by Anni Taylor
I had one last thing to say to Pria.
Pria bent her head slightly as I approached, her lips whitening as she pressed them hard into a thin line.
I stopped dead in front of her. “Did you want to kill me?” I said, keeping my voice steady. “When you cut the stairs, were you trying to kill me?”
The police officers glanced at each other, then lifted their chins and turned back to the ocean.
Pria didn’t answer, not that I’d expected her to. I’d just needed to say it. We’d been friends since we were nine years old. My mind was still fighting against this new perception of her, all the things she’d kept hidden from me.
I hunched my shoulders against the icy wind. Pria didn’t even seem to be feeling the cold, despite being soaked to the skin.
“I just remembered something,” I told her. “That day at number 29 was the last time we ever played The Moose. It was your idea. You shuffled the names and handed them out. I was you and you were me. You made sure of that. You were me from that day on, weren’t you? You never stopped playing the game.”
“I wasn’t playing a game.”
“You took my son away from me, Pria. You kept him and left me in torment.”
“I rescued him. And I rescued Luke. Luke should always have been with me. I loved him better than you.”
“They didn’t need rescuing.” My voice lost its conviction.
In all truth, I couldn’t say for sure what would have happened to Tommy had Pria not stolen him away. My rage back then had terrified even me. Despite the terrible things Pria did, I couldn’t say for sure that she hadn’t actually saved Tommy. And was she right about Luke? Her love wasn’t a healthy kind of love, but in some twisted way, maybe she did love him more than I was capable of.
“I know why you’re wet,” I said. “You went in the water after they fell from the yacht, didn’t you?”
She nodded vacantly. “The waves were too high. I got driven back. And then I couldn’t see any of them. I didn’t mean for any of them to die. They were supposed to come back on the dinghy.”
Pain grew hard inside me. “They almost did die out there. I can’t forgive any of the things you did. I never will.”
I turned away from her then.
As I entered the yacht, I looked for Luke first, because I knew he had Tommy. He was sitting on a bench seat, a woollen blanket around his shoulders, facing away from the island and away from Pria, his head down, his arms around Tommy in that protective way that men held their children—the gentleness of their large bodies accentuating their masculinity.
Jessie stood with Bernice at the railing, looking out at Pria’s Ab ovo. Walking up to Jessie from behind, I slipped my arms around her, wanting to protect her from the sight of her mother being left behind on the island, trying to urge her away. But when I caught the expression on her small, cold-pinched face, I saw something that I could only describe as release. The usual quick, nervous look was gone from Jessie’s eyes. What I’d always thought was Jessie was not really Jessie.
I didn’t know what she’d been through being Pria’s daughter. And I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed that things weren’t right. In retrospect, there’d been signs. But I’d missed them all. I’d lived on the same street for almost the past three years, too caught up in my own life to see what was happening around me. Silently, I made a promise to Jessie that I’d be there for her now.
Jessie had been shy when the police had praised her for saving not only her own life, but Tommy’s also. The boat and the relative warmth of the cave had prevented them from becoming hypothermic. I owed her everything.
Bernice, holding the boat’s rails, glanced at me. The storm had died, the intensity of it showing on her face. Her skin was not the type to deal with extreme weather well. Her cheeks were dry and scaly, her lips almost blistered. We all had a touch of exposure, but Bernice had fared the worst. A few minutes ago, Detective Yarris told her it would be best for her to get out of the elements, but Bernice had refused. As I watched her now, she raised her face to the sky, letting the breeze stream past her. It seemed she’d become a vacuum, scooping up everything: the salty air, the restless ocean, Pria-on-the-island. She shot me a brief smile, and I smiled back, nodding. I was sure of one thing. The daughter that had left Mrs Wick’s house last night was not the same daughter that would be returning today.
Trent Gilroy approached me somewhat sheepishly. In the rush to organise the flight here, he’d forgotten to call Nan. He put his phone on speaker and dialled. Nan answered, her voice strained thin with apprehension. She and Mrs Wick were together at Nan’s house. Bernice crept across to listen.
