by Anne Buist
He nestled on her shoulder, oblivious to any threat.
Natalie was halfway through a beer when Bob began flapping his wings and jumping up and down. It was the door, but Natalie wasn’t expecting Tom for an hour.
Not Tom; Liam. He looked good. Annoyingly. He’d either changed at the office or been home first. His suit had been replaced with casual black trousers and a dark polo shirt.
‘I thought we could share some travel time.’ He leaned against the doorway, looking her up and down. Natalie was wearing shorts and a tight top that accentuated her nipples.
‘Meaning?’
‘I was hoping I could give you a lift.’
Natalie raised an eyebrow and waited.
‘I have a car waiting.’
‘Let me guess, a limo with champagne in the fridge.’ Natalie tried not to smile.
‘Haven’t looked. But there’ll definitely be some bubbly in the Qantas lounge.’
‘Qantas lounge?’
‘I believe you have to be in Sydney tomorrow.’
‘My flight is in the morning.’
He shrugged. ‘Change it. You’d just be going a night early. Live dangerously. ’
Beverley had a lot to answer for.
‘Carol is doing an investigator course to enhance her role with us,’ said Liam. ‘Though I don’t think your secretary put up a fight.’
‘Just totally by coincidence you happen to be going to Sydney?’ There was no reason she couldn’t go tonight, besides the cost of an extra night’s accommodation, but Liam probably intended that she would share his room. His arrogance had gone up a notch. Or was this his idea of making up?
‘Not exactly. I have to meet someone and tomorrow is as good a day as any.’
‘You’re that sure of me?’
Liam laughed. ‘That stupid I ain’t. Jaysus woman…’ Shit, she loved it when he laid the accent on. ‘I can enjoy a dinner in Sydney by myself, but it seems a waste. I thought spontaneity might be your style.’
It only took her a few minutes to throw some clothes together. She remembered to grab Georgia’s file to read before seeing her mother, as well as her conference presentation, which had yet to progress beyond headings. Live dangerously. She could almost hear Eoin’s laughter as she changed and packed her bag. It took five minutes. Tom had his own key; she’d ring him from the cab.
Liam burst out laughing.
‘What?’
‘I think you just achieved the impossible. Don’t women need at least two hours?’
With the slam of the door, and Bob letting out a screech, Natalie slid into the limo next to Liam.
Liam took her straight through security to the business lounge. The receptionist greeted him by name. Liam had her ticket changed without any apparent penalty.
‘Drink?’
‘Don’t need anything.’
Liam flipped open his laptop.
‘You might be interested in this. I warn you, it’s hard to watch.’
Liam showed her fifteen seconds of a video clip. She was grateful for its brevity. A little girl no more than five: blonde with blue eyes who reminded Natalie uncomfortably of Chloe. With the child was a pink bunny, fluffy and new-looking. And a man in a face mask holding her hand.
‘Let me assure you the rest is unpleasant. There’s just one other thing you need to see.’ Liam went to the end, to the logo: bunny ears on a circle, with a smaller circle in the centre, the second bunny’s oval more clearly phallic.
‘You need to tell me more about your suspect,’ said Natalie.
‘You know I can’t.’
Natalie pulled out Georgia’s file. In it was a photocopy of Georgia’s card, complete with logo.
Liam took it from her. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Seems we have a stalemate. I can’t tell you either.’
‘My suspect is in his late twenties, very smart.’
So he had been telling her the truth last time she’d asked. Natalie let out her breath and took the card back. ‘Different person. This one maybe just downloads the videos.’
‘Whoa up. I still want—’
‘No can do, Liam,’ said Natalie. ‘I told my patient to tell her lawyer. She’ll be in touch.’
Liam leaned in. ‘This isn’t a game, Natalie. We’re talking about lots of kids. The video I just showed you is old, the one we thought was our chief suspect. The crime techies couldn’t do a definite match and in later videos he got smart, used lots of other perps. We’re just this far’—he held up his thumb and index finger a millimetre apart—‘from getting him. I need to know where this card came from.’
‘You will,’ said Natalie. ‘Just not from me.’
When Liam handed her the second key to his room, she just looked at it. ‘I never said I’d stay. Come to think of it, I can’t recall being asked.’
‘Think about it over dinner.’
Dinner was very good Chinese. The spicy salt and pepper squid was the best she had ever tasted and they’d ordered a second serve. A layer of tension had disappeared with the knowledge that she wouldn’t be under surveillance. Until she felt it roll off her shoulders she hadn’t realised how much of a burden it had been.
