Sylvie hadn’t heard from her mother since leaving Sydney. She’d almost rung her four times. Each time she’d stopped. Fidelma was probably still at her coastal retreat. With Ray. Painting. Meeting her dealer. There was the shimmer of hurt that her mother hadn’t rung to see how she was getting on, but it was a feeling she’d become used to over the years. It wasn’t malice on Fidelma’s part, as Sebastian had pointed out. It was absentmindedness. It still hurt.
As she slid to a halt near the answering machine in the hall, the light was flashing. Two messages. She hadn’t heard the phone ring over the music. She pressed the button.
“Great-Aunt Mill calling, Sylvie. I’ve had a marvelous idea. Would you please start keeping a note of some handy household hints for me? All tried and tested. I’m getting forgetful so I think the best thing is to tell you when I think of them. Carla next door says I should buy one of those Dictaphone gadgets but I thought, no, that’s silly. I can tell you and you’re young and you’ll remember for me. Denture-cleaning tablets are ideal for bleaching white table linen. So simple, isn’t it? Thank you, Sylvie. No need to call back.”
The second message was from her sister Cleo. Her voice filled the hallway.
“Hi, Seb. Hi, Sylvie. Hope Melbourne’s good. Sylvie, I can’t find that dry cleaning anywhere. We’re back in Sydney for an opening night and I need my blue dress. Where did you put it?”
Sylvie hadn’t put it anywhere. In the flurry of packing and getting ready to leave, she’d forgotten to get it. Oh bloody hell. She could call a courier and ask them to collect it and drop it around to Cleo. They should be able to give it to her without the docket. She’d ring them first and—
She stopped. Or she could ring Cleo back and tell her she was sorry, she’d forgotten, but perhaps Cleo could collect her own dry cleaning.
She dialed the number before she lost her nerve. She could almost hear her heart beating. Voicemail, please, voicemail. Her plea was answered. “Cleo, it’s Sylvie.” Her voice was croaky. She gave a little cough. “Hi, all’s great here. Sebastian’s apartment is beautiful. The weather’s good. Um, your dry cleaning—” About to back down and say she’d organize it from there, she had a vision of Sebastian frowning at her, mouthing, “Don’t let them bully you. Stand up for yourself.” She stood up straight. “I’m sorry, but unfortunately I didn’t get time to collect it. The docket’s in the in-tray on the desk in the studio. Hope your holiday’s going well. See you.”
She had to stop herself phoning back and apologizing again. She went out for a walk around the block, away from the temptation. When she got back fifteen minutes later, there was another message.
She pressed the button. Cleo, again. “Hi, Sylvie. Thanks for letting me know about the dry cleaning. What a complete bloody pain in the backside. We’re only in town for a few hours and I haven’t got time to visit a dry cleaners. I thought I could trust you to do that before you left.” A sigh. “All right, look, don’t worry about it, I’ll do it myself. See you.”
Any mood-lifting the dancing had done was wiped out.
***
At exactly noon, the doorbell sounded. A tall, thin, red-haired woman about her own age was at the front door, dressed in a strappy top, skinny jeans and heels. Sylvie barely had time to say hello before the other woman started talking.
“Sylvie? Of course you’re Sylvie, who else? I’m Leila, Seb’s neighbor across the courtyard.” She glanced down and her lips twitched. “I like the name tag. Has it come in handy?”
Sebastian’s label was still pinned to Sylvie’s jacket. She hurriedly unpinned it, realizing she’d also been for a walk around the block wearing it. “It’s a joke, I promise. Seb’s idea of a joke, at least.”
“What’s got into him lately? I spent a day last week with a Post-it note saying ‘I’m a monkey, give me a banana’ on my back. He thought it was hilarious.”
“I’m so sorry. We thought the electric shock treatment was working.”
Leila smiled again, a dimple appearing in her cheek. “Time to up the voltage, I think.” She took an envelope out of her bag. “He asked me to drop this in to you today.”
Sylvie glanced at it, front and back. No clues there. “Thanks very much.”
“Seb says you’re down for a few weeks or maybe longer, is that right? Fancy a drink or something some night?”
“I’d love that, thanks.” Leila reminded Sylvie of someone. Pippi Longstocking, she realized, one of her favorite childhood book characters. She warmed to her even more. “Would you like a coffee or something now?”
“Normally, yes please. I live on coffee. But I’m running late for an audition.” She pulled a face. “I’m up for a part in one of the soaps today, hence this charming outfit. Another time maybe?”
“That’d be great, drop in any time. And good luck with the audition.”
“I need it, believe me. See you!” With a cheery wave, she was down the stairs and away.
Leila’s visit canceled out the effect of Cleo’s phone message. Envelope in hand, Sylvie turned on the music again and went for a final slide around the apartment. As Patrick Hernandez’s “Born To Be Alive” came to an end, she arrived in the kitchen, took out a knife and carefully slit open the envelope.
Inside was a sheet of fax paper. On it, four lines in Sebastian’s handwriting. Not last-minute instructions about the house-sitting. Nor tips about good restaurants or cafés or job websites or house agencies.
Sylvie smiled. It was something even better.
***
By mid-afternoon, the kitchen table was littered with scraps of paper covered in scribbles. There was a pile of books on the floor. Sylvie was on the phone.
“I can’t figure it out, Seb. You have to give me a clue.”
It had taken her an hour to get hold of him. It was a bad line. “Sorry, no can do, Miss Devereaux,” he said, his voice breaking in and out. “It’s a treasure hunt not a treasure-handed-to-you-on-a-plate.”
“But I can’t decipher the riddle. And I’ve been through every book on your bookshelf.” She’d opened every single one and there were no slips of paper to be found.
“That’s cheating going straight to the books. You’re supposed to look when you’ve deciphered the title, not flick through willy-nilly.”
“I was getting desperate. We can change the rules, can’t we?”
“The rules are set in stone and shall be forevermore. Apart from the fact I had to fax this starter clue down to Leila, but these were extraordinary circumstances. Anyway, who said anything about my bookshelf?”
“Where else should I look for a book? In the fridge?”
“Oh, you wit. There are other places for books, you know.”
“Libraries, you mean? You want me to go the library?”
He lapsed into a Scottish accent. “Och, pet, there are other places than libraries.”
Scottish. When had she heard a Scottish accent recently? Donald in the bookshop. “The bookshop? Do you mean your friend’s bookshop?”
“Is that the time? Got to go, Sylvie.” He hung up.
She pulled on her sneakers, picked up her bag and jacket and set off. The area already seemed familiar. Quiet roads lined with elegant stone houses beside modern apartments, all leading to the long shopping street. The sky was blue, but there was an autumn crispness to the air and a few brown leaves crunching underfoot.
As she walked, she thought back to the first of Sebastian’s treasure hunts, a present for her eighth birthday. She remembered it so clearly, the one lovely thing in a time of turmoil. For the months beforehand, the mood in the family house had been an unhappy one. Her parents always seemed to be fighting. Odd things started happening. Sylvie’s favorite painting of a small boat, an inheritance from Fidelma’s grandmother, disappeared off the living room wall. So did the gold lamp in the hallway. Her father started staying out all night, coming ho
me as Sylvie was on her way to school. He left one night with a suitcase. That time he didn’t come back for a week. Her mother was either crying or angry all the time. She stayed in bed or sat on the back verandah. She rarely went into the studio. If she did, her paintings were angry splashes of color, dark lines, fierce shapes.
Sylvie’s birthday arrived. There was the present of a jigsaw puzzle, unwrapped, but no party and no cake. Her mother told her she was sorry, but she couldn’t manage it. Vanessa and Cleo were otherwise occupied. Already a tight duo, they spent most of their time in their shared bedroom talking makeup and fashion, or out with their friends. There was no point asking them to help her make a birthday cake. Sebastian returned home late that night from an interstate theater camp. He noticed there were no party leftovers. She heard him go in to their mother, heard raised voices. “She’s only a little kid. Couldn’t you have done something special for her?” She didn’t hear her mother’s reply.
