The Last Guests

by J. P. Pomare

  ‘Lina?’ she says.

  ‘Oh sorry. I just dozed off.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, scratching at my eyes. ‘I’m just waiting for my shift. What time is it?’

  She looks confused for a moment. ‘You’re not rostered on today, darling.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re not rostered on. It’s Erica and August taking over now for us. You’re off today.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, blinking. ‘It’s Thursday, right?’

  ‘It is, but you’re definitely not on. I checked the roster when I saw your car.’

  I swallow. ‘Oh, my mistake. I must have misread it.’

  ‘No worries. Go get some rest.’ She taps the roof of the car with her fingers and starts out towards her own vehicle.

  I can’t muster the energy to drive home straight away. I tip my seat back again and stay like that for a period. I could sleep right here with the radio soothing my mind, and for a moment too long I stay in that position because when I open my eyes, the car is full of mid-afternoon sun. I check the time to find it’s almost three o’clock. It’s been hours. Pressing my fingers to my eyelids, I let out a long yawn before reaching for the keys and starting the car.

  The gate opens and I head off.

  At home something has changed. I’m grieving for my old life, for the man I’ve loved all these years who might not be who I think he is. Rata’s words, you should know everything about a person after seven years, are trapped like flies in the web of my mind. He’s right and I’m angry. Angry at Cain. What has he done?

  I do something productive to take my mind off things. I print out the next fortnight’s schedule and pin it to the fridge with a magnet. Now I’ll see it every day.

  Dragging my anger and my empty stomach up the stairs to the bedroom, I collapse beneath the covers once more and protectively wrap my arms around my belly. My last thought is about the baby, what this means for it. My connection to it has already grown so strong; the instinct to protect it fuelled me last night.

  I don’t need my sleep mask, or tea, or rain sounds, I just tumble into the dark hole of slumber once more.

  •

  The phone call from Rata comes at around midnight. I’m in bed, the same bed I’ve shared with Cain for so many years. This house is only a rental but like the lake house it’s charged with memories. I reach for the phone, see the time and want to hurl it at the window but I know it must be about Cain. I bring it to my ear.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Lina, it’s Detective Rata, sorry to call you at this hour.’ He doesn’t sound sorry. He sounds rushed and frustrated.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Cain has been cooperative in assisting the search through his personal computer files, and web use. We have no evidence to suggest your husband has engaged in any criminal activity outside of his use of proxy servers to access international gambling websites – something for which he will be cautioned and not charged.’

  ‘But what about the video? Where did it come from?’

  ‘The footage you discovered your husband watching was sent by an anonymous email address from an encrypted server.’

  A wave of relief rushes through me, but immediately the shame and guilt empties me. I put him through hell today. ‘So what does this mean?’

  ‘It means we’re releasing him. I can’t share any other details about this investigation.’

  Something dawns on me. My sim card was in that phone that night, so if it wasn’t Cain, then someone else has been in our house and taken it. Daniel? Or the second man? ‘But he went to that house on Hillview Terrace,’ I say. ‘He went there before me, he might have removed the cameras. You said – ’

  ‘I said to be careful,’ he says, his frustration rising. ‘We had good cause for suspicion. I can’t comment on his motivations for going to that house.’

  ‘Right, so he’s free to go?’

  ‘Look, it’s not necessarily protocol, but given the late hour we can keep him here overnight without charging him, give you time to gather your thoughts or find somewhere else to stay if you’re concern – ’

  ‘No,’ I say, cutting him off. Rata has asked Cain his questions, now I suppose Cain will have some questions for me. He’s innocent. I overreacted. All the emotions of the past week bubbled over and sent me into a tailspin of panic. How could I do this to him? ‘I want him home now.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘We will have him back there shortly.’

  •

  I pace about the lounge, my feet wearing a neat figure eight into the carpet as my mind runs over the facts and possibilities. Daniel got into the lake house, he threatened to kill Cain and me. He went upstairs and beat Cain. I got free and when he emerged from one of the rooms at the end of the hall, I shot him. Then Cain visited the property Daniel took me to, where other cameras were installed. Someone anonymously sent him video footage of Daniel in the lake house. At some point, my sim card was taken from the bottom of my wardrobe.