‘Does Carol the Dental Queen know you’re fucking me? Or at least were,’ asked Natalie through a mouthful of squid, ‘and still want to?’
Liam grinned. ‘If she was a betting woman her money would be in the right place.’
‘Does Lauren know?’
‘I thought we didn’t discuss exes or wives,’ he said as he called for the bill.
When he opened the door to the suite—their suite, she thought, with a shiver that was unreasonably, unconscionably erotic—they didn’t speak. They stood for a moment, just looking at each other, then, item by item, pulled each other’s clothing off. She sensed in him a need that went deeper than just the sex, but right now it was the physical sensations that dominated her own thoughts, and she gave into them as his hands moved all over her.
When she had come three times they climaxed together on the table.
‘Think about this when you’re meeting the suits here tomorrow,’ she whispered in his ear before pushing him off her.
They adjourned to the spa tub. She added a whole bottle of bubble-bath and the bubbles frothed up and over the edge as they sank into it.
They had drunk only Chinese tea at dinner, so Liam opened champagne.
‘Okay, you’ve got me captive,’ said Natalie, wishing her words had less truth than they did. ‘So tell me about your life.’
Liam nibbled on her ear. ‘What would you like to hear?’
‘Meaning what lie or what topic?’
‘Take your pick. Honesty is easier.’
Natalie held her breath. Did she really want to know anything? She probably already knew too much.
‘Favourite song?’
Liam laughed. ‘All time or current?’
‘All time of course.’
‘“Hungry Heart”.’
Natalie burst out laughing. ‘You have got to be joking.’ Seeing his expression she added, ‘Okay, okay, everyone can have a Springsteen moment.’
‘Your turn.’
‘I’ve already sung them to you.’
‘How about films?’
‘Four Minutes,’ replied Natalie without hesitation.
‘Don’t know it.’
‘It’s a German movie. Culminates in a piano recital of classical music, in handcuffs.’
Liam laughed. ‘I’ll watch it some time.’
‘Your movie?’
‘Sound of Music.’ He was so deadpan she almost believed him; until he was laughing at her for being so gullible. ‘Life is Beautiful.’
‘The one in the concentration camp?’
Liam nodded.
‘Where the father looks after his son?’
The simple interpretation stopped him short. Then the wit took over again. ‘The one where the father gets shot.’ He paused again. ‘How about you—a movie you liked but you wouldn’t ever tell anyone about.’ Except him, obviously.
Natalie thought for a moment. ‘Okay, this is like you are so dead if you tell anyone.’
Liam rubbed her leg affectionately.
‘Flashdance. I was confined to bed for four months when I was sixteen. My mother felt helpless and kept finding me old movies. I think she thought it would inspire me to do my physio; trouble was I wanted to be a singer not a dancer, but it was…Well it had some good music and dancing in it.’
‘That’ll not be why you liked it.’
It wasn’t hard to figure it out; the heroine was from the wrong side of the tracks and had to do everything the hard way. In the end she had changed the establishment’s ideas rather than having to compromise her own. Not what happened in real life.
‘Nick was rich, a working-class guy made good, who’d left his wife,’ said Natalie, conscious of the significance as the words left her mouth. ‘And he drove a Porsche.’ She grinned. ‘You’d enjoy the scene where she takes off her jacket in the restaurant.’
Liam let the marriage reference slide. ‘How important to you is the band?’
‘It’s a good outlet.’
‘And the tattoo?’
Natalie had seen him looking at the band of initials around her arm. PRANZCP: President of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. She’d been manic.
‘Overexcitement at my qualifications and a bad tattooist.’ she said. ‘Did a P instead of an F.’
They got out of the spa with champagne still left in the bottle, and sat on the balcony in hotel robes looking out across Sydney Harbour.
‘This is the best,’ said Liam.
The lights on the bridge, the convex shapes of the Opera House and the buildings around them, the boats bustling around the port made Circular Quay look like a fairyland. She didn’t even know she was going to ask it until she did.
‘What went wrong with you and Lauren?’
Liam didn’t look fussed. ‘We both got exactly what we wanted.’
Natalie looked at him.
‘What you want in your early twenties is not necessarily what you need in the long term. Then, she needed a husband who looked good both physically and professionally. I wanted a smart, pretty and interesting wife. What was not to like? She’s great. A very smart and capable woman.’
Natalie was reminded uncomfortably of a conversation she had had with Declan about a patient.
‘There is, you see, a fundamental dilemma for the single woman having an affair with the married man,’ he had said.
‘What? Whether he’ll leave or not?’
‘I’m talking about a deeper level. What she really wants is not him, but rather to know what it is to be her.’
