26
2015
I’ve given up cigarettes.
It’s been a year, but even now, walking through a cloud of someone else’s nicotine is enough to make me gag.
When I arrived at the hospital they had forbidden me from speaking and strapped an oxygen mask to my face. The only thing I’d managed to say was my name. My real name. Then they’d pushed a tube down my throat to suck out the black mess in my lungs.
The doctor said I was lucky. The smoke inhalation could have easily killed me if I’d been in that house just a few minutes longer. I shiver, although it’s stinking hot today. As hard as it is to avoid, I try not to think about that house.
Ducking and weaving through the peak-hour crowd, I make my way toward the railway station. It’s eight in the morning, the sun is bright and I’m on my way to the interstate platform. It’ll take me a long time to get where I need to go. But that doesn’t bother me. It’ll be well worth the journey. There’s someone I need to see.
I hate Perth central station. It seems like it’s either packed with suits pushing and shoving, or it’s deserted except for a few creeps eyeing you from the shadows. There’s never any in-between. Apart from that, it seems to always smell slightly of stale urine. Summer was the worst, because the concrete absorbed the sun and then it smelt like hot stale urine. I pinch my nose as I wait in line to buy my ticket, hoping the smell won’t stick to me. I had my best clothes on, and I’d even attempted to do my hair. Even though it wasn’t ideal circumstances I was jittery with excitement. I looked around, smiling at people, which was something I never, ever did. Then I noticed the newsstand inside the station. The excitement died in an instant. The headline of today’s newspaper read Winter Twins: Not Guilty.
I had seen it coming, but it didn’t matter. It still hurt. In that hospital bed, lying for days in complete silence, I had told myself I was going to clean up the mess I had created. I thought of Bec a lot. I grieved for her, and I promised I would fix what I had broken. Swore to her that I wouldn’t let her brothers get away with killing her.
When at last the doctors told me I was allowed to speak, I went down to the pay phone in the lobby, my fist full of silver coins. I started with the hardest call: my stepmom. I told her how sorry I was. She had passed the phone to my dad without saying a word. He had begun to get worried about me after all. When I told him I was going to turn myself in for the credit card fraud, he bought me a plane ticket home to Perth. I didn’t ask to move back in with him. I knew we could never go back to the way it was. Not after what I had done. He said he’d pay for a good lawyer for me. Looking back, it wasn’t love that made him do that. It was his need to avoid the shame of his only daughter going to jail.
I wouldn’t have cared. I’d do community service. I’d apologize to everyone I stole from. I would do the jail time if I had to. Just hearing people call me by my own name would make it all worth it.
After hanging up, I took a long deep breath. I couldn’t leave it any longer. I clunked the coins one by one into the pay phone. Slowly, I keyed in the number and listened to it ring.
“Andopolis speaking.”
“Hi.”
“Bec! Where are you?”
“She’s under the house.”
I told him everything. Every detail of what had happened that horrible day. Then I hung up before he could say a word, my throat aching from talking again. It was time for me to go home, to be myself again. The only trace of Bec left in my life was the deep scar on my forearm.
Even in Perth, the story reached the papers: Kidnap Victim Sets Fire to Her Own Home. I had swallowed down my anger, and hoped like hell that Andopolis was doing his job to fix this. For months, the story was in the news. Luckily for me, they didn’t include anything about how the new Bec wasn’t really Bec at all. Andopolis must have stayed tight-lipped on that one. I guess it made him look pretty bad. The mother was okay, too, in the end, physically at least. The firefighters had pulled her out of the burning house kicking and screaming to stay.
I’d watched the news with my hand over my mouth as the presenter dryly stated that they had recovered a decomposed body in the blackened garage. A body bag was lifted carefully into the back of an ambulance.
“Lab results have confirmed that the body is that of Maxwell Brennan, forty-one, who lived next door to the Winter family before he disappeared in 2004.”
It wasn’t Bec. I felt like jumping up and down. After all that, maybe it was possible that she was still alive.
The twins had a great alibi for the fire. The press had photos of the parents leaving the house with them in the back and returning without them. They must have been lying under a blanket or something. The airline had records of them checking in their baggage at the exact moment the terminal opened, and they had made it onto the flight, three hours later. Despite the fact that there was a two-hour gap in there, I guess Andopolis thought he wouldn’t have enough evidence for a conviction.
But then, to my surprise, a few days later the twins were arrested. I watched as Andopolis led them into the station, T-shirts over their heads. He was trying to look serious but the corners of his lips tugged with a smirk. Turned out, even after all this time, Max’s body was covered in their DNA.
