Drowned Vanilla (Cafe La Femme Book 2)

by Livia Day

  Xanthippe had disappeared again. The appeal of running a café had definitely worn off her. So it wasn’t all bad news. Darrow’s regular absences were what had made him such a brilliant business partner, after all. My faith in Xanthippe’s short attention span had finally paid off.

  I’d be back on Boxing Day, when Hobart exploded in the post Christmas sales. Seriously. Whose bright idea had it been to not only open the shops on Boxing Day, but put everything on sale? After a December of mad shopping-lust, Christmas Day was our single oasis of calm before the madness got madder.

  And they were all going to want gluten-free friands with their coffee.

  When I got home, I found Darrow, Ceege and Stewart in my living room, trying to get to grips with editing software. An image of Pippa Avery jumped out at me from the monitor, in starkly contrasting black and white.

  I eyed the empty snack plates that littered the coffee table. ‘You’d better not have touched my tiramisu.’

  ‘Ye mean those WARNING TOUCH ON PAIN OF DEATH WITH SPIKY INSTRUMENTS signs were no’ there tae make it taste better?’ Stewart said, not looking up from the screen.

  ‘Mmm, forbidden fruit,’ said Ceege.

  ‘You think you’re funny, but you’re not,’ I said in a warning voice.

  ‘Relax, Darling,’ said Darrow. ‘I can keep a lid on the rabble. Despite my sweet tooth.’

  ‘Are we the rabble?’ Ceege asked Stewart.

  ‘Aye, must be. I’ve always wanted tae be rabble.’

  ‘Me too!’ They high-fived each other, unironically.

  I ran upstairs to get dressed. The black dress was still hanging there, a pointed reminder that I had actually been trying to mould myself into the perfect girlfriend for Bishop, while denying I was his girlfriend. So that was embarrassing.

  How did we go from me kissing someone else in public to maybe possibly levelling up to a proper relationship? Damned if I know.

  But I’d been expecting anger, jealousy, some kind of deal-breaking ultimatum like telling me I had to cut off being friends with Stewart. Instead I got — warmth and security and unhurried kisses. That’s enough to make any girl want to make tiramisu and Swedish potato pancakes topped with sour cream and dill, then gear herself up to impress and/or offend his mother.

  I looked at the black dress. Yep. Still not me. Xanthippe was going to laugh at me if I wore it.

  On the other hand, since when did Tabitha Darling care about anyone’s reaction to something she wore?

  I dug through my piles of stray clothing and came up with something festive — a light green frock with sunflowers all over it. It was just begging for my silver daisy chain necklace, and after that … well. Strappy green sandals, hair in bunches, and green ribbons tucked into my hair ties.

  ‘Oh look, it’s the Christmas fairy,’ crowed Ceege as I made my entrance into the living room.

  ‘Don’t mock the elves, or you’ll get coal in your stocking,’ said Darrow. He wore a green velvet suit, a red silk shirt, and his tie had a holly and ivy pattern on it. It’s good to have someone in your life who never makes you feel overdressed.

  Stewart looked at me, his eyes warm. He was taking it suspiciously well, this whole thing where every time we kissed, my relationship with Bishop became just a little bit closer to a relationship.

  Xanthippe strolled out of her room. She wore black jeans and a red shirt, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about her, except that all her buttons were done up. I looked closer, wondering what was different. ‘You’re not wearing makeup,’ I said finally, blinking. ‘At all.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Xanthippe, having the grace to look slightly embarrassed. ‘My Mum hassles me about wearing too much. It’s not worth the drama.’

  I smirked at her.

  ‘Come on,’ she said again, more loudly. ‘Like you wouldn’t do anything differently if we were going to visit your mother.’

  ‘That’s assuming anyone can find my mother,’ I shot back. ‘I think the hippie belly dancing cult has eaten her.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure hippie belly dancing cults tend towards vegetarianism.’

  I loaded up my food containers, and we headed out to the car.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ said a voice I would recognise anywhere. I glanced along the pavement and saw Bishop leaning against a fence. He always looks good. He is the definition of tall, dark and handsome.

