No More Secrets No More Lies

by Amos, Gina

  Suellyn sat cross legged on the carpeted floor and began rummaging through the contents of the cardboard box. She found old school books belonging to Tommy, his parent’s personal letters to each other, a few family snaps with people who looked like his extended family and bank books dating back to the late sixties and seventies. She casually opened them and noticed they were in Tommy’s mother’s name. At the bottom of the box, amongst a collection of bank statements, insurance bonds and other mundanities, she found a baby photo. The baby in the photo looked to be about seven months old, with chubby cheeks and a wide toothless grin. The child was sitting upright, straight-backed - William Phillips stared back at her.

  ‘How did a baby photo of William end up amongst all this stuff?’

  William at eight months was written on the back of the photo, scribbled in faded ink in her mother-in-law’s scratchy hand writing. She recognised the photo from the one in the photo frame that Rose kept on her bedside table. Amongst Isabelle’s papers, were letters from Rose thanking her for the money. What money? Suellyn noticed a bundle of letters held together by a rubber band at the bottom of the box. Written in Tommy’s hand was an envelope addressed to Isabelle Dwyer. She removed the letter from the envelope, held it up to the light which was streaming through the bedroom window and began reading.

  Dear Mother

  I’m strapped for cash and I was hoping that you could help me out. I have plans to travel overseas and I need $50,000 immediately. I know you won’t deprive me of the experience that international travel has to offer, so please transfer funds immediately to my bank account or I will be forced to act on our conversation yesterday, something I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to do.

  Your loving son as always,

  Tommy

  The menacing tone of the letter surprised even Suellyn. She wondered what he meant by ‘acting on their conversation.’ Was Tommy blackmailing his mother? Tommy’s family was wealthy, but fifty-thousand dollars was still a lot of money in anyone’s books. However, there was something else that bothered Suellyn. Tommy had told her that he had never travelled outside of Australia and that was why he was so keen to travel overseas now, before he got too much older. She wondered if Isabelle had given him the money and if she had, what he had done with it.

  Suellyn reached deeper into the box and found another envelope – this one was addressed to Rose. She carefully broke the envelope’s seal and unfolded the letter. She was surprised to find that it was a carbon copy. Carbon paper went out with the ark and Suellyn wondered if you could still buy it.

  She assumed the original of the letter had been sent to Rose and wondered why Tommy’s mother had gone to the trouble of keeping a copy. Was this her way of protecting herself from him? The contents of the neatly written letter startled her. Surely the Tommy she knew wasn’t capable of what he was being accused of by his mother. Suellyn stood up from the floor. Pins and needles shot down her left leg and she massaged her calf with her hands until the blood began to flow. She quickly walked out of the bedroom down the hall towards the study and placed one of the letters on the glass plate of the fax machine and pressed the copy button. As she waited for the machine to warm up she watched Tommy through the window. He was down on his knees, his back was to her and a hessian bag of weeds was by his side.

  After the fax machine spewed out a copy of the letters, she returned them to the envelopes and shoved the warm sheets of A4 paper into the pocket of her silk robe. She returned the letters to the box and began to flip through the yellowed pages of bank books. The books were filled with transfers written in smudged black ink, monthly withdrawals for several hundred dollars over a period of years, withdrawals recorded by bank tellers, probably long dead, the same amount, the same date, every month. She didn’t find a withdrawal for fifty-thousand dollars recorded; perhaps Isabelle had money invested elsewhere…

  Suellyn concentrated hard and gathered her thoughts. None of what she had just read made any sense. Tommy knew she was married to William. They had talked openly about William and Rose. Tommy had asked her questions about her husband and her mother-in-law when they first met and she remembered at the time she had been flattered by the fact that he wanted to know everything about her. She had been surprised by his interest in Rose. He had even asked her where she lived, her habits and about the state of her health. She’d not given it much thought at the time and assumed that he was just curious about her family but now it all made sense.

