Poison Orchids: A darkly compelling psychological thriller

by Sarah A. Denzil

  “The red dress,” Gemma said. “Definitely wear that.” She reached into Hayley's pile of clothes and pulled out a halter-neck dress with an A-line cut. “You look gorgeous in this. Eoin will love it.”

  “You think?” Hayley held it up to her body. “Honestly, Gem. I don't know if I even like Eoin.”

  “Really, how come? He seems nice enough. And that accent!” She raised her eyebrows.

  “We didn't click, I guess. I'm glad you and Clay are hitting it off so well.”

  Gemma made a sound of derision. “Not anymore. Did you see him with that tiny blonde?”

  “Oh, he's just doing that to get her to stay at the farm. He's definitely more into you.”

  “You reckon?”

  “Totally.”

  Gemma grinned and slipped the maxi dress over her body. “You'd better be right.”

  Hayley followed Gemma out of the cabin and wandered through the maze of outhouses. The location of the party was an easy spot, as people filtered out and made their way to the event. All they had to do was follow. As it turned out, the party was at the glass mansion itself, next to a wall that looked into a modern living space with white walls and floors. A long dining table was the centrepiece of the living area, and accessible through open glass doors. On the table, which must have easily been ten feet long, were a number of snacks, appetisers, and fruit. Gemma grasped Hayley's hand and pulled her over to the snacks where they each took a plate.

  After biting into a delicious avocado and tomato appetiser, Hayley realised she was ravenous and thirsty. She looked around for the drinks table, taking in the sights. She could see why Tate would want to host a party here. The place looked like something out of a Hollywood movie about Hollywood, with a large swimming pool stretching out next to a neat lawn and patio area. There were little tables and chairs dotted around, with more Moroccan-style cushions over the lawn. But what did appear jarring were the guests compared to the surroundings. Rather than glamorous people in expensive outfits, Tate's party consisted of just the backpackers from the farm in their tie-dye and piercings and scruffy beards. The juxtaposition of the two very different views gave her a strange feeling, and she couldn't help wondering why Tate had opened his doors to these people.

  Was he really that charitable?

  Sure, they worked for him, but he didn't need to provide this. He didn't have any obligation to the people who worked here apart from paying them a wage and providing food and shelter. Maybe he wanted people around him because he was lonely. Maybe Tate was some strange modern-day Gatsby who hosted the craziest parties but never revealed himself to the revellers.

  “I'm going to get a drink,” Hayley said. “I think I see some water bottles over there.”

  “I need a beer.” Gemma frowned. “Are there any?”

  “In that ice bucket near the swimming pool.” Hayley pointed the beers out to Gemma.

  “Ooh, Clay is over there too.”

  Hayley grinned and waggled her eyebrows. “Good luck.”

  As she made her way over to the water bottles, Hayley noticed that Eoin was now talking to the petite blonde from the hot springs. Good. That saved another awkward 'double-date' scenario happening with Gemma and Clay.

  “Having a good time?”

  Hayley froze with her fingers grasped around the neck of the bottle. She turned, holding the bottle, to find Tate standing behind her. Earlier that day at lunch she had obviously noticed how handsome Tate was, but now that he was stood here, in the dusk, leaning over her with his hands casually in his pockets, she noticed his good looks again. When he smiled, he revealed a perfect set of white teeth.

  “Yes, thank you. I mean, I only just arrived so I haven't had time to do much, but it's really beautiful here.”

  He moved his head, surveying the scene. “I built this place with socialising in mind. It's a lovely spot, and I'm very blessed.”

  “It's so kind of you to open your house to us like this.”

  He took a step closer, and Hayley smelled the musk of his aftershave. “Thank you, but I really don't do it to be kind. It's actually quite selfish of me. I don't like to be alone, which I am quite a lot, and this house deserves the sound of laughter.”

  So, he was lonely.

  Hayley opened her mouth to speak but a group of excited, tipsy backpackers came over and began talking to Tate, thanking him for the party in an overwhelming, gushing way. Hayley decided to slip away quietly and find Gemma. But first she went back to the food table and grabbed a mini veggie burger.

