‘Where’s Raf?’ I ask. ‘And your mums?’
‘Pizza shop.’ Sabeen returns with two glasses of juice. ‘I’ve got tonight off.’
She hands me a drink and settles into the armchair opposite, tucking her bare feet up beside her. As she sips from her glass, Sabeen stares out the large windows at the trees. I leave my drink untouched, waiting for her to tell me why I’m here.
In the kitchen, the old fridge clicks and whirrs as the silence stretches.
‘Sabeen,’ I say impatiently. ‘You have something to show me?’
She places her glass down and sits up. ‘Yeah, sorry. It’s been a long day. Bernie’s shop is such a mess. Tom’s going to have to spend his entire uni holidays sorting it out.’ She hauls herself out of the armchair and leaves the room for a moment. I take a quick gulp of my juice and try to stop my knee from jiggling.
‘We found something,’ Sabeen says, appearing in the doorway. ‘That is to say, I found it. But when I showed it to Raf he said we shouldn’t tell you.’
I’m momentarily stung by Raf ’s betrayal, and I’ll no doubt feel the need to dissect this later in great detail. Right now I’m transfixed by what Sabeen has in her hand.
She passes me a folded sheet of paper then sits back in her chair again, yanking the towel off her head. Damp hair falls around her shoulders, dark and stringy.
I unfold the note quickly, smoothing it out against my thigh. It’s a flyer from our motel before it had the name change, printed in a large, bold font. Patches of the paper are rippled, as though it was wet at some point and then dried out slightly buckled.
MOTEL GUESTS PLEASE NOTE:
Scheduled maintenance of washing machines on 12–13 January. Motel laundry will be closed to guests during this time.
Signed,
Management.
‘It’s from the motel laundry,’ I say, frowning at Sabeen. ‘So what? My dad put these up months ago.’
‘Turn it over.’
I do as instructed. There’s an upside-down message scrawled in red pen. I flip the page around.
Hey Chloe,
Where are you? I came back but you’re not here. Things are bad at home.
I really need your help with something. Can we talk tomorrow?
From Henry
I suck in a sharp breath. ‘Where’d you get this?’
‘I found it when I was cleaning for your dad a couple of weeks back.’ Sabeen fiddles with a strand of hair, wrapping it tightly around her finger. ‘He asked me to vacuum your bedroom to get ready for your visit, and this got caught in the vacuum head behind the curtains. I was about to throw it in the bin when I thought I’d better check it wasn’t important.’
I scan the note again. ‘Where did it come from?’
Sabeen leans forwards with her elbows on her knees. ‘I assume through your window?’
‘That window’s jammed,’ I say. ‘It only opens about ten centimetres.’
‘Well, that’s enough to shove a folded note through.’
I murmur in agreement, unable to take my eyes off the paper.
‘Maybe Henry was trying to toss it onto your bed,’ Sabeen suggests. ‘Remember that time he did it with the rubber spider?’
My mouth forms an echo of a smile. ‘Yeah. Raf put him up to it.’ I frown at the note again. It’s creased in a checkerboard pattern as though it was folded quite small, perhaps to give it some weight. ‘You could be right. Maybe it landed on the floor instead. Or I accidentally flicked it off my bed when I got in to go to sleep.’
‘So when do you reckon Henry put it there?’ Sabeen asks. ‘You were here for a month over summer.’
‘It’s not dated, so I don’t …’
I flip it back to the printed side and re-read the motel notice. Dad stuck three or four of these to the wall in the motel laundry about a week before the maintenance guy was due to service the machines. Were they up before the night of the storm? They must have been. The maintenance was scheduled for the twelfth and thirteenth of January. The storm was on the tenth. Henry came to the motel a few times during that week, so it could have been any of those days. If he looked or called for me through that gap in my window, there’s only one night he would have found my bedroom empty.
‘I thought it could be important,’ Sabeen says. ‘I was going to take it to Sergeant Doherty—’
I jerk upright. ‘No.’