  Both letters had a terrible tone to them and Suellyn’s mind raced as she tried to think what she would or should do about the information that she had just discovered.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tommy removed his reading glasses, looked over the top of the newspaper he had been reading for the last ten minutes and gazed out across the ocean at a flock of seagulls, watching them as they swerved sharply and slipped between the waves. The surf was flat this morning and the sky was clear.

  He wondered why he’d not heard from Suellyn. The last time he had spoken to her was when she phoned him last Wednesday and even then she sounded distant and preoccupied, as if she had something on her mind. There was a hint of anxiety in her voice, but that wasn’t unusual for Suellyn, she was always anxious about something. Even so, he hoped she wasn’t getting cold feet or feeling guilty about Rose. Disconnecting the power was a bit drastic he thought, but in the end, a result was what they were both after and who was he to judge her, he probably would have done the same thing given the circumstances. Suellyn was tough underneath all those hysterics. He liked that about her.

  It was eleven-fifteen. The real estate agent said he would drop by around eleven-thirty. The marketing campaign was on track and after a couple of open houses a young couple was interested in buying the beach house. Tommy had made up his mind a few weeks ago that it was time to move on after he discovered he was a beneficiary to Rose’s estate. What a surprise that had been. The old girl must have felt guilty about inheriting what she knew was rightly his. With the sale of his house, the windfall from Rose’s estate and the money Suellyn would eventually get from the sale of the house in Eden Street, they would be able to afford to live anywhere in the world. Tommy had suggested Spain but Suellyn wasn’t keen on the idea, but perhaps now after everything that had happened, she would reconsider.

  The couple was impressed with the house and the agent was confident that they would exchange contracts by the end of the following week. Tommy looked around him at the job he had ahead of him. He wasn’t looking forward to packing up all his belongings but fortunately he was used to moving and most of the furniture in the house was rented anyway. Suellyn had already sorted through his clothes, but there were things he had to get rid of; starting with the contents of his bookcase and the two storage boxes in his wardrobe. The boxes were filled with childhood photos, letters and a collection of memorabilia his mother had sentimentally stashed away in her garage. The telephone rang. It was Suellyn.

  ‘Hi Sues, how are things?’

  ‘Things are fine Tommy, I just thought I’d let you know that it looks like we’ve got an interested buyer for the house in Eden Street. The real estate agent said that it didn’t worry the buyers that Rose died in the kitchen, they’re going to knock the house down anyway.’

  ‘That’s good news, so when am I going to see you? I’ve missed you.’ Tommy smiled into the phone. His cheek dimpled.

  ‘Things are a bit hectic here at the moment. Let’s wait for things to quieten down, okay?’ Suellyn breathed heavily into the mouth piece.

  ‘Whatever you want, but listen, I’ve got some good news as well. A young couple inspected the house this morning. They’re keen to buy it. Looks like all our plans are starting to take shape.’

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t take long for someone to snap it up. Having the beach at your back door really helps. All the same, I’m going to miss the place,’ Suellyn said.

  ‘So come up. What’s stopping you? One last look for old times’ sake.’

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p; ‘I promise I’ll come when I can get away. She hesitated, ‘Look Tommy, I have to go, I think I heard William at the front door,’ Suellyn lied. ‘Speak to you soon.’ Suellyn hung up and wondered what she was going to do about those letters. She was nervous and was having doubts. She was beginning to wonder who Tommy Dwyer really was and what he was capable of.

  Suellyn was lying down on the lounge propped up against a couple of cushions, waiting for William to come home. She knew she had to tell him about the letters she found at the beach house. She stood up from the lounge and closed the sliding door. There was a market on today. Every weekend saw the influx of stall-holders peddling their wares, everything from organic goats’ cheese to hand painted glass plates. Children were squealing; the sound of carnival rides and tuneless music slowly drifted up to the eighth floor of their apartment block. It was the only downside of living across from the beach, that, and the salt spray that drifted in from the ocean devouring everything in its path.

