by Maggie Groff
His manner changed abruptly. ‘Harper discussed our private business with you?’
‘Of course,’ I said defensively. ‘We’re sisters!’
There was a long silence at the end of the line. Eventually I heard an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s really none of your business,’ he said tersely.
That did it. In defence of sisters everywhere, I jumped off the high board.
‘I am not going to enter into a debate about what is or isn’t my business, Andrew. And I’m not going to tiptoe around. Harper thinks you are having an affair. However, I believe that the young woman you have been seeing is your daughter. She’s the image of Jack and your mother.’ I blurted it all out without taking a breath. Then I sat back and waited for Andrew to tell me that I was wrong, but I knew I wasn’t. Once I’d spotted the family resemblance and realised that Jack and Harper would have recognised her if she were a known relative, and then considered the young woman’s age and Daisy’s observations, it was a no-brainer.
Andrew would either hang up or, more likely, want to find out how and what I knew. After about two minutes I perceived that I had caught him so off guard he actually didn’t know what to say, so I dived in again.
Gently this time, I said, ‘She’s lovely, Andrew.’
I could hear him breathing but he still didn’t respond.
‘Andrew?’
‘Oh, God.’ He sighed. ‘Is that why Harper has been so crazy lately? Because she thinks I’m having an affair?’ His concern was palpable.
Avoiding his question, I said, ‘You were seen with a young woman and someone told Harper.’ It wouldn’t help matters to tell him that it was his son, Jack.
‘So how did you see her?’
I stopped and took a deep breath. No way was I going to admit that Harper had asked me to find a private detective, or that I’d had Daisy follow him. I was going to have to wear this one.
‘I followed you,’ I lied. ‘I saw you together and took a photo. She is the image of Jack. I knew she had to be related to you.’
It was an irony of life that Jack had been the son who had first seen Andrew with her, and in his anger had reported she had a face like a hatful of spiders. Of course she didn’t, her face was wonderful, and the comment would either be forgotten or end up in Jack’s stand-up comedy routine. I rather hoped it would be forgotten.
‘I didn’t see you,’ Andrew said, and thankfully there was no anger in his voice.
‘I’m an experienced investigator,’ I replied, cringing.
‘No, really,’ he said, and I could hear a hint of mirth.
Taking a dig at my professional competence was Andrew’s way of defrosting the potentially icy ground we were skating on. I relaxed and, as it seemed appropriate, uttered a small laugh.
‘Has Harper seen the photograph?’ Andrew asked.
‘Yes, and she still thinks you’re being unfaithful.’
‘Didn’t she spot the family resemblance?’ he queried. ‘It’s so obvious.’
‘No, but she’s had a lot on her mind,’ I said, aware that the lot on Harper’s mind was yet another child that Andrew didn’t know about.
‘Why didn’t you tell her?’ he said, a slightly accusatory tone in his voice.
‘I’ve only just realised,’ I fired back defensively. ‘And anyway, why didn’t you?’
‘I was waiting for the DNA results,’ he said.
‘But it’s obvious she’s yours!’
‘To me, yes, but not to my daughter. She didn’t want to meet the family until we’d had the test.’
‘And?’
‘She’s a Blaine-Richardson all right,’ he said proudly.
Smiling, I asked, ‘So why haven’t you told Harper yet?’
‘Would you introduce a previously unknown offspring to Harper at the moment? She’s angry as hell at everything and everybody, especially me. That’s why I’ve been staying away.’
This was edging perilously close to a French farce.
‘Yes, but she’s angry because she thinks you’re being unfaithful!’ I exclaimed.
‘I didn’t know that until you just told me,’ he said, exasperated.
This, I had to admit, was true.
‘Please tell me about your daughter, Andrew. This is wonderful news, really it is.’
‘Do you think?’
‘I do. I’m assuming you’ve only recently learned of her existence. You must be thrilled and it must be incredibly hard not to share this. Congratulations, by the way.’
He laughed. ‘Thank you, Scout. It’s all been a shock. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to tell someone.’
