by Anni Taylor
Standing suddenly, she kicked her sandcastle down.
I decided to go walk down and ask if she’d like to make a tree house later. There was a big stack of wood in the shed. And trees with low, wide branches not far from the house.
Leaning the axe against the shed wall, I dusted my hands off and headed down to her.
When she caught sight of me, she began running away along the beach.
I knew Pria would tell me to let her go, but I felt bad for the kid. It must be a huge and confusing change having me around—and now Tommy. I sprinted up to her, making an exaggerated puffing noise. “Hey, I’m old. You can’t make me work this hard.”
She stopped but didn’t look at me. “I don’t want to talk to you.” Wind blew her hair over her small shoulders.
“Okay. Are you going to tell me why?” I stepped around to face her.
Immediately, she looked out to the sea. “I just want to get off this island. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Too boring? Or is it because of Tommy? Look, I know you’re used to having your mum to yourself. And Tommy’s getting in the middle of that.”
She sucked her lips in. “Mum keeps saying he’s ours. He’s not ours. He’s yours. And Phoebe’s.”
“That’s true. But sometimes, families change. I know it’s going to take time for you to get used to me. And to Tommy. He’s been missing for a long time. It must be strange, him just appearing out of nowhere like this.” I blew out a stream of cold air. “I thought maybe we could make a tree house later. Just you and me. Would you like that?”
She thought for a moment then shook her head.
“Okay, well, you’re getting your wish about the island tomorrow. We’ll be going home.”
She tilted her head, screwing up her forehead as though she didn’t believe me. “That’s not what Mum says.”
“Your mum wants to stay longer, that’s true. But we can’t.”
“No, Mum told me this morning that we’ll be here for months, so I’d better change my attitude.”
“You must have heard wrong.”
“That’s what she said. And I’m not upset that you and Mum are spending time with Tommy, if that’s what you think.”
“You’re not? I hoped you’d understand. I’ve only just got him back.”
She stared at me with her upturned Pria-eyes. “You’ve had him all along.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She moistened her lips nervously. “You and Mum kept him upstairs at our house. To save him from Phoebe. I thought it was a puppy Mum was keeping up there. But it wasn’t.”
“That’s not what happened, Jessie.”
She shot me an accusatory look, her voice rising. “Yes, it is. Why are you lying to me, Mr Basko? Why do all you adults lie to me?”
Stepping forward, I held her trembling arms. “He was only there at your house for a few hours. You’ve got it wrong.”
“I heard him, Luke.” Her voice suddenly sounded so damned mature. She was so like Pria. “He’s been there all year. Sometimes, he’d throw things around. Mum would blame it on the dog going wild. But there never was a dog.”
Panic started banging in my chest. Pria had casually mentioned a dog the night we left her house. But she’d never talked about a dog before that to me. “I was at your house lots. I never heard anything.”
“When did you come? After the dog was asleep for the night? Because that’s what Mum used to tell me. She’d tell me that Buster was a heavy sleeper. I’d hear him in the afternoons sometimes, when the house was all quiet and there was no TV on. But at night, I never did. And plus, Mum had new walls put on the playroom and a really thick door.”
“She what? When?”
“I’m not sure. I missed the school bus one morning, and so I came back home. I couldn’t find Mum. The door to the playroom was open, and I could see everything. Plus there was a TV and toys in there. I finally found her in her bathroom. Her clothes were all wet, and I thought maybe she’d been bathing the dog. She screamed at me. Told me to get back down to the bus stop and just wait for the next bus and told me it was my fault I was going to be really late.”
Jessie backed away from me, pulling her arms free. “Mum tells me lies. You’re telling me lies, too. And we’re not leaving this island, are we? Are we?”
I heard Pria’s voice, calling us from up the beach. “Jessie! Luke! Jessie!”
“Pria!” I called back. “Where’s Tommy?”
Pria looked back up the sharp slope of the beach at the house.
Hell, she’d left him alone.
The house had no locks. And an open fire.
I tore along the beach. Pria just stared at me helplessly. I was out of breath by the time I reached the house. Flinging the door open, I raced in and entered Tommy’s room.
He was still sleeping, his knees tucked up to his chest under the blanket.
Panting, I closed his bedroom door.
Pria stood in the frame of the front door. “He’s fine, Luke.”
“He’s not fine. He can’t be left alone.”
Stepping inside, she closed the door behind her. “I just got worried. I couldn’t see either you or Jessie.”
A crushing pressure weighed on my mind. I studied her face, panting, searching for hints of what Jessie had just told me. She looked frightened of me suddenly.
“Luke?”
“Why weren’t you worried before when you couldn’t see Jessie? You were quite happy to let her go off around the island on her own.”
“I don’t know. I just—”
“Pria, it seems to me that you only got worried when you saw me gone, too. When you came down to the beach and saw me talking with your daughter. Do you want to tell me why?”
“What did Jessie say to you?” Her voice deadened.
“Is that what you’re worried about?” I inhaled through teeth that were set tightly together, still breathless from the run up the steep hill. “I’ll tell you what she said. She told me that you were keeping Tommy in the playroom upstairs at your house. The whole time he’s been missing.”