  *****

  Tommy slid open the mirror robe. He leant in and dragged out the cardboard storage boxes from the back of the wardrobe. They were covered in a fine layer of dust. As he dragged the boxes out one by one across the tracks of the wardrobe, he knocked over his golf clubs. ‘Bloody golf clubs.’ Tommy couldn’t remember the last time he played golf. His handicap never got below thirty in all the years that he’d played. He decided he would have a garage sale to get rid of the junk he had accumulated over the years.

  He stacked the two storage boxes on top of each other and carried them out to the backyard where he had already set a small fire in the brick barbecue. The contents of the emptied box landed in a pile in front of him. Golden flames jumped and sparked into life as he added a small branch to the smoldering fire. The smell of eucalyptus filled the air as bank books and statements, black and white photos of his mother and father in happier times were engulfed by the flames. A life which was so distant now, he could hardly remember it. So much had happened since the day he found out about Rose and William Phillips. His face hardened. He remembered his father’s dying wish for him to take care of his mother.

  ‘No time for sentimentality now, Tommy old son,’ he said quietly to himself. He sorted through letters and postcards and one by one he placed them on the fire. A whisper of wind sprung up and carried the ashes into the air. A burnt photo offering landed on his jumper. It was the face of his mother. It was just as well he wasn’t superstitious he thought as he flicked the ash from his jumper. He scooped up the remainder of his mother’s correspondence and added them to the fire. He wondered what had compelled him to keep the boxes, they held far too many memories. He picked up the second of the empty cardboard storage boxes and was about to throw it onto the fire when he noticed an envelope wedged into one of the corners of the box. He pulled at it and it came away. It was addressed to Rose Phillips in his mother’s neat handwriting. Tommy turned the envelope over in his hands. It obviously had not been posted but the envelope had been opened and resealed. He tore at it and read the indigo blue words written on the unlined paper. His hands shook as he held the letter in both hands; deep frown lines formed on his forehead and his lips tightened. This was a carbon copy, so who had the original? Rose? And why had his mother decided to keep a copy of the letter? Who had she expected to read it? He threw the letter to the ground, trod on it and kicked it into roaring flames.

  Chapter Twenty One

  ‘William, we need to talk.’

  ‘What is it now Suellyn?’ William snapped. He was on his way to the beach. His full length wet suit fitted his body like a glove and a beach towel hung around his neck and over his broad shoulders. The wet suit outlined his taut muscled body and Suellyn followed the bumps and curves of his form right down to his tanned, naked feet.

  ‘I’ve got something I want to show you before you go. It’s to do with your mother.’

  William placed his keys on the dining table and saw the anxious look on his wife’s face. Suellyn was obviously frightened by something or someone. She was clutching sheets of crumpled paper in her hands. William took the letters from her and threw the towel over the back of the lounge and sat down to read them. Suellyn sat on the ottoman watching her husband closely for his reaction. Why didn’t he say something, anything? The silence was physically painful.

  ‘I’ll have to hand these over to the police,’ he said eventually. ‘These letters explain a lot. Where did you get them?’

  ‘I found the original letter from Isabelle in your mother’s bedroom after she died, the day you followed me, after we’d been to see the solicitor.’ Suellyn still remembered the way William had slapped her face and the way he had sobbed afterwards. ‘And I found a copy of the same letter at Tommy’s house along with the letter Tommy wrote to his mother asking her for money.’

  ‘So, this is what you were searching for? It’s all starting to make sense to me know. You were trying to protect him weren’t you? Is this why you wanted my mother out of the house, so you could find this letter and destroy it? Why show it to me now? What’s changed?’