I could imagine Nan and Mrs Wick huddled together in Nan’s tiny living room, watching the news for updates. Apparently, so far, the media knew nothing except of my escape from Greensthorne and that the police had found Bernice and me breaking into Pria’s house and had brought us into the station. He gave them a brief overview of what had happened with Bernice and me over the past few hours. And he told Nan we had Tommy.
Their cries and screams of disbelief and joy had fresh tears stinging my eyes.
When the conversation ended and he’d put his phone away again, Trent locked eyes with me, exhaling uneasily, as though he had a lot to say but couldn’t find a beginning point.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ve got Tommy back.”
I understood he’d done what he had to do, with the information he had to go on. I didn’t hold anything against him.
But right now, my focus wasn’t on providing a salve for his conscience.
“I think Bernice might have something to tell you,” I said carefully, meeting Bernice’s eyes.
At first, her expression froze. But then she drew in an audible breath and gave a nod.
“There’ll be lots to go over in the coming days,” said Trent. “We’ll do it all at the station, where we can get official statements.”
“This isn’t about Tommy,” I told him. “It’s about something that happened a long time ago. The after-effects of which gave me the wrong impression of Bernice. Because I didn’t know what happened.”
With a deep frown, Trent turned to Bernice.
I could see that it was taking all of Bernice’s strength as she began. “It’s about Luke’s father. And house number 29 . . . .”
Excusing myself, I headed over to the other side of the boat, to where Luke was sitting. I wanted to give her the space to tell her story without me there listening. I’d been one of the people who’d added to her pain all these years.
I’d asked Jessie to come with me, but she wanted to stay where she was, watching the island. I could see the conflict on her face as she kept her eyes fixed on her mother. Perhaps, mixed with her love for her mother was a desperate desire to be certain that she was really getting away from her.
Luke was reluctant to give Tommy up when I reached for him. Partly, I guessed, because he’d fallen into the trap laid by the person who abducted Tommy, and now he wanted to be Tommy’s human shield.
But I insisted, taking Tommy’s tiny blanket-wrapped body into my arms.
“Boat,” Tommy told me excitedly, pointing.
It was the first thing I’d heard him say.
“Yes,” I cried, trying to steady my voice and failing badly. “This is a big boat.”
“Phoebe . . .” Luke’s eyes swept over Tommy and me. “I didn’t know. I deserve how you feel about me. But I didn’t know.”
“Jessie told the police everything. Yes, you didn’t know. But you didn’t have to come here.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for that mistake.”
Tommy held my face between his hands, taking my eyes away from Luke. This had been a typical Tommy gesture when he’d wanted someone’s attention. It surprised me that he still did this. Somehow, I’d expected that all the things that used to be Tommy would be different now.
I kissed his warm cheek, inhaling the scent of his skin. I could feel the connection between T
ommy and me—physical, visceral. He was the being that had once been inside me, part of my body, a heart beating under mine.
The wind careening into the boat made me uneasy. As though it could sweep Tommy from my arms and take him. There was far, far too much sea and sky. The clouds scudded too fast across the horizons.
“I’m taking Tommy inside,” I told Luke.
He sighed, nodding, then bent low over his knees, his head in his hands. I could guess that the storm hadn’t yet eroded in his mind.
I headed into the covered area of the boat. Seating myself on the bench seat, I held Tommy close against me, one hand stroking his newly flaxen head. From here, I had a filtered view of the island.
I vowed never to let Tommy out of my sight again—Jessie either, if I was allowed to keep her. Maybe I’d move to a country town where there weren’t too many people.
And I’d watch Tommy out in the garden with his beloved caterpillars and snails. He’d spent a long time in Pria’s trap, unable to see the insects and dig in the dirt and run his trucks over stones.
Nan would come to my new house, too. Getting her there would be like breaking in a wild horse, but once she’d settled into country life, she’d surely love it. Not that she’d ever admit it.
