Five days had passed since our last conversation. It was early afternoon and I was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the doorbell to ring.
‘What could a lawyer possibly do for me?’ I’d asked him. ‘Those people who had my parents killed, they are the law. They make the rules. There is no escape.’
‘You can’t think like that,’ he said. He was shocked and annoyed. ‘Why do you think a job like mine even exists? Horrific things like this happen way more often that you can imagine. Who do you think is the biggest perpetrator of human rights and ecological violations? The giant corporations. The government. Its intelligence agencies. It’s all tied up. It’s all the same mechanism. It’s because of that that my job has to even exist in the first place. I don’t understand why you haven’t done anything about any of this before.’
He sat there shaking his head as though he was disappointed in me. It made me angry.
‘You just really don’t get it, do you? They have all the power. They always win. What can anyone possibly do? It’s like… we’re tiny… and they’re huge… it’s impossible!’
‘No,’ he said, ‘no, no, no. You just can’t think like that. It’s that kind of thought that gives them power.’
‘I’m sorry Jack, but I don’t believe you,’ I said. ‘I think you’re being idealistic.’
He looked so offended.
‘And I think you don’t know enough about the work I do,’ he said.
I wanted to believe him. I really wanted to believe him.
‘Silvia,’ he said, ‘I’d like to take your case on.’
A thousand thoughts ran through my head and I didn’t know which one to listen to. A case. My case?
‘Jack, no one knows any of this except you. Don’t you get it? Only you. And I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t even know why I told you.’
‘Look, listen to me – no one else needs to know about any of this until I have it figured out.’
I was shaking my head but I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘You’ve been too scared to go to anyone all this time, haven’t you? But you don’t even know who you’re afraid of in this situation!’
‘Jack please, I really don’t want to talk about this anymore.’
‘I just want you to know that this is different.’
‘What do you mean? What’s different? What are you talking about?’
‘Well, you didn’t actively go and seek out some kind of help, did you? You’re scared of having the responsibility in all of this. You were, understandably, scared of making that leap all by yourself.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Well this is different, because it’s my decision, not yours. It’s my responsibility, not yours. You can forget you ever told me any of this. Only when I come up with something will we revisit it, okay? In the meantime carry on living your secret life as you’ve always wanted.’ He paused. ‘But you haven’t, have you?’
‘Haven’t what?’
‘You didn’t really think that you’d be able to live like this for the rest of your life, did you?’
It felt like he was interrogating me. Why was he suddenly so sure of all these things? He didn’t know me.
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘Silvia, you chose to tell me this for a reason. You made a decision to start finding out the truth.’
*
The doorbell rang at exactly 2pm. I’d needed a few days alone to calm down and to think.
‘So this is what we do,’ said Jack, once we’d sat down on the sofa. ‘We stay put, you do things as usual, and in the meantime I’ll start looking into things for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t thank me, I haven’t done anything yet.’
‘Well actually it looks like you have,’ I said, fiddling about with a few documents he’d laid out on the coffee table.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘think of it as a favour you’re doing me. Some nutjob lawyers from my field spend their whole lives waiting or looking for a case like this. Seriously.’
He laughed and so did I – a little nervously perhaps, but I laughed. He was making me look at things in new light. I already felt more removed from everything that had happened to me, like a character from a film. Like I was watching a story unfold about someone else, not me. It felt good. It felt empowering.
‘Okay,’ he continued, ‘so, we keep doing everything as normal, going about our business as usual, unless…’ he stopped, ‘unless something happens.’ He paused again and looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Any inkling,’ he said, ‘any inkling you get that something’s changed, then you use this phone,’ he said, looking down at the two phones he’d put on the coffee table. ‘It’s prepaid and you’ll have to keep it charged, switched on and with you all the time.’
His face was stone serious. He handed me one of the phones and slid the charger across the coffee table towards me. As I grasped the phone in my hand, my heart suddenly sunk. The realness of all of this was hitting me.
‘And,’ he continued, ‘you send me a message, mine’s the only number stored in it, and you say something trivial like, “See you at five on Thursday.” What that message will mean is that as soon as I get it, we drop what we’re doing, go home, get our bags and then we meet at the Westfield Horton Plaza Shopping Mall, and from there…’ he paused, ‘we hit the road.’
I burst out laughing and shook my head. Then I stopped. He was being serious. There was silence for a moment as we both contemplated those four last iconic words he’d said, and the actual reality that would come with them if his plan ever came to be. We hit the road.
‘It has to be as soon as possible after the message is sent though,’ he said breaking the silence with a hint of urgency. ‘That’s important. We don’t want to be hanging around, because that’s just too dodgy. It shouldn’t take too long, right? To stop what we’re doing, pick up our bags and get there? Right?’
He was looking at me. Fuck. He wanted an answer.
‘I… I don’t know,’ I said. My mind was racing with all this information. He was speaking so fast, I could barely take all of it in.
‘The Horton Plaza Westfield has a twenty-four hour gym, so whatever time we’d end up meeting wouldn’t look strange. People go there at all kinds of times. So we meet outside the gym. Do you know it? Have you been to that mall?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, I’d been there just once before, ‘it’s the one with the kind of trippy buildings.’
‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ He paused for a second as though he’d gotten sidetracked by his own thoughts. ‘Good,’ he continued, ‘so whatever happens, don’t take a lot with you, just a backpack or something, you know, something that could pass for a gym bag. And come dressed in gym wear.’
Suddenly a wave of dread hit me. This all seemed so uncomfortably real. It must have shown on my face.
‘This is all just in case, don’t forget,’ he said.
‘You… you told me it was unlikely.’
Just the other day he’d made me feel silly for my apparently overblown paranoia, saying it was unlikely anyone was still watching me, that anyone would find anything out. But now… now he was coming out with all this?
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘of course it is. I’m just being hyper cautious, just in case. It’s good to have a plan. Chances are no one is watching you or me at all, and to be honest that’s the most likely scenario. I really don’t think they are.’
He looked at me in a way that reassured me. I felt a little better. He had a way of suddenly changing his whole demeanour and with it making me feel immediately better. My body responded to his. It was strange, the weird way I had suddenly felt so relaxed when I first drew him. And surely he knew best. He was a lawyer after all.
‘Text me tomorrow from your usual phone asking me if I’m free for another modelling session. Needless to say, make the text seem as normal as any you’ve ever sent.’
I nodded.
‘We can discuss things further next time. I should go now,’ he said, and he got up to leave.
We walked towards the door without looking at each other.
‘Thank you,’ I said, just before reaching the door.
‘You need to stop saying that!’ he smiled, ‘Remember, we’re both doing each other a favour.’ And after a pause he quietly added, ‘Pack your bags tonight and have them ready just in case. And start withdrawing as much cash as you can.’
‘What? Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are we crazy?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled.