‘Why don’t you take Leah for a walk, show her the neighbourhood?’ Mum says as she clears up the breakfast dishes.
‘You wanna see some grass and trees?’ I ask Leah sceptically.
‘Sure, why not,’ she responds with more enthusiasm than I expected.
We pull on our sneakers and head out. It feels strange walking without Zelda. I’m used to her choosing the direction, dragging me up and down hills come rain, hail, shower or sun. As we leave, Andy’s ute pulls up. There’s a mower in the back and a bunch of other stuff. He’s been bugging Mum about having a bushfire preparedness plan. Apparently cutting back the long grass and bushes near the house should be a major part of it.
‘Hey Abbie,’ he says as he climbs out. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and navy work pants and steel-capped work boots. He’s got the hot-tradie look right down. Leah slows and scuffs her shoes in the dirt as we approach him.
‘Leah this is Andy. Andy, Leah. Andy helps out around the place.’
‘I’m sure Abbie needs a lot of help,’ she says sweetly, smiling at Andy. I resist the urge to jab her with my elbow.
‘Your mum said you went to visit the caves yesterday. How was it?’ Andy asks.
‘Pretty cool,’ I say.
‘We found all this crazy psychedelic art that Abbie reckons Damien O’Reilley painted,’ Leah says, her eyes going wide. ‘It was totally freaky’
‘Sounds… interesting,’ Andy raises an eyebrow.
‘I don’t know that it was his,’ I say quickly. ‘I mean it could have been done by anybody. And it could have been there for ages. It’s not like it was signed and dated or anything. It’s just a guess.’
‘I’ll have to go take a look sometime,’ Andy says. ‘You girls enjoy your walk.’ I feel Leah fluttering like a butterfly beside me.
She barely waits until we’re out of earshot before she says ‘Whoa, he is hot. You didn’t tell me about him. Now I can see the appeal of country living.’
‘Leah, he’s like twenty-something.’
‘And you are a very mature and sophisticated young woman.’
‘With a boyfriend.’
She looks at me. ‘Really?’
And I realise with a rush of guilt that I never actually told her. But then, so much has happened in the past week that Zeke and I have never had The Conversation either – we’ve just kind of gone with the flow. And the flow has involved lots of kissing.
‘I’m pretty sure.’
Then Leah starts squawking and jumping up and down and hugging me.
‘Go you! Abbie!’
‘You don’t have to rub it in,’ I say blushing. I’ve had approximately point five of a boyfriend to Leah’s dozen.
‘Well that’s one good thing anyway. I was starting to think you didn’t have a life at all and I’d have to smuggle you back to Sydney in my bag when I leave today.’
‘Hill or no hill?’ I say as we head out onto the road.
‘Hill. Definitely. I need to tone my butt.’
‘Yeah right,’ I say. Leah’s butt is about as perfect as they come, apparently due to the power of genetics and good fortune, because she mostly just uses it for sitting on whilst watching bad TV.
We turn up the hill. I miss feeling Zelda pulling at the lead, dragging me over to the side of the road every minute or so to sniff something or pee on something.
‘So, are you going to tell me what’s been going on?’ Leah says. She can only mean one thing. My heart sinks. I’d been hoping to avoid this bit of the conversation altogether.
‘It’s been a full-on couple of months,’ I say, and kick at a big chunk of quartz that’s embedded in the dirt. It comes free and skitters along ahead of me.
‘I Googled Rebecca O’Reilley,’ she says.
I don’t say anything.
‘I can see how it freaked you out.’
I know that tone. Leah’s in monologue mode. She’s been practising, she has something to say and she’s going to say it. The easiest thing is just to let her talk.
‘Uh huh,’ I say.
‘But Abbie you do get that it’s just a fluke, right? Pure coincidence. It doesn’t mean anything.’ We keep climbing. ‘I mean going to her house, all of that, that was just way too far. You were breaking and entering.’
‘It was already broken,’ I say.
