‘Hang on, Sal,’ the woman in front of her said. She slipped her phone into her handbag and knelt beside Hannah, helping her to gather everything up and waving the other customers ahead of them. ‘There you go, love.’
‘Thank you.’
Hannah’s face was hot as the woman finally met her eyes. Did she recognise her? They’d only met once, but Hannah had seen her face over and over again, first on the TV after it’d happened, and then in her dreams for years. For several long seconds, the woman stared at her, and Hannah’s heart beat hard as she waited for her to make the connection.
But then the woman smiled. ‘No worries. Have a lovely Christmas, won’t you.’ And she turned and rejoined the line for the checkout, getting her phone out of her bag again while she waited. ‘Sorry, Sal, I was just helping a lady in the shop.’
Hannah pressed her eyes closed for a moment, hugging her purchases to her chest with relief as the woman continued her conversation on the phone, completely unaffected by their encounter.
Angela Harris. It’d been years since Hannah had given her so much as a thought. She’d been so kind that night Hannah had been to her house for dinner. She must have known, on some level, what was going on, but she’d turned that radiant smile on Hannah, had given her second helpings of everything, topped up her wine glass. Hannah wondered what had happened in her life since the incident, how long she’d kept searching for answers before finally giving up and moving on.
Then the checkout operator motioned to her, and Hannah realised that Angela had gone. She shook off the cold tendrils of dread that had closed around her limbs and moved forward.
For the first time in ages, Ethan got home while the children were still eating. The kids went absolutely nuts, abandoning their meals to crowd around him, all shouting at him at once.
‘You’re home early,’ Hannah said, getting up from the table to serve him some food.
‘It’s almost Christmas,’ Ethan said, taking the plate from her and sitting down at the table with them. ‘Things have quietened down at work, so I took an early minute to spend time with my beautiful family.’
When Hannah sat back down beside him, he leant over to whisper in her ear, ‘I got the kids an awesome Christmas present. They’re going to love it.’
‘Oh.’ Hannah put her knife and fork down. ‘I finished the shopping today; they probably didn’t need anything else. What did you get?’
‘I’ll show you later,’ Ethan said with a secretive smile. ‘Once the kids are in bed.’
The usual bedtime chaos allowed Hannah to push the moment in the store with Angela out of her head for a while, but once they were all asleep and Ethan was getting changed, there was no hiding any longer, memories resurfacing that had once consumed her. Seeing Angela again was the closest she’d come in a long time to that dragging feeling of dread that had dogged her back then. But while Hannah had been panicked, terrified, Quinn had quietly and calmly taken charge, told her what to do, steadied her through the news reports with police officers discussing the inconsistencies in the case, and Angela appealing to the public for anyone who might have seen anything to come forward. Even through the warped and stippled shell of her own fear, it had been a surprise to see that careful, controlled side of Quinn again. Her friend had changed after the Travis incident – she’d become the outrageous, outspoken, carefree spirit Hannah had always known was coiled inside her.
Once the whole thing had blown over, Quinn had gone back to the big nights out, the living for the now with no thought of tomorrow. But that life had been over for Hannah; she’d had an overwhelming desire for stability, certainty, a ten-year plan for the future. And today, with so much distance between then and now, it was hard to believe that Hannah had once been the wild one, the one who’d been first to lead Quinn astray.
‘Check this out,’ came Ethan’s voice from behind her, breaking into her thoughts.
She turned as he stepped into the living room, carrying a large cardboard box. Her stomach fell when she saw the logo.
‘You bought them an Xbox?’
He grinned. ‘Isn’t it great? They’re going to love it.’
Hannah sighed. ‘I thought we’d agreed we weren’t going to go over the top this year. I don’t want to turn them into tiny consumers just yet.’
‘We live in a capitalist society, Hannah.’ The smile hadn’t left Ethan’s face. ‘They’re already consumers. Why fight it?’
‘Because there are more important values in life than things. I want to give them a Christmas where they find joy in small things.’
