Sister Pact
Page 6
But he was the least of their problems.
‘Ah, the first cracks appear in the fragile truce between the Feuding Heiresses. How will they cope with this first challenge?’
Joni spun on her heel, ready to let loose a stream of the colourful invective she had learned on army bases as a child. But as she turned, she found they were being followed by a mobile crew. They were at the edge of the swamp, and the contestants were lining up behind fancy placards around its fetid brown edge, awaiting instructions.
Frankie grasped Joni’s elbow again, differently this time. The lightest of presses on the soft inner skin of her elbow, and Joni remembered all the times her big sister had protected and backed her. Her cool avenging angel. Her fearless Frankie.
Like the time with that boy, Kirby Jones.
And anyone else who’d ever been mean to her.
She’d even tried to save Joni from herself, at least in the beginning.
Of course Frankie had found her.
She’d always been there to witness Joni’s most spectacular falls from grace.
Joni had never meant to steal it. Not really. Just borrow it to help her get through. But Frankie had a way of calling things as they were.
‘I know what you’re doing.’
Joni had looked up from G’s trinket box, and caught sight of her own flaming cheeks, outlined dramatically by the theatrical lights that bordered G’s dresser mirror.
‘No you don’t.’ Joni was trying for defiant.
‘Yes. I. Do. Joni, it’s me.’
Even now, Joni remembered how Frankie’s face had looked framed by G’s crazy mirror; like a broken angel, her face wet with tears, as she’d put her arms around Joni’s shoulders and pressed her face close to her sister’s blazing cheeks. ‘I can help you. Remember? I arranged for you … that place … they can help you with the crack and the rest of it …’
‘I. Hate. It. There.’ It was Joni’s turn to bite out the words. ‘They remind me of Dad. But worse. I never felt so bad as I do when they try to help me. They don’t even try to hide what they think of me.’
Frankie had held her more tightly. ‘Don’t take it, JoJo. Not from G. How can you? There are some things … Some things are hard to go back from. Please.’
Frankie rarely said please. And it almost worked.
But then Joni imagined going back to her flat. Thought about what she would need to get through the night. And she slipped G’s diamond ring into her bag.
‘I’ll have it back by Monday.’
Even though Frankie had looked at her with heartbreak in her eyes, Joni had never imagined for a moment that her sister would tell G.
Of course, Frankie hadn’t needed to tell G anything. As Joni had hugged the old woman goodbye, she’d seen in G’s eyes that she knew. And she’d known in that moment that even her sister couldn’t save her from herself.
From her own weakness. From never being good enough. Not for her dad. Not for anyone.
Just like now. As Joni turned to get her first full-frontal view of the Swamp From Hell, her stomach turned to water. It was brown, putrid-smelling and littered with dark carcasses that could have been rotting logs, or crocodiles.
Joni turned towards Frankie, seeking some more of that reassurance but, as she met her eyes, she saw Frankie catch Darryl’s gaze, and watched her sister’s eyes harden. Frankie reached for Joni’s chin and held it.
‘Don’t muck this up,’ Frankie hissed loudly enough for Darryl to hear.
Fuck, Joni thought, she’s courting ratings already.
Frankie had told her at least a hundred times on the plane to Australia: Remember, it’s the boring ones who get voted off. Our schtick will be our mutual animosity. People won’t be able to resist tuning in to see what we say and do to each other. We need to make it believable.
Joni remembered what she had said to her sister in return.
Gee, however will we manage that, Sister Dearest?
Darryl was speaking animatedly into the camera, but Joni’s stomach was already queasy from wondering what manner of evil would shortly be perpetrated on, in or around this hideous swamp.
Frankie touched her chin again and Joni forced herself not to flinch but to meet her eyes. ‘Sorry, Joni, but you know the score. Now, listen. Whatever they tell us to do, talk to me before you move a muscle, okay?’