‘You haven’t told me much,’ I replied, keeping my voice jovial.
‘I honestly don’t know where to start.’
‘Well, what’s her name?’ I encouraged.
‘Saskia. She’s twenty-eight and Dutch.’
It was enough to set his thoughts in motion. Over the next ten minutes I learned that Andrew had met Saskia’s mother, Arabella, when he was twenty and she was a Dutch student travelling round Australia. They’d had a brief romance before she’d continued on her world travels, both promising they would keep in touch.
A few months later Andrew had met my sister and had fallen in love with her. He had stopped writing letters to Arabella and had thought no more about her. Arabella had never mentioned to him that she was pregnant, or contacted him after Saskia’s birth.
‘I wish she’d told me,’ Andrew said. ‘Arabella knew where I lived. All those years of my not knowing Saskia. I can’t bear to think of it.’
Poor Andrew. I felt for him. His was a difficult joy.
‘How did you find out about her?’ I said.
‘She turned up at the hospital three weeks ago. As soon as I saw her I knew we had to be related. She looks exactly like my mother. As does Jack.’
‘How did she find you?’
‘She always knew her father was an Australian, but had never searched for me. She told me that when Arabella had returned to Holland and discovered her pregnancy, her parents had encouraged her to stay home, have the child and they, as a family, would take care of her. There was family money and Saskia thinks her grandparents couldn’t bear the thought of Arabella living so far away in Australia, but we’ll never know the full truth about their reasons, or why Arabella never told me.
‘When Saskia was five,’ Andrew went on, ‘Arabella married a Dutch oil company executive who formally adopted Saskia. He was, according to Saskia, a wonderful stepfather, but he was killed in a helicopter accident three years ago, in the North Sea on the way to an offshore rig. Arabella died of ovarian cancer last May. Before she died she told Saskia my name. I wasn’t hard to find.’
‘And losing her stepfather and then her mother was what prompted Saskia to seek you out?’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Andrew paused. ‘You know, it hurts a little that Saskia never wanted to find me before.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said, surprised he was so candid.
‘She told me she thought about it during her early teens, but didn’t want to upset her mother. Or her stepfather.’
‘She might also have feared you would reject her,’ I added.
‘Mmmm.’
‘What does Saskia do for a living?’ I asked.
Andrew uttered a small laugh. ‘She’s a medical student, studying in Amsterdam.’
‘There you go,’ I said. This also explained why she was staying at a backpackers hostel.
‘Look, Scout,’ Andrew said, ‘I need to go home and explain all this to Harper. It’ll be a shock, I know, but a happy one, I think. And I’m pleased that at last I know why she’s been so irrational lately. I haven’t seen Harper like this since she was pregnant with Fergus.’
‘Me neither,’ I said. The temptation to enlighten him was enormous.
It was, I thought happily, Andrew who was in for a shock.
Chapter 42
On Friday morning Chairman Meow sat on his Windsor chair and daintily bat
hed himself while I did a company search on the owners and operators of Silver Gull Island. We were as busy as bees.
I had dressed for work in footless black tights and a russet-coloured tunic top that was designed to fall off the shoulder in a fetching manner. By 8.30 am the fall-off-the-shoulder lark had driven me nuts and I was back in jeans and a Che Guevara T-shirt.
Silver Gull Island had been privately owned until 2009 when it was purchased by Blue Wonderland Adventures, an Australian company that boasted global resort islands strategically placed to capture the sun and the tourist dollar.
A historical search showed the company had been operating for forty-five years, had had no name changes and was privately owned by the Burns family. Nowhere did I find any adverse media.
Travellers’ reviews of Silver Gull Island were positive, indicating it was a small island with great walks, no cars and reasonably priced accommodation.
Working methodically, I drilled down to the next operational level, the manager of Silver Gull Island.
I called the Melbourne office of Blue Wonderland Adventures and, posing as a location scout for a film company, asked for contact details of the island management. The girl who answered couldn’t give me the details fast enough. I thanked her and hung up.