Leah looks at me crossly. ‘It’s not a joke. You need to stay away. Leave it alone. And if you can’t, like, if it’s getting to you too much, then let your mum know. Maybe you should come back to Sydney. I thought that was what you wanted. All this stuff about Rebecca O’Reilley gives you a reason, had you thought about that? I mean Zeke’s great and everything, but I’m worried about you. And I miss you…’
I push harder up the hill and Leah skips a couple of times to catch up. She’s right. When we moved here the only thing I wanted was an excuse to leave. Maybe Becky O’Reilley would have given me that? Except that now she’s become part of my reason to stay. Because something in me itches to know more. I feel like there is too much order, too much symmetry to my presence here. There must be a reason behind it. There has to be. But then I think of the symbols that Damien painted on the walls of the cave. There was order and symmetry to them too, but that didn’t make them any less crazy.
The dreams, though – they mean something.
‘Abbie?’ Leah says.
‘Sorry, I’m just thinking.’
‘Are you going to at least tell me what you’re thinking about?’
‘Just about those symbols Damien painted.’ I know straight away that was the wrong thing to say. Leah groans and shakes her head and looks away.
‘Abbie you’re obsessed. Do you understand that? You’re thinking about this all the time and looking for connections everywhere and it’s not healthy. I’m your friend. It’s my job to tell you this, right?’
I nod. ‘Yeah I know. I just, I can’t help it…’
‘That’s what I mean. You need to talk to your Mum about it.’
I look away.
‘Now how far away is this house of yours? You know, the murder house.’
‘What?’ I stop and turn to look at her.
‘You’ll go back, won’t you? Tomorrow or the day after or next week sometime. You’re going to go back and look around. So, you may as well do it now, while I’m here. I can keep you company and make sure everything is okay.’ She smiles.
So this is what she’d been thinking about and rehearsing. This was her plan all along.
Chapter forty-seven
‘Creepy, hey, all those pine trees,’ Leah says as get a view of the house.
As we approach, I see a sign out the front, on the road just beside the entrance to the driveway. ‘That wasn’t there before,’ I say.
It’s a For Sale sign. 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, extensive entertaining area, tennis court and swimming pool. Buy a piece of history.
I shudder. ‘Buy a piece of history?’ I say. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Well, it looks old,’ Leah says cautiously.
‘Do you think that’s what they meant?’
‘Meh. Real estate agents,’ Leah shrugs disparagingly.
‘I wonder how much they’ll get for it,’ I say, and my mind begins to turn the question over.
‘Wonder if it’ll be worth more or less because it’s a murder house?’
I vaguely hear Leah’s words but am too distracted by my own thoughts to even be bothered pointing out that her comment is in horrifically bad taste.
I try to recall what Duncan told me. The estate went to his father, Rick. Who I’d met driving by the last time I’d been there. He wouldn’t want to live here – of course he wouldn’t. But the money from the sale would come in handy, given what Duncan had said about them going slowly bankrupt for the past decade on the sheep farm.
Leah’s poking me. It takes me a second to respond.
‘Is this it?’ she says. ‘This is really the place?’
‘Yep,’ I say.
‘Abbi
e, I know this place. I’m not one hundred percent sure but, like, eighty to ninety percent. Of course you thought you recognised it.’
‘I did recognise it,’ I say.
‘Totally. You did.’
I look at her, confused, searching for a hint of sarcasm.
‘Bloodbath Manor. That really B-grade low-budget Australian horror movie that was shot in like 2012. Had that guy from Neighbours in it. You know, the one with the hair?’
I frown. It’s hard to recall anything specific from the dozens and dozens of trashy horror movies we’ve watched. They all just blur together.
‘You remember, the parents go away for the weekend and they have a party and they start getting picked off one by one and then there’s a storm and the power goes down and… you know the one?’
A vague memory is triggering in my mind.
‘I swear, this is the house. The same house, Abbie. That’s why you recognise it. You’d seen it before. You’d seen the corridor covered with blood. In the movie. You had a dream because you’d been reading about the murders, and then you came here and of course you thought it was the same place as in your dream because you recognised it. That totally makes sense.’
