key player in all this, considering I only just met him tonight. He doesn’t seem to find it odd at all. It feels like he’s done all this before, or maybe he’s been preparing for this instead. How’s that for a sinister deduction?
“I’m Detective Sergeant Ruth Powell. I’m in charge of this investigation,” she begins. “Thanks for your time, Mr…?”
“Vijay Singh,” he says, politely filling the space. “Doctor Vijay Singh.”
We’re both looking at him sideways now. Ruth says, “Have we met before? You look familiar.”
Something flickers behind those dark eyes of his. It’s the first crinkle in his otherwise smooth demeanour, but he recovers quickly and shakes his topknot. “I don’t believe so, no.”
She nods slowly, eyes squinting. She’s making a mental note to look him up.
“You’re a GP?”
“A doctor of philosophy.”
Her eyes relax again; she looks suitably unimpressed. She is thinking, Doctor of bad hairstyles more like. And I am thinking she’s hilarious. (I don’t know why I can hear Ruth’s thoughts and not others’, but I’m grateful that I can. It’s like she’s keeping me in the loop.)
Ruth asks about his phone call, and he tells her what we already know. Hottie started screaming, everybody came running, he called the cops.
“And you dialled triple zero immediately?”
“Give or take a minute. There was some discussion about calling an ambulance, but I knew that was unnecessary. She was clearly deceased.”
Ruth’s eyes squint again. “We believe she may have been deceased as long as forty minutes before she was discovered. Any idea why no one heard the gunshot?”
He shrugs like it’s obvious. “It was a party. Insanely loud music, lots of laughter. Usual stuff.”
“Okay, how about the body then. The office is not that far from the front door. It’s just near the inside guest bathroom. How could no one have spotted her on their way in or out?”
“Good question, Detective Powell. You’ve got me there.” He checks his hair, as though worried the topknot might have taken off. “Except, well, I do believe the door was originally closed, although you’d have to confirm that with the first witness. Jonah, I think his name was. Something like that. And the party had primarily moved to the pool by then anyway. I can only assume that most people used the facilities out the back. There’s a small loo to the side of the pergola. There’s also a gate out onto the laneway from the back garden. A better way to exit if you don’t want to drip through the house.”
She nods casually, but I’m looking at him twice again. He seems creepily familiar with the property layout, don’t you think? I have a hunch he’s been here before. I have a hunch he’s not who he says he is.
Perhaps it’s time we take a closer look at Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome, Vijay Singh.
At a party with almost one hundred guests at its peak, many of them friends of friends, some clearly gatecrashers, it’s only natural I didn’t know all of them, including Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome. (Do you mind if I keep using the moniker? I think it suits him better.) But there was something suspicious about him from the start.
I’m not even sure we were properly introduced. I do know he was by Una’s side for the first half of the night, and so I assumed they were together. As you do when you see people clinging to each other like soggy lettuce. Yet he kept sneaking glances at me, over his wineglass, his dark lashes batting lazily, a coy smile on his lips.
He was incredibly flirtatious.
I let him have a good long look at one point, hoping that would satiate his curiosity and put him off. I mean, I can bat eyelashes with the best of them, but I’m not into stealing other people’s men.
I’m not Tessa McGee, for instance.
So, Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome—sorry, Doctor Tall, Dark and Handsome—a man that everybody else seemed to know except me, approached at one point and asked how I was.
I said, “I’m fine, thank you. How’s Una?”
He smiled as if I was an amusing imbecile. “We’re not together. Is that what you think?”
Then he took my hand into his own and started inspecting my palm like he was about to read my future as he said, “I was wondering if you want to go somewhere more private, maybe upstairs?”
Urgh. Yuck! I snatched my hand back.
“Don’t be like that,” he said.
And I said, “Like what?” before turning away and smashing straight into Una’s breasts.
She’s super tall, did I tell you that? Well over six foot, with legs up to her ears a la Darryl Hannah from that movie Splash.
“What’s going on?” she said, glancing from Tall, Dark and Handsome (do you mind if I use the moniker? I think it suits him better), then down to me and back.
“Nothing,” I replied, blushing despite myself.
Her eyes narrowed, and she stared hard at the Lothario behind me, but I wasn’t hanging around to deal with the fallout. I excused myself and scurried off towards the kitchen. I don’t know what happened next. I don’t know if she eventually tracked me down and we had a fight and she killed me in the heat of the moment, but I can’t see that playing out.
If Una shot me for “flirting” with her new beau, she’d have to be shockingly insecure, and that’s not a trait that sits easily with Una. She’s the kind of woman who can give a rousing speech at a moment’s notice, who eats meals at busy restaurants on her own without a book, and even goes on exotic holidays todo solo. She’s just back from three days in Bangkok and never even thought to drag someone along. I would have gone, if only she’d asked me and if only I had the cash.
Una’s one of the most confident women I know, as you would be when you have the looks of Daryl Hannah and the smarts of a lawyer—did I mention she’s a lawyer, an actual real lawyer, not a lowly PA? What’s not to be confident about?
Yet, despite that, she rarely has a boyfriend, and I have a feeling I know why. She has dangerous taste in men. They’re never suitable; it always self-destructs. I have a theory about Una, but I won’t bore you with it now. Let’s just say she has commitment issues and leave it at that.
Anyway, moving right along, while we’re on the subject of suspects, shall we tick another one off? Let’s take another look at Tessa. My nemesis.
We’re actually best friends if I’m being honest, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t bring me down from time to time. We’ve been besties for twenty-four years, ever since she popped her head around the paint easel at kindergarten to say “Hawo” or some such thing.
“Oh, darling, you were hiding behind there and shaking like a leaf!” My mother loves to remind everyone whenever she gets the chance. “And lovely Tessa took you by your chubby little hand and dragged you out.”
Tessa always smiles smugly at this retelling, as though I would be cowering there still if she hadn’t stumbled over and rescued me.
Suffice to say, we became “thick as thieves” after that—my mother’s words, not mine. I love Tessa, I really do, but sometimes I wonder whether she’s one of those friends you stay friends with for no real reason other than a shared history, a common neighbourhood and a lot of habit. She lives a few doors down, across the street. We just fell in with each other and forgot to fall out.
Until tonight.
Yep, that’s when everything clicked. She is having an affair with Roco. I just know it. I didn’t need to spot them snogging or groping or anything that crass. It was suddenly very obvious. The way they held themselves. The way they avoided each other’s eyes. The way the air sparked like faulty Christmas lights whenever they got close. Roco never sparked like that for me.
“What are you doing?” I said to Tessa about halfway through the night.
She stared at me blankly. “What?”
I stared back. And then she blushed. Quite literally, she turned a beetroot shade of red. And I thought, Hook, line and sinker.
“Really, Tessa? Really?” I said and then shook my head and walked away. Because I didn’t really want to face the facts. I didn’t want to hear her say “Yes, we’re at it like rabbits” or “Sorry, but we’re soul mates, we just can’t help ourselves” or whatever inane justification was bubbling away in her big fat head.
So I stumbled off to the kitchen where I found Tall, Dark and Handsome deep in conversation with another woman, the aforementioned Arabella. I wondered if he’d tried to read her palm and if she’d fallen for that trick.
They both swept around to stare at me as I walked in, and the look of guilt in Arabella’s eyes was all the answer I required.
I wondered if Una knew just how sleazy her new boyfriend was. I was planning to find her and ask. I was hoping we could lick our wounds together, but Una was nowhere to be found. Until I did find her, ten minutes later, rummaging about in my dad’s study, leafing through the contents on his desk.
What was she doing in there?
“What are you doing in here?” I asked as she swept up and around to look at me. If there was an innocent explanation, her spontaneous babble belied it.
“What? Me? Huh? No!”
A bizarre splutter of words if ever I heard some. She’d lost her usual confidence.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Nothing! No, nothing at all!”
Then she backed away slowly from the desk as though it contained live explosives and sprinted out the door, and I was left to peer at the papers on top to try to comprehend. Apart from some bank slips and unopened junk mail, I spotted light pink stationery, a Qantas boarding pass and a wad of cash, which made me think twice.
My folks wouldn’t leave a fistful of hundred-dollar notes lying about. Did Una just put them there? And if so, why?
I never got a chance to explore that further because Roco suddenly appeared and dragged me by the hand and led me back to the party—it was cake time! Hurrah! Let’s cut the stupid sponge cake! Even though it wasn’t my birthday and I didn’t want a cake, especially not a mushy strawberry sponge one with fake cream filling.
I was going to go back to the study. I was going to store that cash somewhere safe, but someone must have beat me to it because I’m staring at Dad’s desk right now and I can tell you, there’s not so much as a dollar in sight.
And now that I think about it, the pink stationery has also gone walkabout.
Before I can give that any more thought—and it is super interesting, don’t you think?—Buzz Cut claps his hands and makes another announcement. What is it with him and grand announcements? He doesn’t even have much to impart. Just asks the throng to hurry up and finish giving their statements and bugger off, although he says it slightly more diplomatically than that.
“And be sure to use the exit out by the pool,” he adds. “Nobody is to step through the living room door and back into the house. We have officially secured the scene.”
I’m not going anywhere, I hear Tessa think. I’m not leaving poor Maisie alone with you lot.
And suddenly I don’t care if she’s sleeping with my boyfriend or not. I want to reach down and hug her tight.
Una, meanwhile, is in a corner madly tapping away on her mobile phone. I try to zoom in. I try to see what’s on the screen, but like the computer in Dad’s office, it’s just a bunch of hieroglyphics. Is she messaging my folks? Is that it? I can’t even read her thoughts to find out. I try, very hard, but her mind is like a closed book.
Come on, Death! Throw me a bone!
Why can’t I see what Una’s doing? What’s that about? I’m also intrigued by this mind-reading business. If I can read minds, and clearly I can—Leslie’s wondering if Hottie Hodder is still single, Arabella is wondering where she misplaced an earring and Mattie has “Despacito” on a loop in his head—why can’t I read Una’s mind or, more importantly—and let’s just hope they’re mutually exclusive—the mind of my killer? Why can’t I hear someone chuckle to themselves while thinking Mwahahaha. I got away with murder!
It’s a fair question, don’t you think?
And I have so many more where that came from, like how come I can suddenly see straight into all the bathrooms as well as the guest bedroom, which contains nothing more incriminating than a ruffled bed cover? I don’t know exactly why that particular room was previously blacked out, but I have a feeling it has something to do with a scantily clad Arabella and her missing earring.
Who was she in there with, I wonder, and why were they hiding that from me?
“Pssst!”
