The Housemate

by Sarah Bailey

  ‘This is incredible.’ Cooper holds the diary in front of him like a Holy Grail.

  ‘I’ll order some more tea.’

  The afternoon sun redirects off the venetian blinds, and swords of light hit their table as they read. They make notes and occasional comments, but mostly they read in silence, side by side, tracing over Isabelle’s version of the past.

  ‘Look at this,’ Oli says. ‘Isabelle thought that Melanie from Calamity Jane’s was full of shit.’ She points to the notes where Isabelle has written: Melanie can’t confirm claims. Who was the original source? No evidence E was ever there.

  ‘But why would she lie?’ Cooper asks.

  ‘To make the girls seem like trouble,’ Oli replies. ‘And maybe to suggest that Evelyn’s death was linked to the prostitute murders from the year before.’

  ‘If that’s true, it might mean there really is more to this whole thing. That type of cover-up seems pretty sophisticated.’

  ‘That’s what I’m starting to think. Although Bowman was pretty sure that Evelyn had been linked to the club.’ She looks down at the notes. ‘Isabelle might have been totally off base. I guess we need to keep that in mind. These are just her theories.’

  Cooper nods. ‘It’s hard not to see it as a flashing arrow pointing to a clue though, huh?’

  Oli smiles. ‘Yep.’ Her smile turns to a frown when she remembers what Bowman said. ‘We also need to consider that Isabelle wasn’t entirely above board.’

  Cooper looks shocked. ‘You think she was corrupt?’

  ‘Not necessarily corrupt. But she might have been influenced or pressured by the wrong people. We just don’t have context is all I mean.’

  They fall into silence. Oli can tell Cooper is worried that he might be reading the musings of a dirty cop.

  There are bank account balances and phone numbers. Isabelle made notes about a website called stkildasitters.com.au, which Oli types into her phone. All she gets is an error message. Next she tries the archive site but has no luck there either.

  ‘I know some guys who might be able to trace the old site,’ Cooper murmurs.

  Two pages later, Isabelle has written: BS jobs. Link between quitting other jobs and increase in their spending. New bed (N) and new computer (A). Nothing in bank accounts + still collecting gov money. McCrae?

  Oli sits up straight, neurons firing. These scrawled notes are only half the story—she’d give anything to know what Isabelle was thinking.

  ‘How long was this before she died?’ Cooper asks.

  ‘Six years.’

  ‘God, I remember some of these other cases. It’s weird to think we know what ended up happening in a few of them, but she never did.’

  Oli feels a stab of guilt at sharing this private part of Isabelle. She would understand—she would trust Cooper. And she would want the truth to come out. The thought arrives from nowhere, but somehow Oli knows it’s true.

  She refocuses and reads a page of notes about a web platform and file transfers. Then there’s a list of names she doesn’t recognise relating to the suspicious death of a man in St Albans.

  Her eyelids start to droop. She needs a coffee. She shifts position and has more tea. She pulls out the 2011 diary and opens it.

  ‘Holy shit!’ exclaims Cooper, a few moments later. He jabs at the page and grabs her forearm. ‘There’s a note here, look. ES babysat in Malvern area. LC? Holy shit, do you think she means Louise Carter?’

  Oli’s heart starts hammering as she looks to where he’s pointing, but her mind is fixed on what she just read: something she missed when she read this page last night, battling to keep her eyes open, in dark-blue ink on the Friday afternoon after Isabelle died are the words 1 pm, Noel & Young Lawyers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SUNDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2015

  OLI DRIVES AROUND THE METICULOUSLY MANICURED BOULEVARDS of Brighton Cemetery for almost twenty minutes, craning her neck to read the custom street signs: Breeze Lane, Ocean Road, but no Saltwater Drive. Giving up, she parks outside a building with Information written across the wall. She really should just leave, but the ferocious urge to be here has been gnawing at her ever since the idea speared into her consciousness while she sat with Cooper in Chili Town yesterday.