Luke wouldn’t fit there. Not Luke with his big dreams and his big life. And I didn’t even know whether Luke fit with me anymore. Did Luke and I make sense together?
Flynn wouldn’t fit there in my country house either. Flynn was a traveller in life. He couldn’t be held to one place too long. Back when we were a couple, it was understood that we were going to be free spirits. Adventurers. No children.
Six months ago, both of us had wilfully forgotten that. I remembered now what I’d told him that day over the phone, at the moment Tommy had gone missing. I’d told him yes. I’d planned to pack up Tommy and myself and go live with Flynn in London. It was a way out of the consuming depression and bleakness that had coloured my days.
But I couldn’t figure now why I’d agreed to such a thing. (I guessed that I was still holding the phone when I was searching for Tommy down at the harbour, and I’d dropped it in the water without noticing. Flynn, once he’d heard in the news what had happened with Tommy, must have known I wasn’t coming. He never did make contact again.)
I’d played such a terrible game, from Tommy’s first kick in my belly, making myself believe I could be who I wasn’t. Pretending and pretending and pretending until there was nothing left of me. And then pretending again with Flynn that we could pick up where we’d left off.
If I didn’t know who Phoebe Basko was, I knew even less about Phoebe Vance.
None of that mattered now, though. Tommy was back, and he was going to expand into every empty space in my life.
The distance between the boat and the island grew too great to be able to see more than a faint image of Pria, until she disappeared completely from view.
54.
PHOEBE
Six months later
TOMMY PUFFED UP HIS CHEEKS AND blew out the three candles on his cake. Nan and Mrs Wick busied themselves giving out slices of cake to the guests.
Jessie and a friend from her new school collected slices of cake, then walked down the hall to Jessie’s bedroom, giggling about ten-year-old girl things.
I paused after I snapped a photo of Tommy, glancing out the window beyond his laughing, cake-smeared face. Green hills rolled away to a small village, the air saturated with yellow summer sunshine.
I’d bought this new house after Luke and I had sold our house on Southern Sails Street. The house was located an hour north of Sydney, on the coast.
I’d returned to my Southern Sails house with Luke after that terrifying day at Pria’s island. Both Luke and I had wanted Tommy to return to his own house and his own bedroom. Tommy’s reaction had been shock and joy at seeing his home again. I couldn’t give him back all the things I’d destroyed, but he still had some things, including his beloved train tracks.
But I’d known from the start that I couldn’t stay there long: I didn’t want to stay there. We put the house on the market after the first three months and it’d sold almost immediately, at auction.
After selling my house, I couldn’t have stayed with Nan even if I’d wanted to. Her home, and all the rest of the terrace houses on Southern Sails Street had been demolished months ago. They were all gone now. All the people gone.
I was glad that house number 29 had been torn down, but a part of me also felt the terror of what might have happened if it had been demolished six months earlier. I would have never found the boat from the nightlight. Sass would have never made the connection that the boat wasn’t from Tommy’s nightlight. Sass wouldn’t have rescued me from Greensthorne and she, Bernice and I wouldn’t have shared the discoveries that led to Pria’s island. If no one had found out about Pria’s island in time, Luke could have drifted around in the cold winter ocean of the Bass Strait until he died of exposure. Jessie and Tommy would have been left alone and defenceless on the island—with an unstable woman who was capable of carrying out terrible things. I thought of what she’d done to the cats that she’d imagined hadn’t loved her enough and I couldn’t stop a shiver from travelling down my bare arms.
Pria was in jail now, awaiting trial. Every time I’d seen her face on the TV, her expression had been a mix of cold detachment and bewilderment. The court had given me custody of Jessie. Her father, Jake, had returned from New Zealand when he’d heard what happened, willing to take her, but Jessie didn’t even know him. He’d left Pria when she was pregnant with Jessie. We learned then what we didn’t know. That Pria had made Jake’s life hell, alternately being spitefully jealous of every woman he spoke to and telling him he’d never be half the man that Luke was. Jake promised he’d be in Jessie’s life now. I hadn’t allowed him to take her away anywhere with him yet, though. He seemed nice, but I remained cautious.