  And after crushing on someone for so long, it shouldn’t be a shock that he still made me feel slightly melted.

  Maybe that’s exactly how it should be.

  Bishop looked me up and down, a bemused smile crinkling up the corners of his mouth. ‘Quite a dress.’

  ‘I thought we were meeting you there.’ Arriving with Zee had felt like slightly less of a major personal statement than arriving on Bishop’s arm.

  ‘I didn’t want to subject you to Xanthippe’s driving.’

  ‘Screw you, big brother,’ said Zee, and hopped into the driver’s seat of her Spider. ‘Your loss, both of you. At least I’ll turn up in style.’

  ‘Yeah yeah, wear your seatbelt,’ Bishop said, and she gave him the finger.

  My arms were full of Tupperware, which meant he had no opportunity at all to hold my hand as we walked to his car.

  ‘So, ready to face Nonna Nikolaidis?’ he asked.

  ‘Hey, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks associating with teenage hoodlums, webcam girls and property developers, I think I can handle one elderly Greek grandmother,’ I said lightly.

  This was a lie.

  The Nikolaidis family stronghold was up in Fern Tree, the deep green mountain suburb beyond South Hobart. Bishop and I bickered over our musical choices for the whole drive, which at least felt natural and us.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said when he parked out the front, behind Xanthippe’s Spider. She had beaten us there by several minutes, probably because the Spider has little respect for speed limits on mountain roads. There was a statue of Pericles in the front garden, with Christmas lights strung on him. Good to know I wasn’t the only one with an embarrassing family. Bishop leaned over. ‘You can unbuckle that seatbelt at any time.’

  ‘It makes me feel safe,’ I ventured.

  ‘She’s only a grandmother, she’s not going to eat you. Cannibalism is definitely not an approved Nikolaidis family tradition. It’s up there with vampirism and bringing the same dessert as Aunt Pia.’

  ‘Very reassuring,’ I said, but I couldn’t make myself move from the seat. Not at all. There was a silence that maybe wouldn’t have seemed long and awkward with anyone else, but this was me and Bishop, so it did.

  ‘It’s not working, is it?’ he said finally.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine, you’ve gone as white as a sheet.’ He leaned in, and brushed a stray lock of hair from my face. ‘Tabitha, this was your idea.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to — girlfriend up, or whatever ridiculous term you have for it. I was fine with the indefinable something we had where I sleep over most weeks, and you don’t throw a tantrum if I get too caught up in work to text you.’

  I stared at him, panic rising in my chest. ‘But that’s not what you do. You always do the girlfriend thing.’

  Bishop’s eyes flared with impatience. ‘If I wanted to repeat an old relationship with one of my exes, I would be there right now doing that, instead of here in this car, trying to make sense of anything you say and do.’

  Yelling at each other in a car did, admittedly, feel more like the ‘relationship conversation’ I had expected when he found out about the YouTube kiss.

  ‘So you don’t want to get serious? You don’t want me here.’

  ‘I didn’t say that! I just — ’ He dragged his hands through his hair, which is the thing he generally does when his brain tells him he wants to strangle me. ‘I don’t want you to fake us being more serious than we are, especially not for my bloody family. I can wait. We can both wait. We have ti
me.’

  I’d been looking at this all wrong. He didn’t want to push us forward. I was the only one doing that. And giving myself a minor emotional breakdown in the process. ‘So that was why you weren’t all jealous about the kissing thing,’ I said finally. ‘You didn’t care.’

  His eyes darkened for a moment, and I saw a flash of the angry, frustrated Bishop who used to yell at me to hide that he liked me. Because apparently we’re both twelve years old. ‘I wasn’t happy about it,’ he said finally. ‘But you’re you. I know you, Tish. You flirt and you’re all huggy with people, and I can live with pretending some random kiss in a film project didn’t happen.’

  Some random kiss. Had he not been paying attention? Had he not — oh. ‘You haven’t seen it? I thought — ’

  ‘I’ve managed to avoid that so far.’ Then Bishop gave me a closer look. ‘Would you actually feel better if I did?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘This is — so we’re good.’