Her mouth drops open. ‘See, that’s how Raf reacted too! He wouldn’t give me a reason and said we shouldn’t tell you about it either. But this right here—’ she taps her finger against the back of the paper, ‘—where Henry says “Things are bad at home”. That’s something Sergeant Doherty should know about, don’t you think?’
I sigh, kneading my forehead with my fingers.
On the one hand, the note might help Doherty pinpoint Henry’s movements, if there was some way of proving the note was indeed dropped through my window on the night he disappeared. There’s nothing to indicate what time of day it was written or even the exact date. There’s also no indication in the note that Henry was planning to run away.
On the other hand, if I show this note to Doherty I have to explain my theory about the timing, how Henry could have returned to the motel on the night of the storm when I wasn’t there. This, in turn, will lead to Doherty asking questions about where I was and why I lied to him about it back in January. And while I’d be prepared to own up and take whatever punishment I’m owed for lying to the police, it isn’t just me I’d be opening up to consequences. Raf lied to Doherty as well, to keep my secret about breaking curfew. There’s no way I’ll drag him down with me. And once my mother finds out about all of this, she’ll take a sledgehammer to the current custody arrangements. How can I do that to Dad?
‘Thanks for giving this to me,’ I tell Sabeen, conflicted about what to do with it. I don’t like keeping her in the dark, but I also don’t want to tell her everything and then swear her to secrecy. I’ve already got one Nolan sibling covering for me. I can’t involve another.
‘Do you see what I mean about the handwriting?’ she asks.
I do. It’s a bit jerky in places, a couple of wobbly words as though it may have been written in a rush. But there’s a familiarity to the letters that I recognise as Henry’s.
‘Now compare it with the postcard,’ Sabeen says. I rummage in my bag to find it, then place it down next to the note on the coffee table. Sabeen moves around to sit beside me on the couch. ‘Okay, so they’re both done in printing, right? Not cursive. No loopy l’s or g’s to analyse.’
I turn to her. ‘When did you become a handwriting expert?’
‘If you’d spent as much time as I have trying to decipher Mum and Min’s scribbles on pizza dockets, you’d be an expert too.’
Poring over both writing samples, I agree they don’t look perfectly alike. One is written in blue pen and one in red. The postcard is definitely neater, like more time and care was taken, and the writing on the laundry note is slightly larger overall. It’s tricky to do an exact comparison.
‘As soon as I saw the postcard, these jumped out at me.’ Sabeen taps her finger on the two capital I’s. They have the little crossbars at the top and bottom of the letter. ‘Now check out the I’s in Henry’s note. They’re simple vertical strokes, no crossbars.’
‘You’re right. They are different.’
‘Also this.’ Sabeen points out my name and Henry’s on the laundry note. ‘See how the letters C-h are joined in Chloe? Almost cursive but not quite. Same with the H-e-n in Henry, and other words like Where and really and Can.’ She points out each one in turn. ‘Now compare that with the postcard. Every word is neatly printed with distinct gaps between the letters.’
‘Do you think it’s because one note was rushed and the other wasn’t?’
‘Maybe. But even the way he signs off is different. Just plain Henry with a dash on the postcard, and From Henry on the note. Again, it might only be a small difference, but there are enough
small differences here to add up.’
I sit back in admiration. ‘I’m impressed.’
Sabeen shrugs it off. ‘The I’s made it obvious when I saw the postcard. I don’t know why I remembered how they looked on this note.’
‘Sometimes quirky little things stick in your head, I suppose, and they become useful later.’
We’re both quiet for a moment, doing another comparison to confirm what we already suspect.
‘If Henry didn’t write the postcard,’ I say, ‘who did?’
‘Maybe Henry is in Manly,’ Sabeen says. ‘And he asked someone else to write this.’
‘Who does he know in Sydney?’
‘Doesn’t his dad live there?’
‘Possibly,’ I say. ‘But he deserted them almost a decade ago. Henry doesn’t have a clue where his father lives. They’re not even allowed to say Wayne’s name in front of their mother.’
‘Maybe Henry tracked him down by himself.’
‘How would he even start?’
Sabeen shrugs again. ‘How would you start?’
‘The internet.’
‘There you go. Henry might have been doing more than just emailing you and watching YouTube when he was at the library.’