She gaped incredulously, but her eyes gave away what I needed to know. Her face grew pale, high spots of colour in her cheeks.
“No. No, no, no,” I breathed.
“Luke, yes, I saved your little boy. Let me explain—”
My hands clenched repeatedly, the palms slick with sweat. “Tell me this. Was it you who took Tommy from the playground that day?”
Raising her face, she avoided me, gazing at the rafters as though there were some celestial light shining from up there. “I did the right thing.”
I collapsed into the nearest chair, my fists on the table. “It was you. You all along.”
Her mouth drew in, and she looked directly at me. “This doesn’t change anything. I rescued him from her. And now you’ve got him back again.”
“Do you have any fucking idea what you’ve done? Any idea at all?”
“But you’ve got him back—”
“You keep saying that. Like it’s going to change anything.” I swallowed back an intense desire to hit her. Shake her. Make her hurt. “The letters—was that you, too? No, don’t bother. Of course it was you.”
“If you just give me a chance to tell you why.”
My voice darkened to a snarl. “Here’s your chance.”
She flinched. “Please. You’ll know that I was only trying to do the best thing when you calm down. We had to do it this way. Everyone kept covering up for Phoebe. Her drinking. Her neglect of Tommy. She neglected you too, Luke. I dropped in to see her, the day she destroyed Tommy’s things. I saw what she did. Her grandmother and Mrs Wick and Bernice were already there. I was terrified for Tommy. I wanted to take him, but Mrs Wick—evil witch that she is—shooed me away. I helped Nan take the toys away, in my car. She wanted to hide them in the toolshed. A few days later, Phoebe had forgotten everything. There was nothing to stop her from doing it again.”
“That wasn�
��t your call.”
“Someone had to make the call.”
“How did Tommy’s blood get on the last letter?” I demanded. “What did you do to him?”
“You’ve seen for yourself that he’s fine. He fell over and nicked his elbow. I collected a small amount of blood. No harm done.”
“Don’t tell me there’s no harm done. You’re insane. You gave Phoebe the third letter that night when she was sleepwalking, didn’t you?”
“Yes. She was raving. Thought I was a wizard. Do you see, Luke? She’s the crazy one.”
A thought flashed through my head. “You watched our house. Your house is high enough on the hill to get a good angle from the top storey. You knew when Phoebe left the house at night. You knew when she was sleepwalking.”
Her failure to answer told me that I was right.
“Hang on, it was you who suggested to me the name of those pills she was taking. I remember. Then Phoebe talked her psychiatrist into prescribing them, telling her she was desperate. And she was desperate. My wife was barely existing from day to day back then.”
“That brand of sleeping medication is renowned for causing sleepwalking incidents. I didn’t know it would cause her to sleepwalk, though. We just needed to disrupt her sleep patterns. People show their inner selves when they’re exhausted. If that medication didn’t work, there were others on my list. It’s too easy for violent, neglectful mothers to get off on charges against them. We had to do something to show everyone the crazy inside Phoebe. Bring it out into the open.”
“Hell. All that time, I was coming to you to try and release the stress, I was bloody telling you all about Phoebe, offloading on you. You used that information for your own purposes, didn’t you?”
“We did what we had to do. You’d tell me about her state of mind, and I’d plan what to do next. We were a team. And we succeeded.” Her mouth drew down and tightened. “But you took a long time to love me. I gave you so many chances to show your desire for me. It had to be you who made the first move. You took nine whole months. It was the last thing that needed to happen before we could start a life together. And it was beautiful when it happened. We did it, Luke. We made it.”
Her smile vanished before the look that I gave her. Bloody thoughts churned through my mind. I wanted to kill her. “Stop saying we. There is no we. I didn’t do any of this.”
“You were there, all along. And you were the one who talked your wife into those pills. Take some responsibility. Be strong, like I’ve had to be.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“It’s exactly what happened. You can’t pretend you didn’t play a part in this. You’ve been coming around to see me since October last year. You know you have. We were a couple, in secret. Maybe not so secret. Bernice used to watch you coming in. You wouldn’t have noticed her. All you wanted was to be with me, but you couldn’t. You couldn’t divorce your wife and leave her alone with Tommy. You were so terrified of what your wife would do to him, you had your mother move in. Your mother couldn’t live there forever. So, we took Tommy away and kept him safe. And then you sailed him away to the island. You did all that. For us.”
Hell. Hell. Hell.
Everything clicked through in my head, everything she’d said. I had been having an affair with this woman. The physical affair itself had only started a week or so ago, but no one knew that except Pria and me. Once this reached the media, they would blow it out of all proportion. And Tommy had been kept at the house I’d been visiting since he disappeared. I could hear the cries of people reading that juicy piece of news: “How could he not know?” they’d say. I’d look guilty as hell. I was the one who negotiated the sale for this island. Me. And she was right. I’d brought her, Jessie, and Tommy here. Willingly.
When this went to court, I could end up in prison. It could easily go that way.
Pria stepped over to sit at the table. “Luke, everyone thinks Tommy’s dead. Phoebe will go to jail on the strength of that. There’s enough evidence against her. And I have more evidence prepared, if needed. She won’t be able to hurt Tommy again. You’re free to go on and live your life and raise your son. We can stay here. But if you raise the alarm, Phoebe will get Tommy back.”