The next day Sylvie woke to find an envelope with her name on it at the end of her bed. A sheet of paper was inside. She opened it. It was Sebastian’s writing.
A chair that grows wings?
Lands of pixies and elves?
If you want the next clue,
Better look on the shelves!
It took her nearly an hour to figure it out. Sebastian wouldn’t help. “It’s a treasure hunt, Sylvie. You have to work it out.” She eventually realized what it meant. A chair with wings. The wishing chair. It was the name of one of her favorite Enid Blyton books. She found it on her bookshelf. She looked at the front cover, on the back. No clues there. She flicked through the pages. There tucked in the middle was another slip of paper. On it, two sentences of jumbled words.
Og ot het ozo. Kool ta eth gritse.
It took her an hour to figure them out, too. “Go to the zoo? Look at the tigers?” she asked Sebastian. “Is that what it says?”
“If that’s what it says, then we’d better do it. Come on.”
They caught the ferry across the harbor and then a bus to the top of the hill. At the zoo, in front of the tigers’ enclosure, he gave her another slip of paper. It told her to go to the café. They had chips and an ice cream, as directed. Another slip of paper. To the harbor for another ferry ride, to Manly this time. Another slip of paper. To a bookshop. There behind the counter was a parcel with her name on it. Five Enid Blyton books. It was the best birthday of her life.
Until they got home that night and heard the news. Their parents were getting divorced.
Things grew worse. She heard her mother talking to her friends in her studio, using words she didn’t understand. Division of assets. Maintenance payments. Custody battles. As a child, she’d thought they were saying custardy. Fighting over custard? Why would they do that? Sebastian explained it to her. The family was going to be divided up.
The idea terrified her. “I want to be with you, Sebbie. Wherever you are.”
“Sylvie, it won’t be up to me.”
“Please, Seb. Please let me go with you.”
She was taken into an office, a room with a high ceiling and five red chairs. A woman behind a desk asked her in a kind voice where she would like to live. She didn’t have to think twice. “I want to be with my brother.”
“And if your brother was living with your father?”
“I want to be with my brother.”
In the end it didn’t matter what she said. The judge decided. Sebastian was going to live with his father in Melbourne. Laurence Devereaux had been appointed to a position in the English department at Melbourne University. Fidelma was given custody of her three daughters, Vanessa, Cleo and Sylvie Devereaux. Case closed.
The day at the courtroom was the last time she’d seen her father. He’d come over to her and leaned down as if he were about to speak. Sylvie’s mother took the top of her arm in a tight hold and pulled her away. There had been a bruise there the next day.
Sylvie reached Donald’s bookshop, nestled between a French bakery and a wine shop. The front windows featured beautifully displayed books and posters. An old-fashioned bell sounded as she pushed open the glass door.
Without Sebastian sweeping her along beside him, she had more time to look around the shop. Pale wood shelves, a skylight, the walls painted calm colors, each section clearly marked: fiction, nonfiction, Australian, new releases, poetry, classics. Two tables at the front of the shop featured staff picks, recently reviewed titles and special promotion titles. To the side was a children’s section divided not into fiction or nonfiction but into subjects: cats, dogs, trains, trucks. Classical music played softly. The whole shop smelled of coffee. Toward the back was a small café with three tables, armchairs and a compact coffee-making machine, the shelf above it lined with colorful cups and large glass jars filled with biscuits. There were half a dozen customers browsing the shelves and book tables.
The only assistant was up a ladder, putting up a poster. As she waited by the counter, he descended. She saw black runners. Long legs in faded jeans. A blue T-shirt. Lightly tanned arms. A head of dark-brown curls. It wasn’t Donald.