That’s the drooling woman near the light again. Louder, more insistent. She’s just not giving up. I stare at her. I sigh. She looks like she’s been back there a while. I guess she may have some answers for me. Shall we indulge her? Just for a bit?
I glance back at the house. My friends are slowly being ticked off by the police (in every sense of the word, for Roco at least) and shuffled on their way, the detectives still inspecting my corpse, other officers now ransacking the house. Big Ears is in Mum’s sewing room and staring at the makeshift bed in the corner like it’s out of place. And I guess it is. Mum must have set it up for Peter, hoping he’d stay over. For once.
There’s not much to report, so I give up on the living. I swallow my nerves and I head towards the light.
We’ve all heard about the infamous pearly gates and the long, dark tunnel that leads to the “afterlife,” but from this angle all I can see is a dingy archway, three seriously deformed dead people and not a pearl in sight.
The oldest, the woman who’d been waving like the Queen Mum, drifts forward as I approach and offers me a sympathetic smile.
“Hello, Maisie,” she says, her voice low and slow, oozing concern. “How are you feeling, darling? Are you okay?”
I snort at her. “You’re about an hour and forty minutes too late.”
She nods, her smile sadder. “A little longer than that, I’d say.”
Humph! Like she can talk. “The question is, are you okay?” I snap back.
I can see the haunted look in her eyes. I can see the dribble running down her face. She knows it’s there, right?
The woman wipes one cheek self-consciously. “I’m just here to help you across.”
“Were you the victim of a vicious murder too?” I ask.
Now her smile deflates. Pain crosses the threshold of her face. “I guess you could say that,” she says, then sniffing, adds, “Two murders in fact.”
Before I can digest that bizarre comment, the young man behind her calls out in a singsong voice.
“Helloooo? What am I? Chopped liver?”
His face is black-and-blue, his body broken, one arm dangling oddly from its socket, his right hand a mash of bone and pulpy flesh. He does look a little like chopped liver, but I’m too polite to say so.
I hear a tiny snigger and spot a teenage girl hovering behind him. She’s probably sixteen but looks about twelve, as thin as a twig, deep hollows under her eyes, a beanie on her head.
Blimey, it’s like a floating horror show back here.
“No offence, guys, but you’re not the most comforting welcoming committee.”
The man looks mortified by this comment. He attempts to straighten his dangling arm, but the older woman places a hand on his shoulder and says, “Ignore her. She’s just angry.”
“I think she’s still at denial, actually.” He gives me the once-over. “Just because you’re dazed and confused, honey, doesn’t mean you gotta take it out on the rest of us.”
“Hey, it’s not my job to communicate with the living.”
He stares at me, bemused. “What are you on about?”
“Haven’t you got some creepy message you want me to pass on to your bestie, or something?”
“Huh?”
“We’re just here to help you across,” the middle-aged woman explains, and now I’m really cranky.
“Well, I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time, but I didn’t ask you to come and drag me to the light. I’m quite happy where I am, thanks very much.”
“Sure you are,” says the man, rolling his bloodshot eyes. “That bullet wound looks like a barrel of laughs.”
“Ouch!” I say, reaching for my head and patting some of my hair down across the gaping hole. I realise the tiara is still there, clinging on, and I reposition that while I’m at it, while they all watch me with varying degrees of pity.
“Let’s start over, shall we?” says the woman, her tone upbeat. “I’m Deseree. This is Neal, and behind him young Emie. It’s Neal’s first official chaperone job.”
“Really? And here I was thinking he was an old hand.” I flick my eyes to his smashed limb and grin.
Neal looks fit to burst, but Deseree has him by the shoulder again. “Maybe just let me take this one for now.”
Neal sneers but drifts back, muttering something about practise and how he’ll never get his points up, like he’s discussing frequent-flier miles and I’m standing between him and a free trip to Bali. Then he attempts to fold his arms across his chest, nightclub bouncer-style, but the dislocated arm flops back down again. I try not to laugh.
Deseree draws me away from them just a little.
“So, Maisie, do you understand what’s happened to you?”
I shrug. “It’s pretty open and shut. I’ve clearly been shot in the head by person or persons unknown.”
I can hear both Neal and Emie sniggering now. They think I deserved it.
“You really don’t know who did this to you? You didn’t see?” Deseree asks.
“No! Honest. I’ve forgotten the whole event. Why, is that important?”
“It is if you want to cross, my darling, yes. You need to work it out.”
“Why don’t we just put her out of her misery and tell her whodunit?” calls Neal.
Deseree shoots him a stern look. “Because that’s against the rules and you know that very well, Neal. Thou shall see when—”
“Thoust is ready to see, yeah, yeah,” he says.
“Huh?”
A sheet of paper has materialised in Deseree’s hands, and she holds it out to me.
“The Rules of Death,” she says. “They’re quite inflexible. But they’ll make total sense at the end, I promise you that. It’s important you come to terms with what’s happened to you and why it happened, otherwise your spirit will be in limbo and you’ll never settle in.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want to be unsettled now, would we?” I say sarcastically, snatching the sheet from her. “Nothing remotely unsettling about any of this.”
I stare at the sheet in my hand. It’s not actually a sheet, at least not one made of paper. It’s like a floating iPad screen, as thin as a strand of cotton and just as flexible. It’s lit from within, words sketched across the front in an old English font. Black Chancery by the look of it. I wonder if Steve Jobs has had a hand in the design. He’s back there somewhere, right?
I glance down and begin to read.
The Rules of Death
© Forever
1. Thou shalt not hear what the living do not wish thee to hear.
2. Thou shalt not see what the living do not wish thee to see.
3. Thou shalt not invade the living’s thoughts unless invited in.
4. Thou shall see all when thou is open to seeing.
5. Thou shall make thy way towards the light at the earliest opportunity.
6. Once registered at Forever, thou shalt not return beyond the light without express permission.
7. Thou shall be granted one final wish upon entering the light.
I only get as far as the second rule before I’m frowning back at her.
“Well that’s a load of nonsense because I can tell you this much: I keep seeing things that I’m pretty sure the living don’t want me to see.”
“Such as?”
“Such as my best mate flirting with my boyfriend.”
“Maybe they do want you to see that,” says Emie, her voice barely a whisper, but it smashes across me like a roaring wave. I flinch.
Why would they do that to me?
“Probably enjoy hurting you,” says Neal, who has clearly just read my thoughts. He smiles when he hears me think that, and so I take the opportunity to think, You are a total dickhead.
Takes one to know one, he thinks back.
“Now, now, children,” says Deseree, who’s also a mind reader, “let’s keep it civil, and this will all be over before you know it.”
“I don’t want it to be over!” I wail, knowing I sound like a toddler and wondering whether to stamp one foot for good measure. “I need to spend more time with my friends! I never got to finish my party! I never even got any birthday cake!”
“But it’s not your birthday, and you don’t even like sponge cake,” hisses emaciated Emie, who looks like she could benefit from a very large slice.
She gasps at that thought, and I try to shake myself out of it. I try very hard to calm down.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m being a brat.” I look at her properly and realise that she’s also clearly a victim, but unless she’s been lingering since the Holocaust, the poor thing, my guess is she had cancer. Probably leukaemia. She’s the spitting image of a kid down the street who died of it a few years back.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “But give me a break, okay? I’m new at this. I’m still trying to come to terms with the idea of being dead, let alone murdered, and it really doesn’t help if I can read some people’s thoughts and not other’s.”
“Rules are rules,” sings Neal.
“Well they’re stupid rules then,” I snap back. I soften my tone. I turn to Deseree. She seems amenable. “Please give me a little longer. I do want to solve my murder, but it’s not that straightforward. For some reason I can’t remember all the important bits, and it feels like everyone is hiding something from me; no one’s being completely honest. If you could just let me hear what they’re all thinking, then I’d have this sewn up in a flash.”
Deseree is shaking her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“But why?”
She nods to the others, and they start to float back inside the tunnel.
“Read the rules again, Maisie, read them properly this time.”
I watch as the darkness swallows her whole, and then I openly scowl. Thanks for nothing, weirdos. Thanks for all your help.
I take a deep breath and float back to Mother Earth where I notice that Detective Sergeant Powell is making her way up the interior staircase towards my bedroom. I can see Kelly’s already up there, poking through my belongings, a pitiful expression on his face. What he’s looking for I cannot say, but I doubt he’ll find much. I may have redecorated and moved back a few months ago, but I never really moved back in. If you look closely, you can see half my stuff is still in my suitcase, several cardboard boxes of crap still sitting there unopened.
“I’ll pop these away then, shall I?” I remember Mum saying, and I remember screaming at her that I could do it myself and to leave me alone and to get the hell out.
I had to trudge downstairs to find her and apologise for that.
“I know it’s a difficult time,” she said stiffly, stopping short at the “but.”
I pulled her into a hug. “I’ll be better, Mum, I promise. I just need to sort my head out. I’ll be okay.”
The sad smile she gave me told me what she thought of that.
Was I really such a screwup?
And if so, where did it all go wrong? I had a thriving career once, I had a boyfriend, I had a sharehouse in the city and friends who didn’t cheat on me. So what the hell happened?
I hear a cup smash, but it’s another flashback.
I hear the smash long before I register what it is I have done. It’s my favourite work cup, the one that says My Way Or The Highway. The one I keep on my desk so the others won’t use it and leave it smudged. It’s in a dozen pieces on the floor of the kitchen at work, hot tea splattered everywhere, several sets of eyes watching me aghast. I did that. I smashed it.
When did I become so angry? So out of control? Such a brat? And, more importantly, why?
Detective Ruth is leaning against the banister, staring into my bedroom.
“Anything?” she says to Kelly.
He looks up and shrugs. “Just a diary with lots of bleak poems, but she’s no Dylan Thomas I can tell you that.”
Ruth snorts. “And what would you know about Dylan Thomas, mate?”
“I know my poetry. I’m more than a pretty face, you know.”
She snorts again. “Nothing about taking her own life?”
“Not a word.”
I told you so.
“So what’s with the meds then?”
She sounds like she’s answering me back, and I follow her gaze to my bedside table where, sure, there are some antidepressants, I’ll give her that. But don’t you go and get excited either. If you all look closely, I think you’ll find the box remains unopened. I just took the damn pills to humour Dr Marlin. He’s the family GP.
Mum dragged me to see him after the Jonas incident, the one that’s really not worth repeating. At least I don’t think it is.
“These might help,” Dr Marlin said, and my mother nodded vigorously, thinking that would sort me out, that and plenty of hugs and old-fashioned home cooking.
