‘He wouldn’t lie that Sophie is alive. He just couldn’t.’
I avoided arguing with mum over this one. I didn’t want to admit to myself, or her, that Sophie was scared for a reason, and whatever it was, it could have caught up with her since she sent the email.
‘I was thinking I might email Liam, and see what he’s up to. Then at least I might get a better idea about what he has found.’
‘Ok, but I don’t want you accusing him of anything. He’s been looking for your sister for months. He’s given up his whole life. If you can’t appreciate that, please don’t make him feel that I can’t either.’
Mum was right in a way. There was no point in approaching Liam with anger. My best strategy was to be charming and polite, grateful even. Once I worked out exactly who I was dealing with, I could start to uncover who the real Liam Kingsley was.
I logged onto mum's email, and I sent a short note to Liam explaining who I was, that I was now aware of the situation, and I would like to know what was going on. I sent him my mobile phone number, and asked him to ring me. Much to my surprise, my phone rang within minutes of me sending the email.
‘Hello, Ellen speaking.’ Charming and polite, easy peasy.
‘Hi Ellen, this is Liam Kingsley.’
With even the few words he had spoken, it was obvious he was trying to be charming and polite too. Or maybe he wasn’t trying, maybe this was what he really was.
‘As I said in my email, I have recently become involved in what is going on with you and my mum, I mean, that you have been looking for Sophie.’ I started pacing the room, trying to keep a confident air so I sounded completely in control.
‘Yes, the case is ongoing. It has been much more difficult than I thought it would be.’
I felt like saying he probably had no idea how difficult it was going to be, since by his own admission he was ‘keen but green’. But I was still trying to keep my hostility hidden, so I bit my tongue.
‘So, can you tell me any more about what has been going on? I’ve seen all the emails you sent.’
There was silence on the other end of the line, long enough to raise my suspicion that his mind was searching for something to make himself sound like he had been genuinely looking for my sister, when he had actually been sitting on the beach in Sydney.
‘It would be fair to say there have been a lot of things going on that I have, for particular reasons, been leaving out of the email updates to your mother.’
That was obvious. I thought for a moment he was going to confess. He wasn’t easy to rattle was he? He kept going, speaking with such hesitation that I wondered if he was nervous about talking to me.
‘The situation has become far more complicated and dangerous than I anticipated. I don’t want to speak about it all on the phone, but it is probably quite good timing you have got involved at this point.’
Here we go, try to flatter me to take the attention off his crimes. ‘Oh, why is that?’
‘As I said, I don’t want to say much over the phone, but it so happens I have to come home to Adelaide on Saturday – that’s tomorrow. Maybe we should meet up in person. I would have come before, but your mum said no contact except by email.’
‘I would be more than happy to meet up with you. I have lots of questions to ask.’
‘No doubt you do. I’ve got your address. Should I drop round at about 12:30? I fly in at 12:00, so I could come straight from the airport.’
‘I’ll be here. Waiting for my piano to be picked up.’ Oops, the hostility slipped out after all. Of course I would be home. When wasn't I home?
‘Piano?’
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I look forward to it.’
Was that relief I heard in his voice? Did he want to tell me what was going on? I hoped so. I was amazed he was suggesting we meet up. I assumed he would never have agreed if I asked him straight out. Maybe he just made up that he needed to be in Adelaide, so he could make sure his income was safe?
Mum was happy to hear Liam would be visiting in person the next day, but she also admitted she was a bit worried that he would ask for his account to be paid. I told her not to worry about it for now, but couldn’t help feeling anxious myself. She hadn’t paid him for so long that his wages now added up to thousands of dollars. The money I got from Picasso was to be used to pay the mortgage, not be given to Liam. He had been paid more than enough already.
I had the rest of the day to kill. I needed to busy myself with something, and not dwell on my anger at Liam, my worry and annoyance at Sophie, and the imminent departure of Picasso. Mum obviously didn’t want to discuss the search for Sophie; it was so like her to avoid talking about problems. And while it was understandable, what with how stressed she must have been, it also made me feel really lonely, knowing all this information and not having anyone to dissect it with. I wished Liam was arriving sooner.
I was tempted to sit at Picasso and say my final goodbyes with our favourite Mozart, but when I went into the living room, mum was taking her turn to bid the piano farewell. She was carefully cleaning and polishing, buffing and waxing each key, making his shiny black top sparkle like glass. So I did something I hadn’t done for years; I went into Sophie’s bedroom.
Unlike Sophie, mum preferred everything to be in its place, so the room didn’t look anything like it did when Sophie lived here. Mum had packed up all her things and put them away neatly in every possible storage space. Her double bed was still where it always was, in the corner under the window, taking up most of the room. But now it had a plain quilt cover, suitable for the guests we never had. The only other pieces of furniture were a large built-in cupboard, made of dark wood, stretched across one wall, and a big desk and chair which were bulky and mismatched. The posters of The Beatles were gone; there were still chips in the paint where mum had peeled off the Blue Tack. The room seemed bigger when Sophie was here, either because I was smaller then, or because her things were always strewn all over the floor and the bed, on top of the desk and spilling out of the cupboards. Maybe a bit of both.