She didn’t want to be Lauren: she didn’t want the job that was probably more about committees than patients; the two kids with the nannies and the private schools; and for that matter the husband who had grown bored and was screwing another woman.
But she thought of Liam tying her up and wondered where else he could take her. Where she could lead him. To explore that, there needed to be a relationship. She was beginning to think that might be what she wanted.
Chapter 23
After the keynote presentation on the unreliability of memory and a workshop on assessing dangerousness, Natalie slipped out of the conference and hailed a cab to take her south of Cronulla, where Georgia’s mother lived. Damian rang while the driver was still negotiating city traffic.
‘I thought I’d let you know Tiphanie made bail.’
‘About time. Anything new on Travis?’
‘I was right. They were too plastered to recall that the car didn’t start, until we jogged their memory. Travis borrowed Rick’s car and gave him a ride to work the next morning.’
If Travis had left Chloe in his car while he was watching football, he would have needed to transfer her. Or her body.
‘Have they found anything?’
‘Nothing on Rick’s car yet. It didn’t look like it had been cleaned. A couple of samples are with the lab.’
‘Did Travis or his mate come up with anything else?’
‘Mate still saying he didn’t see anything, just threw the keys at Travis so he could go to bed. Travis still denying he had Chloe.’
‘Can I ask you for a favour, Damian?’
‘If I can.’
‘Can you get me a copy of an old police file, a Welbury one? Amber Hardy’s.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘No,’ said Natalie, thinking he might work it out anyway. Half-hoping he would.
Georgia’s biological mother, Lee Draper, was sixty. She had served fifteen years of a twenty-year term. Georgia would have been in her late teens when Lee was released. Natalie wondered if she had been informed at the time or if Lee had ever tried to contact her. Natalie wasn’t certain what she hoped to achieve by seeing Lee, only that she was looking for anything that would shed light on Georgia’s case. She wanted to be able to make a clear cut assessment of Lee: either a monster or a domestic-violence victim who had done the best she could for her baby in the circumstances.
The journey took more than an hour. Lee’s house was a compact weatherboard with a well-kept garden and an early model Corolla in the drive.
A thin woman in jeans and T-shirt, short grey hair tucked behind her ears, looked Natalie up and down from behind the screen door. She clicked the lock and opened it.
‘You can come in but you’ll have to put up with me smoking. Else we can sit out the back.’
The smell of stale smoke was strong and the weather mild, so Natalie chose the backyard option. Lee looked older than sixty, her skin dry and taut as if she had been drained of life. There was a suggestion of Georgia in the bones of her face. Mother and daughter shared the same clear blue eyes but in Lee they were more focused and self-aware.
‘Does Georgia know you’re here?’ Lee asked, stubbing her cigarette in a beer can on
the ground beside her chair.
Natalie hesitated. She had asked Georgia’s permission to see her mother. But she’d never specified which one.
‘Didn’t think so,’ said Lee. ‘I’m an embarrassment. Certainly to Virginia. My half-sister.’
‘Have you ever spoken to Georgia?’ Natalie noted a child’s plastic bike and wondered who it belonged to.
Lee had seen her look. ‘The screws told me it was a bad idea and I figured she’d find me if she wanted to. I’m still her mother; I’d always help her if she asked. The bike’s for my bloke’s grandkid when she visits.’
‘You must have…been curious,’ said Natalie, mindful that Lee had evaded the question.
Lee leaned back, head against the weatherboard wall. ‘Hard not to be. I watched her for a whole week. Sat in the coffee shop at the hospital and watched her come off her shifts. Never said a word to her.’
Too embarrassed? Afraid? Natalie had no idea what this woman was thinking. If she had been mentally ill once, she wasn’t now.
Lee lit another cigarette. ‘So what do you want to know?’
‘Tell me about Georgia’s early years.’
Lee inhaled and watched the smoke as she blew out. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Yes, but it was an important time for Georgia. She lost you, then had to move in with her aunt and uncle who were strangers.’
‘Losing me wouldn’t have fussed her. It would have been losing her father.’
Natalie watched her. This wasn’t the time for a lecture on the importance of the primary attachment figure.
‘She wasn’t planned, you understand,’ said Lee. ‘I was a good Catholic girl and even if I hadn’t been I wouldn’t have thought to get the pill. Wouldn’t have an abortion; still had hopes.’ She coughed and the mucus sounded heavy on her lungs. ‘We weren’t married, but Cliff was older; he had a house. My parents cut me off; holier than thou. It was all right that my mother fucked a married man, but me? I was a tart. Virginia must’ve thought I was getting my just deserts.’