  Noel & Young Lawyers specialise in divorce. Oli knows this because Lily has frequently raged about how much money Shaun has paid them to settle things with Rebecca. Lying awake in the early hours, Oli conjured up reasons for Isabelle to have an appointment there—reasons that weren’t related to ending her marriage. A case she was working on? Or was she going to support a friend? But none of those possibilities seemed right. Oli had known the truth the moment she saw those words: just before she died, Isabelle was planning to divorce Dean or vice versa.

  It’s hot inside the building, stale air buzzing noisily from a vent in the ceiling. Oli approaches the information desk and gives Isabelle’s name to a kid in a suit who has a bleeding pimple on his chin. With an orange highlighter he draws a few lines on an A4 map and hands it to her without uttering a word.

  A little further along there’s a cafe packed full of people—most of whom, Oli notes absently, aren’t wearing black. She glances outside at the drizzle and decides to order a coffee. More caffeine, just what I need, she thinks wryly, smiling at an older lady who is sitting by herself and eating a large cupcake topped with pink icing.

  Back in the car, Oli holds the map in one hand. Left, right, right, left until she arrives at the base of a green hill dotted with graves. Double-checks the map. This is it, with the impossibly perfect lawns and the relentless chirping of birds. She plods up the knoll, clutching her oat slice and coffee, half expecting to find that there’s been some mistake, that Isabelle is not here after all, that she never was. But then Oli sees it, the bed of quartz under a giant weeping willow.

  ISABELLE ANNE YARDLEY

  1970—2011

  Beloved wife, mother and daughter.

  No mention of her being a detective. At the head of the slab there’s a posy of blue flowers and a huge bouquet of dying tulips, identical to the ones Dean often buys for Oli.

  She looks around. The girls said Mary comes here every Sunday at lunchtime. It’s midday.

  Light-headed, Oli takes a seat on a nearby bench, eats and waits. As she stares at Isabelle’s grave, memories roll through her mind of the day Dean’s wife died, how confusing it was. She swallows a sob, trying to quell unexpected emotion.

  ‘I certainly didn’t expect to see you here.’

  Oli whirls around.

  Mary Masterton is staring at her daughter’s grave, lips pursed. She is dressed for another era, or perhaps another setting. The collar of her ivory blouse is high under a navy blazer; jodhpurs grip her slender legs, and tiny gold buckles sit on each side of her leather boots. Sharp cheekbones stand to attention, her thick dark hair glossy and curling obediently against her neck.

  Oli wipes coffee from her sleeve and wrist, her pulse racing.

  ‘Or maybe it makes perfect sense.’ Mary marches over to the bench and sits down with such force that it shakes.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Oli doesn’t know what else to say. How can she explain the urge that brought her here? ‘The twins told me you come here on Sundays.’

  Mary clenches her jaw and doesn’t say anything.

  Oli falters. ‘Should I go?’

  ‘Stay.’ It feels like an order.

  ‘I don’t really know why I’m here,’ Oli admits.

  ‘That, at least, is obvious.’ Mary’s tone is droll. ‘I suspect it has something to do with confronting the ghosts in your life.’

  Oli feels disoriented, as if she’s on the verge of waking from a vivid dream.

  ‘Do you smoke?’ Mary pulls a packet from her jacket pocket, lights one and raises a groomed eyebrow.

  Oli stutters. ‘I used to, a long time ago.’

  ‘It’s like riding a bike. You’ll remember.’ Mary holds out a cigarette.

  Oli accepts it and
tilts forward so Mary can light the tip. Their eyes lock; hers are the same pale blue as her daughter’s and granddaughters’. The cigarettes are strong, and Oli retches slightly as the smoke hits her lungs. ‘God, this takes me back,’ she says in an attempt to keep up the façade of being a non-smoker.

  ‘To happier times?’ inquires Mary.

  Oli shrugs awkwardly.

  ‘I found marijuana in her schoolbag when she was fifteen,’ says Mary, squinting at Isabelle’s grave. ‘I was so angry, I grounded her for a month.’ Mary sucks hard on the cigarette, her carefully lipsticked mouth puckering like that of a fish. ‘Of course, I couldn’t care less what she smoked now, as long as she was here.’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ Oli says feebly, struggling to align this knowledge with the pure mental image she has of Isabelle.

