by Anna Romer
‘That’s bullshit.’ Tom glared at her. ‘A kid goes missing for three weeks and the best you can do is heap dirt on the mother? Have you any idea why disadvantaged people attract trouble, Kendra? It’s because people like you believe they’re not worth the effort. Not worth educating, not worth listening to. Not even worth a moment of kindness. And,’ he added, gripping his crutches and hauling himself away, ‘feel free to quote me on that in your paper.’
26
‘What did she mean, you’re on a crusade?’
We had driven back to Ravensong in silence, me gripping the wheel and brooding over Kendra’s broken promise, Tom slumped in the passenger seat, glaring through the windscreen, lost in his own private world. It wasn’t until we pulled up outside the house that he finally asked.
‘She wasn’t talking about Alice, was she?’
I switched off the ignition and the Fiesta shuddered and died. ‘No.’
‘It’s related to why you blame yourself?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘Are you going to make me sit here all night playing guessing games? Because’—he reached across and gently touched my cheek—‘I will if I have to.’
‘Why do you even care?’ I moved out of reach, my words ringing loudly in the stillness. ‘No one else seems to!’
‘I care because it’s important to you.’
I flung open the door and got out, gripping my keys so hard my knuckles popped. ‘Murder, Tom. Three girls murdered, and God knows how many more were killed and their bodies never found. And now, another girl goes missing and it takes her own mother three weeks to even show concern.’ I slammed the door, and stalked away through the darkness, veering onto the path and around the side of the house. Stomping up the back verandah steps, I fell into one of the redwood chairs and glared across the dark garden.
Behind me the kitchen light went on. Tom rattled around, glasses clinking, a cupboard door whispering open and closed. He ambled out and placed a brandy bottle and two glasses on the table.
‘Drink?’
A small pathetic moon clung to the sky like a dead leaf. Out in the garden, a family of bats cried shrilly as their shadow-shapes raced over the treetops.
Tom topped both glasses, and dropped heavily into his seat. He threw back his brandy and poured another. I picked up my glass and gulped the liquor as Tom had done. It burned all the way down. I gagged, and wiped my watering eyes.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Years of practice.’ His lips twitched as he uncorked the bottle. ‘Another?’
‘No thanks,’ I croaked, slumping on my elbows. Then I released a long sigh. ‘Remember how I said that a few months before I met Alice, I’d gone through a rough patch?’
He nodded.
I fiddled with my empty glass. ‘One rainy day in April of 1996, I went into the reserve alone. A school excursion that never eventuated. I got lost, and while I was trying to find my way back to the campground, I met a man. He was holding an axe, and when he spoke to me I got scared and ran. I must have tripped and hit my head, because I don’t remember what happened next. Just that I woke up in a dark place and couldn’t get out. I was trapped there. I thought it was a cave, but now I’m not so sure. I’m starting to think it was a man-made place.’
‘That’s why the caravan spooked you?’
I nodded. ‘I was there for three days. I don’t know how I escaped. Some hikers found me wandering near Pilliga’s Lookout, but when I told everyone what happened, no one believed me. Kept prisoner for three days in a cave? It sounded absurd. I went back to school and got on with things. Then I met Alice, and in a very short time we became like sisters. So I confided in her what had happened.’
‘And she wanted to find the cave?’
I took a deep breath, then eased it out. ‘She made this crazy promise that we would. We picked a day, but I couldn’t go through with it. The thought of going back there, of seeing the place again . . .’ A shiver passed over my skin. Tom filled my glass and I sipped the brandy this time, savouring the slow burn. ‘So Alice went by herself that day. And she never came back.’
Tom splashed more of the golden liquid into his glass, and then topped mine. ‘What about Jasper?’