  ‘I thought we were.’

  The silence between us stretched beyond the road, beyond the dappled sunshine that squeezed through the thick green trees.

  I released my seatbelt finally, but only so I could lean forward and let my head hit the dashboard with a clunk. ‘I think it’s better if I don’t come in to do the family thing.’

  Bishop’s hand brushed the back of my neck, stroking me there. It made my shoulders relax, like I was a cat. ‘It does seem like you’ve had enough trauma for one month.’

  ‘Have I been acting crazy? With the girlfriend fever.’

  ‘Yes you have,’ he said with a low laugh in his voice. ‘I could hardly tell the difference, though.’

  I leaned back against him, my head fitting neatly under his chin. He smelled good. It was hard to be stressed when you were being cuddled by someone who smelled that good.

  ‘You’re still mine, right?’ I breathed. ‘Not boyfriend, not significant other, not — anything else that needs a Facebook status. But mine.’

  He kissed the top of my head. ‘Who else is going to keep you out of trouble next time you fall into a crime scene?’

  I tipped my mouth up to his and we kissed slowly. It wasn’t a goodbye kiss or an ‘I can’t go five more seconds without touching you’ kiss. But it was good, and it was us.

  ‘You should go in,’ I said finally, relinquishing him. ‘Keep the food — pretend you cooked it. That should give you brownie points.’

  ‘You can’t walk back from here,’ said Bishop. ‘Let me drop you home first.’ Oh god, such a gentleman. If I was sensible I would make him take me to his place right now, get naked and sort all our relationship questions out without any words at all.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, sliding out of his arms before I could change my mind. ‘I’ll steal the Spider. Tell Zee after dessert.’

  ‘I suppose I can look the other way for grand theft auto just this once.’ Bishop gave me an inscrutable look. ‘You’re not up to anything, are you?’

  There was the Leo Bishop I knew and loved. For the least scary possible definition of ‘love’.

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ I said breathlessly, then threw myself back into the car to kiss him again until we were just that bit more breathless. ‘What could I possibly be up to?’

  ‘What are you doing back?’ Ceege asked when I walked back into the living room.

  ‘Forgot something.’ I picked up the video camera that Stewart had been using in Flynn.

  Stewart gave me a suspicious look. ‘Do ye know how tae use that?’

  I found the reddest, biggest button, switched the camera on and swung it up to film them both. ‘Nope. You’d better come with me.’ I turned around, heading back for the Spider.

  Stewart caught up to me by the time I got there, having had the presence of mind to grab his jacket, keys and his own camera on the way ‘Are ye after an adventure, Tabitha Darling?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said breathlessly, and grinned at him as we buckled up. ‘Yes I am.’ I set off, my hair streaming back as we drove. ‘If my phone rings, you get to answer it and listen to Xanthippe abusing me for stealing her car.’

  ‘Ye give me the best jobs,’ Stewart said cheerfully, and snapped a picture of me which was probably going to end up as police evidence when Xanthippe killed me dead, some time in the distant future.

  I could have done this without him. Of course I could. But he was my favourite partner in crime.

  It was fine weather, though the traffic was terrible — everyone was going somewhere, whether it was home or to relatives or whatever. Christmas Eve. Part of me felt very guilty about not being in a certain other place, with a certain other person. Would Bishop feel as relaxed about giving me an out for Christmas if he knew I was running around with Stewart, involving myself in something I shouldn’t all over again?

  Bishop would never have come with me to do this, not without interrogating me until I couldn’t see straight. Right now, therefore, he was not what I needed.

  ‘I still cannae get used tae Christmas in summer,’ said Stewart, raising his voice against the growl of the engine. ‘Feels wrong. We should be inside, feeling miserable and slagging off EastEnders with the thermostat pushed up as high as it can.’

  ‘I don’t think Jason killed anyone,’ I told him. ‘It’s been running around and around in my head.’

  Stewart glanced across at me, and his voice had that careful pitying tone in it that Xanthippe had been trying out lately. It didn’t sound any better in a Scottish accent. ‘Tabitha. The lad confessed.’

