The Housemate

by Sarah Bailey

  She flicks through one of the notebooks. Her messy shorthand fills every page, and so many words are underlined that any attempt at emphasis has clearly failed. It’s both familiar and foreign. Her writing has evolved over the years; it’s less round these days, more clipped and impatient.

  Facedown under the notebooks there’s a photo frame, the one she used to keep on her desk at work: her and Lily at their mother’s wedding, arms around each other with their tongues poking out. Both tall with matching wheat-coloured hair parted harshly in the middle, skin tinted tan, blue eyes ringed with black liner. Lily’s dark-brown spray of freckles charming as always, Oli’s plumper face completely unmarked. Their dad always delighted in telling the story of a toddler-aged Oli trying to wipe the dirty spots off Lily’s face when she was sleeping. The photo had been taken a few years before Oli met Dean. She had deferred from her arts degree and was waitressing at a hotel bar in the city; she made more from tips than from her hourly wage, wrote the occasional magazine article, and worked on short stories when she couldn’t sleep. Lily was employed at the art gallery and dating a revolving door of attractive men.

  Oli looks at the photo again. Both girls are flushed, full of champagne and broadly happy for their mother, if only because they were relieved that she was finally someone else’s problem.

  Eleven years before the girls posed at their mother’s wedding, Bradley Groves had gambled away the last of the family savings and taken off in their only car, never to be seen again, leaving their mother with a mound of debt and no obvious way to pay it back. Seven years after that, Oli had scraped her unconscious mother off her bedroom floor, still picking up the mess he had left behind.

  Pretty Lily and jolly Oli.

  Oli’s jaw starts to ache, and she swallows determinedly. Why does this photo make her so sad? Lily seems happy enough now; Shaun adores her, and they’ve bonded over their mutual hatred of his ex-wife. Oli has Dean. And the girls. Their lives are a version of what they used to talk about when they speculated about their futures. In many ways, it’s all turned out better than they ever thought it would.

  But Oli feels guilt when she looks at this photo, like she’s somehow betrayed this former version of herself.

  She puts the notebook back and digs around in the box, looking for the one she used during the Housemate Homicide story: A4 with a plain beige cover, filled with hundreds of pages of notes, phone numbers and questions. She runs her hand over the textured surface, remembers holding it as she watched Isabelle at the press conference the day after Evelyn’s body was found. Jo stood next to Oli and bitched about the incompetence of the police, having rushed back from the country wedding. Oli, on the other hand, was mesmerised by Isabelle. The young detective spoke clearly, her voice feminine but powerful. She confirmed that Evelyn Stanley had been murdered, stabbed with a kitchen knife and left to die in the hallway. Her housemate Alexandra Riboni had been arrested. She’d confessed to the crime. Nicole was missing, presumed harmed.

  Oli rubs her eyes, looks around the room. A framed map of Italy hangs on the far wall. A sleek silver pencil holder sits on the desk. Books on the bookshelf. Isabelle’s things. Dean understandably wants to retain keepsakes for the girls, but surely this entire room doesn’t need to be closed off, treated like a minimalist shrine. Oli sighs. It’s difficult to separate Dean from his past. So many things compete for his attention. Funny how it seemed simple when they first met: only one obstacle. Now, over a decade later, she has what she wished for. Isabelle is gone.

  The heater has switched off, and a light chill runs across Oli’s shoulders. She pulls her dressing-gown tighter, then unfolds herself and stands up, her knees cracking. Walking over to the shelf on the other side of the room, she rubs the small of her back. Picks up a glass vase. Runs her finger along the ornaments. Isabelle may be gone, but Oli’s curiosity is as ravenous as ever.

  She pauses before she slides open the left wardrobe door. It’s jam-packed with boxes and bags. A pair of high heels stands on the wooden floor; she squats to pick them up. They’re small, size seven. Black velvet with diamantes studded along the straps. Her feet are two sizes bigger.

  As she stands, her head brushes against something soft. From the wardrobe’s silver rod hang a few clothing bags, grey and shapeless, their tails tucked behind a stack of boxes.

  Her hands shake as she unzips the first bag, loud against the quiet of the house. She freezes. A police uniform, out of date, perhaps twenty years old. Her heartbeat thrums in her neck. She tugs the zip shut and pushes the bag to the left, exposing the throat of the next bag. Inside, two dresses share a hanger: one is cherry-red, the other black and beaded. Both look expensive, the material finely woven. In the final bag is a snow-white wedding dress of sleek satin. Oli detects a faint floral fragrance.

  She pushes the bags hard against the wall, her heart pounding. Her eyes shift higher. There are two tiers of boxes on the shelves above the clothing. More of Isabelle’s things.

  She pulls off the lid of the nearest box. It’s stuffed with glossy gift cards wishing Dean and Isabelle well on their wedding day. Oli traces the embossed patterns, glides her fingers along the embossed font. Some are from people she knows, most from people she’s never heard of. All express their certainty that Dean and Isabelle are a perfect match, a pair of soulmates lucky to have found each other.

  Oli wrestles with unwelcome images of Dean and Isabelle, some messages from the cards worming their way into her brain. If the couple were so perfect for each other, why did Dean seek Oli out five years later? Why did he risk what he had with Isabelle? Oli lifts the box onto the floor and opens the one beneath. Cards, photo frames. Pieces of paper. Notepads. A driver’s licence that features a surprisingly unflattering photo of Isabelle. Oli sifts through a few handwritten recipes, then more photos of Dean and Isabelle with dates scrawled on the back. There’s a note from Isabelle to Dean: I just want to say how much I love you! A narrow love heart before the scrawl of her name. Valentine’s Day, 2004. A year before Oli met Dean.

  There’s a loud creak in the hallway, and she startles, dropping the note back into the shoebox and jumping to her feet. Spins around. Nothing.

  For a few moments, she stands completely still. The house is silent except for the steady tick of the grandfather clock downstairs bouncing off the walls. The light from the alarm system glows green in the corner. After the twins were born, Isabelle had panic buttons fitted in every room as well as a state-of-the-art security system. When Oli asked Dean about it, he mentioned Isabelle was worried someone might break in and hurt her or hurt the girls. Constant fear was the price she paid for being a homicide detective.

  Spooked, Oli returns the boxes and slides the cupboard door closed. She goes to the desk and quickly logs on to her old computer. Finds the memory stick labelled HH06.07, the ink blurring under the clear tape. She fumbles as she inserts it into the side of the outdated machine. Drags and drops the files one after the other. Hours of work. She connects to the wi-fi and signs in to her Gmail, attaches the little icons and sends them to herself.

  The grandfather clock chimes, its familiar melody rolling through the house. One o’clock.

  Oli shuts the laptop, unplugs the power cord. She takes the beige notebook and puts the rest of her things back in the box and jams it in the cupboard underneath Isabelle’s old clothes and next to her beautiful shoes, then rushes down the hallway back to bed.

  FEBRUARY 2006

  Being hated by so many people is strange. It feels like pressure, an invisible weight bearing down on her. Most days Alex wakes up suffocating under it.

  But as hurtful as it is, as gut-wrenchingly awful, she doesn’t want to block it out. She deserves it.

  She pesters Ruby for updates, devours every article. It’s like reading about strangers or characters in a book. Their lives appear to be somehow both more and less than what they were. Mysterious. Like three young women who didn’t know how good they had it. Who didn’t know how bad things were about
to get.

  Being hated is better than being dead.

  Being hated is better than being gone.

  At least, Alex assumes it is. It’s not like she can compare notes with the others.

  Not only is she hated, she’s famous. Infamous. Her face is everywhere.

  She traces the photos in the newspapers Ruby brings her until her fingers are dark with ink.

  From her spot in the communal hall at mealtimes, Alex watches her face flash up on the nightly news. The media alternates between using the photo of the three of them at Ren and Matt’s New Year’s Eve party and the one of Alex at her high school graduation. In the group shot, Evelyn pouts prettily, her head tipped to the side. Alex is laughing. Nicole, the tallest, stands in the middle, staring down the barrel of the lens as if the photographer has just challenged her to something. In the early days, a few news articles mistook them for sisters, and it’s not hard to see why.