Once the cops started digging, they linked the twins to a series of murders in the aged care home that Andrew had volunteered at in Melbourne. Holden Valley. The murders were grisly, nasty. So much so that at first they had thought some kind of animal had gotten into the facility. The story of the impending hearing was in the paper constantly. I couldn’t have avoided it if I’d tried. Newspapers were a large portion of the trash I picked up from the side of the highway for my community service.
During those long hours on the side of the road I thought of Jack almost constantly. I called him. He didn’t answer. I texted him. No response. I followed the Kingsley blog obsessively. Then the blog disappeared from the web and it was Jack’s face I saw in the paper. Just a small photo, right at the back. They’d found the camera he was trying to smuggle into the detention centre and arrested him. Unlike Andrew and Paul’s case, Jack’s was swift. He got six months.
I was trying very hard to be a good person. Still, I couldn’t help but see the opportunity his incarceration provided. I knew exactly where he was. Today I was going to see him and he would have to listen. He was literally a captive audience.
“Miss?”
The line has disappeared in front of me and the ticket booth lady is glaring impatiently at me. I attempt a weak smile and go to pay my fare. Part of me doesn’t want to read the paper; I know what it will say. Paul and Andrew share identical DNA, so it can’t be proved that it was one of them and not the other who had murdered Max. Of course, the media have already convicted them. Maybe that was enough.
I make my way to the newsstand. There is a dark-haired woman looking at the newspaper, too, her back to me. I wouldn’t have noticed her, if it wasn’t for how still she is standing. The peak-hour suits knock into her, clicking their tongues in annoyance. Slowly, she turns, like she somehow feels my eyes on the back of her neck, and I look straight into the face I know as well as my own. She’s dyed her hair and eyebrows brown, but a hint of copper glows at her roots. Her clothes are perfectly tailored and stylish, like she has a job in fashion. Even after twelve years, it is undeniably Bec Winter.
There are tears running down her cheeks as she locks eyes with me. Quickly, her sadness turns to panic. My face is showing the expression I had gotten so used to, eyes wide in shocked recognition. Like I’ve seen a ghost. I try to push apart people to get to her.
“Wait!” I scream, but she is already running.
People stare at me as I chase her down toward a platform. But there are trains leaving; there are people everywhere. I keep my eyes locked on the back of her head.
“Excuse me!” A woman smashes her pram into my shins.
“Hey!” I yell at her. What kind of idiot brings a baby to a station at peak hour? I look arou
nd, ignoring the woman’s snarky comments, trying desperately to spot Bec again. But it’s too late.
She has disappeared into the crowd.
* * * * *
Acknowledgements
To my agent, MacKenzie Fraser-Bub, who pulled this work out of the slush pile. She is such an extraordinary woman, and I feel so lucky to have her in my corner. My editor, Kerri Buckley, with whom I developed a great connection through Track Changes before I ever met her in person, and the amazing team at MIRA, who have been outstanding every step of the way. To Nicole Brebner and Jon Cassir, who both believed in this story.
Of course, the story of this novel started long before all that. To my friends at Kino, who always inspired and supported me over popcorn cleaning and choc-top making. To my fantastic writers group, who kept me on track during the sometimes painful writing process. To Ian Pringle, for still teaching me even though I haven’t been your student for a long time, Graeme Simsion, for his wonderful advice, and to Jenny Laylor, for her legal expertise. To Sergeant Kylie Whiting of the NSW Missing Persons Unit and Ken Wooden, coordinator of the Policing Practices Unit at UWS, thank you for your patient answers to my nitpicky questions.
I am lucky enough to have so many dear and supportive friends. My girls Phoebe Baker, Lara Gissing and Lou James, for making everything more fun. To the awesome screenwriter Joe Osbourne, who shares my taste in weird. To wordsmiths David Travers, Martina Hoffman and Rebecca Carter Stokes, for reading drafts of this book and not being afraid to tell me when it sucked. To Allegra Mee, who didn’t mind me pinching a lot of our teenage memories. To Adam Long, who always listens.
And of course, from the very beginning of it all, to my family. Amy Snoekstra, my sister, who kept insisting I should write a novel until I thought that it was my idea. To my intelligent, amazing parents, Ruurd and Liz, who encouraged me to do what made me happy, and to my hilarious, kind in-laws, David and Tess.
Lastly, to Ryan, the love of my life.
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First Published 2016
ISBN 9781489210814
ONLY DAUGHTER
© 2016 by Anna Elizabeth Snoekstra
Australian Copyright 2016
New Zealand Copyright 2016
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Only Daughter Page 22