  ‘No, you’re wrong. I was trying to protect you. I admit I wanted to know what Tommy’s involvement was in all of this. I was curious. Tommy told me that before his father died he had told him about the baby his mother had given away to Rose. But what Tommy didn’t know was that Isabelle changed her will and left her entire estate to Rose. We both wanted to find out the full details of the inheritance and what Rose was planning to do with all the money. I just wanted to help Tommy get what was rightfully his. His mother should never have left her money to Rose. It wasn’t right. Tommy tracked down her solicitor, that awful Bartholomew man, but he wasn’t going to tell him anything apart from that he had acted for Rose regarding Isabelle’s estate and that she had kept most of the paperwork at home. He knew a letter existed somewhere, outlining the reasons why Isabelle was leaving all of her estate to Rose. Knowing Rose, I knew the letter must have been somewhere in the house. You know what she was like William, she kept everything, she even had the first pay slip from when she worked at the dressmakers in the city before you were born.

  I wanted to destroy any evidence that linked you and Tommy. I thought if I got her to move away I could search the house, find the letter and destroy it. I just wanted to protect you, I didn’t want you to get hurt. I know what finding out about your father did to you. You have to believe me.’

  ‘What was Tommy’s involvement in all of this? Did he ever visit my mother, I mean Rose?’

  ‘Tommy and I went to see Rose the day she died. I waited in the car outside while he went in to speak to her. He said he wanted to talk to her about his mother, to tie up a few loose ends.’

  William’s head was spinning. He looked at Suellyn and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘And where did this letter from Tommy to his mother come from?’

  ‘I found it at Tommy’s place.’ Suellyn was rubbing her arms nervously, she stood and walked towards William but he turned his back on her. ‘William, I had no idea that Rose had written Tommy into her will.’

  William spun around and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I didn’t, really, you have to believe me. She probably did it to bring everything out into the open. It was like a clue, like the way you and Tommy both share the same middle name. She was probably too afraid to tell you the truth about Isabelle and that you had a brother. She knew how badly you took it when she tried to explain to you about the father she’d invented. I’m sure she was sick of all the lies but wanted to wait until after she was dead before you found out the truth. She was either too ashamed or too scared to tell you, especially after she had already tried to tell you the truth once before.’

  William grabbed his keys and towel and slammed the apartment door behind him. He took the lift to the basement, grabbed his surfboard from the caged storage area and left the building by the fire exit which led out to the street in front of the building. The beach wasn’t crowded today. With the first hint of cool weather it was only t
he most dedicated of surfers who took to the waves. William ran headlong into the surf and paddled out to the first break. He surfed at Manly Beach often enough that he recognised a few of the other surfers and acknowledged the ones he knew.

  The water was a chilly eighteen degrees. The waves washed over him and cleared his mind. He sat upright on his board with his legs dangling beneath him and drifted for a while before he looked back over his shoulder towards the shore and watched as the waves cracked and thundered onto the beach. He watched a young girl who he didn’t recognise, stretch up on her board like a cobra only to twist and flip over under the power of a freak wave.

  William didn’t stay long at the beach, he knew he had to call Jill Brennan and speak to her about the letters. Suellyn wasn’t in the apartment when he returned an hour later and he was relieved that she had the sense to make herself scarce. He showered and walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his narrow waist. Water dripped from his hair. He picked up the cordless phone from the glass coffee table and selected Jill Brennan’s phone number from the phone’s directory and dialed.

  It was Saturday. Jill Brennan’s first weekend off in a month. The afternoon sea breeze blew her hair into her face and a few loose strands stuck to her lip gloss. The sun still had some warmth in it and the wind burnt her cheeks. The gravel track was crowded with people heading towards Bronte. She was standing behind the barrier at the edge of the cliff face, deep in thought, gazing out at the postcard views of the Pacific Ocean. Behind her at Bondi Beach, a mob of surfers sitting on their boards were waiting for a decent wave to carry them back to shore. A Westpac surf rescue helicopter flew overhead just as her phone rang. William wondered if she worked on Saturdays or if she had the weekends off.