  In both pictures Alex’s light brown hair is flowing and glossy, her smile friendly and open. She looks so happy, so full of promise.

  Those photos don’t belong to her anymore. They have become the property of the media, sublet by the nation. Never in a million years did she imagine that her face would be beamed into people’s homes, her little life published in papers all around the country.

  Who took the photo at the party? She tries to remember, but comes up with nothing. Her brain does that a lot lately; thoughts start to form, then fade away.

  She says please and thank you to the staff, but her voice sounds distant. The only person she really speaks to is Ruby, and even that is vague, only one layer deep. Alex can’t risk going any further.

  At night when she can’t sleep, she imagines talking to Nicole and Evelyn. Imagines telling them about this new adventure and its cast of characters: the girl who always sits in the corner after dinner narrating TV shows and the curly-haired chef in the canteen with the tattoo of Dumbo on her forearm.

  And then the grief arrives. Alex lies in the dark struggling to breathe, holding the edges of the narrow bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling. As she hovers on the edge of sleep, she pictures her life like a huge spider web. Starting with the knot of her childhood, bouncing from foster family to foster family, primary school, then secondary school, each a chance for a fresh start. A new web formed when she met Evelyn and Nicole: more deliberate, stronger. For the first time in her life, Alex felt in control. Felt like she was going somewhere.

  Felt like she had a real family.

  But you were wrong, so wrong, chants her wounded brain.

  Alex misses them. Misses the intimacy. Misses the sense of being part of something.

  She mourns them, she really does. But a part of her is relieved too. Relieved to be free.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WEDNESDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 2015

  ‘OLI?’ DEAN’S FRESHLY SHAVEN FACE APPEARS IN FRONT OF HER. He looks worried. She blinks several times. Her head is foggy, eyelids heavy. The feeling of being caught in a lie hits her in an instant. Isabelle’s dresses, the boxes of cards and notebooks, are like a pulsing clue in the corner of the room. She jerks forward, pulling herself up.

  But she’s not in Isabelle’s room. She’s in bed. Her laptop is cool against her forearm, and the cord of her dressing-gown is twisted around her body.

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Her deep voice is extra thick and woolly. ‘I must have fallen asleep working.’

  She vaguely remembers coming back to bed, not being able to sleep. Checking and replying to emails while Dean snored softly next to her, the well wishes in the wedding cards playing on her mind.

  Lines appear on Dean’s forehead, and he gestures to her phone on the bedside table. ‘You slept through your alarm. Are you sick?’

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ she says, although she does feel clammy. ‘Any news on the Horrowitz case?’

  Shaking his head, he grimaces slightly. ‘There was nothing on the bulletin before.’

  She relaxes back against the pillow.

  He straightens and puts his hands in his pockets. Oli feels grimy in contrast to his iron-pressed neatness. ‘I have to go in a minute.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s just gone seven.’ He looks around the room. ‘You should take those pills if you can’t sleep. You shouldn’t be getting up in the middle of the night to work.’

  ‘I know, I only meant to do some reading. I don’t even remember falling asleep.’

  Dean smooths her hair aside and kisses her gently on the lips. He looks into her eyes, his fingers tangling in the golden strands. ‘I’m driving the girls to school now, and I’ll pick them up tonight and take them to Mary’s for dinner. You just relax, okay? Maybe work from home today if you’re not feeling well—it’s not like you haven’t put in the hours.’

  ‘I’ll see,’ Oli murmurs.

  Mary is Isabelle’s mother. Oli’s met her twice, and both times were incredibly awkward. Oli has no interest in going to her house for dinner but doesn’t like not being invited either. The thought of being compared to Isabelle by her mother is unbearable, although Oli assumes at some point she’ll have to get used to it. After spending the past two Christmases interstate with her other daughters, Mary is planning to stay in Melbourne this year.

  Dean’s irises glow golden-brown as he bends to kiss her on the forehead. ‘Love you.’ He straightens. Smiles.

  ‘Same,’ Oli says.

  His footsteps trail down the hall, then the stairs. His muffled voice calls out, ‘Amy! Kate!’