Joni was about to tell Frankie she’d rather have a chat with No-Neck right now than listen to anything her money-hungry, scheming bitch of a sister might say.
But before she could speak, The Stapler’s voice floated down to them from on high. Joni threw back her neck and saw the woman perched on a platform; some kind of camera strut. She turned her attention back to her fellow contestants. Until now, she had studiously avoided properly seeing the rest of the group. Her father called it classic avoidance syndrome. She thought of it as: going to her happy place.
Directly across the swamp from Joni stood two women, one of them the owner of the breasts with whom Frankie had been conversing over lunch. With their golden-blonde hair and warrior princess bodies, the two women looked identical, except that Joni knew from Frankie’s incessant briefings that they were friends, not sisters.
And there was something else. While the breasts of note were large and perfectly proportioned, the other girl sported small, high breasts. Not so small, really. Bigger than Joni’s. Breasts that would be fine anyplace. But which beside her friend’s appeared almost pitiful. Joni squinted across the swamp to read their placard.
Sorority Sisters. Saving Up for Surgery.
She stifled a giggle – it seemed inappropriate in the tense, swampside atmosphere, with the sulfury smell burning her nostrils – and mentally nicknamed the girls the Boobs.
Her curiosity piqued, Joni started to sweep the scene further. To her left, a couple stood wrapped in each other’s arms. They looked to be in their mid twenties, and had the caramel skin and perfect features of South American supermodels. She stretched her neck around to see their placard. Horny Honeymooners.
‘Righty-fookin’-O then,’ The Stapler barked. Joni craned her neck to look hopefully for Lex. No sign. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. Now, the first task today involves you bunch of freaks fighting it out for tools to help you make your shelters tonight. Remember, this isn’t a challenge. Think of it as a warm-up. The real challenge will be building your shelters once you get the shit.’
She emitted a maniacal cackle, a caricature of a pirate’s, and pointed at the sky.
‘And, by the look of them thar clouds, we better get a move on, or you’re going to be wet little fookers, that’s for sure.’
She laughed again before pulling herself together.
‘Now, Darryl the Deviant over there will voice-over this to make it seem all fancy for the punters, but essentially this is what you’re doing. I have here –’
She brandished what looked to be four weatherproof bags, like saddlebags one might see in old westerns. For keeping guns and chewing tobacco.
‘– four bags. Now, as you know, there are six couples. In each bag are various utensils for preparing shelter. Rope, hammer, saw. And so on.’
She snorted as though bored.
‘One bag has the good tools. The other three have a couple of useful things only. I am going to drop the bags into this swamp and you are going to get them. It will be very hard to make a shelter without them. The rules are –’
She paused for effect and Joni got the distinct impression she was enjoying this. ‘There are no rules. I’m going to count to twenty, drop these things and then you can go at each other. The bag is yours once you drop it on one of those mats marked “safe”. Good luck, losers.’
Joni looked at Frankie, who began to whisper hurriedly in her ear.
It reminded Joni of when they were little and used to share secrets in bed at night, quietly, so their father wouldn’t come in and yell at them to get to sleep. Frankie still whispered the same way, her hand cupped around Joni’s ear, putting
her mouth so close to it that Joni could feel her wet, intense little tongue. Between Frankie’s saliva and The Stapler’s hoarse counting splitting the air, it was hard to focus.
But if Frankie knew about anything, it was how to win.
So Joni made damn sure she was listening.
No matter how pissed off she was with her sister.
‘Right, we’ll focus on a bag each. Try to pick ones that land near the edge, even if they’re further away. You know I’m not a strong swimmer –’
Understatement of the century.
‘So, you go for any that land further away. If you get the bag, do not let anyone take it from you. No matter what.’
With that, The Stapler’s tinny whine reached ‘Twinty!!!’ and the world was a blur. Four parcels hit the knee-high muck with satisfying plops, and twelve bodies entered the fray as Darryl began to narrate the event. Joni headed for a parcel that had fallen to her left, about twenty yards away and maybe six or eight feet in.