‘And I want to spoil them,’ Ethan insisted. ‘Don’t you think they deserve it?’
‘You think there aren’t kids out there who deserve it too, but their parents can’t afford extravagant gifts like this?’ She gestured at the box.
‘Well, that’s not really our problem, is it, Hannah?’ He turned away from her. ‘You’re always hinting that I don’t help out enough around the house. I was trying to do something good for once.’
‘I don’t hint that you’re not helping out!’ Hannah protested.
But she did. She knew she did. Over time, her resentment at taking on ninety per cent of the parenting responsibilities had rasped away at her until she’d resorted to passive-aggressive behaviour. Mostly, she was furious with herself, because she should have known this was coming when she’d agreed to be a stay-at-home mum in the first place. She remembered reasoning that at least it was a safe life, a life without risk, a life that would protect her from what once might have been.
Ethan’s face softened, and he placed the Xbox on the table and put his arms around her. ‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you about it first. It was a bit of an impulse purchase. I saw it on special in my lunch break today and got a bit carried away. I just wanted to surprise them with something really cool. Do you want me to return it tomorrow?’
Hannah looked up at him. ‘No, don’t take it back. You’re right, they’ll love it.’
‘It’ll be great, you’ll see.’ His voice became animated. ‘Sam can play Minecraft on it, and he and Jet can use the two-player mode and play together. Then there’ll be no more fights over the iPad.’
Hannah laughed. ‘They could have six of everything and they’d still fight over them. You are so charmingly naive sometimes.’
‘That’s why you love me.’
His arms tightened around her and he kissed her gently. Hannah hooked her arms around his neck. She did love him. Their relationship wasn’t always easy, but whose was? She’d craved safety, and now she’d found it, it was OK to be content with that.
CHAPTER SIX
QUINN
Quinn presented her strategy to Total Care Insurance on Christmas Eve, and they signed with the agency on the spot. She was used to success, but it wasn’t normally this instantaneous, and it was like a bolt of adrenalin straight to her heart. This would be one of the biggest accounts the agency had ever landed, and it was almost entirely because of her. Alistair cracked a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and filled glasses for everyone, and by the time the company directors had left, Quinn was on the kind of high that could only come from outperforming every single dick in the room.
When Alistair returned to the boardroom after seeing their newest clients out, he held out his hands in an expansive gesture. ‘Well done, everyone. What a great team effort.’
Simon tilted his chair backwards, resting his champagne glass on the ankle crossed over his knee. ‘It was all Quinn, really. She came up with the strategy and the campaign ideas. I just rubber-stamped it.’
Quinn glanced at him in surprise. She’d fully expected him to claim this account for himself, but maybe the weirdness at the Christmas party last week had reminded him of the way things used to be between them. Maybe she was finally going to get one of the big accounts for herself.
Alistair raised his glass to Quinn. ‘Yes, great work, Quinn. You should go into the break feeling very pleased with yourself indeed.’
/> ‘Merry fucking Christmas,’ she said, leaning across the table to clink her glass against her colleagues’ in turn.
‘Speaking of which,’ Alistair said, rising from his chair, ‘I must be off. My daughter and her family are coming over from Sydney to stay. Have a great Christmas, and I’ll see you in the new year to keep on kicking goals.’
Quinn tried to catch Simon’s eye at the latest of Alistair’s corporate buzzwords, but he’d already stood to shake the managing partner’s hand and wish him a merry Christmas. Once Alistair had left, everyone else started to make a move as well. They all said their farewells and Quinn returned to her office to shut down her computer and get out of there for two weeks, the longest time she’d had off work in years. She couldn’t wait to get away from fusty old Adelaide for a while and hit the bars of Melbourne.
She was just standing up to leave when Simon’s figure darkened the door to her office. Normally she’d welcome the opportunity to have one last dig at him about his upcoming resort holiday, but ever since that interaction last week after her text message, followed by their mutual bad behaviour at the Christmas party, she’d found herself avoiding him.
