He wondered how Tina would take the news if Isabelle was pregnant. She wouldn’t be happy. Not even a little.
There he went again, getting ahead of himself. He had to keep in mind, even though it would dull the polish on his excitement each time he did, that there was a huge chance this pregnancy was a false alarm. And even if Isabelle were pregnant, he couldn’t live his life according to how Tina may or may not feel about matters. That relationship was dead. He was still alive and racing in a new direction.
Sometimes, only sometimes, the pace of his new life was too fast. He missed the quiet, familiar, comfortable speed he and Tina had operated at. With her, he had been himself from the beginning, and he had only sunk deeper and deeper into authenticity the longer they were together.
Over their marriage, they had grown to think the same. Grown to depend on each other so much that after he had moved out, it took months and months to break the habit of reaching for his phone to call her, or her being his first thought when he had gossip or wishing her warm body were right there beside him when he awoke alone in his bed each morning.
He had missed them with every aching part of his heart for a long time.
None of that meant that he didn’t adore Isabelle. Love Isabelle. But she was still new. He hadn’t hit that comfortable point. He was still trying to be someone else—the man he thought she wanted him to be. He farted quietly. He used toilet spray after going. He put the seat down. He was testing how crude he could go with his jokes. He still needed to find the limit to how relaxed Isabelle would allow him to be.
What he was sure of, though, was that he wanted this baby. He wanted this baby so much. He was already envisioning teaching his boy or girl how to kick a footy and ride a bike. Weekends fishing for barramundi at Awoonga Dam or heading out in a tinnie to Curtis Island for the day. Gladstone was a great town for a kid to grow up. He was one to know; he’d lived there his whole life.
* * *
Chris was sitting on the couch, his leg bouncing up and down as he watched the golf and intermittently checked on the pastabake he had in the oven when the garage door opened around six. His grin extended across his face, but when Isabelle came inside, smelling of hair dye and perfume, he hid his excitement.
“Hi,” she said when she met him in the living room and kissed his cheek.
He still couldn’t believe how he had managed to meet and marry a woman as beautiful as her. “Hi. Good day?”
She sighed and sank onto the couch beside him. “Busy. Not that I’m complaining.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Still very tired. Even a little nauseous this morning. But it was better by about mid-morning.”
“Did you have morning sickness while pregnant with Juliette?”
“Every single day until about four months into the pregnancy.”
“I bought a test today.” He got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s do this because I can’t handle the suspense any longer.”
She giggled. “If I knew you were this impatient, I would have snuck home at lunch and done the test then.”
“That would have saved me from a very, very long day.”
When in their bedroom, he opened the drawer and handed her the box. “Pee on the stick thingy. Wait five minutes. If there’re two blue lines, you’re pregnant. If there’s only one, you’re not.”
“That easy?” she asked with a brow raised and a small grin.
“That easy.” He shooed her out of the room. “Go now before Juliette gets home.”
She hastened her pace to the bathroom. “I’m going.”
Five minutes later, Isabelle returned. Her face was ashen. Chris’s heart thumped hard. She held up the stick and he had to step closer to see.
Two blue lines.
Pregnant.
He sucked in a deep lungful of air, eyes widening. Awe filled him from his toes to his head. He and his beautiful wife had created life. “I’m so pumped!”
Isabelle’s gaze flickered over her husband’s face and his smile, studying every facet for inauthenticity, but she couldn’t find any.
All day she had been lost to a moment almost twenty-two years ago when she had told her seventeen-year-old high school sweetheart, Trent Farrow, she was pregnant with his baby.
He was tall and muscled from rowing club. Took care of himself—styling his dark brown hair every day and he always wore clean and ironed uniforms. She was desperately in love with him. Had said again and again that she would run away with him if that’s what it took. She honestly believed she would die of heartache if they were to ever break up.
One afternoon, she had invited him over before her parents arrived home from work. It would give them some privacy to talk about their changed future. She still hadn’t dared to tell her mum and dad about the baby. She wanted Trent to be by her side when she finally did.
They sat together on Isabelle’s bed and Trent had kissed her lips, her neck, his hands greedily running over her breasts. She pushed him away, straightened her shirt. “I didn’t ask you here so we can fool around.” Not until she had told him her big secret.
“Well, what is it?”
Her heart had fluttered like a frightened bird in a cage. Her lips were dry. The hormones, she realised later, had made her emotional and her eyes gloss with tears.
“Trent, I have some news.”
He nodded, gestured with his hand that she tell him.
“I’m” – a forced smile – “I’m pregnant.”
He laughed. “Pull the other one.”
“I’m not joking.” She trailed her fingers across her flat stomach. “I’m pregnant.”
His face drained of blood and he was left as pale as starched white sheets. His quick gaze flicked from her eyes to her stomach. His lips twisted, pulled down at the corners. A slight crinkle of his nose.
No doubt about it, he was not happy with the news. He was not happy with her. His reaction hit her like a punch. She had not anticipated such a response.