The man turned as he reached the floor. He had a boyish sprinkling of freckles on his face. Dark eyes. A grown-up Huckleberry Finn, Sylvie thought. First Pippi Longstocking, now this man. She felt like she’d stumbled into Book Land at the top of the Faraway Tree.
He smiled at her. “Hi. Sorry to keep you waiting. Can I help you?”
“Hello. Yes please. I was wondering if Dona—”
He interrupted. “You’re Sylvie, aren’t you? Sebastian’s sister?” At her nod he gave a big smile. “He said you’d be calling in. You’re exactly as he said you’d be.”
She wondered what Sebastian had said. Lost-looking? Anxious? She put on a bright expression, just in case. “Which means you must be Max.”
He bowed. “At your service. How did you know? Let me guess, he described me as a devastatingly good-looking man of the world?”
She smiled. “Nearly. He said you were a very good friend of his.”
“And I am, for my sins.” He put out a hand. “It’s great to meet you. Are you looking for a book or a coffee? Both, maybe?”
“Actually, something a bit more complicated than that.”
“Excellent.” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “I’m in the mood for something a bit more complicated today. Ask away.”
She reached into her bag for the envelope. “When we were young, Sebastian and I used to—”
“You’re on to the treasure hunt already?”
“You know about it?”
“I couldn’t possibly say. But you don’t waste any time, I’ll give you that.”
She took out the piece of paper. “He’s left me the starter clue but I—”
Max put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”
“You can’t?”
He shook his head, eyes still shut. “Seb said no matter how much you begged, you had to figure it out for yourself.”
“But can you tell me if I’m in the right place? Will I find the book here?”
He opened one eye. “We’ve got twenty thousand books here so the odds are good. Any questions about them, feel free to ask. Though perhaps not twenty thousand questions this afternoon. We close at seven.”
“Can you help me at all?”
“I’m a highly trained bookshop assistant, with a mind like a computer, of course I can help you. But only with book-specific questions.”
She liked the spark of mischief in his eyes. If he was Sebastian’s new partner, then she approved completely. “Did you have a hand in this?”
Another grin. “Let me just say that when Sebastian burns the midnight oil or gets a notion about doing something, he doesn’t like doing it on his own. And that’s the last bit of information you’re getting. How about a coffee before
you get started?”
“Could you make it a strong one?”
Ten minutes later, settled at a table at the back of the shop, a double espresso in front of her, she went over Sebastian’s clue again. She’d read it so many times she knew it off by heart.
In search of a new and glittering vocation?
Then, dear Sylvie, travel old-fashioned kilometers
Across an ancient story-filled river.
His message was clear. He was telling her she needed to leave Sydney—the “fashion” referred to Vanessa, the “glittering” to Cleo’s jewelry, she’d guessed—to find what she was supposed to be doing with her life. But what river had she crossed—or flown over at least—to get from Sydney to Melbourne? The Murray? Was she supposed to look in books about the Murray River?
Max was serving an elderly man. She waited a little back from the counter watching him. He had a lovely manner with the customer, friendly but respectful. He looked over and smiled at her as the man left.
“You’ve solved the puzzle already?”
“Inching closer every minute. I think I’m onto something. Would you have any books set on or about the Murray River?”
“Fiction or nonfiction? Or friction or nonfriction, as my grandmother used to say.”
She smiled. “Either. All. Any.”
He was very helpful. He checked on the computer, flicked through catalogs, searched the shelves with her. They found two fiction titles quickly. The River Kings by Max Fatchen. All the Rivers Run by Nancy Cato. There were also five works of nonfiction. She flicked through the pages of each of them. Nothing.
“It wouldn’t have fallen out, would it?” she asked. “It’s usually only a little slip of paper.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“How long would it take me to check every book on every shelf here, do you think?”
“I’ve just done a part-time, manual stocktake so I can tell you—three weeks, two days and one long, heartbreaking final hour. Isn’t that cheating, though? And have you got that long?”
Odd One Out Page 4