  I should feel relief because intellectually I’m beginning to see this was all a misunderstanding. Cain has done nothing wrong. In fact, he’s been mostly patient with me throughout. I’ve done wrong, not him. There’s an aching knot of guilt in my stomach. Guilt. There’s only one question unanswered and it’s the one I’m most afraid to ask: did he go to that house because he knows what happened with me and Daniel? Was there another photo left in our letterbox?

  After some time I hear the key scratch into the lock at the front door. I ball up my courage, and stride over to meet him as the door swings open.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ANGER. NO, NOT anger. Resentment? Defeat? Whatever it is in his eyes it drains me. ‘Well, that was an interesting day,’ he says.

  ‘Cain,’ I begin but the rest of the words don’t come at first, I have to push them out. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  He raises a hand, seems to wince as if my apology is spit that’s hit him right in the eye.

  The hand goes to his forehead, slides down, straightening out his face. Say something, Cain. The tension presses against me, thick as water. Brain, pharynx, larynx, lymph nodes, lungs, heart, spleen, liver … if I get through every organ in the body before he speaks, I might collapse. Gall bladder, stomach, kidneys.

  ‘Thought I was conditioned to deal with interrogations but after today I …’ a pause, a deep exhale. ‘I’m done. I’m spent. It’s taken so long to try to build a normal life and I feel like it’s just slipping through my fingers.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Cain, please.’

  ‘I just want to go to sleep and forget about everything.’

  I move to let him through. He leads me into the kitchen.

  ‘That’s it for the betting,’ he continues, ignoring me. ‘Just when I was starting to do well. And I don’t want police digging into my past, or journalists.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He turns, leans against the island. ‘I mean the Skelton stuff, Lina. I mean me snapping at customers at Axel’s gym. We need to be on the front foot. We need to show a united front, which is hard when you don’t trust me. When you run away from me to the police in the middle of the night. How are we going to raise a child together when this is what you think of me?’

  Under the hanging kitchen lights his eyes are dark, his laughter lines are deepened by the shadows. He’s right.

  ‘You have to see it from my perspective too, Cain. I’ve been on edge since the home invasion. I panicked.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I see it from your perspective but it doesn’t change anything. I was making good money and now I can’t. I’m not the cleverest, my body is damaged, I don’t have great business sense obviously. I just wanted to take care of you, and the baby. I want to do good for this family.’

  The ache inside intensifies. What have I done to him? ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise using betting agencies outside of New Zealand was illegal. I just didn’t think when I saw that video.’
/>   ‘They’ve given me an official warning.’

  He pulls a glass out of the cupboard and fills it from the tap. Takes a slow, thoughtful sip.

  ‘It might be time to swallow my pride and get a boring job with a steady pay until the baby comes.’ He pauses, takes another mouthful of water. His sad eyes stare down at the benchtop.

  A fresh ache below my sternum. He’s too proud, too principled. Those rules of his: A man must look after his family, his wife. Don’t take the dole if you can stand on your own two feet. There is nothing worse than hurting a woman or a child. Yet I feared him. I feared for my life. I’m thinking of something to say, some hope to offer but before I can open my mouth, he’s speaking again.

  ‘What I don’t get, Lina, is why you ran away. Why you went to the police. You could have asked me about that video and I would have explained it. Did you think I could actually hurt you?’

  I shake my head, hot tears come. ‘I don’t know, Cain. I was overwhelmed. The people that had access to that video are perverts and – ’

  ‘Did you actually believe I had something to do with recording the video? That’s where your mind went?’

  ‘I panicked. I thought …’

  ‘You thought it was me. You thought I was a creep, despite knowing me for seven years, and swearing to always love and trust me. You thought I could do something like that?’ Now his eyes come back up to me with a sour look. I hold my elbows, sniff as tears come.

  ‘You grabbed me.’