‘When they found Alice’s body a month later, the town went into a sort of meltdown. Emotions ran high. The community demanded a killer be found and put behind bars. Suddenly, everyone was very interested in the man I’d seen at the gorge. Jasper was picked up a couple of months later in the reserve. He claimed he’d been collecting firewood. Winter was coming, he told them, and the family business was entering its busiest time of year. He remembered seeing me that day. He’d been out early and got caught in the downpour. He realised I was lost and tried to help me, but I ran away. As it turned out, thirty-two-year-old Jasper had previous form. At the age of sixteen he’d been charged with the indecent assault of two schoolgirls. Touching inappropriately, exposing himself.’
‘Charming.’
I looked at Tom. ‘But not necessarily a precursor for murder.’
‘Still, a record like that makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’
‘Jasper never confessed to killing Alice. And his dad, Roy, has rallied behind him all these years, insisting he’s innocent. Roy told me Jasper was hopeless around people. Out of his depth. An oddball, I guess. And those who knew Jasper said he didn’t have it in him to kill.’
‘How did they convict him?’
‘When they searched his house they found an axe, ropes . . . and a yellow hair ribbon. Jasper said he found it at the campground. But Alice’s mother claimed it was her daughter’s. Jasper was a simple guy. A loner; uncomfortable around women his own age. This had everyone nodding their heads – he fitted their idea of an unstable predator. Besides, the town was eager to put the nightmare to bed. They’d found the monster. Justice was done and everyone could sleep peacefully again.’
‘But you weren’t convinced?’
‘At first I was. Jasper was definitely the scruffy young guy I encountered in the forest that day. I gave my statement, believing that Jasper was the one who abducted me. Jasper was the last person I remembered seeing before waking in the cave, so I told them it was him. I said I was absolutely sure. But I wasn’t, not really. And then after . . .’
Tom waited, then frowned across at me. ‘After?’
I examined the golden liquor at the bottom of my glass. ‘I wanted it to be him. I wanted someone to blame for what had happened to Alice. Someone other than myself.’
• • •
Later in bed, I snuggled against Tom’s warm back. The brandy had turned sour in my stomach, and Kendra’s words replayed like a stuck recording: The Pitneys of this world are not newsworthy, Abby. No one wants to read about people like them. They’re a burden on the system and are better off ignored.
I rested my forehead against Tom’s shoulder, breathing the scent of his skin, but it didn’t soothe me. Shayla had been missing for three weeks – twenty-one days, unseen by her family or friends, calls going unanswered, texts not replied to – and her mother had only gone to the police this afternoon. It seemed that Kendra wasn’t the only one who believed the rubbish she spouted – that ‘problems’ like Shayla were best disregarded. Where was Shayla now? Holed up with friends, punishing the world with her silence? Lying dead in a gully somewhere? Or was she trapped in the belly of a dirty, dank prison, growing hungrier and weaker and more terrified with every passing hour, believing that everyone had forgotten her?
I couldn’t forget. How could I when there was a part of me, deep in my core, that was trapped in that dark place with her?
Cuddling closer to Tom, I slid my arm around his middle to find his hand and nestle my own around it. He gripped my fingers and drew them to his furry chest, settling them over his heart. He murmured something I didn’t catch, then his body relaxed back into sleep.
I shut my eyes and willed myself into oblivion, but it skittered out of reach, leaving a black void behind
my lids. Into the void stepped Jasper Horton, walking along that rain-drenched track, the hatchet gripped in his hand as he regarded me with his kingfisher blue eyes. But then he morphed into a small, wiry version of himself, wearing horn-rims, his face framed by lank grey hair.
My word, you’ve got a hide coming round here.
I sat up and swung out of bed. Threw on my jeans and moss cardi. What was the point of trying to sleep now? I crept upstairs and retrieved my map, then wandered out to the kitchen and made a pot of Darjeeling. On the verandah, I lit a lantern and sat on the redwood bench beneath it, smoothing my map on my knees, thinking back.
I had raced through the bush that day, caring only to get far away from the hole that had trapped me. I ran for what seemed a breathless eternity, my tongue like sandpaper, my breath searing my lungs. I’d been a fit girl, accustomed to trekking through the bush with my family – but still, I was only twelve. The distance I travelled that day – running and stumbling, walking when the terrain grew too rough or too steep – could not have been more than twenty kilometres.