It doesn’t sound right to me. Henry would have told me if he was searching for his dad. We’ve had lots of conversations about Wayne before, and the idea of Henry tracking him down never came up.
I gather up the note and postcard and slide them back into my bag.
‘What are you going to do with those?’ Sabeen asks.
‘I don’t know yet. Guess I’ll need to pay a visit to our friendly neighbourhood police sergeant.’
She sees me grimace and offers a sympathetic smile. ‘I know you’d rather eat from the pizzeria’s dumpster than speak to Sergeant Doherty. But if it means a lead on Henry, it has to be worth it, right?’
Yes, of course. Of course it is. At the very least I can show Doherty the postcard so he can follow that up while I decide what to do about Henry’s note. Because if Henry didn’t write the postcard himself, that means someone is pretending to be him.
Why would someone do that? Why would they lie?
Why does anyone lie?
To hide the truth.
Eight weeks before the storm
Mason tasted blood.
He rolled his tongue along his teeth to check none of them were loose, and his tastebuds found that sharp, metallic tang. His front tooth must have gone through his lower lip when Darren Foster’s fist connected with his chin. Admittedly he’d let Foster get in a few good punches. If anyone had been watching they’d probably wonder why Mason had stopped defending himself halfway through. It wouldn’t make any sense if he told them it was because, deep down, he believed he deserved it.
You’re empty.
He couldn’t remember how old he was when the numbness started creeping in. It had compounded over the years, a gradual deadening, until Mason wondered whether he’d ever really felt anything at all. He could pinpoint the exact moment he was taught to be ashamed of himself though, by someone other than his mother. He learned that being honest about who he was would only make life harder.
It was just after Wayne left and Ivy was on one of her downward spirals, not bothering to go into work and spending large portions of the day in bed with the curtains drawn. Mason was eight years old and had come to the realisation it was his stepfather who’d been doing most of the shopping and cooking for the last four years. Dinner around the kitchen table had now turned into home-delivered pizza on the couch, then baked beans on toast, then tinned soup if you were lucky, or half a box of dry crackers if you weren’t. And when the cupboards were really empty, mealtimes became whatever cereal they could shake out of the hollow boxes littered all over the pantry.
One afternoon, when their mother complained of a headache and slept on and on until night crept in, Mason fed his brother slices of plastic-wrapped cheese with tomato sauce because it was the closest thing he could find to a meal. The next day at school, Mason’s Year Two class did an exercise about the food pyramid where they had to illustrate their meals from the previous day. Mason’s desk mates created colourful texta dinners of roast lamb and pumpkin, and spaghetti bolognaise with garlic bread. Mason had to explain to his teacher what a yellow square with a red splotch depicted. Mrs Kruger was unimpressed. She folded that drawing in half in one smooth action before placing it in her pocket.
Don’t make things awkward with your pitiful situation, that gesture said to him now. Fold shame in on itself and pretend it never happened.
‘Try again,’ Mrs Kruger had told him, providing a fresh sheet of paper.
So Mason lied. He wasn’t exactly sure why he couldn’t tell the truth about what he and Henry had eaten for dinner while his mother slept the evening away in another room. He created an elaborate drawing of chicken schnitzel with mashed potatoes, peas and gravy, a meal Wayne had once cooked for Ivy’s birthday.
‘Oh, yum,’ his teacher said approvingly. ‘How delicious!’ There was a hint of relief in her expression. Play along and we will too.
It became easier to pretend. Until the pretending caught up with you and you realised you were nothing but an empty shell, letting a meathead from your English class get a few good punches in just so you could feel something.
Mason hadn’t provoked the fight, though. Despite how bleak things felt, he wasn’t a masochist. Getting the crap beaten out of him wasn’t his idea of a good time, especially in the rancid school toilets with the stench of piss and urinal cakes tainting the air. He shifted his weight now on the tiled floor beside the sinks, his back supported by the cold concrete wall. The wave of nausea had almost passed, leaving behind a dull ache in his lower abdomen.