I guess I never got the chance to find out.
As I watch Ruth inspect the packet and then place them in an evidence bag, I wonder if I should have opened them. Maybe they would have been more useful than hugs and home cooking, not to mention that silly feathered contraption that flutters over Kelly’s head, mocking me and any dreams I dared to have.
Downstairs most of the guests have now cleared out, as instructed, and there’s just a handful of my closest friends still loitering by the back gate, just on the other side of my house. (If you get lost, just ask Tall, Dark and Handsome, he seems to know his way about.)
I know what Tessa promised, but she may as well head off. My body has left the building; it took off in my absence. Mickey has vanished too, so I guess she escorted it out, although she could be back with her hot date for all I know, hooking into some leftover trifle. As I told you before, I can’t see beyond Ivey Street (that’s my street, in case you’re wondering).
I can see inside some neighbouring houses, however, although not all, and can only assume from those ridiculous rules that those people have invited me in. Yet why old Mrs Russo would want me to see her standing in her floral nightie, peeking through the kitchen curtains like a paparazzo, I don’t know.
“Go back to bed, Mrs Russo! Nothing to see here!”
Except that’s not quite true.
There are still plenty of uniformed officers about, some now trampling through Mum’s garden at the front of the house, others going door to door, interrogating the inhabitants who lean against doorways, clutching dressing gowns, eyes wide with voyeuristic delight. And who can blame them all? It is rather fascinating, in a ghoulish kind of way. This is my first murder too, and I’d be just as fascinated. In fact, the old me would be handing out pipes and trying to work out whodunit. If only I could channel the old me, the one who didn’t smash cups and wasn’t prescribed antidepressants.
I watch as a new team of characters start pulling up. Ah, it must be the soccer team, or whatever Buzz Cut called them, judging by the white vans and the matching turquoise pullovers and the looks of bland proficiency about them. They don’t seem anywhere near as enthusiastic as Ruth and Kelly, so I’m guessing they’ve been there, done that, bought the T-shirt… You get the gist.
I’m happy the experts are here, to be honest. It’s proof they’re taking my murder seriously, and who knows, maybe they can shine some light on this dark and woeful night. Speaking of dark, I was about to follow them inside, but something in the gloomily lit laneway has caught my eye.
Someone is standing on the very edge of the thin lane that leads to that back gate, looking furtive. He has his hands wedged into his trouser pockets and is peering down towards my friends as though trying to catch someone’s eye. Una’s, I think, judging by the angle. But Una is not looking his way; she is talking in hushed tones to Leslie, but I can hear them loud and clear. They are remembering the last time they went clubbing with me. A long time ago by the sounds of it, and isn’t that a pity and wasn’t I the world’s worst dancer. Ever.
“Like two ferrets trying to get out of a hessian bag,” says Una, and they almost fall over with laughter.
Wow, thanks for that, ladies. Hope that gets a mention in the eulogy.
I glance back at the watching man and am not surprised to find that it is Vijay. Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome. He looks a little frustrated. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and brings one to his lips. It looks like he’s about to whistle when something makes him stop, and he shoves his hands back. A police officer with large buttocks and a thin ponytail has rounded the end of the laneway and is calling out to him to get a move on.
“I’m on my way, Officer!” Tall, Dark and Handsome calls back, giving Una one more glance before turning away. Belatedly she spots him and raises her eyebrows, but it’s too late. She has no clue what he wants, but I do.
Bad luck, bucko, you weren’t quite furtive enough. I saw what you shoved in your pocket then. I know what that is.
It’s a light pink envelope, just like the one I saw on Dad’s desk earlier tonight. It looked a little pregnant, though, like it was “with letter.”
Now we know who pilfered the stationery. The question, of course, is why?
Okay, how are you doing? Are you keeping up? Because, yes, it is a little curious that a virtual stranger would steal a letter from my father’s study and then try to flag Una down with it. Is there something in the letter he wants to show her? Was he giving it to her? Or was he giving it back?
He certainly looked suspicious—the way he concealed it the moment the officer called out—and Una looked equally suspicious when I caught her hovering near that envelope earlier tonight. I thought she’d just deposited the cash. Now I wonder if that money was like the proverbial red herring, distracting me from what was really going on. Was Una dropping a letter off for my folks? Or was she leaving it there for Tall, Dark and Handsome to discover?
Are you as baffled right now as I am? We need to see what’s in that envelope, that bit is clear. We need to read that letter, assuming it is a letter, and well, what else would you put inside a mushy-coloured envelope? I stare hard at Tall, Dark and Handsome’s trousers (yes, bear with me, we have no choice). His pockets are camouflaged in the dark. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if only I had superpowers, I could see through pleated cotton.
Tall, Dark and Handsome is now striding down the street, heading towards a red sports car (what else would he drive?), and Una is now chatting with Arabella, but this time I can’t hear a word they are saying. And, frankly, I’m relieved. If that last conversation is any indication, they’ve probably moved on to my karaoke skills (“like two cats screeching in the night”).
A shrill ring cuts through my thoughts, and I am forced away from my friends and back to the centre of the action, which has now moved from my bedroom to the kitchen, evidence bags piled up on the round pine table that sits in the very centre of the room. It’s the place we usually eat our Corn Flakes.
The kitchen has become a makeshift headquarters, by the look of it, and Ruth is now standing at the open doorway, surveying the action. (Kelly is still in my room, by the way, one hand holding a phone to his ear, the other poking about. It makes me feel a little violated, if I’m honest, and I wish he’d do it with a little more enthusiasm.)
I watch as a young woman with a black bob furiously clicks away on a laptop at the table, Buzz Cut standing over her, notepad in one hand. Craig is leaning against the oven door, talking to someone on his own phone while Ruth darts glances between all three of them.
She’s waiting for something, but I can’t tell what.
Eventually she says, “Okay, guys, settle down, let’s see where we’re at.” She waits as Craig finishes his call, then she continues. “We still have far too many loose ends. We need to clear some up if we’re ever gonna get some sleep tonight. Craig, tell me that was good news.”
He gives her a so-so motion. “Dubbo Area Command is getting back to me.”
“Dammit. What’s the holdup?”
“It is two in the morning,” he says gently.
“So what? They get to sleep and we don’t?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Just keep on it, okay?” She runs a hand through her hair. Stares at Buzz Cut. “Tanner, how did your people go? Find any evidence of a break-in? Tampering with the office door? Anything remotely unusual or suspicious?”
“Nope, sorry,” he says, sounding anything but apologetic. “No one saw a thing, and we can’t find anything interesting to report. Plenty of empty booze bottles, some joints, a couple of used condoms and some vomit out in the front garden—just your typical party paraphernalia. Well, apart for the stiff in the library, of course.”
Ruth flinches at that, which is nice of her, but she doesn’t pull him up on it, just congratulates herself for recruiting Craig to her team instead of this “buffoon.”
“What about the brothers?” she persists. “Have we at least found one of the brothers yet?” The buffoon shrugs, so she turns to Black Bob. “Louise?”
The woman at the laptop shakes her head from side to side, her eyes never leaving the screen as her hair slaps across each cheek.
“Hey, guys, I just spoke to the Day Street police,” Kelly says, pocketing his iPhone as he strides into the kitchen. “They’ve checked at hotels neighbouring the InterContinental and several of the better ones in the city, and Peter May hasn’t booked into any of them.” Under her glare he quickly adds, “I’ve also located a mobile number for him, but it appears to be switched off.”
“Oh for goodness’ sake. It’s like the entire family has gone into hiding.”
Ruth sighs and I sigh along with her.
I was happy they were sleeping peacefully, really I was, but now I think it’s time for them to wake the hell up!
Ruth reaches for one of the evidence bags. “Right, first things first. We need to get this firearm down to forensics and get some fingerprints off it. Mickey is checking gun residue on Maisie’s fingers as we speak.”
Ah, good. She’s got her priorities straight, and the trifle has come out second best.
“We should’ve tested everyone at the party, made them all give us their DNA,” Tanner says, taking the bag from her, and Ruth shoots him a frown.
She’s thinking it’s high time he pissed off back to his cave. “That’s not how we do things, mate. We find our suspect first, then we look for DNA. Better use of resources. And it’s kind of polite not to treat everyone like a suspect.”
He shrugs again.
“So you think there is a suspect, boss?” says Kelly. “It’s not just suicide?”
“Just suicide?”
“You know what I mean.” He saw the antidepressants. He thinks it’s open and shut.
“I don’t know anything at this stage and neither do you. The victim was found with a fatal head wound that could have been self-inflicted, granted, but we don’t know that for a fact. Until Mickey comes back with a bit more substantiating evidence, we keep an open mind, and until I talk to the parents about their daughter’s state of mind, I’m not making any assumptions.”
“Her friends did say—”
“I know what her friends said, Tanner.” She interrupts. “But maybe it’s in the interests of those friends to say what they said. Ever think about that? You can’t believe every single thing you’re told in this business, right? We need to hear it from several sources before it becomes ‘fact.’” She makes air quotes with her fingers, then drops them to the marble bench top and starts tapping away. “I really need to speak to the family.”
And then, as if on cue, one of them starts screaming like Stanley Kowalski from the front of the house.
“Peter!” comes a loud cry. Then more dramatically, “Peeeeeeeter!”
Goodness, it really does sound like something out of a Tennessee Williams play, raw and heart-breaking, except that’s my brother Paul down there bellowing his lungs out while a uniformed officer attempts to restrain him. It’s the ponytailed woman who told Vijay to clear out.
Glad you could make the party, Paul, I think, but why are you screaming for Peter when I’m the one with the bullet in my head? Peter isn’t even here; we’ve already established that. Well, neither am I, now that I think about it, but he doesn’t know that.
“It’s my home!” Paul cries to Door Bitch out the front. “It’s my sister! I’m going in!”
“Your sister’s body has now been removed, sir,” the copper says calmly, one hand still on his chest, but it has the opposite effect.
“What? No! I didn’t get to see her! I didn’t get to say goodbye!”
“I’m sorry, sir. I can give you details for the morgue.”
“Morgue?” He looks at her horrified.
Ruth appears then, Kelly close behind. “What’s going on?” she calls out.
Ponytail goes to speak, but Paul pushes past her and up the remaining driveway to the front door.
“I’m Paul May,” he cries out. “This is my parents’ house. I heard that my sister… she’s…” Then his face crumples and he looks ready to drop.
Kelly rushes forward and grabs him under one shoulder while Ruth wraps a protective arm around the other, and together they shepherd him through the door and into the hallway, Ruth shooting a ferocious scowl at the officer at the front as she does so. Moron, that look says. Idiot, imbecile.
