by Anni Taylor
“Want me to make you something for lunch?” Phoebe stood before me, the sun that was coming in from the rear glass doors giving her hair an intense glint. Her eyes looked dull and tired, but you otherwise wouldn’t know she’d been roaming the neighbourhood in her sleep last night. I could tell from her barely controlled posture that she was looking for something to do, somewhere to direct her energy.
“Are you eating, too?”
“I can’t. . .”
I shook my head slowly. “I’ll make it, and you’re going to eat it with me.”
“I’m sick in the stomach. I’ll only throw it up.”
“Feeb, you haven’t been eating enough. Your hip bones are sticking out.”
Straight away, I felt bad. She didn’t need that. Not now. And I couldn’t separate out how much of that comment was concern for her health and how much was my distaste at how angular she’d become.
Her expression changed to a mix of defensiveness and hurt. “I’ll go make us coffee.” She headed out to the kitchen before I could formulate something to soften what I’d just said.
I switched on the TV, wanting something to fill the silence that Phoebe had left behind.
There was an ad about life insurance: a smiling woman giving her family dinner while the husband looked on, thinking about happy-sunshiny dinner topics, such as his own mortality. He was worrying himself into the grave about the kind of dinners and lifestyle the family would have in the future if he wasn’t around to provide it.
I flicked around the channels, hunting for something to catch my attention. But nothing did. I slumped on the sofa, watching part of a Star Wars movie.
The ad break cut to a news broadcast.
I saw Tommy’s face. There on the screen.
No warning.
Cut to our street. My house. My damned house. A reporter outside talking about the notes. Live.
News had got out about the letters. In a big way.
I loped across the room and through the hall, to the small foyer that had the only downstairs window that looked out onto the street.
Cameras. Reporters. Neighbours peering from their front yards.
I turned as Phoebe walked up behind me with two cups of coffee. She stared out at the scene on the street with troubled eyes.
18.
PHOEBE
Saturday midday
I WATERED THE WALL GARDEN FURIOUSLY, drowning it.
Cameramen were camping out in our street. Reporters were interviewing neighbours so that they had something “new” to report each hour. Luke turned down all attempts by reporters to interview us.
I ended up in my room, curled on my bed, waiting for all of it to end.
The activity happening down there was going to scare the letter-writer underground and make it harder for the police to find him. It was the first real breakthrough we’d had. There was a real possibility that the kidnapper was coming to us. My heart alternatively squeezed and pounded. I didn’t know how long a person could exist in this state. But I couldn’t calm myself. Not until the moment the police had this man in their hands.
I heard Luke opening the door to someone downstairs. Surely he wasn’t letting any of the reporters in?
“Phoebe,” he called up the stairs, “the girls are here to see you.”
I’d barely seen any of my friends since the day Tommy disappeared. I’d locked myself away, refusing to see people. The only thing I’d had energy for—mental or physical—was the search for Tommy.
Combing my fingers through my hair, I stepped out of my room to the top of the stairs.
Saskia, Kate, and Pria stood huddled together, staring up at me with anxious faces, the three of them dressed in smart jackets, scarfs, and jeans. Saskia led the charge—all of them rushing up the stairs to me.
They grabbed me in a hug.
“God, this can’t be real,” Sass exclaimed. “Letters about Tommy? Why didn’t you call us?”
Pria swept her blond locks back, tucking her fringe beneath her knit cap. “I was in shock when I saw the news. I called everyone.”
I bunched my eyes shut for a second, shaking my head. “It’s been a whirlwind. Three notes in two days.”
Kate’s large blue eyes went watery. “The news said you saw a strange man just before you found the last note. I feel terrible . . .”
I frowned at her in confusion. “Why—”
Kate sucked her lips in, running her hand distractedly along the long dark plait that was draped on her shoulder like a rope. “Elliot and I have been noticing a man hanging about our block at night. We take turns to go for a run, after dinner when the twins are in bed. About nine o’clock. I mean, it’s not unusual for there to be a stranger around here, but it’s just that this guy seems to be hanging around night after night, not really going anywhere. I didn’t think to tell the police. It wasn’t like he was doing anything illegal. But what if—”
“Where do you see him?” I straightened, shivering.
“Along our street and down at the docks,” Kate answered.
“What does he look like?” I asked straight after she’d finished, desperate for a clue about the man’s identity.
She winced apologetically. “Can never see him all that well. It’s dark, and it’s been a damned foggy winter. He’s about six foot. Wears a big jacket and a cap. And he’s got a bit of a goatee or maybe a short beard. Whatever you’d call it.”
“So he’s just always hanging around?” I pressed. “Could he be homeless?”
An awful picture flashed through my mind of Tommy being kept by a homeless man. I remembered from my research that a homeless man had abducted a toddler from a library in California. A library of all places. A sharp-eyed bus driver had recognised the man and child from a police bulletin when the man took the boy onto a bus. The boy was returned to his mother within hours.
Kate thought for a moment. “Could be homeless, but he’s definitely not one of those dudes you normally see with the long beards and the dingy old clothes.”
I took out my phone from my pocket. “Kate, would you mind, I mean, telling the police about him? They’re looking for the man I saw now.”