Two years ago, I had pencilled a big circle around the places where the girls’ bodies had been buried, and another around Pilliga’s Lookout where the hikers had found me. I’d always assumed that my cave was within the radius of those areas. But what if I was wrong?
I shook the map, straightening its folds, and studied the dotted lines of old trails that might once have accessed mines or logging pockets. The north end of the reserve was riddled with them. There was also a travelling stock route that cut through the forest southwest of Ravensong. But my map, an old one of Dad’s, dated back to the 1930s. By now the stock route would be decommissioned, and most of those old trails grown over and long forgotten. Only one thing was certain.
The reserve was huge; even if Shayla was out there, my hope of finding her was practically nil.
Tom emerged from inside the house, rumpled and sleepy. ‘No rest for the wicked.’ His words croaked out, and his eyes were ringed by shadows. Maybe he hadn’t slept so well either.
I wriggled along the bench, making room. ‘I feel so helpless. Shayla’s got to be out there somewhere. People don’t just disappear into thin air.’
Tom tucked a crocheted blanket around my shoulders and snuggled in beside me. His arm went around me and I leaned against him, relishing his warmth and solidness. For a moment I drifted in my thoughts, but as dawn started lightening the horizon, I shivered.
He glanced at me but said nothing.
I frowned. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t want to mention this, but maybe it’s time to say it.’
My shoulders wilted. ‘Yeah, I know. After three weeks, the likelihood of her still being alive is slim. Maybe even non-existent.’
‘I’m sorry, hon.’
I hated to admit defeat, but here it was, staring me in the face. ‘I can’t give up on her,’ I whispered. ‘Even if it is too late to save her, I just can’t give up. I’ve been exploring the reserve for the past two years, trying to find the cave. Mostly hoping to prove that I hadn’t dreamed it up. But what if she’s there, Tom? What if she’s in my cave or caravan or whatever it is, and I’m the only one with any chance of finding her?’
‘How can I help?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone can help her now.’
‘Abby, if anyone can find that place, it’ll be you.’
I smiled and looked at him. ‘You have a lot of faith in someone you’ve only known a few weeks.’
‘Is that all it is, a few weeks? I feel like I’ve known you a lot longer than that.’
His hair was tangled from sleep, and a tiny white feather had caught in the sandy strands near his temple, probably from his eiderdown. His mismatched pyjamas were seriously rumpled, and the sight of him – outside in the dawn cold, draped in a crocheted rug, helping me despite his fears that my quest might be pointless – touched a tender place in my heart. Smiling, I reached over and unhooked the little feather from his hair and blew it off my finger, setting it free to drift away on the morning air.
Tom’s eyes darkened and he leaned up close and claimed my lips with his mouth. Then he pulled away. ‘I’ve a sudden yearning to evaluate the condition of the grass under the magnolia tree. Care to join me?’
I knotted my fingers in his hair. ‘That’s possibly the sexiest idea I’ve ever heard.’
• • •
After breakfast, Tom retired to the library to research the Second World War. He had decided to ramp up the Frankie and Ennis romance, but move towards a more bittersweet ending. Having a girl like Frankie waltz off into the sunset with the man who kidnapped her as a child seemed somehow wrong. And as he approached the end of his novel, he wanted to do his two heroines justice.
He booted the laptop and then leaned back in his chair. Outside, he glimpsed Abby through the trees, taking off on one of her runs. Soon – in a couple of months, he hoped – he’d be joining her. His pulse spiked as he pictured her under the magnolia that morning, writhing naked in his arms on their crocheted rug, the soft morning shadows caressing her skin, the breeze teasing her nipples. Tom had trailed his mouth across the cool smoothness of her curves—
‘Whoa, steady boy.’