Foster was built like a tank, but he obviously wasn’t as tough as he thought he was. He’d resorted to kneeing Mason in the balls to gain the upper hand. Or maybe he thought he was sending Mason some kind of message, considering what went down moments before the scuffle.
‘Whattaya think you’re looking at?’ Foster had said when he stepped up to the urinal right beside Mason’s. Mason hadn’t even been aware anyone had entered the toilets. He was staring at an illegible sentence of graffiti etched into the painted concrete wall, thinking about the Geography homework he hadn’t done.
He narrowed his eyes at Foster’s flat-nosed face. ‘What?’
‘Have a good perve, did ya?’ Foster said, glancing down at his own junk.
Mason turned his face to the wall again as he zipped up his fly. ‘What the hell are you on about?’
Foster zipped up his pants too without having pissed at all as far as Mason could tell. That’s when he realised it wasn’t what Foster had come in there to do.
Darren Foster had hated Mason’s guts ever since that day in the preschool playground; little had they known it was a preview of what was to come. Foster got his kicks pushing Tom around in primary school too, and Mason had always stepped in to protect him. He ended up getting into his fair share of scraps with Foster until both of their mothers got called into the school principal’s office in Year Five with a warning about suspension. For a year and a half, Foster finally left them alone.
But in high school the insults and ridiculing started all over again. Foster was the kind of guy with such low self-esteem that he had to pick fault with every single person he came across. For the most part Mason had been able to ignore it, and their shoving matches had been few and far between. No one cared what Foster had to say. The fact that he’d even made it through to Year Twelve without dropping out, being expelled or dying in some Darwin Awards-style accident was a bloody miracle.
Today was different. Mason sensed it as he paused at the sink to rinse his hands. Foster moved between him and the exit.
‘Now I’m gunna have to tell everyone I caught you staring at my dick.’
Mason forced a quick sarcastic smile. ‘Okay, dumbarse. You do that.’
He knew what this was
really about. Foster was Stu Macleod’s nephew and he’d really wanted the mechanic apprenticeship at the workshop. Stu had already told Mason he’d never had any intention of employing his sister’s lazy son, even though she’d been nagging him about it for years. ‘You’re the better man for the job,’ Stu told him, and Mason was conflicted. He really needed the job and was grateful for the opportunity, but he also had one eye on the road.
Foster had already threatened Mason not to take the apprenticeship, then badmouthed him to Stu, and had since let down the tyres on Mason’s Subaru in the school car park. Mason felt the seething anger radiating off the guy whenever he passed him outside a classroom, and knew it was only a matter of time before Foster would throw a punch.
As Mason attempted to get past him to the bathroom exit, Foster leaned one arm against the wall to block his path. Mason tried to duck under it, but Foster's arm dropped onto his shoulders and snaked itself around Mason’s neck, dragging him into a headlock.
‘Get off!’ he yelled, his voice muffled against Foster’s stomach. He tried to pull himself backwards, but Foster had him pinned against the wall. The bell had already signalled the end of lunch, and fifth period was now underway. There was no one outside in the corridor.
‘If you keep staring at my dick,’ Foster said, puffing with the effort of holding Mason down, ‘you’re gunna make your little boyfriend jealous.’
Mason flexed his body, forcing Foster into the wall. The arm pinning him loosened enough for Mason to wrench his head free. He backed away a few steps into the centre of the bathroom as Foster straightened up again, moving towards him with his chin down and his shoulders hunched.
‘Come on then,’ Foster sneered, grabbing his crotch. ‘You wanna give us a blowie?’
Mason shoved both hands hard against Foster’s chest. ‘Get out of my way.’
Foster smirked. ‘Aww. You on your period, princess?’
A fist came out of nowhere and Foster’s head snapped sideways. Mason only realised the blow had come from him when he felt the shooting pain across his knuckles and up through his hand. He couldn’t recall exactly what went down between that first hit and Foster’s knee to his groin. Lots of arm swinging and few connections, more shoving and wrestling, a volley of swearwords back and forth. Mason wasn’t much of a fighter, but it did give him a sense of satisfaction to watch Foster limp out of the toilets with a bloody nose and buttons missing from his shirt.
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