He jumped to his feet, his mouth curling into the contorted shape of revulsion, and pointed at her stomach. “I will have nothing to do with that. If you want to keep it, that’s up to you. If you want to get rid of it, that’s up to you, too. But do not tell my father. As far as anyone knows, we were over before this happened.”
She stared, lips parted. “We’re over?”
“I’m going away to university next year, Issy. I can’t have a kid.”
“Well, you’re having a kid. We’re having a kid. I can’t change that fact.”
He shrugged. “You could. As I said, your call. But as far as I’m concerned, not my problem.”
He strode to the bedroom door, turned one last time and glared. The revolted expression on his face had stuck with Isabelle for years. But not so much as the anger and shame Trent’s parents had blasted her with a few weeks later when they had eventually discovered the truth.
Isabelle had spent much of her life thinking she was disgusting for falling pregnant so young. That to bring a child into this world was shameful. To witness the opposite in Chris’s expression was eating away that long-held humiliation.
“You’re truly happy?” she asked.
Chris nodded, drew her to him and cuddled her to his chest. When he spoke, his voice was husky and choked by tears. “I can’t even find the words to tell you how happy this makes me.”
She looked up at his face, into his glossy eyes and smiled. “Good. I think I’m happy, too.”
Chapter 10
Saturday morning, Tina set about cleaning her house. Routine. With the stick vacuum, she hoovered across the floorboards of the hall, ensuring to get close against the tracks because dust would accumulate there otherwise. Old houses like hers, surrounded by bushland, were magnets for dust.
Into the office, she pushed the vacuum over every part of the floor, then pulled the connector off, added the small attachment she had in her pocket and poked it into the windowsills, sucking up dead flies, small bugs and cobwebs
—again, a standard out there.
She wouldn’t change it. Living on a big property, the seclusion and birdlife, the quiet pace of the tiny town, offered refuge. When she and Chris had inspected that house together fifteen years ago, they had both met each other’s gaze and silently said that they were in love with it. The years there were mostly good. They had always wanted their own slice of land to grow vegetables and fruit trees. Raise chickens.
Out in the vast yard, the large rectangle vegetable gardens had grown over years ago. Only weeds and the odd stubborn pumpkin grew there now. The chicken coop, once filled with six, fat hens that would scratch for worms in the cooler afternoons, was empty. A wild dog had gotten to each of them one night after she had forgotten to return them to the secure confines of their cage early enough.
Some of the fruit trees still bloomed each season—the ones hardy enough to survive only on rainfall. But the fruit would fall to the ground, unpicked, filling the air with sweet-scented decomposition. How easily dreams could fracture when they were no longer nurtured.
Tina turned from the window to leave, passing her scant-used desk. Sitting on the desktop were three sticky notes all in a neat row. Faint scrawl across each. She gasped and dropped the vacuum’s handle. It crashed to the ground at her feet.
She glanced around the room, listened hard. Only regular morning sounds of the house, insects and birds.
“What the actual hell?” she barked and marched to the desk, snatching up each note.
The first note read: Hear no evil.
The second note read: See no evil.
She could already anticipate what the third would say before she even looked at it.
Speak no evil.
A slight tremble in her hands as she read and re-read the notes, over and over, shuffling them like cards before her eyes. Enough was enough. Someone was playing games with her, though she couldn’t understand what type.
She raced out of the room, grabbed her phone off the kitchen bench with shaking hands, and dialled the Gladstone police station. An officer called David May spoke to her for fifteen minutes as she explained in a rush of words what had been happening.
The officer asked her to fill out an online report, but, at that stage, there was little that could be done. No damage. No theft. No indication of who could be responsible. He suggested she change her locks and organise a personal security system.
When she ended the call and filled out the report using her laptop, she searched for local locksmith listings. She punched the phone number of the first business that appeared on her mobile and hit dial. After a quick conversation, the locksmith said he wasn’t available until next Tuesday morning. But she couldn’t wait another three nights without assurance that she was somewhat safer in her own home.
“I think I’ve someone entering my house while I’m not here,” she pleaded. “Or it could be while I’m sleeping. I live on my own. I’m scared. Please, can you doublecheck if you can fit me into your schedule today?”
A long silence, then his gruff voice returned to the phone. “I’ll call in late this afternoon.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
She took a seat on her office chair, face in her hands, wondering who could possibly be behind the notes. The only person she hadn’t asked was her ex. She would not put the conversation off any longer.
When Chris answered the phone, familiar construction noises were in the background.
“Hello,” he said, somewhat surly.
“Hi, Chris, sorry to call at work…” She parted her lips to ask her next question, but it was obvious that he wasn’t responsible for the notes. Not if he was a thousand kilometres away. “It seems silly to call you now because you’re at work, so it couldn’t be you.”
“What are you talking about?”
She sighed. “I’ve had someone breaking into the house. They’re leaving weird notes around the place. I had one left on the fridge. Now I have three in the office. I was wondering if you may have been using the key to get in—”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled on her earlobe. “I’m at a loss. I’ve contacted the police. They were no help. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you, that’s all.”