‘You have a smashing Christmas, Simon,’ she said, snatching up her handbag. ‘I’m out of here.’
His hand came to rest against the opposite doorframe, his arm barring her escape route. ‘I meant what I said in there. That was fantastic work. We wouldn’t have landed them without you.’
No fucking shit, Quinn thought.
‘I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the campaign in the new year,’ she said.
‘Well, you’ll certainly be part of it, of course, but I’ll be handling their account.’
Quinn’s smile disintegrated. ‘What?’
‘You must understand that an account with that kind of budget calls for senior representation.’
‘But they loved me. They loved me. I spent months building a rapport with them. They know all those campaign ideas were mine.’
‘And they’ll be expecting a senior member of staff to take those campaigns and run with them.’
‘No!’ Quinn slapped one hand down on her desk. ‘This is bullshit. That was my strategy!’
‘Come on, Quinn, you’re a big girl. You know how it works.’
Rage boiled up inside Quinn. ‘Yeah, I know how it works, all right. I do all the work and you swan in at the last minute and take the credit. I’ve kept my mouth shut, but this has been going on for years and you know it.’
He crossed his arms over his chest and leant against the doorframe with a grin. ‘Anyone ever tell you you’re sexy when you get angry?’
Quinn’s mouth twisted. ‘When I come back from my leave, I’m going to Alistair and telling him that account’s mine. I earned it, and I bloody well deserve it.’
Simon gave a soft chuckle. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ He took his phone out of his pocket and held it up. ‘I might just have to show Alistair that little message you sent me.’
Frustration was about to explode out of Quinn when Sandra called, ‘Bye, guys! Have a great Christmas!’ from down the hall, and then there was the sound of the front door clanging to a close. Silence plunged in around them.
‘Alone at last.’ Simon grinned.
Quinn shook her head. ‘I’ve got better things to do than hang around here arguing with you. We can resume this conversation in a couple of weeks.’
‘Leaving so soon?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Worried about what you might do when you’re alone with me?’
‘As if. Go home to your wife and kiddies, Simon.’
She started forward, but Simon stepped in front of her. ‘I wasn’t so drunk last week that I didn’t notice you kissing me back.’
Embarrassment flushed hot down her neck. ‘It was muscle memory, Simon,’ she said tartly. ‘And I wasn’t so drunk that I would ever be interested in hooking up with someone as boring as you.’
‘Come on, Quinnie, your hand was practically down my pants. You wanted it.’
She was an idiot. An idiot. She should never have let herself get into that position, and now he was taunting her with it, that shit-eating grin still plastered across his face as he watched her squirm. It made her angry. It made her want to stab and stab at him until she drew blood. ‘I wouldn’t go there if you were the last person on earth. I’m heading home.’
He reached out and caught her upper arm in his hand. ‘Stay a bit longer. We should celebrate landing that client.’
‘I landed that client and you’re stealing them from me. Why would I want to celebrate with you?’
Before Quinn realised what he was doing, he’d moved in close and planted his lips on hers. She craned her head away from him and stepped backwards, but he moved with her, snaking an arm around her waist. Quinn hammered on his chest with one fist. ‘Can you get off me?’
‘I’m not stupid,’ he said, his face uncomfortably close to hers, breath fanning champagne fumes over her skin. ‘You wouldn’t have been rubbing your tits against me if you didn’t want this.’
He still hadn’t released her, and Quinn’s uneasiness grew. He’d never been this forceful with her before. Her mind whirred as she searched for a way to try to bring back some lightness. ‘Ha! I want a lot of things, Simon, but you’re not one of them.’
His arm tightened still further around her. ‘Come on, it’s just a bit of harmless fun between friends.’
She might have laughed if she could breathe properly. ‘Let me go, Simon.’