“Sure. Anything if it can help.”
“Thanks.” I breathed out a tight breath. “How about we go downstairs and get a bit more comfortable?”
I led them down into the kitchen. Luke was on the phone with an aunt, talking about the notes. The whole world was talking about the notes.
He nodded at them in acknowledgement and then headed upstairs, still on the phone.
I made the call to Detective Gilroy and then put Kate on. I listened with chills crawling down my spine as Kate told the detective what she’d seen.
Was she describing the same man? What was he doing in the street every night?
Sass busied herself around the kitchen, putting the jug on and getting cups ready. Pria helped her, finding the tea and coffee.
Kate finished her call and handed me the phone. “I hope it helps. I’m afraid I couldn’t provide much information.”
Sass distributed the cups of hot liquid. In an emergency, the person you’d always want to call was Sass. She was a born organiser.
Sliding back onto a stool, Pria eyed me with a worried expression. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard what’s been happening. You poor thing. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m okay. So far.” Gratefully taking the coffee that Sass offered me, I told the girls about the letters, starting with finding the first one in my mailbox after an early-morning walk.
I left out the bit about my sleepwalking. I knew that Pria, as a psychologist, would switch to her professional mode. She’d ask awkward questions about my sleeping patterns and medications. I knew she’d try to get me to stop taking the sleeping pills. And I didn’t know if I could stop.
“Crazy.” Sass shook her head, stirring her coffee. “After all these months.”
Pria reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I pray that it’s leading somewhere.”<
br />
“I hope so.” I rubbed my forehead. A headache that had sprung to life in my temples a few minutes ago had migrated behind my eyes.
Kate picked through a box of varied herbal teas and delicately selected a tea bag. Since her late teens when she’d first started modelling, Kate had been a devotee of clean living. “The press had better pack up and leave soon. How’re the police supposed to do their job with them hanging around?”
“Well,” said Sass, “you never know what the broadcasts might dig up. Someone might know something. Maybe someone even drove past and saw the guy putting the letter in Phoebe’s letterbox.”
Kate lifted her chin in a half nod, still looking dubious.
She and Sass had had the same argument many times before—about the police versus the press and public. Kate was strong on law and order. Sass believed in the power of the people. Kate never used to be like that. But she’d changed after she married a cop.
Pria was usually the peacemaker in between. Me, I was none of those things. I’d slip randomly into any role or point of view. Loyal to no cause.
Sass tugged at the scarf around her neck, loosening it, a U-shaped frown settling in between her eyebrows. “Kate, was the guy you saw sort of wide across the shoulders?”
Kate twisted her mouth, thinking. “Yeah. But not in a muscly way. More in a just big kind of way.”
“That half sounds like Justin,” said Sass. “He was that guy I went on a couple of dates with about a month back. When I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore, he became a huge pain in the butt. Turning up at work, loitering outside my apartment block. It’s probably not him, though. Justin’s a gym junkie. You know, with the guns and the shoulders and the abs.”
Pria set her tea down on the bench. “That’s stalking, Sass. Is he still doing it?”
“No,” Sass replied. “He stopped after a couple of weeks. But Kate’s mention of a guy hanging around made me wonder. Only, Justin doesn’t have a goatee. He’s clean shaven. All over.” She paused. “But I guess he could have grown one. How long does it take a guy to grow a goatee?”
Kate gave a slight grin. “About as long as it takes you to grow back your map of Tasmania.”
Smirking, Sass glanced down briefly at her lap. “Can’t compare. I go in for deforestation every six weeks at the salon. But men don’t wax. Usually. So a guy’s beard would grow a lot faster.” Sobering, she eyed me directly. “If your detective wants any details about Justin, just let me know. But I can’t see there being any connection.”
“Okay, thanks.” I breathed in and out slowly. “Sorry that this Justin guy ended up having a screw loose.”
A wry smile dimpled her cheek. “I’d rather be on my own anyway. No more men.”
Pria raised her left eyebrow, angling it high. She was so expert at doing that that it was more effective than speaking.
“It’s common in Japan,” Sass studied her red, expertly painted fingernails.
“What is?” I asked.
“Living alone,” Sass answered with an almost prim air. “Focusing on your career. When I went there last year I was blown away by the way many of the women live. It’s a new era. You don’t even need sex. What’s it good for? Babies and STDs.”
I shook my head, smiling. Sometimes, it was hard to know if Sass was serious or not.
Kate raised her eyes at Sass from above her cup of tea. “But what about, you know, fun?”
Sass shrugged. “My job’s fun. All the travelling I do is fun. And when I want the other kind of fun, I’ve got my trusty rabbit.”
“Except, men don’t run out of batteries,” teased Pria.
“Elliot does.” Kate twisted her plait around her finger. “A lot. He’s tired all the time. Stressful job I guess.” She kept her eyes on Pria. “How about you? Didn’t you meet someone new? The navy dude? How’s his batteries?” She winked.
Pria nodded. “Yeah. Michael and I are still seeing each other. Believe it or not, we haven’t done the deed yet.”