‘You mean, I wasn’t…?’
‘I’ve read about that happening. It’s about how you interpret memories, the way you subconsciously try to make sense of things. You look for connections. Join the dots. It’s basic psychology. Nothing supernatural at all.’
Leah’s looking at me and grinning with a self-satisfied expression like she’s sorted everything out. I look away.
‘Abbie?’ she says finally.
If she’s right that means… my whole basis for believing that I had some connection to Rebecca O’Reilley, that there was something I had to discover, was based on nothing but a mismatched memory. And that was why I went to see Tina. And if I hadn’t, Dave wouldn’t be dead.
‘Abbie, this is good, right? You said you wanted an explanation…’
‘I do,’ I say. ‘I did. I just…’
I can’t say it. I feel like I’ve lost something. She’s taken something from me that I wasn’t ready to give up. I had a purpose, a meaning, and now I’m just randomness, coincidence, insignificant chance.
‘It doesn’t change the fact that you look like her and you got her dog. But that’s just freaky small-town maths, nothing voodoo about it. Come on, let’s go take a look.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It’s on the market now. There’s a sign.’
‘Sheesh Abs, now you get all law abiding on me? The sign gives us an even better reason to be there. Maybe my Dad’s interested. I’m checking it out for him. We don’t even know anything about the murders. Perfect, huh?’
I let her drag me along down the driveway, Leah acting as a surprisingly effective Zelda substitute.
‘Do you reckon it was someone who’d seen the movie?’ she asks as we get closer to the house. I get that same uncomfortable prickling sensation down my spine and around the back of my neck that I had last time I was here.
‘I mean, I wonder if the police made the connection? That someone might have seen the house in the movie and, like, re-enacted the killings. Seriously, it could happen,’ Leah sounds excited now. This is her kind of thing.
‘I don’t know. I guess they had pretty solid evidence that it was Damien,’ I say.
‘That wasn’t what you were saying yesterday,’ Leah says. ‘Just now it’s my crazy theory not yours, so you’re backing the police version. He hasn’t even been to trial yet.’
‘Hey this looks different,’ I say as we get closer. While the place still creeps me out, it doesn’t have the untouched, abandoned look that it did. The garden has been tidied. Dead stuff is gone. The grass has been mowed. And when I look at the house, the blinds are all open wide.
‘Wow, fancy huh,’ Leah says and heads straight for the front door.
‘Leah what are you doing?’
‘Just taking a look. It’s totally fine,’ she says, pressing her face to the glass of the big French windows. ‘Woo nice furniture –’
I stand next to her and take a peek. It’s changed completely. There’s a pristine white leather lounge suite, a long dresser on which stands a vase of white flowers, a print on the wall of white sailing boats on blue water.
‘What’s all that stuff?’ I say.
‘You don’t think they’d try and sell it empty, do you? They always do this. Make it look like a real house that people live in.’
‘It is a real house that people lived in,’ I say. I don’t know why it upsets me so much to see it like this, but it does. ‘Leah, stop. We shouldn’t be here. We need to go. Please.’
‘You don’t want to come around the back? Maybe see if there’s a window that’s been left open? I assume they’ve fixed the broken one up now, but still. I’d love to see what they’ve done with the bedrooms…’
She starts to turn and I grab her shoulder. ‘We have to go,’ I say.
‘You’re sure? I wouldn’t want you to feel like you didn’t have enough opportunity to explore…’ She grins at me, a smile as sharp as scissors.
And suddenly I get it. She’s trying to force me to get the whole thing about the house out of my system, once and for all.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I won’t come back.’ And I know now that it’s true. I won’t. This isn’t Rebecca O’Reilley’s house anymore. This is something else. Something empty.
‘It’s just a house Abbie,’ Leah says as we walk back up the drive. ‘Bad stuff happened here, but it’s still just a house. Wood and stone and… well you know, whatever they make houses out of. Stuff.’