But he bent his head to kiss her again, his tongue prying apart her lips and forcing its way inside. She tried to protest again, but her voice was muffled by his mouth. He put a hand down the front of her shirt and into her bra, fondling her breast roughly. Quinn kept moving backwards, but he stayed with her until her buttocks bumped up against the edge of her desk. She tried to lean away from him, bent over the desk, her back about to snap in half. Her heart grew larger inside her, expanding and expanding until she thought it would crash out through her rib cage in an explosion of bright fear.
‘Stop!’ she cried when he paused from kissing her, his hand now moving under her skirt.
She tried to press her legs together to stop him, but his fingers dug into the soft flesh of her inner thighs, clawing at her. His other arm was still a vice around her waist, supernaturally strong. She was trapped and, for the first time, Quinn realised, utterly powerless.
‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Please stop.’
Simon yanked at her G-string, the cracking sound of stitches breaking apart telling her he’d ripped it off her. She imagined her flesh ripping, too; imagined blood seeping from gashes around her hips. A red haze of terror screamed silently behind her eyes.
Simon’s face appeared over hers, his expression wild. ‘You’re up for anything, aren’t you?’
Quinn was sobbing now. She could no longer fight him; this thing was a high-speed train: too strong, too fast, too inevitable to stop. Instead, she went deep inside herself, allowed her eyes to glaze over so the room was a blur as he fumbled with his belt buckle. The red scream inside her head became one long, high, infinite note. She let her body go limp, numb, loose, imagined it was little more than meat; it didn’t matter what he did with it, because it belonged to someone else.
Someone nameless.
Someone who didn’t matter.
No one.
Quinn had no idea how long she’d been sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, skirt hiked up around her hips, when she finally levered herself up. She hobbled across the room to where one of her shoes lay on its side, the black patent leather gleaming. How strange: it looked exactly the same as it had when she’d slipped it on that morning, even though it had travelled with her into this alternate universe.
Simon had given her a tender kiss on her bruised mouth before he’d left, as if they’d been lovers. He hadn’t even taken off his tie.
Everything hurt. Even the parts of her he hadn’t touched. Her body fel
t empty. Her heart, her kidneys, her liver, her brain: all gone. She couldn’t feel anything on the inside. Shouldn’t she be feeling something? Afraid? Sad? Angry? She turned over each emotion and crossed them off the list.
Her handbag was still beside her desk where she had dropped it, its contents scattered across the floor. She picked up the items, one by one, and placed them carefully back in the bag.
What was she supposed to do now?
The rational part of her knew she should call someone. Her mother? Alistair? The police, definitely. But then she’d have to go to the station, make a statement, answer their questions, relay every detail of what he’d done to her, and she was so, so tired. She’d go home: that’s what she’d do. Get a good night’s sleep, then go to the police tomorrow.
But of course. Tomorrow was Christmas Day. She knew the police station would be open, but how distasteful to burden someone else with this on Christmas Day. And she was expected at her parents’ house at eleven thirty. It was all so inconvenient.
Quinn found her torn underwear draped over her keyboard. She picked them up and added them to her bag too. Then she got out her keys and walked slowly from her office and down the hallway, trailing her hand along the wall to prevent herself from falling off the earth. Locked the front door behind her, walked out into the night. The sun had gone down; she must have been in there for hours. Her car sat in the centre of the car park, alone, the dark shape of its seats like monsters crouching inside.
Quinn got in and put her bag on the passenger seat. The violet sky and a gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach were the only signs of how much time had passed. The afternoon and evening had disappeared into a black hole.
She stared out the windscreen, her eyes unfocused. Willed herself to start the engine. Wondered how she was going to reach the other side.
‘How are you, sweetheart?’ her dad said when she let herself in their front door and met him in the hallway. He gave her a whiskery kiss on the cheek and put his arm around her waist as they walked up to the kitchen. Quinn tried not to shrink away as his fingers pressed one of her bruises. They hadn’t been visible last night when she’d got home, but by this morning they’d surfaced on her skin, lurid purple and shadowy black, and in far more places than she could remember getting them.
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