“Makes me feel bad you’ve been seeing someone new and I didn’t even know,” I told Pria. “I ran into Jessie the other day—literally—and she made me promise to come and visit.”
“You so should,” Pria said.
“I will.” In truth, I didn’t know if I would. “How’s Jessie and your new guy getting on?”
“Oh, the whole thing is so difficult. He’s away a lot with the navy. I want him to have a relationship with her, but I can’t see how that’s ever going to happen.”
Sipping her lemon camomile tea, Kate studied Pria’s face sympathetically. “Shame he can’t be there with you. I hate it when Elliot is away for even a night. And that’s only happened twice. If I’d had a break-in, I’d be so nervous being on my own that I couldn’t sleep.”
I frowned at Pria. “Your house got broken into?”
She pulled her mouth tight. “Yes. Back in January. You had enough to worry about without me telling you my woes. It was nothing, really. Someone got in through one of the downstairs windows. They stole a bit of jewellery. Probably teenagers.”
“Still, it would make you worry,” I told her.
“It did unsettle me,” Pria admitted. “Even more because they got in while I was sleeping. Thank God Jessie was away at a holiday camp. Anyway, I got us a dog. Nothing’s happened since.”
“God, I’m glad you’re okay.” I was relieved to hear that Jessie wasn’t there. If she’d woken when the intruders were in the house, things could have gone badly.
“Anyway, enough of that,” said Pria, brightening. “Have you been back to the local theatre group, Phoebe? Jessie and I have been waiting for your next performance. We really enjoyed the last play you were in.”
“I gave the whole theatre thing away,” I told her. “My heart’s not in it anymore. Showed in my performance, too.”
“No way, girlie.” Saskia waggled a finger at me. “You were great in that play, and don’t go telling yourself any different.”
They’d all come to the play. Luke and Nan, too. Even—strangely—Bernice. But I’d let them all down.
If I’d ever been any good at acting, I wasn’t now. There really wasn’t anything that I was good at. I hadn’t proved to be much of a wife or a mother. I wasn’t good at supporting Luke with his business—I had no interest in it. There was only one thing left, and that was finding Tommy. And I was determined to be good at that.
“You were always making us act in your one-minute plays when we were kids.” A wide smile dimpled Kate’s face.
The conversation shifted to our old days together on this street. All our conversations led back there, and once they did, we knew we were in for the long haul.
Moving from the kitchen to the living room, we chatted about the homes that had been demolished and the people who were missing from the street, about Luke stealing flowers from people’s gardens to give us all flowers, about how Saskia’s bedroom was so messy you had to excavate it just to find her in it, how Pria used to rescue all the abandoned cats in the neighbourhood, how Kate used to switch the garden gnomes around in people’s front yards and how I used to pretend to busk on city streets—randomly walking up while a real busker was taking a break and bursting into some song from a musical.
A wave of exhaustion hit me.
This day had left me so, so ragged.
I woke on the sofa, with a blanket over me. Sass, Kate, and Pria were gone. The wall clock had the time at four in the afternoon. I’d slept for hours—the longest stretch of sleep I’d had in weeks.
Padding over to the window at the front of the house, I peered out. One diehard reporter remained.
I couldn’t take the sleeping pills tonight. I couldn’t risk ending up out there on the streets again. First, I needed to find a way of securing myself so that there was no way of getting out.
God, I’m like an addict planning my next fix. Is this real—are my dreams really giving me clues? Or have I just become addicted to the dreams or to the sleeping pills or
to avoiding life?
Behind me, the sudden peal of the home phone in our silent house made me jump.
19.
LUKE
Saturday afternoon
I GRABBED THE PHONE FROM THE kitchen wall before it woke Phoebe.
“Hello?” Crazily I was almost expecting it to be the letter-writer himself, reading out one of his rhymes over the phone.
It wasn’t.
“Luke,” said Gilroy, “we’ve got some new information.” An edge cut into his voice.
I jumped to my feet. “What have you got?”
“I’d like for you both to come down to the station.”
Phoebe came running into the kitchen, stopping and staring at me with wide eyes.
“Just tell me one thing,” I asked Gilroy, trying to keep my teeth unclenched. “Do you have an idea which fucker is sending those notes to us?”
“We need to discuss this in person, and naturally it’s going to be very upsetting for you both. But yes, we do have information.”
“Hell. You do know. We’ll be there.” I ended the call, a million thoughts ramming my head.
There’d been something in Gilroy’s tone that had flattened me. He should have sounded a bit more celebratory if they had their guy. What was wrong here that he wasn’t saying? Did the police now know for certain that Tommy was dead? Was this the end of the journey that started with Tommy being abducted? Whatever the news was, it wasn’t going to be good. I didn’t know how to begin to prepare Phoebe.
“They know who it is?” Phoebe put a hand across her mouth, pinching her cheeks in.
“Sounds like it.” My breath caught on the end of that sentence.
During the drive to the station, I could tell that Phoebe was like me, struggling to just breathe.
It wasn’t just Gilroy in Gilroy’s office when we got there either. When we walked in, there was a team of three detectives looking back at us. Three. I’d met the other two before but hadn’t seen them in a while.