Mum and I stand side by side on the front veranda and see Leah and Aaron off. Aaron toots the horn a few times and Leah waves like crazy. The instant their car pulls away, I miss her. And I feel awful for not enjoying the weekend more, for not making the most of every single second we had together. And I think about what she said, that Rebecca O’Reilley could be my reason to get Mum to agree to let me move back to Sydney. Mum puts an arm around my shoulders and squeezes.
‘You okay chicken?’ she says.
I nod.
‘The vet called while you were out. We can pick Zelda up tomorrow.’
‘That’s great,’ I say and try to smile.
We head back into the house.
Tom is lying on his back on the ground with his legs up on the couch watching TV upside down. The living room is full of the sound of explosions and car chases.
‘I guess I’d better get some homework done,’ I say, feeling listless and lost.
‘Let me know if I can get you anything,’ Mum says.
I head back down to my bedroom. When I get there, I see something lying on my bed.
A dress. Leah must have left it behind.
I pick it up. I don’t remember seeing it in her bag. It’s beautiful: pale cream silk with buttons up the front, covered in tiny flowers – little pink roses and white daisies with green leaves.
Maybe she didn’t say anything to make it a surprise. It’s the sort of thing Leah would do. I feel a sudden rush of warmth at the thought. We used to basically share a wardrobe. We’d borrow from each other all the time, without question. I pick the dress up and hold it against myself. It looks like it should fit.
I take off the shorts and singlet I went walking in and pull the dress on over my head. Wearing it makes me feel closer to Leah, like maybe she’s just around the corner and I can see her again anytime.
I pull out my maths text book, then sit at my desk and start working through some exercises.
Chapter forty-eight
When I arrive at school on Monday, Zeke’s waiting out the front.
‘I missed you,’ he says.
I feel nervous for a second, and then he gives me a hug and kisses me and I turn my face up and kiss him harder. He’s warm and solid and real and beautiful and I forget everything else. I feel like I can’t get close enough to him.
‘He
y you guys!’
We break apart. Cara is standing there looking at us, grinning.
‘So… how was your weekend?’ she says.
‘Um, good?’ says Zeke.
‘Yeah, I figured that much,’ she says. ‘Well come on lovers, we don’t want to be late for double Chem.’ And we head in the gates together.
We sit next to one another in Australian history and Zeke sneaks a hand under the table and runs it up and down my thigh, somehow managing to coherently answer a question about the separation of powers as he does so.
We sit together at lunchtime. Helena has her trombone class and Cara doesn’t turn up. Zeke says that she’s got to study for a test but I suspect she’s just giving us space and that makes me feel awkward. I don’t want to displace her. She’s Zeke’s friend and my friend and I don’t want her to feel unwelcome. Then Zeke starts to stroke my hair and then we start to kiss, and he runs a hand down my back and I feel his fingertips through the light material of my school dress and I feel all shivery and strange. It’s a bit like having a super-rich dessert – part of you has had enough but you can’t help wanting more. I keep expecting a teacher to blow a whistle or come and yell at us and give us detention, but this tree that we sit under is about as far as you can go and still be on school grounds, and there’s a big expanse of oval between us and anybody else. You’d see a teacher coming for a good five minutes before they got here.
By the time lunch is over, my lips are red and I’m getting a rash on my chin from Zeke’s stubble, and when Zeke pulls me up to standing my legs feel as wobbly as a new-born foal’s.
Mum gets off work early and she and Stace pick up Tom and I and we all drive out to the vet’s surgery to collect Zelda. We sit in the waiting room and one of the nurses brings her out. She seems different – withdrawn, more like she was when we first met her. But then she sniffs each of us in turn and her tail begins to swipe the air and she whines excitedly. I crouch down beside her and give her a gentle pat.
‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t there Zelda-pup. Mum said you were sick and I was really worried. But you’re all better now, right?’ She licks my face and I wipe it off with my forearm.
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