It’s official. I’m in love.
“I am so sorry about that,” she says gently, directing Paul towards the living room before realising the SOCOs haven’t cleared that space yet. She steers him into the kitchen where she nods at Louise, who’s still tapping away. The woman scoops her laptop up with one hand and, still tapping, scuttles out. Tanner and Craig have already vanished. Paul drops into the chair Louise just vacated, then places his elbows on the tabletop and his head into his hands.
Ruth gives him a moment, fetching him a glass of water, then flashes a final scowl in the general direction of the officer outside before saying, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr May. We’ve been trying to contact you and your family for the past two hours.”
He looks up. Frowns.
“Isn’t Peter here? Didn’t he…” He lets that sentence dangle.
She waits a beat, then says, “Your brother left the party sometime ago, before your sister was discovered. We haven’t been able to reach him either.”
“What? Really?”
“Do you know where he might be? Have a contact number? We’ve tried him at the InterContinental, but we’re told he hasn’t booked in yet.”
Paul looks confused by this before he starts to vigorously nod. “Yes, no, um, he’s… he’s staying at the Comfort Inn this time. The one just down the road.”
Really? Peter’s standards are dropping. Paul has other thoughts. He’s thinking, He’s been through every chambermaid in the city, has to start afresh on a new lot.
He doesn’t say that, thankfully, just adds, “Wanted to be closer to home.”
And the wrinkle that suddenly appears between his eyebrows reveals what he thinks of that. He shakes himself a little and pulls out his mobile phone.
“I’ve got his number here somewhere.” He begins scrolling through his device, finds it and then looks up at Ruth, who is still hovering over him protectively. “Should I…?”
“It’s best we deliver the news in person, sir. Face-to-face.” She calls Kelly over, who checks the number on Paul’s screen and nods.
“That’s the number I’ve got. It’s not picking up.”
Paul looks even more startled by this and starts plucking at his lower lip as though trying to draw blood.
Ruth tells Kelly to get someone across to the Comfort Inn, pronto, adding, “See if Pippa is free; she’s good at that kind of thing. Oh and get that evidence bag off Tanner if it’s not too late.”
Kelly departs while Ruth turns to Paul again.
“We still haven’t reached your parents either. They are currently staying in Dubbo, is that correct?”
He nods, a plump tear dropping out of one eye as he does so. “Yeah, they needed to be closer to the hospital, to my grandfather. He’s… well, he’s the one who’s supposed to be…” He doesn’t need to finish that sentence.
Ruth nods now. “We do have a mobile number for them, but they’re not picking up.”
“No, they’re useless with their mobile. Never charge it. Probably haven’t even switched it on.”
Probably haven’t even taken it with them, I want to add. Or at least not the Samsung I gave them. I don’t know what that iPhone’s all about.
“Do you know the name of the hotel where they’re staying? Maisie’s friends weren’t much help there.”
“No… Sorry. I can’t help you either.”
“No ideas at all?”
He shakes his head. Looks stricken.
Great family, you got here, Maisie. Real close, she thinks sarcastically, and I can’t blame her.
We used to swap contact numbers and itineraries; we used to know each other’s business. When did that stop?
“And you?” she says.
“Me?” He blinks back.
“Where have you been for the past two hours? I had an officer stop at your place on Dulwich Road, and there was no response.” It looked derelict, she wanted to add but held her tongue.
“Oh, yeah, no, we… we’re not on Dulwich anymore. Sale goes through next week. We’re at a smaller place now, down on the other side of Chatswood. Shit. No wonder… right.”
She frowns and checks her notes. “And your mobile? You weren’t answering that either.”
He stares at her, still looking so confused. It’s like Ruth’s talking at chipmunk pace and he can’t keep up. Eventually he registers what she says and looks at his mobile again, then clicks something on the side.
“It was on silent.” He sighs heavily. “Ruby… our youngest… she’s got, well, she’s got a bit of a cold. We haven’t been getting any sleep. Didn’t want to wake the house.”
It makes more sense now. A sick kid trumps a dead sister any day I guess.
“So how did you know,” Ruth begins. “How did you hear about Maisie?”
He shakes himself as if still trying to keep up, then mumbles something about his wife and breastfeeding and Facebook.
“There was a post, um, about Maisie. Freaked Jan out. She… she woke me. All hysterical. Looked like she’d been to hell and back.” He sighs. “I should call her. See if she’s all right.”
Ruth holds up one palm. “That will have to wait.” She drags a chair out and finally takes a seat across from him.
“I know it’s a very difficult time, Mr May. I know it’s a tremendous shock.” She offers him a slim smile. “But I do have some more questions, if you feel up to it.”
He drops his head in his hands again and mumbles, “Yeah, sure.”
She nods at Kelly who has returned, a plastic bag held low against his thigh.
She says, “I’m sorry but I have to ask, do you have any reason to believe someone might have wanted to harm your sister?”
“Harm her?” Paul looks up, the wrinkle between his eyes now a deep ravine. “But I thought… I thought it was suicide.”
I want to scream. Why is everyone so quick to pin it on the victim?
Ruth watches him for what seems forever, then replies, “At this stage of the investigation, we are treating it as suspicious.”
She holds one hand out to Kelly, who places the evidence bag in her palm. It’s the gun, of course, and Paul glances at it and away and then back at it again.
“That’s Dad’s gun,” he says, his tone almost matter-of-fact.
She nods. “We assumed as much. It was hanging on the wall in his office? Is that correct? On the two hooks?”
“Um, sure, yeah, I think so.” His forehead smooths over. I think he’s starting to comprehend even though he says, “I don’t understand. What’s Dad’s pistol got to do with—?” His eyes widen, his lips part. Oh yeah, he gets it now.
“Your sister received a fatal head wound, Mr May.”
“Head wound?” he repeats.
“She was shot in the head. With this gun, we believe. It’s not confirmed yet of course, but it was located close to the body. I’m so sorry.”
She’s watching him closely now, but if it’s signs of guilt she’s looking for, she’ll be disappointed. Paul seems completely thrown by the revelation, his brow furrowing all over again. It’s like a sand dune, that strip between his eyes, rippling with every emotion, giving everything away. His eyes dart back and forth from the gun to the detective and back again.
Finally he says, “Shot? Are you sure?”
Ruth looks at him with the patience of a mother. “Yes, it’s conclusive.”
I can tell Paul’s mind is racing away. I can see that from the deepening furrow and the darting eyes and the fact that he’s now pulling at his lower lip again (he’d be an atrocious poker player), but I am not privy to his thoughts and it’s both exasperating and a little worrying, to be frank. Why doesn’t Paul want me to read his mind? What’s he hiding from me?
Ruth’s thinking the same thing. “Do you know how to use a gun, Mr May? Does your brother?”
He stops torturing his lip and meets her eyes. “Sure. I mean, we did some target practise at the farm, but that was years ago. That was with the rifle. Gramps taught me when I was twelve, but… but I’ve never…” He gulps painfully. “You don’t think we… You don’t think I…? I didn’t shoot my sister! I could never do that to Maisie!”
“Which is why I have to ask again. Do you have any reason to believe someone might have wanted to harm your sister?”
Paul snaps himself out of it now. He’s heard her loud and clear. As his forehead straightens out, he folds his arms across his chest, sits back in his chair and says. “No. No I do not.”
And, sadly for him, Ruth and I don’t believe a word of it.
Ruth is called away—something about the office computer and a “suspicious post”—and I am tempted to follow her, but my brother’s behaviour is just too extraordinary to dismiss.
He looks dodgy. Why does he look so dodgy? I need to keep watching.
No sooner has she stepped out of the kitchen, he is reaching for his phone again and stabbing at a number. He waits, tapping a fat thumb on the wooden tabletop.
Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
He frowns, starts to hang up, then pulls the phone back to his head quickly and spits into it. “I knew you were there! I knew it!”
Then he glances towards the kitchen doorway before whispering, “What the hell did you do? Just tell me. Just say it!”
He listens for a second, then says, “Don’t act dumb and don’t bloody tell me to calm down.” Then he does calm down, his voice dropping considerably. I can barely hear him as he says, “We had an agreement. You promised me. You promised—”
Then he abruptly hangs up as Ruth walks back in.
I don’t know what she says to him then. I have no clue.
Suddenly I am whirling through time and space. I am shuffling down the hallway in my pyjamas, from the direction of the study. I am thinking, Someone needs to vacuum that crap off the carpet, but I don’t have the heart or the energy to do it. I can hear voices.
Someone says, “It is what it is, mate; we have to suck it up,” but the voice is slightly muffled. It’s coming from the kitchen. It’s another day, another time. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the anguish in the tone is incongruous.
“But he can’t do that! We had an agreement! He promised!” It’s a man’s voice, clearer now. My brother Peter, I think, but I didn’t realise he was back from London yet.
“Tell me about it! Jan’s spewing. She’s irate!” That’s Paul, equally as vexed. I haven’t heard that tone in months.
There’s a pause, then “What’s Jan got to do with it?”
What? I think. What are they talking about? I stop just outside the door and keep listening.
“It’s got everything to do with Jan! Jesus, we’ve been stone broke for years, we’re selling our home for Christ’s sake, moving into a friggin’ shoebox with four kids, and he’s just gonna sell Nevercloud on a whim? For her? Without even thinking about it!”
Another pause and then Peter sighs loudly, but his tone has calmed considerably as he says, “I’m sure he’s thought about it, Paul. I’m sure that’s all he can think about. That’s the problem; he’s not thinking straight. We need to tell him. That’s all.”
There’s a scoff. “What do we tell him, mate? ‘You can’t do it, Dad! She’s just not worth it!’?”
There is silence. It seems to go on forever, and then finally Paul speaks again, his tone back to placatory.
“You’re right. He loves her; what else can he do?” Then, to book end the conversation, he says, “It is what it bloody is.”
I waited a few minutes, then strode casually into the kitchen and feigned innocence as I smiled at my two brothers who stood at opposite ends, arms wrapped around their chests, cheeks ruddy.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” they replied in unison, clearly hiding something.
I smiled at them like a shark. I remember that. I was super patient. I knew I’d get it out of them. Eventually.
I was a big fan of games like hide-and-seek when I was a kid. I could play it all day for hours. My brothers loathed it, or at least they came to loathe it, so persistent was my passion. As the youngest in the family I was also the smallest, which meant more hidey-holes were open to me than my taller, lankier siblings, and they got so incensed when they couldn’t find me.