Detectives Gilroy, Yarris and Haleemi hadn’t made me come into the station to give my statements. They understood that I was suffering anxiety due to the hours I’d spent there being told I’d written the letters and then that I was under suspicion of harming Tommy. They came to Luke and me at our house. Detective Gilroy got down on the floor and played trains with Tommy. He’d never met him, of course, before the day we found him. He half let it slip to me that he’d thought Tommy was dead during the six months that he was gone. I didn’t blame him for that. In my own mind, Tommy had been both dead and alive; a paradox that had almost destroyed me.
Nan didn’t come with me to live at my new house, despite my urging. She’d said she couldn’t leave Sydney. It’d been part of her for too long. Nan and Mrs Wick went into a retirement home together in North Sydney. They had been good friends as children, back in the 1940s. I’d sold my story of the search for Tommy to the media so that I could raise the money for Nan and Mrs Wick to go and live in a nice retirement home. A TV station paid me an enormous amount of money and the story made international headlines. The media had used me and so I figured it was a kind of justice to use them in return.
All of the elderly residents suffered when they had to leave their homes. But I think it was Bernice who suffered most of all. All of her carefully collected treasures were taken away from her. She had no money to put them into storage. I offered to pay, but she declined, saying I’d already done enough for her mother. She surprised everyone by taking off to travel the world as a yacht deckhand. Earlier today, Mrs Wick had shown me the latest photographs Bernice had sent her—pictures of sea and sky and exotic ports. Bernice said she would come back when her court case began.
Luke had refused to speak to his father since he’d learned about what he’d done to Bernice. Luke’s father was going to plead not guilty, but I prayed that the truth would come out in the court room. Luke’s mother was sticking firmly by her husband, and Luke was barely speaking to her either.
Luke was renting an apartment in the city these days. Still working hard at his real esta
te business, coming up to see Tommy every second weekend. I was still unable to reconcile my feelings for him. I still loved him, but I didn’t know if I liked him. And worse, he’d kept secrets from me—about seeing Pria. Had he always kept secrets from me? When I thought back, to the days when he’d first turned up in London and how he’d swept me away so easily, I couldn’t understand it. It almost seemed like he’d slipped past me, into my life. In the years afterwards. Luke had tried hard to shape me into the wife he wanted. Flynn had blinded me, too, in his own way. He’d sold me a picture of the incredible future we’d have together, then he’d pulled the rug from under me. I’d been stupid enough to buy that picture twice.
Luke was here today, standing awkwardly by himself, eating a piece of cake he was obviously not enjoying. Luke wasn’t fond of cake. Especially not a children’s cake with blue frosting and sugar frogs on it. (Tommy had asked for a cake that looked like frogs in a pond.)
Kate’s twins skipped up to me, their eyes and cheeks bright with excitement and sugary party food. “Can we take Tommy outside to play?” Orianthe asked.
“Sure,” I told her, glancing up to exchange smiles with Kate and Elliot.
Kate and I had made up a few days after I’d returned from Pria’s island. She’d cried her eyes out and she’d been certain the friendship was over. But it would have been stupid of me to hold anything against her. I imagined I would have acted the same as she had, had I been in her position.
Sass gave me a sideways hug as she, Kate, Elliot and I watched the kids run outside, Orianthe and Otto pulling Tommy along. Sass had always been big on hugs, but she was especially grabby with Tommy and me these days, like she was scared she was going to lose us again.
Sass’s phone buzzed then, and she went off to answer a call. The TV network that she worked for had recently asked if she’d run her own home renovation show for them. Up to now, she’d been one of the organisers of their shows, never in front of the camera. I could tell that this was the call where they were asking for her decision. I could hear the nervousness in her voice.