Mr Barrington Tupper was the manager of Silver Gull Island. I hit the website LinkedIn and discovered Tupper was experienced in hospitality and had managed Silver Gull since it changed hands in 2009. I didn’t find any negative press about him either.
It appeared the owners and operators were kosher.
By 10 am I’d figured out that Leila had needed a reference because she had been an unknown entity to the new manager.
I was distracted by thoughts of Harper. She hadn’t called yet to tell me that she had something amazing to tell me. Maybe there had been a major accident somewhere and Andrew had been in surgery all night and hadn’t made it home? Or maybe Harper wasn’t pleased to learn she was now stepmother to a twenty-eight-year-old stranger?
I was on tenterhooks and needed to keep busy.
I was drafting an outline of the case when Daisy arrived.
‘Yoo-hoo,’ she called as she came through the gate onto my back verandah.
‘In here,’ I yelled from the study.
Chairman Meow hopped off his chair and ran out to greet our guest. Almost immediately he raced back into the study, closely followed by Peppy. The Chairman shot under my desk and Peppy promptly stopped, lay down, stomped a front paw and uttered a small yelp. He wanted to play.
I leaned over, patted Peppy and said, ‘Nice doggy,’ and he licked me. Looking under the desk, I saw that Chairman Meow had retreated to safety behind the backboard and was peering at me through a tangle of cables and wires. ‘It’s okay,’ I coaxed gently, but he wouldn’t budge.
‘Ignore him and he’ll come around,’ Daisy said as she breezed into the room, dropped her bag on the floor by the Windsor chair and gave me a peck on the cheek. She was wearing purple pants, a fitted green knit top with the sleeves pushed up on her forearms, and a dazzling amethyst pendant on a silver chain. The colours had worked for the suffragettes, and they worked for Daisy.
‘Should I put away the porcelain?’ I said, eyeing Peppy. I was unsure how much leaping about would occur.
‘I don’t think so,’ Daisy said. ‘Peppy’s well trained. He was a breeze in the car.’
She bent over and peered under my desk at the Chairman, and then stood up and said, ‘I could murder a cup of tea. Finish what you’re doing and I’ll make a pot. Stay there, Peppy,’ she ordered and went off to the kitchen.
I tried to concentrate on the case outline, but couldn’t. At any moment I expected Peppy and Chairman Meow to re-enact a Tom and Jerry cartoon in my study. I saved the work I’d done and opened the Silver Gull Island website.
Daisy returned carrying two mugs of tea. She put them on my desk, then pulled the Windsor chair over next to me. Together we looked at the website, studied the brochures and drank our tea.
‘I think we should organise a sail with Splash Charters,’ Daisy said, and I agreed, glad she had suggested the idea and not me. It had already been on my to-do list, but I didn’t want to be the one calling all the shots.
I was conscious that neither Chairman Meow nor Peppy had budged for some time. As often happens, my thoughts jinxed it and cables rustled behind my desk. Uh-oh. The Chairman was on the move.
He emerged with his head in the air and walked pompously past Peppy and out of the room, a regency prince passing a serf. I held my breath but Peppy didn’t move.
‘What a snot,’ Daisy said, laughing.
‘I can’t believe Peppy hasn’t moved,’ I said.
‘I told him to stay!’
‘Yes, but that was ages ago.’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘As I said, well trained.’
Neither of us are ditherers, and we quickly decided to leave Brisbane this coming Sunday morning and fly to Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, take the high-speed launch across to Silver Gull Island where we would stay for four nights, and then retrace our steps and return to Brisbane on Thursday. Dave would take us to the airport and Ben would collect us. I knew they’d both be thrilled about that part of the plan!
Daisy had brought with her a homemade quiche and salad, and she prepared lunch while I phoned the airline and booked the flights as per Captain Diamond’s instructions.
Then I phoned Silver Gull Island direct and enquired from a male booking clerk with an Indian accent about their stand-by rates for this Sunday. The prices were good and I booked four nights, all meals included, staying on the second floor of the Lagoon Beach accommodation, which was beachfront and overlooked the lagoon. The clerk offered me a private beachfront cabin, but I declined. We would be safer on the second floor, surrounded by other guests. You can’t direct an ill wind that might be heading towards you, but you can adjust the sails to minimise risk.