I hid above the fridge once, in a cupboard half-filled with brilliantly coloured bottles. Spirits and liqueurs I realised much later. How I got up there and how I managed to squeeze in amongst the Galliano and the Cointreau is anyone’s guess, but I was good like that, a champion hider. And I had the patience of a predator. Happy to wait it out.
Of course, eventually, frequently, the boys gave up on finding me and headed back to their bedrooms, but that didn’t worry me. I just waited until one of them reappeared to fetch a drink and then burst down upon them, causing them to shriek.
I always won that game. I really liked winning.
My brothers fought frequently, but the one thing they agreed on was that I was annoying. They were united in their loathing of me. I mean, I’m not playing the sympathy card here. I know they loved me, love me still, but they found me so aggravating, like my simple presence sent red-hot bolts of anger through them both. They said it was because I was bossy and told lame jokes at dinner and was “a spoiled little shit.” They said Mum and Dad treated me differently. But I think it had more to do with the fact that it gave them something to unite against, otherwise they had nothing.
Peter and Paul may sound like a unified team, all Christian-like, but they never really had time for each other. They loathed me from time to time, but it was each other they really despised.
Tessa used to call them Stork and Sleaze, a less polite version of Chalk and Cheese. One was a homebody, mad about babies, the other a playboy, mad about babes. That was Peter, of course, the eldest, the one who lives in London and stays in strange hotels and is still missing in action.
Peter is thirty-five going on fifteen. Apart from the adult job—he’s an obscenely overpaid banker—he’ll never grow up. Doesn’t want to. Makes no apologies for it either. Dad had hoped he’d settle down, maybe even run the farm, thought he had a knack for it, but that never happened, and I guess that’s when Uncle Simon stepped up.
I know Dad regrets that. I know he would like to live at Nevercloud permanently, himself, Mum not so much. So to hear they might be selling the place makes me sit up and take notice. Why would they be selling it? Did Mum force Dad’s hand?
As for Paul? He wanted a wife and kids before he was twenty, and he almost got his wish. His eldest, Meg, is about ten or eleven, and he’s just turned thirty-three.
I think he’s happy.
I thought he was happy.
I thought a lot of things once.
Paul’s one of those people who’ll always just get by. His face might resemble a quivering sand dune, but he won’t leave any footsteps on the beach, he won’t cause any waves, and he won’t hurt anyone, or at least I didn’t think he would. He works for the council, in a clerical position of some sort. I’m embarrassed to say I can’t tell you precisely what. Every time it came up, I just glazed over.
I always assumed it was the perfect job for Paul though: nine-to-five, rostered days off, set job requirements, stable salary. And, being government-based, very, very difficult to get fired from. Knowing Paul as I did, he only ever would have put in just enough effort to stay on the right side of the annual performance review, but maybe he hasn’t put in nearly enough effort lately, maybe he’s on strike two.
Or did he lose the unlosable job? Is that why he’s in such financial straits?
His wife Jan’s no use, of course. She’s a stay-at-home mum, which I’d normally admire except she never actually left the home, even before the kids came along. She’s just always sat on the couch and waited for Paul to bring home the bacon. And now, it seems, the bacon has turned to the budget cuts.
Why did I not know that? Did they not tell me, or was I too entrenched in my own problems to really notice?
Now as I watch Paul standing at the kitchen sink, a fingerprint analyst smudging his thumbs onto a plastic-coated sheet while he thinks only of his wife, I can’t help but wonder.
When did Paul become so broke he had to downsize? Why did he never tell me life had become so tough? I’m sure I would’ve remembered if he had, just like I know I never did find out exactly what he and Peter were talking about that day in the kitchen, despite my earlier confidence.
“Have you flipped your lid?” Paul said, his voice as fake as the cream in my cake when I asked him about it later. “Dad’s not selling Nevercloud. Don’t worry, little sis, you must have misheard us.”
But I know what I heard, and it’s his deceit that has me worried.
Then out of the blue something hits me like a second bullet through the brain. I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me earlier. As I watch Paul wipe his inky fingers on a paper towel, I start to wonder: Where are my parents?
Why aren’t they answering that stupid iPhone?
How long does it take for news to reach them, for them to scramble for the car and get back on the highway? Surely someone has spoken to them by now? Surely someone has asked them to come home?
There’s a chill running down my spine, or it would be if I still had one.
Oh God. Please don’t tell me my beloved parents are lying somewhere, bullets in their heads, their hair as messy as mine.
Before I can give that horrifying thought more oxygen, an engine roars to life and shakes me back to reality.
Okay, Maisie, deep breaths. No point getting hysterical. At least not yet.
I drop the ugly images and continue to look down.
Outside, the last of the revellers are leaving, and I am glad of the distraction. I see Roco wave a hand out of his Corolla window to Leslie and Jonas, who wave back, Leslie’s car keys tinkling as she does so.
Roco has Tessa in the passenger seat, and I am sadly not surprised. She looks very comfortable there. Like she belongs. And Una is trudging along the street, hands wrapped around her belly, shoulders hunched.
“Need a lift?” Leslie calls out, beeping her SUV to life as she does so.
“It’s one block, you lazy buggers,” she calls back. “Pretty sure I’ll be safe.”
Then I watch as both cars accelerate away and she reaches for her phone again, her expression desolate. It doesn’t last long. The second her screen lights up, her eyes follow suit. She stops in her tracks, turns swiftly around and starts striding towards my house. Then her footsteps slow down, she stops again, hesitating momentarily before turning once again and resuming her walk away. She’s confused or tentative or torn.
Or something.
After a few more strides, Una stops yet again, but this time she pulls her phone towards her and stabs at the screen a few times.
Then she places it to one ear and I hear her say, “Oh, David,” before everything goes silent.
My first thought is one of overwhelming relief. I feel myself exhale, my spine thaw out. Okay, good. My parents are fine. Of course they’re fine. What was I thinking!
If Una is talking to my dad—and I have to assume she is, judging by the river of tears streaming down her face—that means he’s alive and kicking, and Mum must be by his side.
Then a second thought wrestles its way in. Why is Una’s conversation with my father hidden from me? I know I’m dead. She knows I’m dead. What’s there to hide?
I watch more keenly as Una gives up walking completely and slumps down onto the sidewalk, her long legs folded into the gutter, her voice still hidden, her sobbing intensifying. She’ll short-circuit her device if she doesn’t stop.
Her tears should be comforting to me, so why do I suddenly feel like a dirty old man, peering through the curtains at the naked chick in the next apartment? Why should I feel like the intruder when it’s me they’re talking about?
Or is it?
I give myself another shake. What else could Una and my dad be discussing?
Come on, Maisie, now you’re just being odd. This is a good thing! My parents must have given Una their new number—for whatever reason, let’s not complicate things—and now at least they’re in the loop. Now they can pull together and sort it all out. And I know exactly how things will play out. They’ll pull on some clothes, throw their suitcase in the car, then get straight back on the highway and be home in four hours.
They’ll be devastated, of course they will, but together they’ll work out who did this to me. Together they’ll help solve my murder.
Except…
Well, when it comes to my parents, together is not a word that suits them these days. My parents haven’t exactly been a unified force of late, not like the old days when their love traversed time and space. And I mean that quite literally—Dad was pushing forty and lived in the country, Mum was a city girl who’d just turned twenty-five.
Have we got time for a little detour? I think it might help.
You see, my folks first met in a paddock near Gilgandra, not far from Dad’s property, at a Bachelor and Spinster Ball. That’s just a big ole barn dance, really, where single country folk dress up, drink up and hook up if they’re lucky.
Except my parents didn’t just hook up, they fell in love. And I always assumed that Dad must have fallen harder because even though they met in the outback, he was the one who ditched the dust for the Big Smoke, following her all the way to Sydney. Mandy had a thriving career at an insurance firm in the CBD at that time. She gave it all up when she had me. I never did understand that. I didn’t really respect it either, if I’m being honest. There was never any question that Mum would settle in Dubbo—“I just wasn’t country stock”—and I guess he never pushed her. Maybe he never asked.
Apart from that one-off trip to the country—a friend dragged her along, she wasn’t even going to go—Mum couldn’t abide the rural life, told anyone who’d listen, and so Dad had to suck it up I guess and pour his love of the land into a landscaping business that proved lucrative enough. But I know he was unsettled. I’ve always felt his detachment, like a mighty oak reduced to weed status because it happens to be rooted in the wrong place. And, to be honest, I never really cared. Selfish of me, I know, but I was with Mum on that one. I didn’t mind the odd visit to the dustbowl they called Dubbo, but I didn’t want to live out there! Yikes. Imagine the social life!
The suggestion to return to Nevercloud came up from time to time, usually on the long drive home from visiting Gramps, when they thought I was fast asleep in the back. Dad would always bring it up, and Mum would always hear him out.
“You know I love it out here, don’t you, dear? You know I miss the old place.”
“Yes, love, I know.”
“You know the kids would love it too, especially the boys, especially Peter.”
“Oh, they’d die of boredom, Peter more than any of them!” She’d scoff, and I’d silently high-five her from the back.
“It’d do him some good.”
“He can do good in London, love.”
Dad would scoff at that. He didn’t have much time for bankers; it was banks who were always nipping at the heels of poor country folk, repossessing properties that had been in families for generations, providing the final straw for breakdowns and suicides and all that violin-playing stuff. That’s what Mum would scoff at. She didn’t blame the banks, and neither did I. They might be evil behemoths with all the power, but even they couldn’t make it rain. You couldn’t blame them for the drought.
“I’m just saying, Peter would be… well, he’d be better in the bush. He’d be happier, more settled.”
This was usually the stage where Mum would sigh and say something like “This is about you, David, so let’s not pretend it’s about the kids. This is about you being happier and more settled.”
“And what the bloody hell is wrong with that?” he’d snap back, his voice as dark as the crows above the rotting carcasses we passed. Then he’d say something like “I’ve got roots out here, you can’t ignore that. You can’t just wish that away.”
I’d hold my breath while Mum would steady hers before answering carefully, firmly, “I don’t wish that away, David. I visit Nevercloud every single time you ask me to, and so do the kids. We don’t particularly enjoy it, but we’ve never denied you that. It’s not just about you though, is it? It’s about all of us. Our roots are in Sydney. They have been here for decades.”
By the time we reach the outskirts of the city, Dad would have lapsed into a sullen silence and Mum would be breathing a little easier, but I knew each bout, as benign as they seemed, took something from them, left them feeling a little bruised and bloody, their marriage a little more battered.
Is that why Dad was thinking of selling Nevercloud? Was he finally throwing in the towel? Had Mum finally insisted upon it, or was he doing it to patch up their marriage?