  ‘That’s my instincts, Lina. You gave me a fright. Then I wanted to calm you down but you were already sprinting.’ He finishes the glass of water and sets it down. ‘They asked me what porn sites I visit, they wanted to know everything about what I do online. They asked if I’d ever watched child pornography. It was mortifying.’

  ‘I got scared.’ I use the heel of my palm to smear the tears from my cheeks.

  ‘Why did you book that house on WeStay?’

  I become still, an insect trapped.

  ‘What hou –’

  He shakes his head, resigned, and I feel a deep aching sadness. I can see it already by the way his shoulders drop.

  ‘Your work email was on my phone from that night at the restaurant,’ he says. ‘I saw you’d booked a WeStay. Are you seeing someone, is that it?’

  ‘No, no one,’ I begin. How can I explain it? ‘It’s not that, Cain. Don’t ever think that, I only want you.’

  That is how he knows. Everything seems to loosen with the relief. He doesn’t know about Daniel and me.

  He scratches the back of his neck and squeezes his eyes closed. When he starts speaking again he keeps them screwed shut. ‘The truth, Lina.’

  If only it were that easy. There’s no truth for him. I can’t put him through more hell.

  ‘I was working, so I didn’t get there until later.’ I pause, thinking, and he decides to fill the silence.

  ‘You booked the WeStay. That’s all it takes to cut loose my imagination. I could see you with someone from your runners’ group or from work. Maybe Scotty.’

  ‘Scotty?’ I say in disbelief. Never in a million years would I be interested in Scotty. Cain knows that, surely. ‘No, Cain. Not him.’

  His expression changes.

  ‘Not anyone,’ I continue. ‘I booked that place because I realised that the last guests that stayed at Tarawera had also stayed there.’

  ‘You thought you’d just check it out?’ he asks.

  ‘That’s right, the police can confirm it. They found me there at six in the morning. They were monitoring it for that same reason. I knew if I told you, you would just think I was being paranoid. You don’t believe that there was a second man.’

  Cain exhales slowly. ‘I still don’t believe there was a second man,’ he says. For a heartbeat I think he might cry. ‘If you were seeing someone else, I would never live with it.’

  A dark implication in his words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, coming around the kitchen bench to him. ‘I’m sorry for ever doubting you and for not telling you what I was doing.’

  ‘I get it,’ he says. His voice has shrunk. ‘It looked bad.’

  I hug him now and, reluctantly, I feel his arms come around me.

  ‘Now only one question remains, who sent the video?’ I say. Someone else is out there, watching, waiting. Terrorising us.

  TWENTY-NINE

  NOT ALL ALARMS are loud screaming things. Sometimes it’s the quietest alarms that shake you the most. This morning it’s the familiar chirp of my phone. Call it intuition, I know instantly that something is wrong. I had a similar premonition when I received the message about Grandpa. I was a medical student, hungover with a boy from my class in bed next to me. It was a Sunday morning and the moth-eaten curtains in his flat did little to keep the sun out. There was a text from Wiremu, Hi Lina, call me when you can. I’d gotten up and made it to the privacy of the bathroom before I’d begun to cry. I called Wiremu, already knowing. Grandpa’s heart was bad by that stage, but I kept telling myself he would find a way to keep going. The moment Wiremu began to apologise I broke down. I remember thanking him at the end of the call, something that seems absurd now. Then telling him I’d be okay and hanging up. The boy found me balled on the cold tiles, his flatmate was waiting to have a shower. He offered to drive me home.

  It was a gut punch that left me winded for years. After that, every time I got drunk with other students my mind wandered to Grandpa, dying alone in the lake house. So I gave up medical school. I didn’t want to be a doctor, I didn’t have it in me.

  This time when I wake and see I have a text message from Claire, I get that same feeling, an uncomfortable fluttering in my stomach.

  Watching you both on the morning show, it looks terrifying. I hope you are doing okay. Please get in touch if you need us.

  Watching you both. Watching us do what? Cain, as usual, is already awake. I can hear him down in the kitchen. I roll out of bed, scratch the sleep from my eyes as I descend the stairs.

