by PJ Vye
Sunny shoved the computer away and stood again, stepped on Ipo’s tail who yelped and scurried out the way.
“Sorry boy,” she said and poured herself a large glass of wine. Half of that money was hers. She might not have earned it all, but they shared finances—that had been the agreement—and half that money was rightfully hers.
$300,000 Australian dollars.
Plus, the $25,000 cash in the bathroom.
She sat on the couch for a moment, taking it in, but then stood and paced the room again.
$325,000. Unbelievable.
Sunny drained the entire glass of wine and put it down heavily on the table, causing it to crack. Not only had he lied to her, he’d essentially been stealing from her. Maybe that was too harsh. Maybe he wanted to surprise her with a house and a nice engagement ring. A fancy wedding.
Nah.
That wasn’t Judd’s style at all.
Sunny clicked the transfer tab and placed the first account in the ‘from’ box and her joint account into the ‘to’ account. In the amount, she wrote the entire balance of the account.
$304,442.67.
Half was rightfully hers.
But he was going to keep it all, she was sure of it. Why shouldn’t she keep it first? Her fingers hovered over the enter key. He’d been lying. Why shouldn’t she steal from him?
There were so many things that could go wrong. It could need verification from his phone. The bank might send him an email. But if she was transferring into the joint account, it would look like Judd was only transferring from one of his accounts to another. Shouldn’t be any problem with that.
She pressed enter and squeezed her eyes shut protectively, as if the numbers themselves might lash out and damage her eyes.
A red box appeared. Limit of $60,000 could be transferred per day. Shit.
She changed the amount to $60,000 and tried again. “Yes!” she yelled and Ipo looked at her with wary eyes. “Now Ipo,” she said more to herself than the dog, “I’m going to pop this over into my own personal account.”
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she found her own personal account and transferred the money again. Judd made ‘allowance’ payments to her monthly so once again there should be no need for phone verification.
Again, it worked.
She thought about changing the password on his account so he wouldn’t have access but decided against it. It would request phone verification for sure and she couldn’t risk it.
She logged in then as herself and unlinked her account from his so if he did discover it, he wouldn’t be able to move it back.
She bought a ticket online to Heathrow, to fly out tomorrow at 7pm. Judd arrived home from the rig the day after tomorrow around noon. She could transfer another $60,000 at midnight and then another $60,000 in transit, provided he hadn’t noticed and changed his password by then.
The streetlight shone in her eyes through the only window in the room like it always did and she pulled down the blind absently.
Tomorrow she’d leave this place for good and it would all be over. The future didn’t seem as scary with a hundred thousand dollars in her pocket.
Thanks Judd.
She wondered what he’d be angrier about—her leaving or her taking the money.
Definitely the money.
Would he come after her? He knew where her dad lived. Maybe she shouldn’t stay with her dad. What a relief to have some choice. She’d be on her own though. No safety nets.
The thing about having Judd around was she knew someone had her back. He might not have been an overly caring man, but she always felt safer knowing she wasn’t in this world alone.
She’d have to manage by herself. Get out of her own battles. No-one to check her car tyres or remind her to clean her teeth or convince her to get up and start the day. If she didn’t have Judd to answer to, clean for, wait for, what would she do?
Ipo made a contented groaning sound and shifted in his bed.
“Come here boy,” she said, and gave him a good tummy scratch. Maybe she’d get a dog back in the UK?
Sunny messaged Mataio’s aunt.
Please collect Ipo tomorrow from my apartment. S
She tried to imagine Judd’s reaction when he got home to an empty apartment. He’d think she was out, initially. Which would be unusual in itself because she was always there to greet him after he’d been away for six weeks. Usually with his dinner cooked and the house spotless.
If Mataio turned up, he’d tell Judd what she’d been planning and that would keep him distracted for a while. How many days before he realised she’d taken all their money? She didn’t want to be anywhere near him when that happened.
She should try and get some sleep. She booked a taxi for 3pm but then changed her mind and made it for 11am. She couldn’t bare this apartment any longer.
She closed her suitcase and considered washing the dishes stacked in the sink. Better to leave the house in a mess—it looked out of character and supported the suicide story.
She called Ipo into her room and helped lift him up onto her bed. She didn’t want to be alone tonight, and the dogs gentle snoring had become soothing to her.
Ipo gave no reaction to this development in sleeping arrangements and curled up top of the covers on Judd’s side of the bed and watched her from hooded eyes.
The abrasive siren of her phone alarm woke her at midnight, but sleep didn’t haze her thoughts at all. She jumped straight out of bed, not even stopping to put on a dressing gown, and logged in again to Judd’s banking account. She ignored her shivering body as she took another $60,000 from the same account and shifted it twice, logged out of the account, reset her alarm and fell back into bed and drifted off to sleep without a single guilty thought.