As I watch Una continue to talk and sob and sniffle and sigh, wondering what the hell she could be saying to her friend’s dad for so long, an image of the soft pink envelope pops into my mind, followed by the furtive look on Vijay’s face as he tried to get Una’s attention in the laneway.
I start to join dots that really shouldn’t go together, that make my stomach turn, when a loud voice calls out.
“The sneaky bastards!”
For a moment there I think that voice is commiserating with me, but then I realise there’s a new commotion going on, down in the guest bathroom by the pool, and this time Officer Craig is at the centre of it. He’s standing by the door watching as a SOCO with receding orange hair holds something over the cistern while it drips.
It’s a ziplock bag with a white box inside. Looks like more medication to me.
“Drugs?” Craig says, eyes alight.
“Better,” the SOCO replies, reaching into his pocket for a fresh evidence bag. “Illegal drugs.”
Craig beams from one giant ear to the other.
I give myself a shake. Okay, time to concentrate.
A bag of illegal drugs has just been found stashed in the outside toilet, and it’s far more pressing, me thinks. I don’t know what Una is up to or what that pink envelope signifies, but I need to get my priorities in order, and my friend’s bizarre behaviour cannot be one of them nor can my parents’ shaky marriage.
I watch now as the redhead drops the tablets into the evidence bag, zips it up and then pulls out a marker pen to scribble something on the front.
“Can I show the DI?” Craig asks, and he shrugs, handing it over.
“Just get it straight back to me. I have to process it.”
Craig nods, then heads back into the house, looking for Ruth.
I could point him in the right direction. She is now back in Dad’s office, seated at his desk, staring at his computer, Kelly standing behind her.
They both have steaming mugs in hand like they’re on a tea break and are just checking their Twitter feed. Ruth’s cup smells suspiciously like liquorice. Someone has clearly found my mother’s stash of herbal tea and whipped up some refreshments. Mum never even drank herbal tea until I moved back home. Now she has peppermint and chamomile and sleepytime and, yes, of all flavours, liquorice. She says she bought them for me, but I know differently. I know they help her relax, and I am sad that I made her so tense.
Ruth brings the cup to her nose, smelling the aniseed. It used to make me gag, that smell, but she is breathing it in like it’s a blood transfusion.
“So what do you think?” Kelly asks, dabbing a peppermint tea bag in and out, in and out. It doesn’t really go with his whole surfer dude veneer.
“I think mischief is afoot,” is her cryptic reply.
“I hate to break it to you, boss, but it could just be suicide, you know? As boring as that is.”
“Nah,” says Ruth. “There’s something else going on here. I can smell it.”
Good, I think. Don’t let that herbal tea turn your brain to mush.
“You think they want us to think it was suicide?” says Kelly.
She shrugs. “I think they’re up to something.”
For the first time, I notice an object in Ruth’s other hand. It’s thin and white, and she’s tapping the keyboard with it. Tappity, tap, tap.
What is that?
Ah yes, the Qantas boarding pass I saw earlier tonight. Now that’s piqued my interest. Qantas is an international airline, right? That pass must be ancient. Unless it belongs to my wanderlust brother, the last overseas trip my parents took was a week in Vanuatu with us kids, over a decade ago. I was seventeen, just out of school, the boys in their twenties. So why has it suddenly reappeared? Has someone been reminiscing, I wonder?
“Maybe I’m overcomplicating things,” Ruth says now, and Kelly nods. He’s thought that since the beginning, hence all the eye rolling.
Blowing a puff of air through his lips, he says, “That post does kind of sum it up.”
They both stare back at the screen, and I try to follow their eyes, but that Facebook page still looks like a dog’s breakfast to me, all jumbled and messy.
If I’m following the rules correctly, and I think I am, it’s clear whoever posted something on that page does not want me to read it.
“Boss?” This is Craig, holding the evidence bag between a thumb and forefinger like it’s contaminated with faeces. Oh for goodness’ sake. It’s a fresh bag. It never even got close.
She looks up at it and scowls. “What did I tell you, Craig? We’re not vice.”
“This is related. I’m sure of it.”
Her eyes squint. “What?”
He names a drug that sounds a lot like a party upper to me, and her whole demeanour changes. She looks first excited, then, oddly, disappointed, and I wonder what’s disappointing her so much.
“Bugger it,” she says, sounding weary. “Where?”
“SOCOs found it in the pool toilet. In the cistern.”
“Of course they did. Got a name on it? Any clues who put it there.” He shakes his head. “Okay, get it back to them, and see if they can get prints.”
Kelly looks confused; he’s not keeping up. “You think someone tried to drug her first? Knock her out?”
Ruth’s not listening, she’s tapping a text into her phone, and I can read this one. (Thanks for throwing me a few scraps, Ruth!)
It’s for Michaelia, and it says, “Need tox results ASAP.”
Good idea, woman, and about time too. Let’s see who tried to drug me before they put a bullet in my head. It might help explain why my voice was slurring and why I was so shaky on my feet.
“Sounds like a bit of overkill to me,” comes a churlish tone by my side, and I swing around to find Neal hovering.
“Shouldn’t you be lurking in the dark where you belong?” I spit out.
“Just checking in.”
“Just eavesdropping on something that’s none of your business, you mean.”
“Still in a delightful mood I see.”
“Hey, I didn’t ask for this, okay? Why should I be happy?”
He looks to the heavens. “It’s going to be a very loooong night.”
Than he vanishes as quickly as he appeared, his snigger lingering after him.
Back inside, a phone is ringing again, its tone shrill and urgent. It’s funny the way phones sound more desperate the later the night gets.
It’s Craig’s ringtone—I recognise it from last time—and it’s coming from the kitchen where he left it. He takes off to retrieve it while Ruth and Kelly return to staring sullenly at Dad’s computer.
“They’re hiding something,” Ruth says apropos of nothing, and Kelly nods again.
He knows what she’s talking about this time, and he agrees there is something suspicious going on. I’m surprised he’s abandoned the suicide angle so quickly. Those drugs must be very telling.
“Reckon they’ll ’fess up?”
Not sure I want them to, Ruth thinks to herself, her lips remaining in a thin, grim line as she shrugs. “Probably not. Would you?”
That shakes me a bit. How can she say that? It’s her job to know, whether she wants to hear the truth or not.
Kelly appears to be on my wavelength because he says, “Doesn’t matter who they are, if they’ve had anything to do with this, we can throw the book at them.”
She nods, thinking, You’re so young, Kelly. That’s your problem.
“And you’re old and jaded!” I want to scream down to her. “Just do your freakin’ job!”
“Where did the brother go?” Ruth says now, her tone back to weary. “I guess we better get him in here for another chat, see if he can explain any of this.”
I don’t know exactly what she’s referring to—the drugs? The Facebook post?—but I do know where Paul is. I can see him right now, standing at the bottom of the driveway, hands on his hips, a smudge of black ink across his jeans.
He’s clearly waiting for someone, and whoever it is, he looks both terrified and furious. You can just imagine the state of his forehead!
While I watch Paul frown and sigh and continue massacring his lip, I hear the distant plucking of a guitar and the melancholy tones of Nick Drake. He’s singing about time and what it’s told him. Not to ask for more, by the sounds of things.
Gee, I could have told him that.
There’s another party going on, a more mournful one than mine.
The key players have shifted to Tessa’s house, and I wonder if I can shift across. My line of sight is like a circle rippling out from that front office where I died. My carcass may be gone, but that spot is clearly my anchor. I can’t seem to dislocate from it. Having said that, I can lean out, away from that bloodied carpet and across to the McGee’s where Roco’s and Leslie’s cars are now parked out the front.
Tessa’s place is just like ours, minus the fancy renovations. The gaudy pillars are still there and the ugly tangerine bricks, and there’s also an unkempt front lawn, which rarely find its way below a mower. My dad used to mow it when Tessa’s father first took off, then Peter and then Paul, and now, who knows? I guess Dad still wanders over and fires up the rusty old “pushie” whenever he finds the energy. Or maybe another neighbour has taken over, although not lately by the looks of it.
Inside, I can see Tessa’s mum, Tammie, sitting on the lumpy couch in the corner of their lounge room, looking like a child at a horror movie. Her eyes are wide, her lips are parted, her fingers trembling at her neck as she listens to Tessa’s retelling of my murder. She’s clearly just been dragged from bed as her dyed yellow hair is still smooched up from her pillow and her body cloaked in a terry-towelling dressing gown.
Beside her sits Una, and Roco is perched on the edge of a mismatched armchair, while Jonas and Leslie and Arabella all loll on the floor, looking dog-tired yet hyperactive. The adrenaline is clearly still flowing.
“The kettle’s boiled,” calls someone from the kitchen, and now I feel like I’m in a horror flick.
It’s Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome.
When did Vijay Singh get so firmly entrenched in my life? Or is it my death that has cemented his presence? They chorus out their thanks, and then Tessa’s mum staggers to her feet, taking orders. She’s been the caretaker for so long she goes on automatic pilot. Three hot chocolates, two green teas and a strong coffee, thanks.
It’s almost three in the morning, and everybody is enjoying a soothing cup of something while my body lies cold on a slab somewhere and a cold-blooded killer gets away with murder.
Why is no one thinking about that?
Why is no one worried that a madman is running loose? Someone who had the gall to take a gun and shoot me dead in the middle of a party?
As if reading my vibes, Arabella says, “Is anyone else feeling a little freaked? I mean, what if the killer is still around? What if he’s someone from the party?”
Tessa and Roco share a look, and Una stares at her boots.
“Oh don’t be so melodramatic,” says Jonas. “She obviously did this to herself. For God’s sake, you’re such a drama queen.” Then he frowns and adds, haughtily, “Anyway, why do you assume it’s a man?”
“I don’t. It’s just… well, guns are so violent aren’t they? They’re so male.”
“Nah, knives are much more violent,” says Leslie. “Guns are quite efficient, when you think about it. Quite detached. An ideal weapon for a woman. No need for strength, no need even for close proximity. Just a quick bang and they’re dead.”
Now all eyes are upon her, and Roco’s are blazing.
“What?” says Leslie. “I’m just saying.”
“Well don’t just say. Jesus, Les,” says Roco. “She was our friend!”
“I know,” says Leslie, while I think, er, actually Roco darling, I was your girlfriend. But what’s a name change between lovers?
I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of that. If what he says is true—and I’m pretty sure it’s not—when did we break up? And why would we do that? I don’t remember a single fight. Not one. So I guess it all comes back to Tessa.