  She finally found Gemma at the far end of the lawn, which edged onto farmland of rugged grass. There was a campfire here, giving off heat, and Gemma sat cross-legged next to Clay. Ellie was with them, too, holding a bottle of beer, leaning against a guy Hayley recognised from the springs.

  “There you are!” Gemma jumped up and hugged her, which took Hayley by surprise. “Have you got a beer?”

  Hayley gestured at the water.

  “Seriously? Drink something proper! Here, take this.” Gemma reached down and pulled a beer out of an ice bucket.

  Now that she'd rehydrated and eaten something, Hayley didn't see the harm in having a few beers. She didn’t want to drink so much that she'd have a hangover—she'd discovered quickly that hangovers in the Australian summer were no fun—but a couple wouldn't hurt.

  “Clay is about to sing,” Gemma announced.

  It was then that Hayley noticed that Clay had a guitar on his lap. “I didn't know you were a musician.”

  “Hey, I'm not really,” he said. “But I know a few songs.”

  “Cool.”

  He was actually quite good, and Hayley began to relax by the fire with her beer. She chatted to Ellie on occasion, mostly about mango stem sap, the hills of Lisbon, and the wall that circled the city of York. Gemma watched Clay play his guitar with an earnest intensity that worried Hayley. Was she getting too attached too soon? But before long she'd had a second and a third beer, and she no longer cared.

  “I'm going to get more food,” Hayley said to no one in particular, because they were all lost in their own conversations. When she stood, she felt a bit dizzy. With her recent weight loss she'd become even more of a lightweight than before.

  By this time the party had spread out from the lawn to the fields. There were still plenty of people splashing around in the pool, and the surface rippled, highlighted by the sparkly lights on Tate's patio. She watched the lights dance on skin and water and thought it was really quite beautiful. But she didn't want to head towards the noise and movement. She wanted the quiet. So instead she walked towards the fields.

  “Going so soon?”

  When Hayley turned back, she saw Tate standing on the edge of the field. “Just for a walk.” She hesitated. “Will there be snakes in this grass?”

  Tate glanced down and frowned. “Maybe we should walk along the path instead.” He gestured towards the path between the lawn and the field.

  Hayley barely even picked up on the word ‘we’. She just moved across to the path and walked by Tate's side. She wasn't sure whether it was the beer or Tate, but she felt at ease, which wasn't like her around strangers.

  “I liked what you said at the introductions. It felt very honest.” He pushed his hands down into his pockets. “A lot of people are here to find themselves. It's okay to feel lost.”

  “I don't know,” she replied. “Sometimes I think I just need to grow up.”

  He laughed. “Why? You can be older and still feel lost.”

  She'd never thought about it like that before.

  “I think you'll like it here,” he said. “I know it's a cliché, but we really are like a family here, and everyone has a place and a purpose. Everyone is wanted and needed.”

  The way he spoke the words made it sound like he needed everyone. As though this place—the farm and the people working here—were personal to him. For some reason that felt comforting to Hayley, to be wanted and needed. She knew her real family wanted her, but it had
always felt so overwhelming and intense. This was gentler. And more flattering.

  “What made you want to start a mango plantation?” Hayley asked, feeling bold.

  “I'm a gardener,” he replied. “I love plants, flowers, trees. I love nature, and I wanted to be close to nature.”

  “But the others call you The Chemist, which doesn't sound very natural at all.”

  “There's nothing unnatural about chemistry, Hayley.” He stopped walking and leaned closer to her. “Nature and chemistry are not mutually exclusive. They exist within each other.” He was so close to her that she could feel his body heat. “I would love to show you my orchids one day. Would you like to visit my greenhouse?”

  All she could do was nod.

  19

  Gemma

  Her cheeks stung hot from the blazing campfire, Gemma leaned her face back into cooler air, staring into a star-dotted sky. She’d been singing all the wrong words along with Clay’s songs—she never knew the right song lyrics. She was all about the music, anyway.