  There’s the buzz of their responses, a flurry of domestic sounds. The slight vibration of the garage door opening and closing, followed by the low rumble of Dean’s car.

  Oli lies in the dark for a few minutes, her head spinning with snippets from her old articles, the long-forgotten case details dusted off and fresh in her mind. She’d forgotten the strangeness of the girls’ friendship, all of the loose threads leading nowhere. She wonders whether any evidence from the scene suggested Nicole was pregnant. She’s never heard a whisper of it, but it’s something the cops might have kept quiet. She could ask Rusty—or, even better, she could pitch it to Bowman, see if he bites.

  Her mind jumps to Isabelle’s dresses, the beautiful shoes. She shouldn’t have gone through her things like that, but now all she wants to do is spend the day rummaging in the other boxes. Sifting through every single detail about the life that Isabelle and Dean had together. But it’s not healthy, and Oli knows all too well what can happen when someone goes digging, finds things they shouldn’t.

  Her phone bleats, forcing her mind back to the case.

  A text from Cooper: Alex still hasn’t read my message, but let’s meet anyway? I’d really like your help with the podcast. Have you read my interview notes yet?

  The kid is nothing if not persistent. Doesn’t he realise there might not be a podcast without Alex?

  Oli is mid eye roll when TJ texts her. O’Brien’s wife topped herself.

  Oli throws herself in the shower, washing her hair like it’s an Olympic sport. She drips water all over the carpet while she stands in the bedroom wrapped in a towel, trying to find something to wear. She pulls on a woollen dress and applies foundation and mascara at breakneck speed. She puts her old notebook in her satchel next to her current one and drags a brush through her wet hair as she runs down the stairs, then grabs her coat and a scarf from the hatstand in the hallway and sets the alarm. Yesterday was big, but today is going to be insane. The two stories will perform a public boxing match, fighting it out on the front pages for the next few days, their popularity dependent on the unpredictable nature of the people involved and the quality of the info that the police breadcrumb to the media.

  Oli scrolls through her emails as the garage door cranks skyward. Media alerts are pouring in. The editorial meeting has been pushed back to nine because O’Brien’s lawyers are doing a presser at eight, and even though all of the media outlets are reporting it, the cops still haven’t provided any further inform
ation about the scene in Crystalbrook. Oli considers what the silence means. They might have found Evie Maslan already. Oli’s mind conjures a little girl lost in the bush, huddling against a tree overnight in the freezing weather—or dead, her small body buried in a shallow grave.

  ‘Fuck,’ Oli murmurs.

  She drives to work in a daze. At the lights she loads the Melbourne Today website, glancing from the road to the screen while praying there are no cops around. Her piece is still the first article on the home page, but it’s been edited. She skims it quickly, noting the details that have changed. The reference to Nicole having a child is gone, some of the language softened. What the hell?

  Furious, she clicks back to the home page, which has already been updated. A thumbnail of Julie O’Brien’s smiling face is now above an old picture of Evelyn Stanley. TRAGIC END TO DAY IN COURT, reads TJ’s headline. Julie is all elegance and good breeding, pearls at her throat, coral lipstick and straight white teeth. The lights change, and Oli accelerates, still glancing at the screen. Evelyn is thin in comparison to Julie, her light-brown hair limp at the roots, head tipped to the side, heavily made-up eyes relaxed in a sardonic smile. Oli’s seen the picture a thousand times; they used it back in 2005. The other shots they dug up didn’t work as well with the story, whereas the skimpy outfit and dark eyeliner gave the murdered young woman an edge, playing into the trope that all three housemates were caught up in something untoward.

  Julie O’Brien and Evelyn Stanley: two strangers brought together by the news cycle.

  Oli briefly ponders what Julie O’Brien was doing back in 2005. Probably watching the news with her husband, quietly judging the trio of housemates and reassuring herself that her perfect family would never be embroiled in a scandal like that.

  In the car park, Oli smokes a cigarette while she speedreads Twitter. The armchair detectives have rallied and are firing opinions into cyberspace, using hashtags to formalise their uninformed views.