  Mary snorts politely, dropping the butt onto the dirt and smothering it with her heel. ‘I didn’t want her to be a cop either. Problem was, she was too old to be grounded by then.’

  A raindrop hits the tip of Oli’s cigarette, which fizzes softly.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Mary hisses at the sky.

  ‘Wait here.’ Oli runs to the car, grabs a golf umbrella from the boot and holds it above the two of them. She finishes her cigarette and drops it on the ground next to Mary’s. Extinguishes it with her shoe.

  Mary asks, ‘How do you think my grandchildren are?’

  Oli blows out the last of the smoke, adjusting her grip on the umbrella. ‘They seem okay.’

  ‘Strange little girls.’

  Oli shifts her eyes sideways. Mary looks like she’s in a trance. A sparrow drops from a nearby tree and hops madly along the grass to Isabelle’s grave, where it dances in tiny circles.

  ‘They miss her,’ blurts Oli, tears welling in her eyes. ‘They really miss their mother.’

  Mary turns to look at her.

  Oli wipes her eyes, mortified. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m getting upset.’

  Looking back at the grave, Mary says, ‘Well, if you’re going to cry, this is the place, Olivia.’

  Oli doesn’t bother to correct her. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And it can’t be easy for you. My Isabelle was quite the package.’

  Oli’s tongue is thick in her mouth. ‘Was she happy?’ she asks quietly. ‘With Dean?’

  Mary makes an odd snorting sound and leans back against the wooden slats. ‘Was she happy? No, no, I don’t think she was. But she was very private, even with me.’

  ‘Did she ever say she was going to leave him?’

  ‘No.’ Mary shakes her head. ‘Not explicitly, but I’m sure she thought about it. Deep down they were really quite different. And things had been strained ever since the IVF.’

  Oli blinks.

  ‘Probably before that, really,’ Mary muses. ‘Dean worried about her police work. It was one of the only things he and I agreed on.’

  ‘He said she was thinking of quitting,’ Oli manages to say.

  ‘I doubt that,’ Mary says dismissively. She crosses her legs. ‘Anyway, I suppose you’ll want to have your own children. How old are you anyway, thirty-five?’

  ‘Thirty-nine,’ Oli murmurs.

  Mary makes a sympathetic sound. ‘Will you try IVF?’

  A man, woman and teenage girl walk across the grass a few metres away, heads bent, faces grim. The man is holding a bunch of daffodils.

  ‘I don’t, I’m not …’ Oli stops, suddenly conscious of how bizarre this conversation is.

  The man places the flowers on top of a grave, and the teenage girl wraps an arm around him.

  ‘Well,’ sniffs Mary, ‘I must admit infertility is not a topic I’m very familiar with. I got pregnant just looking at William.’ She points past Isabelle’s grave. ‘He’s over there. Been dead for almost twenty years now.’ With another sniff, she adds, ‘Both my older girls were the same, pregnant at the drop of a hat. And I’m sure Isabelle would have been like that too.’

  The man is crying now, his shoulders shaking as he kneels on the grave in front of the daffodils.

  ‘But she wasn’t.’ Oli’s blood is ice.

  ‘No, and it was hard on her. She never complained, but I could tell. She had the girls in the end, of course, so it was obviously worth it, but she had to manage Dean’s feelings of inadequacy on top of it all.’ Mary recrosses her legs and smooths the material of her jodhpurs. ‘Something you should be prepared to navigate.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Oli asks, needing Mary to spell it out.

  She pats her hair, even though every strand is perfect. ‘It’s supposed to be the woman’s issue if children don’t miraculously appear, so when the man is infertile, his ego takes a beating.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LOUISE CARTER VANISHED WITHOUT AT RACE. ONCE MICHAEL Carter’s brother was cleared, the cops had no suspects and no leads. The little girl had been taken from her bedroom, through a window widely reported to have been left open but which was eventually shown to have most likely been tampered with. In the wake of her disappearance, every aspect of the lives of Michael and April Carter was scrutinised. Why had they moved from South Africa to Australia in the first place? Why hadn’t they been back since? Why had Michael Carter taken up a board position with a children’s charity? Had April really swallowed a sleeping tablet that night? But in the end, it all amounted to nothing. The vicious swell of judgement eventually fell away, leaving the bereft family alone to deal with the unfathomable loss of their little girl.