How was he supposed to focus on the muddy trenches of France while images of Abby held prime real estate in his brain? He clicked a link and went to the Australian War Memorial site, one of his favourite resources. But this morning it just wasn’t ringing his bells. Maybe a quick diversion? He typed in the URL for the Gundara Express. Perhaps if he re-read some of Abby’s article – most notably, the ‘glorious six foot three’ – he’d be able to get his mind back on his work?
Clicking another link to the front page headline, he found the article. His smile withered. It was Abby’s byline, and her photo – of all things, wearing the moss cardigan – but where were the words she’d written that Tom almost knew by heart?
Mega-selling true crime writer Tom Gabriel is a recluse for good reason. Not only does he detest people, but people in general tend to avoid him. His ex-wife sums it up like this: ‘Tom is a womanising drunk. He’s sickeningly full of his own importance and loves nothing more than to rubbish his fellow writers. He might be a hotshot in publishing, but in real life he resembles the criminal characters he so enjoys writing about. Bull-headed and arrogant, and, in his own words, emotionally stunted.’ Gabriel says glibly of his meteoric rise to fame and fortune: ‘I got lucky, that’s all.’
Tom made a fist and scrubbed his knuckles across his forehead. That was just the start of it. There was unflattering coverage of his divorce, speculation over his income, even gossip that he was currently dating a nineteen-year-old starlet from Adelaide. Where the hell had that come from? Oh, and a detailed account of the news camera he had smashed in a fit of public anger eight years ago. By the time he got to the final paragraph – the theory that he didn’t write his own books at all, but employed a ghost writer – Tom was ready to find a tall building to jump off. And not in any superhero kind of way. His gut was in knots, and his jaw clenched so hard his face hurt. But worst of all was the jackhammer thump of his heart as it died in his chest. Had Abby been planning to screw him over all along?
He jabbed the print button and glared at the papers spewing out. Abby’s face, now in grainy black and white, seemed to mock him. See, loser? Not such a big tough guy, after all.
His mind flashed back to eight years before, reading another article by another woman he had once loved. His disbelief and anger, the horrible vertigo of having everything he’d known and trusted ripped from under him. The way the press had swarmed like vultures, trying to take every last scrap of his dignity. And now, when he’d finally let himself trust someone again, the nightmare was back. He’d been wrong about Abby; she was no different to the others. Nothing could explain what she’d done. How she had prised out his inner secrets only to splash them across the front page.
He scraped up the article from the printer and went look
ing for her.
• • •
‘If you didn’t write it,’ Tom said tightly, ‘then who did?’
Sunlight drifted through the windows, making the lounge room appear ethereal, otherworldly. As though I was standing in a dream.
‘I’m guessing it was Kendra.’ My fingers shook as I passed the article back to Tom, my stomach in knots.
‘How could she research and write a feature in a few hours?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tom rattled the pages in his fist. ‘But it’s your byline, Abby. And half these quotes – or, should I say, misquotes – are things I’ve said since you’ve been here. How would Kendra know all that?’
I shrugged miserably, lost for words.
Tom sank onto the sofa and screwed the pages into a wad. ‘I trusted you. What a bloody fool. I told you things I’ve never told anyone. And now – all this crap about me is back on the front page. Seriously Abby, how could you do this?’
The room tunnelled around me. Tom was right to be angry. I was angry too. I wanted him to believe that I wasn’t to blame for the article; for the lies and slander. But something niggled. If only I could think straight, remember what it was.
‘Tom, why would I write all that stuff?’
‘You said yourself that your readers want dirt. Scandal, divorce, hot gossip. You said they want to read about my messy life so they feel better about their own. Well, you’ve done your job. They’ll all be congratulating themselves that they’re not total losers like that Gabriel arsehole.’
‘I’d never say those things about you.’
He glanced over at me. ‘And yet there they are in black-and-white. The online article has already gone viral. I mean, “sickeningly full of his own importance”? Is that what you really think?’
‘No!’
‘You did in the beginning.’
‘Maybe at first. But not enough to—’ I gestured at the crumpled pages.