I remembered the closest mum and I got to talking about Sophie since she left was about four years after we last heard from her. Mum was cleaning my room and commented on how little space I had, not even room for anything other than a bed and the built-in wardrobe. She suggested I might like to move into Sophie’s room, since it was so much bigger than mine. I quickly refused, hoping she wouldn’t mention it again. Sophie’s room was her room; what would she think if she came home to find me in it? I must have still been hoping she would come back, not yet ready to admit she was gone for good.
The cupboards were still full of her clothes, and the shelves above packed with old school books, novels and even toys. You only had to glance at the rack of dresses, now hanging neatly, to see Sophie was a ‘colourful’ person. Not ‘colourful’ in the sense of using bad language or being gay or whatever, but literally colourful. One of the dresses had splashes of yellow on top of pink and blue flowers. Another was white, with pinstripe lines of every colour imaginable. Sophie always made her clothes look like they were the height of fashion or she was setting a new trend. She mostly bought them with her pocket money at op shops; mum certainly didn’t buy them for her. And I had a recollection of her sewing, to make them fit, or to take up a hem. She probably could have been a fashion designer if she wasn’t so set on becoming an actress. I never asked to borrow her clothes, even when we were still friends. I simply couldn't pull them off.
I sat down at the chunky desk chair and traced my finger along the grooves where Sophie had doodled. She was always good at finding anything to do other than homework. She didn’t doodle like most teenagers did, with I luv michael or school sux. Her doodles were mostly the lyrics to The Beatles songs, and quite amazingly lifelike drawings of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Mum always thought she would grow out of her love for The Beatles, but Sophie’s preoccupation passed through the description of ‘phase
’, and turned into ‘obsession’. She didn’t just dabble in things; she turned them into her passion, letting them grab hold of her and drag her through the mundane parts of life. I guess I did this with the piano, so maybe we were more alike than I realised.
More out of boredom than in an attempt to go through Sophie’s things, I wriggled open the drawers on the side of the desk, and flicked through the piles of paper and envelopes. Mum really was a hoarder. She must have gone through all this stuff and decided it was worth keeping. There was everything from report cards, to invitations to eight year olds’ birthday parties, to stories written in the semi-illiterate scrawl of a five year old. Near the bottom of one of the drawers was a large envelope, with thick cardboard mounted photos inside. They were Sophie’s class photos throughout her entire time at high school. I stared at the rows and rows of faces; most were strangers, but a few I recognised. The girl standing next to Sophie was Tina Gianopoulos, Sophie’s best friend. Suddenly an idea sprang into my mind; Facebook!
Back before I became a virtual recluse, one of my friends invited me to join Facebook. I had heard of it many times since. Even my youngest piano student, Alice, who was only 13, was a member, and talked about it all the time. I remembered telling her I wished she spent as much time practising piano as she did updating her Facebook profile. I had, so far, never bothered to sign up. What was the point of ‘networking’ with people if you couldn’t bear the thought of them asking about your life? If anyone I knew saw me on Facebook, their first question would be ‘so how is your piano stuff going?’ and my response would be... to log off! But this could be my best chance to get in touch with Sophie. Liam didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Maybe I could be some use.
I hardly ever used my email account. There was no point, when I never contacted anyone. It didn’t take me long to scroll through my old emails to find the one inviting me to join. Within moments, I was officially part of the Facebook universe. I typed Sophie’s name into the search, wondering for the first time whether it was possible she married and changed her name. Much to my amazement, there were over 2,000 Sophie Goddards; I had forgotten Facebook was an international site. I scrolled through the photos for what felt like hours, but was probably only minutes, and none of them were my sister. There were a handful of profiles that didn't have a photo, but the profiles said they lived in the US so were very unlikely to be Sophie. Determined not to hit a dead end so soon, I decided to see if I could find Tina Gianopoulos. Just because Sophie lost touch with me and mum, didn't mean she had ditched all the people from her past. I grabbed the school photo from the bedroom to check the spelling of the last name and typed this into the Facebook search. Thankfully there was only one result, but the photo only vaguely resembled the teenage Tina in the class photograph. I clicked on the 'send a message' button underneath the tiny photograph, and wrote 'Hi Tina, are you the Tina Gianopoulos who left Marryatville High School in 1999?' As I clicked send on the message, I wondered if she would remember me. I was just Sophie’s annoying little sister to all her friends, but my name would still ring a bell with Tina, wouldn't it? I sat back deflated, all the excitement now drowned out by impatience. I had only just started investigating, and was already learning it wasn't as easy as it looked. I had no tolerance for the whole one step forward, two steps back thing.
‘Mum, have you heard of Facebook?’
Mum was still polishing Picasso. She didn’t look like she was doing a chore; she appeared to be enjoying herself.
‘Yes, I have heard of it. I read an article about it in the paper a while ago. What about it?’
‘Oh, I just thought I’d join up, do some fishing around to see if Sophie was on there. I couldn't find her but then I thought we might be able to get in contact with someone who went to school with Sophie, to see if they have heard from her since she moved to London.’