“The police will work it all out,” she says now.
Again, I assume she’s talking to me until I hear Una think to herself, That’s what I’m worried about.
When I was twelve I broke my arm in a trampoline accident. Well, it wasn’t an accident so much as a really stupid mistake. Bored with the same old bouncy, bouncy, bounce, Tessa and I toppled the trampoline onto its side and then threw ourselves up and off it, kamikaze-style. I’m not sure why we thought that would be a good idea, but I ended up smashing into the legs and hearing my elbow crack against the rusty metal.
We were at Tessa’s place, and Mrs McGee went berserk, but I knew then, even at that age, that it wasn’t me she was worried about. It was her reputation as a mother. I had broken my arm on her watch.
I knew my parents would be cool with it. I knew they wouldn’t blame her one bit, but the way Tammie went on and on about how silly I was and how naughty and goodness didn’t I have more brains than that?
Tessa and I sniggered all the way to the hospital, me tensing at the rolling pain, Tessa rolling her eyes at her mother.
That’s kind of how everyone is acting tonight. Like my death is less about me and more about them. Is that what they’re all worried about? Is that what they’re hiding? The simple fact that I died on their watch and nobody was able to save me. They were too busy partying to protect their best friend. And now they all have to live with that. They have to front up to the police and my parents and whoever else bothers to ask and admit that I was shot in cold blood while they were laughing and drinking and splashing about or, in Arabella’s case, hooking up with God-knows-who in Peter’s old bed?
Or is it something else? Is it darker than that?
Do they have something to do with it? I wouldn’t have thought so once upon a time, but the way they’re all acting—including my brother who’s now pacing the street like he’s got a full bladder—well, all I can hear are alarm bells, folks, but nobody seems to have woken up to it yet.
Perhaps it’s time to get our thoughts straight. Perhaps it’s time for a recap. I know at least some of the cops (well, Kelly mostly) and at least one friend (yes, Jonas, I’m looking at you) are clinging to the suicide angle like a life raft, and who can blame them? The idea is a little too tempting to discount. It’s certainly the easiest option for everybody; gets them all off the hook. And if you think about it, logically it does make sense.
I did have antidepressants by my bedside. That has to be conceded. They did have my name on them. You don’t need to look.
I was forced to move home after losing my job, although why I lost it has yet to be explored; there has to be more to it than a few smashed cups.
And I may even have been dumped by my boyfriend while he slept with my BFF. (He’s denied me twice now, did you notice that?)
So, yes, there were a few reasons to be depressed, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do that to my folks, and I’m confident those newfound drugs are giving Ruth, for one, something fresh to grab on to. She wants to know who hid them and why and what, if anything, they have to do with my death.
She also wants to know more about Vijay Singh and has just given belated instructions to Black Bob to look him up. I’m curious about him too, the way he’s ingratiated himself into my life, but I’m even more curious about my brother.
Paul has stopped wearing out the pavement and is now staring expectantly at a vehicle that’s crawling up our street like it’s a taxi and it’s lost.
Actually, I’m not far off. It’s an Uber. I can tell from the small sticker on the driver’s side of the rear windscreen, and I’m guessing it’s electric because it’s barely purring; so quiet in fact that no one inside notices, not even Door Bitch who’s chatting to someone at the end of the laneway.
I keep watching the car, intrigued as it comes to a stop in the middle of the road, just a few houses down. Who would turn up at this ungodly hour and in an electric-powered Uber at that? My parents wouldn’t even have the ridesharing app, let alone want to pay for one all the way from the Central West.
It must be someone else.
No, make that something else—a thick black something that is slipping out of the passenger side and now hovering towards my brother, the vehicle barely visible through all that black.
It looks like a mass of locusts, a shimmering evil splotch.
It sends another icy trickle down my spine.
I want to scream at Paul. I want to tell him to run and hide, but he does quite the opposite. He starts walking towards the car, then running, and is suddenly swallowed up inside all that ghastly black.
After several terrifying minutes, Paul reappears, stepping out of the darkness and back under the streetlight, his face wet, his eyes red and puffy. His anger has dissolved, and he just looks, well, shattered.
“I know,” he mumbles, wiping a hand across his nose and slathering snot up his right cheek. “I can’t believe it either, but… but then how did it happen? How did she end up like that?”
He waits for a response, one that’s beyond my ears, but I know he’s getting his answer because the splotch is shimmering wildly while Paul shakes his head. There’s obviously a person hidden in that darkness, and I think I know who it is. Have you guessed yet? I just don’t understand the secrecy. I don’t understand any of this!
After a minute or so I hear Paul’s tone rise an octave. “So where is it then? What did you do with it?”
The smudge shimmers again, and Paul’s eyes glance up the driveway, towards the house.
“Are you mad? Why did you leave it there?” He stops, listens, snarls suddenly, his temper back at boiling point. “You bloody relax! This is a big deal. I don’t think you get that. We could end up in gaol, mate.” Silence then, “No… no!” Then, “Well who then?” and “Bullshit! There’s no way that happened!”
He is shaking his head and so am I. I may only have half the conversation, but it’s obvious they’re discussing the drugs Craig just found, and it’s clear they are somehow involved.
“Mr May! Is that you down there? Paul May?”
Paul swings around with a start. Constable Craig is standing halfway down the driveway, his eyes squinting at the shadow. “Is that… Is that your brother, Mr May?”
Paul releases a long sigh, then strides back towards the house while my oldest brother follows behind him, lost in his own ugly shadow.
“Nice of you to show up eventually, Peter!” I yell down at him. Pity you can’t hear me and pity you haven’t got the balls to show your face.
Then I turn my percolating anger towards the tunnel.
“What is going on?” I scream into the abyss. “Why is everybody hiding from me? Why all the secrets?”
The tunnel remains dark, infuriatingly silent.
Where is Deseree? Where is that dickhead Neal? Hell, I’ll take Emie if I have to! I just need some answers!
I take a deep breath. I exhale.
Calm down, Maisie, you’ve got this, says a voice in my head, a younger voice, yet it sounds a million years old. I take another breath, then I do the only thing I can do. I force myself to keep watching.
My treacherous brother is now hovering in the kitchen, an officer almost blacked out by his shadow, while Paul makes his way to the edge of the pool, looking like he wants to throw himself in. But he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He was never one for grand gestures or theatrics. Take it from me, his earlier outbursts were uncharacteristic.
Now he just stands there, wraps his arms around himself and looks constipated.
Meanwhile, Craig is back at the office door, his face flushed like a preschooler with the best show-and-tell. Ever.
“Two quick things, ma’am,” he tells Ruth, his words tumbling on top of each other. “We’ve located the second brother, the one that went missing. Peter May.” He pauses, sucks in some air. “He’s in the kitchen now. SOCOs are taking prints.”
Ruth barely glances up from the screen she’s been studying. She’s not so impressed. “I hope you separated them,” she mumbles. “The brothers, I mean.” Then she darts her eyes at Craig. “Please tell me you did that.”
He nods gleefully; he’s not as green as he looks.
“And the second thing?”
His glee turns psychotic. “We’ve also found the parents! Just spoke with my mate in Dubbo. They’re on their way back. Halfway home.”
“Already?”
“Yes! Somebody must have got word to them or something because they’re only a few hours away.”
“Well done, Craig,” she says, but he doesn’t get any gold stars on his forehead from me.
Una was obviously the person who got through to my folks; we already know that. One of her earlier texts must have forced them out of their cosy slumber and onto the highway. By the time she’d finally spoken to Dad, I’m guessing they were well on their way back. Or at least that’s what it sounds like.
“Explains why the Dubbo crew couldn’t find them, I guess,” says Craig.
“I guess,” she says. “That’s a relief.”
I’m more worried about myself, to be honest. I know that sounds selfish and I’m glad my parents are returning, but I’m not sure I have the strength to hang around and watch it all unfold. I might be dead, but I’m still human.
Do I really need to see the two people I love most deal with my murder and its aftermath? Is that what Forever wants to inflict upon me?
Am I in hell? Is that it? Did I bring this upon myself? Do I deserve to watch their misery while others get to cross over quietly and move on to the afterlife?
I already told you, I know how this will play out.
I know my mother will be distraught and my father stony-faced and silent. But I can’t help feeling there’ll be some guilt in the mix, and I’m not sure I understand why. And what of my brothers? Will Peter ever show his face to me again?
Why does he feel the need to mask himself? What is he hiding?
Perhaps it’s time to shine a light on Pete. We’re highlighting all the potential suspects, so why should he miss out? He’s acting the dodgiest of all.
You haven’t met Peter yet, at least not properly. You haven’t seen his face. He’s a good-looking man, always was the better looking of the brothers. I wonder if that’s why Paul decided to marry the first girl he met because he never expected to do any better and why Pete can’t help but splash his good looks about, knowing it won’t last.
He was such a party boy, too, our Pete. Went through a terribly rebellious stage, expelled from one school and caught twice with Ecstasy, once at a music festival, another time while underage at a nightclub. Dad wanted to ship him off to Gramps, stick him in the middle of nowhere and give him a wake-up call, but Mum wouldn’t hear of it. She needed him close. Hugs and home cooking, remember? They were her remedy. And, like the topic of Nevercloud, Pete’s antics became a thorn in their already prickly relationship.
They argued over it so often I grew to despise my brother, and I remember bursting into his room one day, waking him from a deep sleep, and demanding he stop being such a knucklehead. I was probably about ten, so you’ll forgive the lingo.
“You’re ruining everything!” I said, my voice low, lest I set off another parental argument. “You need to start being a bit nicer, please.”
“Oh piss off, Maisie,” was his only response before he turned over and hid beneath his duvet.
That’s when I set about trying to save him. I watched shows where naughty kids were sent away to be straightened out by stern strangers, and I picked up brochures on schizophrenia and ADHD and behavioural management “issues.” I didn’t have the slightest clue what was wrong with Peter; I just needed it to be fixed. I knew if I could somehow solve it, everything would be fine again. We could all go back to normal; Mum and Dad would have one less thing to fight about.
And then somehow, irrespective of all that, it fixed itself. Pete stumbled into the stock market and found he had a knack, and the next thing you know he’s climbing the corporate ladder and straightening himself out, then getting a job in London and moving away entirely.
But now I have to wonder about those drugs the SOCOs found stashed down the toilet and whether they belonged to Pete.
Is he back to his old tricks? Or has he never stopped?
More importantly, did I catch him with the drugs and go ballistic. Perhaps I had flashbacks of that awful time when we were kids, perhaps I didn’t “piss off” this time and let him get away with it. Perhaps, this time, it set off a violent argument.