  ‘Cain, I think we are on the tele.’

  ‘What?’

  I rush towards the lounge room, reach for the TV remote and turn it on. It’s the first thing we see on the screen. That same video Cain was watching.

  ‘And here she is, Lina Phillips as the assailant known to be Daniel Moore leaves the room going back up the stairs in the corner of the shot to her husband who is bound. Mrs Phillips contorts her body, as you can see in the imagery on your screen.’ Cain approaches, stands beside me. ‘She manages to lift the fireplace enough, which according to the manufacturer’s website weighs seventy-five kilograms, quite some feat. If we could just zoom in a little. There, see there is an inch gap for her to slide the other handcuff underneath. It’s incredible really, to have this vision into the night that shocked the nation, and sent a wave around the globe. I’ll remind viewers this is exclusive footage, not even my producers know the exact source of the images you are seeing right now other than an email address.’

  Cain clears his throat. ‘How the fuck did this get to the media?’

  A new voice adds to the conversation now. ‘It’s remarkable the strength Lina Phillips shows here. Given the earlier footage of her helping her highly inebriated husband inside and up the stairs, it’s clear that only one person was going to save her and that was herself.’

  The screen dies. I turn to Cain, he’s still holding the remote tight in his fist.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. It’s a beat-up. You’re the hero, we know that.’

  ‘Cain – ’

  ‘It’s true. I’m glad, of course I am. But these people have half the story. I wasn’t drunk, I was drugged. And how did they get the footage?’

  ‘Probably the same way you did,’ I say. ‘Someone might have sent it to them anonymously.’

  ‘Or the police leaked it. I bet that’s what happened.’

  •

  We cook together. According to my schedule, I’ve not got w
ork for four days so this is a good chance for us to reset, but I know he’ll be stewing on that comment from the talking head. The way the footage makes us look. He’ll be assessing it, internalising it. His mistrust of the police, his anger at the media. He’s wanted to give an interview since it happened, for the payday and to clear our names. He wanted to be the hero not the drunk husband. It should have been him that saved the day.

  ‘At least this should confirm there was just one person there that night,’ he says. ‘You acted in self-defence. The police can stop trying to build some conspiracy now. Case closed, it’s all there on TV.’

  I don’t need to remind him again that someone sent the footage, someone has it. Case not closed. And they may have the other footage from the Hillview Terrace property too.

  •

  Later in the day, while the police are dropping back his computer, Cain is tapping away at his phone. I walk past him, slowing to peer over his shoulder. He’s punching out a reply in the comments section of a news article.

  ‘What are you typing?’

  ‘Nothing. Just these people starting rumours. Bullshit about us.’

  ‘Show me?’

  The reason for his irritation is clear when he raises his phone to me. WeStay Horror House: Hidden cameras in every room, but who installed them? It’s the Daily Mirror, a UK paper.

  I take out my own phone and google our names. Someone has written an opinion piece on the dangers of the ‘gig economy’ for The Age newspaper in Australia, using us and our experience as an example. The New York Times has run an investigative piece linking the home invasion and the cameras with the Colorado murder and a home invasion in Berlin.

  I click on the trashiest article I can find, from The Sun in the UK. I wade through the scum that sinks to the bottom of the article, the comments section. I see what Cain means. They’ve found out he served in the military, that he was scheduled to give evidence into the unlawful killings in Afghanistan when Skelton died; they know I’m a paramedic. Some think the entire thing was staged, some calling it a ‘false flag’. A conspiracy theorist ironically believes it was all faked to help the ‘NWO’ enhance surveillance powers on the internet. Another comment reads: Who would install cameras inside a WeStay anyway? Maybe this guy that turned up with a shotgun had stayed there, found the cameras THAT THE OWNERS INSTALLED and discovered what these perverts were doing. I’m not saying what he did was right, violence is never the answer, but it smells fishy if you ask me and there is DEFINITELY more to this story. If they did install the cameras to spy on their guests they’re sick and they deserve to go to jail themselves.