I paid with my credit card and then asked if I needed to book the launch from Hamilton to Silver Gull.
‘No,’ he said. ‘There are two a day from Hammo to Gull, one late morning and one late afternoon,’ he said. ‘You can catch either.’
I thanked him and rang off.
The flight e-tickets and itinerary were already in my inbox and I printed them out.
‘Come on, Peppy,’ I said, and he followed me to the kitchen to show Daisy what I had booked. Chairman Meow was nowhere to be seen.
‘Sit down, Peppy,’ Daisy ordered, and obediently he lay down under the kitchen table.
I explained the bookings to Daisy and showed her our accommodation in the brochure.
‘It looks great,’ she said. ‘How much is the launch from Hamilton?’
‘Twenty dollars.’
‘You didn’t ask the price, did you?’ she said, grinning at me.
I shook my head and grinned back. ‘Good pickup. We’ll make an investigative journalist of you yet.’
While we ate, Daisy informed me that, as a precaution, she had told Dave a little about my investigation.
I acknowledged her concern, and said, ‘Smart move.’ I didn’t intend breaking the law, but if I got into a scrape it would be Dave coming to my rescue.
I helped myself to another slice of quiche, and we chatted about Peppy and how well he was settling in. I was thankful Daisy hadn’t asked about my sister. I was dying to tell her about Saskia, but it wouldn’t be right to say anything until I knew that Harper had been told. Actually I hadn’t told Daisy about Rafe yet either. Or that Toby and I were no more. I’d save it all for the island.
Suddenly Chairman Meow charged through the kitchen, swiping Peppy in the head with a paw as he shot past. Then he stood in the corner and watched for the dog’s reaction.
Peppy stayed where he was and uttered a small yelp. Chairman Meow cautiously prowled towards Peppy, and then ran the last few steps and swiped him again and ran back to his corner. Peppy yelped again and stamped his paw.
‘It�
��s okay, Peppy, you can play,’ Daisy said, and he emerged from under the table and trotted over to Chairman Meow. They sniffed noses and then Peppy turned and cantered out of the kitchen and Chairman Meow followed at a run.
‘Friends at last,’ Daisy said with satisfaction, and we both smiled after them like proud parents.
After we’d cleared away lunch, Daisy left Peppy playing with Chairman Meow and went shopping. Keeping an ear out for the new playmates, I set about sorting clothes for the trip. Our imminent departure left only tomorrow to prepare, so I would have to put off my op-shopping date with Harper, but that wasn’t a problem as we could defer until the following Saturday.
I looked at the time. Harper would be at school, but Andrew had to have told her by now.
Why hadn’t she called me?
Chapter 43
After Daisy had collected Peppy and gone home, I checked my inbox to see if Harper had emailed.
By now, various scenarios involving Harper’s reaction to Andrew’s news had played out in my head, and all of them were bad. She’d be shocked, but she wouldn’t have gone off the deep end, would she? After all, Saskia had been conceived before Andrew had met Harper. Still, one never knows.
Unfortunately there was nothing from Harper, but Needles had sent photographs that she had taken on Friday morning of our GKI artwork on both ATMs. I printed out the pics in A4 size and put all but one of them in the steamer trunk, and then emailed thanks to Needles.
I guess it was the maverick in me that made me do what I did next. I turned the printed GKI photograph over and covered the back with the yellow post-it notes that were filled with kisses from Rafe. Then I put my artwork, post-it notes to the front, in an old certificate frame and hung it on my bedroom wall.
Although I was unsure if Rafe knew definitively of my involvement with GKI, he had made several comments in the past that had alerted me to the possibility he was suspicious, and recently there had been the jumper comment at the hotel and the Ned Kelly remark at my parents’ place. I rather liked the fact that Rafe would soon be in such close proximity to the evidence. And looking at it!