  Until now, at no point has Oli come across a suggestion that the case could be linked to the Housemate Homicide.

  ‘I spoke to her!’ Cooper exclaims when Oli answers the phone on Bluetooth as she turns out of the cemetery to head home. ‘April Carter. I contacted her through the Missing Person’s Facebook Group last night. She called me about an hour ago.’

  Oli tries to focus on what he’s saying, even though her stomach feels hollowed out. Mary’s words haunt her.

  ‘Does April remember Evelyn?’ Oli manages to say.

  ‘No,’ Cooper says, slightly less exuberant. ‘But she said they used new babysitters just before Louise went missing. Their nanny had fallen through, and they got a flier in their letterbox advertising local sitters, so they decided to give them a go. It was all through email apparently, a Hotmail address. Before you ask, yes, I checked if they still have any of the correspondence. They don’t but they seem pretty sure.’

  ‘But none of them were Evelyn?’

  ‘April only remembers one babysitter they used, and she was Japanese. But it was April’s mother who met the other one. April and her husband were away that weekend, and her mother was staying with the kids. She had plans on the Sunday, so April arranged a sitter.’

  ‘Is her mother still around? Maybe she can ID Evelyn?’

  ‘I already asked her,’ Cooper trills. ‘She thinks it’s possible, says the girl she met definitely looked similar, but it was only a brief meeting. She wasn’t using the name Evelyn, though.’

  ‘Does April’s mum remember the name she gave?’

  ‘She thinks it might have been Jacqui.’

  Oli thoughts rattle painfully. ‘Alright. What are you thinking?’ She indicates to switch lanes, dropping her arm to the right before pulling back when an elfin blonde in a white ute beeps her horn and gives Oli a filthy look as she sails past.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. What are your next steps?’

  ‘I was going to see if I can find anything else about the girls’ babysitting jobs. There must be people out there who know something. Pia’s going to help me.’ He pauses. ‘Unless you think I should be doing something else?’

  ‘No, that sounds good,’ Oli says absently. Should she confront Dean? Maybe Mary doesn’t know what she’s talking about or is trying to cause trouble. But Oli recalls her conversation with Dean at Liane’s, and her stomach twists uncomfortably. She’s pretty sure Mary isn’t lying.

  ‘Episode two is sounding great,’ Cooper a
dds. ‘It was a bit hard to wrangle, but it’s almost there. And we’ve received a whole bunch of emails to the podcast address. Most are rubbish, but one or two might be worth following up. I’ll forward them to you.’

  ‘Okay, sure,’ Oli murmurs.

  ‘You have another guy who wants to take you out for dinner. Shame you’re taken, or this could be quite the dating strategy.’

  Oli’s face crumples. Her future with Dean is uncertain, something she hasn’t wanted to admit until now.

  ‘Oli? Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ she says, her voice shaking.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. I’m just tired.’

  ‘Oh my god, same. I guess it’s just all the thinking.’

  Oli can tell he’s talking quickly to cover up the awkwardness of her crying. ‘Great work, Cooper,’ she says firmly. ‘Something obviously made Isabelle draw a link between Evelyn and Louise, so hopefully we can find out what it is.’

  ‘That’s the plan,’ he says cheerfully. ‘Leave it with me—I’m not going to let this lead die, Oli. I’ll see you back at base later on. How does a six o’clock wrap-up sound? I’ll aim to have the edit ready by then.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ she says, defeated. She realises she’s happy for him to call the shots. Plus, he’s doing a good job.

  ‘Take care of yourself, okay?’ He hangs up, and the road blurs in front of her.

  At the house Oli showers again, washing the smell of Mary’s cigarettes away. Dean calls, and she lets it go to voicemail, not ready to speak to him yet. Clad in the bathrobe he bought her for Christmas, she wanders around the house. She finds a photo album on the bookshelf in the lounge and spends almost an hour poring over the pictures of Isabelle, Dean and the twins. The perfect family. Closing the album, Oli sits still, letting the sharp corner of the cover dig into her thigh.