by Anni Taylor
“Phoebe!” I turned to see Dr Leona Moran. “Sorry I’m running late. Oh damn, I missed the cake.”
“We saved a piece for you.” I smiled at her. She’d been making the drive from the city up to the Central Coast every second Saturday for six months now. On her own time. Unpaid.
She grabbed the plate from the table and took a bite of the cake. “Yummy. Did you make it?”
I nodded. “I’m not much good at making cakes, but I tried.”
“It’s lovely. Come and walk with me outside,” she said. “I can only be here for a short time today. I’ve got to go to a family thing tonight.”
I stepped away with her, through the glass bi-fold doors. Tommy, Orianthe and Otto were rolling on the grass. Luke walked outside with Elliot, glancing across at me.
“Tommy’s getting so big” Leona said, flicking cake crumbs away from the side of her face.
“He got to three so fast,” I said. “Too fast. I missed so much of his second year. One minute I had a little baby and now suddenly I’ve got a pre-schooler.” I watched Tommy, doing all the things that had been denied to him in the months he was with Pria, locked away in a single room.
She studied my face almost too closely. “Phoebe, you know what we were talking about last time—”
“I know. I’m just not ready to talk about that stuff. Especially not today.”
“Yes, of course. It’s Tommy’s birthday. It’s just that I’ll be going away on my annual leave tomorrow and I need to know you’ll be okay. I’ll be in Europe for a month.”
“Enjoy yourself. Everything’s good here.”
She smiled as Tommy jumped like a frog down the slope and tumbled into a roll, Orianthe and Otto copying him. But then her expression pulled tight. “Phoebe, it feels to me that you’re not okay.”
I felt annoyed. “How am I not okay? I bought a fantastic house in a beautiful area. Jessie and Tommy are happy. Everything’s great.”
“Is it?”
I looked away. “Yes.”
“I’m just . . . sensing something when we talk. You’ve been through an enormous set of upheaval and changes. I’ll be honest and say that some things are worrying me. I can’t put a finger on it. But I know. I just . . . know.”
Putting a bright smile on my face, I took her empty plate. “Would you like a tea or coffee?”
For a moment, she looked startled, but then she closed her eyes, sighing and nodding. “Yes, I’d love a cup of tea.”
I made my way inside to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
A knock came at the door and when I answered it, my neighbour Jocelyn was standing there with her young son. I’d invited them to the party today. She seemed a little out-of-breath. “Sorry, Phoebe, I got caught up. My sister’s in a bit of trouble. She drove here from Sydney this morning.” She lowered her voice. “Had to get away from her boyfriend in a hurry. I never liked him. She’s going to be staying with me for a couple of months until she gets herself sorted. Hope it’s okay that I brought Chrissie along with me today. I didn’t want to leave her alone.” She turned her head and looked over her shoulder at a girl who was standing near the end of my driveway. A girl who looked about nineteen—purple hair and Goth clothing.
A small well of panic bubbled inside me. No, it wasn’t okay to bring a stranger to my house. But it was hard trying to explain that to people.
“Yes, of course,” I told her, and showed them inside. “Tommy’s out the back. I’ll come out there in a second.”
Sass and Kate were engaged in an excited conversation in the living room. I guessed that Sass had accepted her new television role. I wanted to go and congratulate her, but right now, there was something else I needed to do.
Stepping down the hall, I slipped inside the spare bedroom. The house had four bedrooms and this was the smallest. I was using it as an office. I closed the door behind me.
Up on the wall, I had a large Google Earth map of the town. I had every one of the two hundred and six houses marked, with a table of notes beside the map.
I opened one of the dozen thick folders on my desk. I made a new entry:
Chrissie—Jocelyn’s sister (find out her last name and where she was living). Blonde hair, dyed purple. Blue eyes. She looks upset, but guarded.
I kept notes on everyone in town. I knew their names and where they went each day and what they did for a living, even if I’d never met them. From my yard, I could see everyone’s houses and the local school. Everything like a grid, securely snapped into place.
I kept watch over everything. Kept count.
Six months ago, you slipped past me, Pria. You took my child and I didn’t know it.
There were lots of ways to steal a person away. You could take them away physically. You could blind them with your love. You could bring them in from the desert and show them a glittering, breathless future. You could reshape them with cutting tools and scrapers and new layers, thinly bridging the gouges and filling in the cracks with fool’s gold.
No one would ever get past me again. Not in any of the ways that it was possible to steal a person.
I would spend my days here, now, in this town where I could see everything.
Keeping watch.
ABOUT
THE GAME YOU PLAYED is author Anni Taylor’s debut novel.
You can find her online at: http://annitaylor.me
Please consider helping other readers by telling them what you thought of THE GAME YOU PLAYED in a review.
CREDITS
Tim Carter for his cover design.
Cover and title page images used from: Dreamstime.com, Unsplash.com, MoonGlowLilly, DemoncherryStock, Rachel Bostwick.
My beta readers, for their much appreciated time and effort in reading the first draft and giving valuable feedback. Brenda Telford, Katie Boettcher, Linda Gonzales, Kira Mattox, Lena May and Carolyn Scott
NOTES
Is Southern Sails Street a real street?
No, it’s fictional. The suburb that the characters of THE GAME YOU PLAYED live in is never given a name in the book. But the fictional suburb is loosely based on Miller’s Point, Sydney. All of the historical facts are real--such as the terrace houses having been built by the government’s Maritime Services Board, the decades of the Bubonic Plague and having had one end of the massive Sydney Harbour Bridge built there. The Maritime terrace housing was taken over by government housing in 1985. In recent years, the residents (many of whom have families that had lived there for generations) did have to leave their homes (the land being sold to developers). This has been happening for a while now, and the details in the book about the timing (including one side of the street being flattened before the other) are not accurate and are used for dramatic purposes only.
If you would like to know more, here are some references:
1. (Recent years. The residents’ point of view)
2. (Recent years. The government/Sydney Council’s point of view)
3. (Historical)