“It’s not me.”
“Okay. Yeah, I realise that now.”
“I don’t know what else I can do from here.”
“It’s fine, Chris. It’s not your job to sort it out. I’ll deal with it. I’ll let you go. I know you’re not allowed to use your phone during work hours.”
A noisy exhalation. “It’s fine. If you need help, I’m there, okay? It’s just hard when I’m working so far away.”
She did her best to hide the waver in her voice. “Yeah, I understand. Thanks.”
“Let me know if it keeps up. Maybe I can install a camera or something when I get back.”
“Can’t hurt.”
“I’ll call when I’m home. We’ll arrange a time.”
“Sure. Thanks. Talk to you later.”
She ended the call, placed the phone down and rubbed her forehead. All she could do was hope that whoever was doing this, stopped.
* * *
Mandy was already waiting for Tina at an outside seat of the large coffee shop. Tina forced a smile and waved, still not quite able to shake her jitteriness after finding those last three notes.
“You okay?” Mandy asked. She was a tall, muscular woman. Her soft-spoken voice and timidity were at odds with her stature.
Tina took a seat, nodded, then shook her head. “I…no. There’s something really strange going on.”
Mandy crossed her legs, leaned closer. “What is it?”
“I’ve been finding weird notes around the house.”
Mandy’s brow furrowed as she shook her head slightly. “I don’t understand. What do you mean by weird notes?”
Tina explained the circumstances surrounding the notes and what each of them said.
“What could they mean?” Mandy asked.
Tina shrugged. “You know as much as I do. The first one turned up on my fridge last Sunday. The other three were on the desk in my office this morning.”
“And you don’t know how they got there?”
“Nope.”
“Bizarre. Really, really bizarre.”
“I’m getting the locks changed this afternoon,” Tina added.
“I’m sure there must be some kind of rational explanation for the notes, but, until you find out what that is, changing the locks is a good idea.” Mandy didn’t feel like that was enough, though. Intuition hinted there was something particularly unhinged about all this. “Do you want Trevor to come over and check around for you? Like, maybe in the ceiling space.”
Tina’s heart thumped. “The ceiling space? I never even thought about that.”
“I’ve heard creepy stories about people living in the ceilings or attics while the occupant has no idea at all.”
Goosebumps spread along Tina’s arms. She shivered. She had heard similar stories, especially one spooky account of an older lady living in a man’s roof. She would creep out at night for a drink and something to eat from the fridge and was only caught after the occupant installed cameras.
It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone could be hiding in Tina’s ceiling. She was a small-sized woman living on her own. She shivered again. “My God, can you imagine that? How unnerving.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but he’d be happy to take a look.” Mandy’s husband loved an opportunity to play the Good Samaritan, especially when he had an audience.
“I’d appreciate that.”
Mandy’s smile was sympathetic as she pulled her mobile from her handbag. “Shall we handle it now?”
Tina shook her head. “Not yet. I need some normalcy for an hour or two.”
Mandy patted Tina’s hand and nodded. “I understand. Let’s have cake with our coffee today then, shall we?”
Tina giggled. “You read
my mind.”
They each ordered coffees and a slice of lemon meringue pie for morning tea. Over the next hour, Tina managed to talk about life—work, new recipes she had found, local gossip—and listened to Mandy in turn. But her mind remained fixated on the last three notes. Their conversation kept circling back to her worries.
“What could it possibly mean?” Tina asked. “A random shopping list and now hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. I can’t make sense of it.”
“Me neither,” Mandy agreed. “They’re totally disconnected. Maybe the recent notes are hinting that you know something you shouldn’t? Or saw something?”
Tina rested back against the chair and crossed her arms. “Could be. But I can’t think what.”
“Maybe you were dropping off a parcel while something big was going down inside a house. And the people involved believe you may have seen.”
Tina’s eyes widened. “That could be a possibility. But why be so cryptic?”
Mandy laughed. “See, this is why I could never be a detective.” Mandy worked in childcare—more concerned with shaping young minds rather than understanding criminals.
“Could be an old patient, perhaps?” Tina suggested. “Someone holding an old grudge. Might explain the lack of sense the notes are making.” Tina had worked as a psychologist at the local hospital when she had first met Chris. She had studied hard at high school, earning grades that won her a scholarship to study her four-year degree on campus in Rockhampton.
After completing her Bachelor’s, she studied an honour’s year. But eight years into her career, she’d suffered serious burn-out and quit.
Mandy’s brows shot higher. “Could be. Like the scene in that movie where the patient threatens to shoot his psychiatrist.”
They both burst into laughter, not because that scene was funny, but how absurd it was to expect something like that in a town like this. And Tina hadn’t worked in that profession for nearly a decade now. Besides, in the movie, the patient’s actions were blatant—a gun right in the psychiatrist’s face. The notes appearing in Tina’s house were subtle. Covert.
Tina blew out a breath, started to gather up her phone and bag. “Come on, let’s get Trevor to check this ceiling space so we can rule out that terrifying explanation.”
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