  Some guy stumbled forward drunkenly as he poked at the fire with a stick, the ends of his blond dreadlocks catching on fire.

  Eoin poured a can of beer over the guy’s head. Everyone clapped and cheered as if it’d been the best entertainment of the night.

  The acrid smell of burned hair made Gemma’s sinuses seize up and her eyes water.

  Grabbing her hand, Clay led her away. She liked the feel of her hand in his.

  Inside the house, the party was pumping.

  Without Gemma noticing, dusk had stepped into night. She’d already had enough beers to sink a whale. She knew she should stop there. At parties, she always swore she’d quit when she got tipsy—but she always found herself drinking until she blacked out.

  She gazed around woozily.

  Everything at the party seemed to slide and smudge together. The driving beat of the music, people dancing, and the constantly changing light show of the pool. Body heat, sweat and perfume, and the sweet smell of mangoes saturated the air. Everyone who was wading in the in-ground pool—which stretched from indoors into the outdoors—was being baptised in the intoxicating elixir that was Tate’s farm.

  She sat herself down on a cushion next to the pool, her feet trailing in the water, feeling as light and free as birds.

  Clay reclined beside her, lightly strumming his guitar, not caring when the occasional spray of water hit the strings. They talked. About everything. About deep things. Crazy things. Things they wanted to do. Who they wanted to be.

  She’d never had a conversation like that with anyone before. He’d pulled things out of her head that she didn’t even know were inside her. That wasn’t like her. She never let people too far in. People always hurt her, sooner or later.

  Boom, boom, boom, boom. The beat grew deeper, tunnelling in through Gemma’s bones. Her gaze skated lazily between the dancers on the floor, trying to spot Hayley. Hayley’d been at the campfire earlier, but she’d wandered away. For a second, a vague stab of panic hit her in the stomach—could Hayley have taken something? She could be out cold on the floor somewhere, overdosed.

  Tonight, it seemed that drugs were being passed around like chocolate. Party drugs and pot and LSD. Gemma thought that LSD was something that only baby boomers had dropped in their university days, but she’d seen it here, in tiny blotter tabs with angels printed on them.

  But Gemma couldn’t picture Hayley taking drugs. She was so straight. Nope, she’d probably gone back to the cabin, to sleep or read or something.

  Gemma caught sight of the blond girl that Clay had brought back from the harvest. In an orange bikini, she was stunning. The girl shared a passionate kiss with another girl from the farm. Gemma was kind of relieved to see that she wasn’t interested in boys.

  People were peeling off from the main crowd in twos and threes, finding spots that were not so private to fling their clothes off. Or just jumping into the pool.

  A guy with wild dark hair was going around offering the angel-stamped LSD tabs to everyone. When he crouched to offer them to Clay and Gemma, Clay waved him away. But Gemma sneaked a few tabs while Clay was twisting around to push his guitar beneath a nearby table.

  “Just pop one under your tongue until they dissolve. They’re only a tiny dose each.” Winking, the guy stepped away.

  She slipped them all under her tongue before Clay saw. She knew he took a dim view of drugs. He’d told her so in no uncertain terms when they were talking earlier. But tonight, she just wanted to get away—as far away from herself as she could possibly get. And she wanted to fit in with the people here. If she and Hayley were staying, they needed to do that, else they’d stand out like sore thumbs.

  Clay kissed her while the drug dissolved in her mouth.

  Things began rushing at her and then rushing away. Materialising and vanishing.

  Everything, everything was splintering.

  “Gemmmma?” Clay’s face appeared before hers, with a smile that made her heart thrum like one of his guitar strings. “Dance?”

  Splinter.

  She found herself in the middle of a jumping group of dancers on the marble floor.

  Splinter.

  Clay’s mouth found hers. Warm. Exploring. Whispering things into her ear and temple. He felt solid and whole as his arms came around her.

  Splinter.

  Tate was kissing her instead of Clay.

  No—that wasn't Tate. It was Clay in front of her. She’d just been imagining Tate.

  Why am I seeing Tate?

  When she opened her eyes, she was alone.

  Clay was gone.