Twenty-One
MATAIO
35 days to go
Mataio had never been an early riser as a teenager. He’d always be getting detention for being late to class most mornings, and it didn’t bother him too much. Some people took punctuality way too seriously, he’d thought at fifteen. Some eight years of medical training later and another four of emergency response residency, hellishly long, irregular hours, broken sleep on hard, noisy mattresses, he still found it hard to get out of bed in the morning.
His aunt shook him several times with no response before she began to flick his ear annoyingly.
“What time is it?” he complained and tried to move his head away under the covers.
“That girl left a message on my phone. It’s about Ipo. She says it’s urgent.”
Sunny. He had to pick up the dog today. “I’ll do it later.”
“She says you need to go now.”
Mataio rolled over and asked his aunt, “What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“How long ago did she message?”
“I don’t know. Must have come overnight. I just found it.”
Mataio took the phone and found the latest message. Sent an hour ago.
Mat - need you to take dog urgently. Don’t come to apartment. Send address to meet.
He sat and stared at the phone awhile, barely noticing his aunt leave the room. Was there anything he could do or say to Sunny to help her? Having Ipo to care for obviously hadn’t changed her mind. Maybe he should call one of the psychs from work and ask what he should do. It would be better if someone came and took care of it for him, so he wouldn’t need to be involved. He’d pick up the dog and if she was still determined to suicide, he’d call in the experts.
The doorbell rang at the same time Mataio noticed his aunt had replied to Sunny’s text with their address. He heard voices and he scrambled to get his clothes on as the front door closed, and the dog begin to whine.
With a pair of shorts, no shirt and no shoes, he ran out the front door, just as Sunny climbed into her twin cab ute.
“Sunny, wait.”
Sunny looked up and the expression on her face stopped him instantly. Not sad, not depressed. Scared.
“Mat, I have to go.” She started the ute and Mataio leaped to the driver’s window, regretting it instantly as gravel dug into the bottom of his feet.
“Wait. We need to talk.”
Sunny wound down the window, “It’s okay, Mat. I’m fine. I have to go.” She checked her mirrors and went to reverse.
“Wait, Sunny,” Mataio yelled. “Can you stop just for a second?”
Sunny looked panicked. “I really can’t. Something’s happened. I have to go.”
“What’s happened? Can I help?”
“You should put a shirt on. It’s freezing out here,” she said, her eyes looking everywhere but at him. He suddenly felt self-conscious about the bare chest and crossed his arms over it.
“Can you come inside for a minute? My aunt will make you breakfast.”
“I have a plane to catch. I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Mataio could only see anxiety. “Are you just saying that so—”
She reached over to the passenger seat and showed him her plane ticket. “See, booked on a flight 7pm tonight. Those are my suitcases in the back.”
Mataio turned to where she pointed—two cases in the back seat. He couldn’t describe how relieved those suitcases made him feel. She’d swapped plans. This plan involved her not dying. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wished for another plan. One where she didn’t fly to another country. But still, this was definitely better. “If your plane isn’t until 7pm tonight, what’s the hurry. Come inside for breakfast. Say goodbye to Ipo properly. He’s in there, whining like a lost baby.”
He saw her eyes well as she tried to control a quivering bottom lip. She wiped the moisture away and stared out the front windscreen. “I left in such a hurry, I forgot my passport,” she said, pushing her neck hard against the head rest. “It’s still at the apartment.”
“It’s okay, Sunny,” he reassured, not quite understanding the dramatic response.” You’ll have time to have breakfast and get your passport, I promise.” He opened her car door.
Sunny kept staring straight ahead. “I can’t pick it up. Judd will be there by now. I have to find another way. Before my plane leaves.”
Oh shit. Now he understood. She was leaving without telling Judd. Smart move all things considered. He wouldn’t want to be around when he found out she’d left, and he’d lived beneath them long enough to know he wouldn’t take it well—how threatening he’d be.
“I’ll come with you. He can’t hurt you if I’m there.” As soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. This was exactly the type of situation he shouldn’t be involved in. This was going beyond Rule Number 10. Community Service. This was crossing a line and it wasn’t allowed. He took a breath to retract the offer, but she spoke before he could.
“Thanks, but no,” she said. “He’ll never let me leave if I go back.”
Something in the way she held her mouth, the flick of her eyes, told him there was more. But he let it pass.
“You just need to explain it’s over. He can’t hold you there against your will. He doesn’t own you.”
She sent him a look that said she believed otherwise.
“Is there a friend you can call? Someone else who can help?” Even as he asked it, he knew there wasn’t. He’d lived below her for nearly a year and he hadn’t seen a friend visit once. “I just don’t understand how you could forget your passport. Plane ticket, passport. Two most important things when leaving for a trip.”
“That’s not helping.”
He sighed, louder than he expected, then tried to cover his frustration by saying, “Come inside and we’ll work it out.”
She stayed staring at the windscreen.
“What choice do you have? I’ll make coffee and we’ll think of something.”
“I didn’t mean to get you involved.”