She couldn’t see which parcel Frankie had locked on to but she was conscious of her sister heading in the other direction, with a look of pure fear on her face.
The parcel was so close, Joni had felt sure it would take hardly any time to get to it, but she hadn’t reckoned on the fierce suck of the muck into which it had been flung. Even running on the edge of the swamp was perilous, and Joni lost her footing twice in her first few steps. She was worried about the Horny Honeymooners, but they must have been distracted by their mutual adoration, because they weren’t focusing and seemed to be heading out into the muck together.
Gracefully, but inefficiently.
After falling into the rancid mud twice more, Joni began to feel sure the parcel had to be somewhere nearby. She groped underneath the surface for it, running her hands around the soft, swampy bottom.
As she searched, her body moved deeper and deeper into the slime, and she became more and more worried about drowning Des in the process. His little legs were kicking frantically and she was sure he was getting wet. She couldn’t remember how ferrets coped with water. She hitched the money belt up to under her breasts and wished she’d done more research before bringing him to a bloody island.
Just as her hands closed on slimy canvas, she heard the slippery tones of Darryl the Dickhead announce her find to the assembled company.
‘Good God, in some kind of unexpected coup, Joni seems to have found something. She –’
Joni didn’t register the rest of Darryl’s speech, because she became acutely aware of the eyes of nearby competitors turning upon her like laser beams. She suddenly understood how it must feel to be hunted. She brought the parcel up towards her chest and hugged it to her, scanning the swamp’s rim for the ‘safe’ circles that were dotted around its edge. The nearest was about twenty yards away.
But two contestants were coming towards her. And, from their purposeful tandem path, they appeared to be a team.
There were two possible routes towards the nearest ‘safe’ circle. One was circuitous, and took her dangerously close to the two people gaining on her. The other involved swimming under the muck, beneath a huge fallen tree half-submerged in it. Just as logic was telling her there was no way she could make it under the tunnel the tree had created without drowning Des, she heard Frankie scream:
‘Go under the bloody tree! It’ll slow them down!’
She felt Des’s tiny body clench in fear, as if he knew what she was contemplating. She couldn’t do it, and pushed back for the longer way round. As she saw the contestants coming towards her, she knew she was done for.
The guy looked like he was made of nails.
He had the hard, clever body of someone who worked all day in some very physical job. This was not a body achieved in a pricey gym. It was brown, toned and spare. He moved through the molasses-like muck effortlessly, like a shark. Sharp blue eyes shone out of his nut-brown face. The woman was equally, but differently, terrifying. She was fully made up – including false fingernails and eyelashes – and wore a tiny bikini with a koala emblazoned on each breast.
She was screaming in the most strident Australian accent Joni had ever heard.
‘Get her, Nick. Get the farkin’ thing and fark her up.’
Terrified, Joni changed course, taking her away from the Wall of Nick, but closer to the shrieking harpy. Dithering, she thrashed around while they closed on her, watching helplessly as they circled. In her confusion, she focused on the placard behind the mat from which her predators had come.
It read: Outback Exes. Fighting for the Farm.
The harpy reached her first and, with embarrassingly little effort, wrenched the bag from her grip. Joni heard Frankie yelp from the other side of the swamp, and then watched in misery as her sister shook her head and struck out again for her own target. Joni was too far away to do anything but watch in helpless fascination as her sister made, with single-minded strides, for a place in the water.
Time stretched on agonisingly. Joni lost track of what was happening, but it seemed that two bags had been retrieved as well as the one that had been stolen from her. The Boobs were leaping victoriously and two thirtysomething men were singing some kind of Irish victory song and waving a placard in the air that read: Potato Farmer Poets.