I tried to play down my self-congratulatory tone. I had been tempted to tell mum I was amazed Liam hadn’t thought of it, but mum wasn’t reacting well to insults to Liam. She straightened up, stretching out her back.
‘That’s a great idea, love. I’m sure it couldn’t hurt.’
‘What do you mean, it couldn’t hurt?’
Mum went to say something, but then stopped herself, a sure sign she was trying to come up with a less confrontational way to explain something to me.
‘You’ve read the emails Liam sent. This search for Sophie isn’t just based on curiosity, or my wish to be reunited with her.’
‘Of course it’s not, mum, I know that, as well as you do. But how could it hurt for me to send an email to a girl she knew 10 years ago?’
Mum sighed and started to rub her temple with the side of her hand. ‘Liam explained that he doesn’t want to endanger us as well. I just don’t want you to get too involved. I’m worried sick about Sophie as it is.’
If I were to be honest with mum at that moment, she would have got very angry with me. She didn’t realise how much I doubted Liam. She hadn’t caught on that I thought he was a total liar, who was stealing as much money as he could. But last time I came close to suggesting this, mum looked like she was going to snap. So I stayed off the subject of Liam.
‘Mum, what on earth could happen to us in little old Adelaide? I have absolutely no idea what this danger is, or how it relates to Sophie, so I find it really difficult to take it all seriously.’
‘I can see that...’
‘And apart from everything else, I’m bored! Bored bored bored! I can’t just sit around and pretend to be reading or watching TV, when all I can think about is Sophie and Liam and the money and Picasso. It’s driving me nuts!’
My voice had grown louder and louder until ‘nuts’ was so shrill and drawn out that I must have sounded like a four year old warming up to a tantrum. I stood with my hands on my hips to complete the scene. Mum stopped polishing again, and looked at me, her eyes asking me to speak sensibly.
‘If you are finished, maybe I'll play for a while?’
‘Would it help you to calm down?’
‘You know as well as I do it works every time.’
‘Ok then. I’m finishing up anyway. Why don’t we put together a rehearsal schedule like we used to, and I can choose all my favourites?’
Mum’s favourites were the same as mine, so it sounded like an excellent send off for Picasso. And a time consuming diversion to fill the rest of the morning for me.
Before I sat down on the stool, mum lifted the lid to empty out the contents, since the stool would be going with the piano. There were some old music books I had forgotten about, along with some loose sheet music, an electronic metronome, and an old broken piano wire that was replaced a couple of years ago. Mum neatly packed all the books onto the shelf along with the hundreds already stored there. While her back was turned, I coiled the wire up, and put it in my pocket. It was the only piece of Picasso I could hang onto.
Chapter 7
Vince poured himself a glass of red wine as he waited for his visitors to arrive. They were five minutes late already. He hated waiting. This was their first visit to his beach house. They were no doubt unused to the dirt road that took them out of the town, winding around the back of the sand dunes which kept each house secluded. He had known as soon as he saw this house it was where he would live in Australia. He couldn’t buy it; it wasn’t for sale. If it was, he would have paid cash for it immediately. But he could lease it, and that would have to do. He didn't know how long he would be working in Australia, but his business interests were growing so fast, it was hard to think of a good reason to leave. And from all accounts, things in London were moving along nicely as well.
This house made him feel right at home. It wasn’t just its private location he appreciated. The deck leading straight onto white sand dunes was handy. The private beach beyond made him feel safe. As if he could share his secrets with the sea and no one else. The towering glass panelled walls, tinted to provide protection from the sun, made it feel like a fortress. He could see
out, but no one could see in. Exactly how he liked to live. The giant, sparsely furnished living area was at the centre of the house, the open first story gallery making it visible from every other room. And the master bedroom was ample space for Melissa to inhabit. She could stay out of his way, and he could stay out of hers. As long as she wasn’t needed for something. The house made him feel powerful and secure, which meant it was worth its weight in gold.
He wouldn’t let his visitors use unfamiliarity with the location as an excuse for lateness. All his employees quickly learnt no excuses were tolerated. It was better just to apologise when at fault, and say nothing more.
When the car arrived, he could hear it was driven in a panic. He watched through his glass walls as it skidded to a halt, leaving a cloud of sand behind like a rally driver throwing up dust. His visitors scurried to the front door, and knocked quickly; he could almost feel them quivering through vibrations in the floor. This was exactly how he liked visitors to be; firmly on the back foot, unwilling to contradict him. Before he got up to open the door, he yelled to Melissa to go upstairs into their bedroom. If there was one thing he hated it was when his visitors perved at his girlfriend. She lived in a bikini whilst at the beach house, not by her own choice, but by his. She was already half way up the stairs by the time he ordered her there. She knew as soon as she heard the car he would be having a ‘meeting’ she was not to be present at.
He hadn’t seen these two before. It wasn’t rare for him to have employees whom he never met. For particular areas of his business, this was how he wanted it to be. He didn’t bother to introduce himself because he preferred not to know their names. They walked into the foyer like scared school boys, ready to be caned by the head master.
One of them said quickly: ‘Sorry we’re late’, and the other scuttled in, ready for a handshake that wasn’t offered.
Times of Trouble Page 5