  Gemma was left dancing by herself. She whirled around and around, dropping her head back and staring up at the glittering lights of Tate’s ceiling. She realised she felt peaceful. The workers at the farm weren’t weird. So what if they chanted during lunch? It was safe here. She and Hayley had been worried about nothing.

  Hands grasped her body.

  She whirled around to see a random guy in a Hawaiian shirt and dreadlocks trying to dance with her. He smelled awful—she realised he was the one who’d singed his hair in the fire earlier.

  Over the guy’s shoulder, she spied Clay and Eoin talking out on the patio. They were throwing their arms up as if having an argument. She frowned. What could possibly be wrong? Wasn’t it Clay who’d told her that things were always happy here?

  She walked off the dance floor, but by the time she reached the deck, Clay and Eoin had vanished.

  Two people stepped along a corridor in the fields, but it wasn’t Clay and Eoin. Gemma paused, squinting to see in the overhead light that streamed from the house. It was Tate and Hayley.

  Tate was guiding Hayley by the arm and talking with her, as serenely as if he were a character of that book that Hayley was mumbling about at the campfire earlier. The Great Gatsby. Gemma had seen the movie. She’d never been one for reading books.

  She ducked back, out of the light. Hayley had looked content. That was good, right? She and Hayley were both finding their place at the farm. This was what they’d come here for.

  She imagined Hayley and herself later in the cabin, telling each other about the night they'd each had. Like sisters, sharing stories and giggling together.

  Still, she couldn't help a burned feeling from creeping under her skin—a prickly, uncomfortable envy. Tate had singled Hayley out. Part of her wanted to be in Hayley's place. With Tate.

  The image of herself standing beside him on the top storey of his house entered her mind. She bit down hard on her lip, confused. Why can’t I let that go?

  She watched Tate and Hayley until they vanished into the fields. She couldn’t figure why Tate even was interested in Hayley. She was about as unsophisticated as they came. No, Tate’s interest in Hayley couldn’t be romantic. He was just showing her around and making her feel more settled. And why did she care, anyway? A guy like Clay was a lot more accessible than Tate Llewellyn.

  Black, balmy air seemed as thick a
s syrup as she stepped through the night, but it was just fresh enough to wake her from the dreamy state she’d been in.

  The sound of muffled cries drifted towards her. The sobs were coming from somewhere behind her. Rotating, she went looking for the source.

  She found Ellie with her back against a palm tree, the glow of a spotlight just near enough to dimly illuminate her. Drooping palm fronds cast deep shadows across her face. Ellie spoke in a burst of fast, anxious Portuguese into a phone. She stopped and nodded, as if listening intently to the person on the other end of the phone line. Then the sobs came again.

  She ended the call quickly as she noticed Gemma, wiping her nose and straightening herself. In the dark light, Ellie’s eyes seemed swollen—she'd been here crying for some time.

  “What’s up, Ellie?” Gemma asked, stepping across to her.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. Just talking with my mother.”

  “Feeling homesick?”

  Ellie’s shoulders rolled inward, and she sighed. “I’m so homesick. I had a big fight with my family, just before I left Portugal. I didn't think I'd ever want to see them again. But I was wrong. It was just a stupid fight. I was stupid.” She sounded like a child, almost whispering the words.

  “Can’t you just go home, then?”

  “I will… soon.” She jammed her eyes shut for a moment. “Please don’t tell Tate that.”

  Gemma shrugged nonchalantly. “Why would I tell Tate?” She watched as Ellie slipped her phone into the pocket of her shorts. “I thought we weren’t supposed to have phones?”

  Ellie paused before she answered, her hand freezing in place on her pocket. “We’re not. I just needed to hear Mama’s voice.”

  “I don’t have any family worth calling.”

  “I don’t know who is luckier. You or me. I miss my family so much it hurts.” Ellie made a fist and knocked it against her chest, on top of her heart. She made a cringing face then, throwing Gemma a sympathetic look. “Oh, of course you are not lucky. Everyone should have a family who loves them.” She peered at Gemma. “You’ve had a troubled life, sim?”