Joni wondered if she’d sustained a blow to the head during the struggle for the bag and shook it as she refocused on her sister, mesmerised watching Frankie close on her target. A few other contestants continued to thresh ineffectively around in the muck and, with a peculiar mixture of disgust and pride, Joni knew her sister was going to get the final bag. Frankie reached down, without any inelegant groping, retrieved the bag and clasped it to her sodden chest.
Then Joni heard a bloodcurdling scream. It ripped through the air like paper tearing, followed by a small Japanese man who appeared to run across the top of the swamp water towards Frankie. As Joni tried to make sense of where he had come from, her eyes landed on the last placard, positioned close to a younger Japanese man who was scrabbling aimlessly in the muck. It read: Game Show Samurais.
Joni saw Frankie put the hustle on. She scurried to the edge of the swamp, nearest to the thick jungle, but was crash-tackled at the bank by the kamikaze Jesus. The two rolled like wrestlers into the undergrowth.
Joni emitted a piercing shriek; part terror, part fury. The thought of her sister in that dark labyrinth, wrestling some madman, struck at her core.
Fucking warm-up, my arse.
She began to strike out across the swamp, oblivious to her own discomfort, the impossibility of the task, and the peril to Des. Her sister was tough, sure, but she was no match for some crazy Japanese guy who appeared to be able to walk on water.
Or so she had thought.
Because, as Joni waded through the muck, screaming and crying huge shuddery sobs, wondering what that man was doing to her sister in the dark of the forest, Frankie walked out. Wet, black with mud, her shirt ripped.
But holding high two things.
Her head. And the tool bag.
Just as she reached the nearest ‘safe’ circle and deposited the bag on it with a dainty thunk, her assailant emerged from the jungle, bleeding profusely from the shoulder and shaking his head like a dog with fleas.
While Joni tried to understand exactly what had just occurred, she became aware of a sound. A low, slow, solitary clapping from behind her. And she turned to see Nick, one half of the Outback Exes, applauding slowly and looking at Frankie with naked appreciation.
Chapter 5
Frances
Frances kicked brutally at the ground, looking for something on which to vent her rage. The Stapler was yammering in the background, Darryl the Dickhead was preening and there was a camera in her face. She was hot and sweaty and coated in drying primordial ooze – ugh! No wonder early life forms had hightailed it out of the swamp. Her hip hurt like a bitch where she’d landed after a kamikaze geriatric had crash-tackled her. And, to top it all off, Joni had been as useful as a chocolate teapot.
Unlike Joni, who had embraced it like a porn star.
Frances clutched the tool bag to her chest – the complete one, as it turned out. She listened vaguely to the next lot of instructions, as ten sets of eyes scrutinised her with a mix of jealousy, respect and determination. She suddenly knew how a lobster in a tank felt.
The last set of eyes, sloping gracefully at the edges and topped with sparse greying eyebrows, looked at her like they wanted to rip her limb from limb.
Bugger. Just her luck to have bested a madman.
Takahiro Miyagi may barely have reached her shoulder but he had fought like a demon. Sadly for him, he’d mistaken her genteel demeanour as the sum of her whole. But one thing her father had taught her well was how to fight. It was the duty of a military man, lumbered with daughters, to ensure they knew how to defend themselves – more often than not from other military men who weren’t averse to undertaking a reconnaissance mission involving the commandant’s daughters.
She knew every dirty-fighting trick in the book.
And a few more.
Frances had had absolutely no compunction about jabbing her knee straight into Takahiro’s testicles, while simultaneously sinking her teeth into his shoulder and ripping his few pathetic comb-over strands of hair right out of his almost bald head.
Her father would have been proud.
His daughter, kicking butt in the jungle.
‘Right, you raving nannas, go, go, go!’ The Stapler yelled, pointing to the darkening sky. ‘Reports coming in say we’re in for one hell of a tropical storm in the next few hours. Don’t want to get your pretty little heads wet, do yer? Remember to stay within the inner perimeter. All land beyond the yellow tape is off-limits.’