He should shut the door and let her leave. This wasn’t his business or his problem. It certainly didn’t fall under any of The Rules. Let her go—his responsibility to her was over. He held open her door and said, “My aunt makes amazing coconut bread. Come inside we’ll work something out.”
She looked up at him with round eyes and he did his best to look like he didn’t care either way.
“I like coconut and I like bread. Never had them together before.” She picked up her phone, covered the backpack sitting on the passenger seat with her scarf, locked the ute and followed him towards the house, turning just once more to press the lock again.
Twenty-Two
SUNNY
Sunny sat at a table in the middle of a kitchen that smelled like fried coconuts as Mataio’s aunt heaped food brown coloured onto her plate. She didn’t have the strength to tell her she wasn’t in the least bit hungry after the three slices of coconut bread she’d already been encouraged to eat. Ironic to think she finally felt full, for the first time in months, right when there was an abundance of delicious home cooked food.
Mataio picked at his food like he wasn’t hungry either. Sunny watched his aunt pile a plate of food and set it on a tray then ferry it out of the room to the mystery sick cousin that nobody talked about. Sunny had seen the carer come and go and she could hear the sounds of a television somewhere else in the house, but no-one had offered an explanation or details about the invalid who obviously was the focus of the household.
Sunny lifted a fork and pushed some eggs around the overloaded plate. With the aunt gone, she could finally talk.
“I was logged into our joint bank account,” she admitted to Mat. “He must have come off the rig a day early, ‘cause I noticed he’d paid for an Uber at 7am this morning. I panicked, figured he was on his way home, grabbed my cases and ticket and ran. My passport was on the fridge.”
“Why do you think he came home early?” asked Mat.
“I have no idea,” she answered quickly then took a mouthful of eggs.
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“I called him an hour ago, asked him to meet me at the BP service station on Murray. To talk. Then, instead of meeting him, I waited until he left the house and went home to get it.”
“Good idea. What happened?”
“It wasn’t there. He must have taken it with him. I mean…he’s not an idiot. He knows I’ll want to go home to the UK. And I’m stuck without it.”
“You don’t think you can talk to him. Ask him to give it back?”
She wasn’t ready to admit to Mat she’d taken Judd’s money. He might not see it the same way she did—that half the money was hers. Mat might tell her to take it back, negotiate with Judd. The idea of that conversation sent her blood cold. Now she was gone, she realised, she never wanted to see Judd again. Ever. She shook her head and said, “I can’t do it.”
“What’s your next plan, La'u pele?” asked the aunt, who’d returned to the kitchen without her realising. She spoke gently and Sunny figured she’d heard.
“I can order another passport. But it means I can’t catch the plane tonight.”
“Is your ticket transferable?”
“No, but it's not a problem,” she said, thinking of the $25,000 in cash in the backpack on the front seat of Judd’s ute. Another one-way ticket purchase was the least of her worries.
“So why don’t you do that. It only takes ten days if you pay extra.”
“It’ll take longer than that. I need a British Passport, remember.”
“Well, what else can you do? Either negotiate with Judd…”
She shook her head firmly.
“…Or you get a new passport," Mat completed.
She had her driver’s license and birth certificate and photos of the passport on her phone, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. It would just take time and the longer she stayed in Melbourne the more risk there was he’d find her. “I think that’s all I can do.”
What a disaster. How could she have been so careless? Seeing the Uber debit in Judd’s account that morning had made her almost lose her nerve. She’d panicked
—considered putting all the money back and staying, pretend nothing had happened—but then decided that if she didn’t leave now, she never would. In her terror, rational thought left her, and when she’d grabbed her bags, called the dog to follow her, and picked up her ticket, getting away without getting caught had been more important than collecting her complete set of travel documents. If he’d found her there with the money in her possession, she couldn’t bear to think what might have happened.
She looked up to see Mat studying her. “What worries you the most, about meeting up with Judd and asking him for the passport?” he asked. “Do you think he’ll hurt you?”
She tried to imagine what it was about Judd that scared her into submission so easily. She’d loved him once. He’d been kinder once. Or maybe he just kept his meanness hidden better. What scared her the most was the affect he had on her.
“No. It’s…it’s something else.”
Mat put down his fork, his plate still piled high with food, and waited for her to answer.
She took a sip of water and placed the glass carefully back down on the table. She spoke, staring at the water like it held the answer to every problem there ever was. “If I see him—Judd—I’ll find it hard to go through with it.”
“Through with leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still not sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“It feels right when I’m away from him. At this moment, I feel like I never want to see him again. But when I’m with him, I doubt myself. He’ll talk me into staying. I know he will. I’ll feel sorry for him, and it will be all my fault, and he’ll convince me he’ll try harder to manage his anger and I’ll end up staying.”
“I’ll come with you. I won’t let him change your mind.” Mat stood like it was decided.
“I can’t do it.”
“Well, you have to do something.” He sounded frustrated.