  ‘I know. I don’t believe it. There’s something wrong, and I’m going to find out what it is.’

  ‘So we’re away tae Flynn?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said grimly. ‘To Flynn.’

  Stewart sighed and pushed himself comfortably against the side of the car. ‘Wake me when we get there.’

  Shay French came out of the back door of his parents’ house, and found Stewart and me leaning against his back fence. ‘What do you two want?’ he said warily.

  ‘Dropped in,’ I said.

  ‘On Christmas Eve? It’s kind of a bad time for our family, in case you haven’t guessed.’

  ‘Yer need a break, then,’ said Stewart lightly. ‘Get away from it all.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ Shay folded his arms defensively.

  ‘Tabitha has a theory,’ Stewart told him. I was glad he’d come along. Somehow all my ideas seem more sensible when endorsed by him.

  ‘I do,’ I said, nodding.

  ‘Going to make things better, is it?’ Shay glared at us both. ‘The Averys left town, went to a hotel or something. Someone threw a brick through their window.’

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, coughing on something that wasn’t quite a laugh. ‘Everyone reckons it was, though. People keep stopping me in the street — a couple of guys congratulated me, and rest of them want me to know how much they understand. They don’t understand anything. Anna’s gone, and Jase didn’t do anything to her, but no one seems to remember that part. It wasn’t his fault.’

  ‘Jason did admit to killing someone,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Shay growled. ‘Anna’s fucken murderer. Wish I had.’

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes about how teenage boys are ridiculous. ‘This is serious, Shay. He’s in a lot of trouble. He took his father’s gun — an unregistered one — and he shot someone.’

  ‘If we were in America they’d give him a fucken medal.’

  ‘Even if they agree it was self-defence, he wasn’t supposed to have that gun, let alone point it at anyone. You know he could get jail time.’

  ‘You came all the way out here to tell me Jase isn’t a good bloke?’ Shay said, furious with me now as well as the universe.

  ‘No! Something’s wrong about the story. Alice’s story. Jason’s. I don’t know why. But I want to figure it out.’

  ‘You’d better not be trying to prove that Jase hurt Anna,’ Shay
said warily.

  ‘I’m not trying to prove anything. But I have a plan to figure out if we really do know everything about what happened that night.’

  ‘With a camera?’

  I nodded grimly. ‘With a camera.’

  ‘You people are unbelievable.’

  ‘But no’ boring,’ Stewart said, grinning over at me. ‘Never boring.’

  24

  Sick of the usual New Year’s crap?

  Fancy a night with a kick to it instead of a whimper?

  Cassidy Crème invites you to join her at Noir

  Nights, a new late night cinema club in Salamanca for

  a special New Year’s Eve event — Le Cabaret Noir!

  The theme is 1940s film, so dress to impress.

  Featuring the gorgeous DJ CJ, the hot instrumental

  vibes of Ljungberg, & the first screening of local film

  Flynn by Night

  plus a midnight performance by Catfang!

  BE THERE OR BE NOBODY

  New Year’s Eve is big in Hobart. I suppose it’s a big night everywhere, but what do I care about other places? The docks area turns into one enormous drunken party as the whole city hangs out for the fireworks, and the Taste of Tasmania. There’s a swanky affair out on the water, champagne and gourmet local cuisine. There’s wall to wall yobbos everywhere else. Much booze. So drunken.

  We were crammed into Noir Nights, a new club on an upper floor of one of the sandstone terrace buildings in Salamanca. I could see straight away why the manager was a mate of Darrow’s — this place was so stylish it hurt the eyes. The decor was startling black and white, and the ceiling was plastered with a painted montage of images from old movies. I looked more closely. ‘Stewart, have you been cheating on me with other murals?’

  His involvement in the film project was starting to make sense now.

  ‘Possibly I came back tae town a few weeks earlier than I said I did,’ he admitted, with a guilty expression on his face. I smacked him, without serious intent to harm.

  Images from the Flynn shoot were projected up on the walls in dizzying fashion — stills of the various members of cast and crew in costume. Loud, boppy music crashed around us, telling everyone it was going to be an amazing night.