I know it all sounds so ridiculous—my brother wouldn’t shoot me, surely?—but he has a history of drug use and he’s the one who fled the scene before my body was discovered. He’s also the one who hid for hours not answering his mobile. And he’s the one—the only one—who cannot bring himself to show me his face.
Una may be hiding her words, but it’s Peter who’s acting like a killer.
“Stop it, you’re killing me.”
This is Tessa, and she doesn’t sound at all threatened. She’s whispering to Roco, a sneaky smile on her lips, yet unlike others, she’s clearly happy for me to listen in.
Is she being cruel or just inconsiderate?
They’re at the back door of her house now, cigarettes in hand, and all he’s doing is looking at her. Just staring straight at her while she blushes crimson under his gaze. And I can’t quite bring myself to blame her. It’s like his eyes contain a hundred volts of electricity that’s zinging off her and back again.
I can feel the zap from up here—can you feel it? For the first time in my life I understand chemistry. Wow, they really do have something, don’t they? I never realised.
How long did they feel it? Have they been hiding it from me? Or have they already acted upon it, the surge too strong to resist?
“You got the message?” he says, and her face crumples a little.
“You know I did.”
“What do you think?”
Her eyes slide away, and she stares down at her cigarette. “I think it feels like a betrayal.”
“But Maisie—”
“I think Maisie would be gutted if she were here now, Roco. I think it’s a tense time. I don’t think anyone’s thinking straight.”
She’s looking at him now, and he’s nodding as he drags on his smoke. He exhales and says, “We’ll wait a bit then.”
Sure you will, I think. I’ll give you a day or two before you’re ripping each other’s clothes off. I know I should still be jealous, bursting with recriminations and rage, yet this seems so inevitable, like my death is the only holdup.
A burst of giggling erupts from inside. It’s Leslie, flirting with Jonas again.
“Want me to get rid of the others?” he says, his thick eyebrows shooting up and down, and Tessa is looking at him sideways again.
“It’s not going to happen, Roco. At least not tonight.”
Now he blushes, and I wish it was from a smack across the face. It might all be inevitable, but I’m not even in the ground yet, mate.
As if overhearing me, he says, “I’m not talking about that… Jesus, Tess.” He sweeps a hand through his hair, looks sheepish. “I just mean, well, how annoying is Leslie tonight? And Jonas. What a dickhead.”
“I thought he was your new bromance.”
“Was, until I realised he was a wanker. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugs, drags on her cigarette. “Most people work it out eventually.” She blows out a plume of smoke. “What made you twig?”
“Something he said the other day, something about Maisie.” He sniffs. “About why they never stuck. He’s a prick.”
Not that you can talk, Roco darling, I think.
She nods. “Yep, the king of them.”
“You gonna warn Leslie off? She’s obviously got the hots for ‘Hottie’.”
Tessa’s eyes squint, and it’s not from the smoke. “I thought Leslie was annoying you tonight.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t deserve him. No one does.”
Then Tessa nods vigorously like they’re talking about Ted Bundy.
I haven’t got time to keep listening or even digest what it is they’re discussing because I am drawn back home, back to the pool where some splashing has started up.
Paul is now dangling his naked feet in the water, kicking them up and down like a toddler might, and someone is sitting beside him, her legs scrunched up into her chest watching him. It’s Paul’s wife, Jan. When did she show up?
“I’m gonna miss her,” says Paul, “as infuriating as she could be.”
Jan smiles sadly. “Me too, even though she couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
“She liked you!” he rails, but we both know that’s not true.
We all know I wasn’t Jan’s biggest fan. I found her a bit much.
My brother is married to the nicest woman in the world. On paper. She’s all smiley and earth motherly and stuff, but it’s those exact same traits that make you want to smack her across the mouth. And she’s boring. Breathtakingly, unforgivably dull. Like I said before, she has no career to speak of, and the way she rabbits on and on about those kids, like no one’s ever reproduced before and isn’t she a champion? Well, that crap wears thin very quickly when you don’t have kids, I can tell you that. But for the most part, we got along fine and I know she adores my lump of a brother. I know that much. So why did she make my skin crawl?
My mother always said I loved my big brothers too much to ever accept a woman in their lives, and it was certainly not an issue I had to worry about with Peter—as you know, he had scores of women, but they never lasted long enough to get to home base.
Paul only ever had Jan.
Is that why I disliked her, I wonder now? Because she lassoed my brother before he had a chance to live his life? Or was it because she dragged him away from me and our games of hide-and-seek?
“We should’ve put her up,” says Jan now, peeling her sandals off and dipping her toes tentatively into the water. “We should have insisted she come live with us.”
Paul looks incredulous at that. “I thought you didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t think it’d be fair to the kids, and God knows we don’t have the space, but now…” She sighs. “Maybe if we had.”
“Maybe she’d have a bullet through her head in our living room! In front of our kids!”
Jan shudders. “You think? Really?” Then she frowns, swallows, turns to face him. “You didn’t have anything to do with…” She falters. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
His jaw drops; he looks outraged.
“Sorry,” she says quickly, “it’s just the way you and Peter were talking the other night… I… I thought.”
“No! Never! I couldn’t! I wouldn’t. I’m not like that!” And then, glancing around, he drops his voice and says, “You didn’t say anything to the cops, did you?”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course not.”
“Because I didn’t.”
“What about Peter?”
He clenches his lips shut.
“Paul?” she says, horrified.
“I don’t know, honey, I honestly don’t know. But I didn’t! You have to believe me.”
“I do believe you,” she whispers. She bumps his shoulder with her own and then says something rather curious. “You don’t have the guts, my love.”
He looks at her again, but he’s less outraged now than wounded. He looks like he’s just been stabbed through the heart.
I remember the exact moment when Paul and Jan skipped into the lounge room and told my parents they were getting hitched. I was just thirteen, and I was bitterly disappointed. It was a Saturday evening, and we were halfway through that Ben Stiller movie There’s Something About Mary. You know the one where Cameron Diaz plays a character we’re all supposed to adore but I always thought was ditzy and annoying? So I wasn’t too perturbed when Paul burst into the room, grabbed the remote control, and pressed the Pause button.
“We’re engaged!” he said, holding Jan’s ring finger up as evidence while she tittered and blushed beside him.
I remember drawing in breath and darting my eyes to my parents, expecting fireworks and not of the good kind, but that didn’t happen. My mother jumped up and swept Jan into a hug, and my father pumped Paul’s fist as though he was the lucky bastard who’d just scored Cameron Diaz!
Paul was nineteen. Jan his first and only girlfriend. How could they want that for him? How could anyone? I was young, but even then I suspected he was giving up so much. Unlike our rebellious older brother, Paul hadn’t done anything remotely interesting, and now he was about to get married? I was overwhelmed with sadness. But I was brought up properly, so I feigned delight and jumped up and offered my own hugs.
It was only later, after the happy couple had dashed off to the share the news down at the local pub, that I asked Mum about it. I fully expected the mask to drop and the truth to come out. I expected words like “too young” and “wild oats” and “we have to put a stop to this nonsense!”
Except she was even more gushing. “Oh it’s so wonderful, so fantastic! I couldn’t be happier!” And she actually sounded sincere.
“But Jan’s so boring,” I wailed. “And… and I thought he’d travel and stuff.”
“They can still travel, darling, they’re not getting locked up.” She laughed, and then her smile straightened a little and she added, “Jan may seem boring to you, darling, but she’ll be good for Paul; she’ll take care of him. And that’s what Paul needs. She’s perfect.”
Really? I understood the sentiment, but wasn’t it Peter who needed a caretaker not the boring middle brother? Paul didn’t look like he’d ever get up to any kind of mischief. He was already good. He was better than good; he was as boring as Jan.
I didn’t understand any of it at the time, but over the years, as I heard stories of Paul losing his wallet and locking his keys in the car and being useless with the household budget and the washing and cooking, all told with peels of laughter from the “better half,” I started to comprehend.
Paul didn’t score himself a bride so much as a babysitter. It wasn’t that he’d found the perfect match. He’d just found someone willing and able to run his life and, failing that, rescue him when required. And I don’t know why that irked me so much because, as I said before, I could see the value in a babysitter, at least I could for Peter.
So why couldn’t I be happy for them?
It seems to me there are two types of people in this world—those who wave their hands in rough seas and those who dive in to save them. I know it’s hard to picture now, but I used to be the latter.
It’s the reason I rescued stray animals and took a job as a personal assistant and stayed friends with Tessa despite everything. I know my mother likes to repeat that story of her rescuing me at the age of four, but the truth is I rescued her right back. I know it’s a corny line from another Hollywood flick, but I paid my dues over and over with Tessa. She wasn’t the most popular girl in school, but I stuck by her side. She went through a bulimic phase, but I pulled her through, sticking to her like glue until I knew every meal had been properly digested (that’s a lot of loitering outside toilet cubicles, folks!). When her dad cleared out, I practically moved into her bedroom until she could get through the night without bawling. I did the same when her first love tore her heart to shreds and when she didn’t get the university entrance score she was expecting and when she got fired from that crappy job she couldn’t stand but which still seemed to cut her like a knife.
Tessa was always the more vulnerable of the two of us, and I know now that’s why my mother would tell that silly little story of Tessa pulling me out from behind the paint stand. It was about boosting Tessa’s self-esteem, not undermining mine. My mother was a rescuer too, and she rescued Tessa almost as often as I did (why else would she let me sleep at another girl’s house so often?).
And I guess that’s why Mum welcomed Jan into our life, because now she wouldn’t need to look out for Paul quite so much. At least one son had his own lifeguard. Pity about the other.
But all this has got me thinking, and no doubt you’re wondering the same thing. When did I switch from the lifeguard to the one madly waving? When did I morph back into the girl behind the easel? When did I become so needy that so many people just assumed I’d put a gun to my head and pull the trigger?
I think about my job now. The one I lost six months ago. Was that the catalyst?
I’ve been avoiding this subject—I know I have—but perhaps it’s time to ’fess up. I told you I was a PA and that I really loved the role, so why did I leave? Why did I do that?
Because, dear reader, twelve months before that, I began to let the balls drop.
It all started with a missing client file—I still can’t imagine where I filed it—that was punctuated with several smashed cups and occasional sobbing sessions in the ladies bathroom, and it ended with my resignation, which I’m mortified to say was accepted hastily with a bottle of warm champagne and a Good Luck! card that was inked with relief.
I was no longer the rescuer, and no one seemed very willing to rescue me back.