She touched her fingers to mine, her face strangely composed again.
I struggled against the recalibration inside my mind. The vision of Pria and me together against Phoebe had been cemented over the past few months. Phoebe the wicked, crazy one. Pria the warm, earthy, and sensible one.
I had my son back with me. Phoebe had never been the kind of wife and mother that my mother was. She never could be. There were days I’d spent at work terrified that I’d come home to find that Phoebe had done something terrible—either to herself or Tommy.
“Luke,” Pria said softly. “We can have another baby, together. A little brother or sister for Jessie and Tommy. You told me that you wanted Phoebe to have another, and she refused. But I’d give that to you. It’s only right, anyway. I was the first one to have a baby with you, not Phoebe.”
A picture of Pria at age sixteen rushed through my head. Pria, after a tense month while she decided whether she’d keep the baby or not, meeting me at number 29 to tell me she’d lost it. Tears streaming down our faces (with joy) we’d downed a half a bottle of Southern Comfort (with lemonade).
“You remember, don’t you,” she said, “the baby we had and lost. You thought I was happy it was gone. I wasn’t. You were happy, and I was devastated.”
“That’s why you were crying?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“You’re going to have to forgive me.”
“You abandoned me afterwards.”
“I thought that was what you wanted.”
“I wanted you. But you didn’t want me, enough. You let me go without another thought.”
“It was just a short time we were together. And we slept together just one time at a party, Pria. One time.”
“So you thought you could just discard me? And run after Phoebe? I tried everything I could to keep you, but—”
She stopped short, her eyes darting away from me suddenly. I glimpsed the tremor in her jaw. It struck me as fear rather than trauma.
Had there ever really been a baby? The possibility had never occurred to me before. When her gaze shifted back to me, I sensed the truth.
Jesus. What was I thinking?
Was there even anything real inside Pria?
In a defensive gesture, she wrapped her arms around herself, hanging onto her shoulders. Her jacket sleeves rode up, exposing an ugly dark line on one of her wrists.
“What happened to your wrist?” I asked.
Her mouth went tight. “Just a bit of extra evidence.”
“What?”
“I cut myself before we left my house and let a bit of blood run into the tub. I just thought that if we were going to be gone for a long time, it might be best if it looked like something happened to me . . . .”
“Why would you—?” Rage blistered through me when I realised the answer for myself. “You wanted to make it look like Phoebe did that to you. Like you were forced to leave Sydney to escape from her. Or maybe to even make it look like she killed you, before she was taken away to the psych ward. You never intended us ever leaving this island.”
I jumped up from the table. “I’m taking my son and Jessie to the yacht.”
Her face dropped. “You can’t sail out. There’s a storm brewing. Take some time to think, and you’ll—”
Leaning over the table, I roared in her face. “No! I’m not taking time to think. And I’m not sailing out either. I’m going to radio for help, and the kids and I are going to sit tight. In the yacht. Until the police arrive.”
“I won’t let you abduct my daughter.”
“And I won’t leave her here with you. Not another minute.”
I watched her, her face and jaw tightening and her eye
s going dark. She stood.
Keeping my eyes on her, I threw some things into a backpack. Bottles of water and packets of food. Enough to last the kids a few hours. Wrapping Tommy in the blanket, I left the house.
“Jessie!” Wind blew in from the sea, my loud voice waking Tommy.
Behind me, Pria walked in a straight line towards us, her expression oddly poised.
52.
PHOEBE
Thursday
THE POLICE TRANSFERRED OUR PARTY TO a large boat. Police and Rescue from Victoria joining the crew.
If it was cold at home, the air was arctic here, freezing our faces into blocks of ice until we could barely speak. Wind whipped the waves into high peaks, snatches of rain gusting in and then catching on a wall of air coming from another direction and vanishing again. The storm was making everyone shout.
Bernice’s skin reddened, her eyes watering in the cold.
“I’m sorry,” I started. “I shouldn’t have asked you to—”
“Don’t bother saying it.” She plunged her hands in her pockets, bringing her shoulders up tight. “I want to be here. It’s not for you—I didn’t come here for your sake. But I want to see justice for little Tommy.”
I sucked my lips in, nodding, the wind drying the tears on my cheeks to salt. “That’s all I have left. Hey, it was you that night, wasn’t it? At my mailbox, after I’d been sleepwalking. What were you doing there?” I shut my eyes for a brief second. “No accusations. I’m just curious.”
“Watching you,” she answered.
I frowned at her. “Why?”
“I’d seen you roaming the streets before. I guess it seemed exciting, you heading out in the small hours. At first I thought you were having an affair, like Luke. Later I realised you were sleepwalking. So I kept an eye on you.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Wasn’t like I had anything better to do.”
The afternoon darkened, the storm intensifying. It seemed that night was closing in hours early. At least, we were going to get there a lot quicker than a yacht would. An hour, I was told.
It was the island we saw first. In the distance. Dark, sharp hills like giant waves. The view of the island matched the picture Pria had drawn.