Blood Sisters

by Caroline de Costa

  She sipped the wine, slowly reading Anna Funder’s latest novel—would Zak be content if she disappeared to read in the bath for half an hour? It was hard to turn the pages with wet hands. Maybe Jordon could find a device that would do that for her. She was also thinking about work. About Marcie. She would try to track her down again tomorrow; somehow, she felt uneasy about the girl.

  And what about Meredith Harrison? Was she telling the truth about her encounter with Karen Moster?

  She’d been lying there for more than half an hour, occasionally adding more hot water with her big toe, when she heard the ping of a message arriving in the phone. Could be Zak, could be Jordon. Anyway, it was time to get out. She stood up, reached for her towel and stepped out. When she was dry, she opened the message.

  She had to read it twice to understand who had sent it and what it meant.

  There was the sound of the back door opening and Jordon coming noisily in, just in time to hear his mother shouting, to no one in particular: ‘Fucking hell!! Those bloody girls! What have they got themselves into?’

  ***

  Earlier that afternoon, Emily had sat at Scarlett’s desk looking with little enthusiasm at her literature homework, due the next day. Scarlett was at work at the motel. Scarlett’s mother was also at work and wouldn’t be home until midnight. It was supposed to be her day off, but another midwife had called in sick and Sally had agreed to work the extra shift. Scarlett was to take a taxi home, on her mother’s orders, so she would be home after ten.

  This meant that they would have at least an hour alone together in the house. Time in which they would continue the exploration of each other’s bodies that had so delighted them for the past three evenings. Just thinking about it gave Emily a delicious shudder right down her spine and she was tempted to climb into Scarlett’s bed right now and touch herself until she came. But she knew that the pleasure would be so much more intense when Scarlett did it for her, her mouth and then her fingers seeking out the right places. She would hold back and wait.

  Emily was much calmer now that she knew about the aneurysm; she’d often heard her parents talk about their cases at home, so she knew that with a good barrister the chances of Meredith getting off were high. Especially if the client was another lawyer. And this eggy thing seemed just what a top barrister would like to sink their teeth into. Secretly Emily had been worrying that perhaps Meredith had pushed Karen down the stairs. She knew how impulsive her mother could be. It was not that she would have planned to do it, just that she would have got carried away in the heat of the argument with Karen. Now that it was clear Karen wasn’t going to die, in fact would probably be fine, Emily felt she could cope.

  It was four forty-five—more than five hours to get through until Scarlett came home. Sally had thoughtfully left her dinner in the fridge to reheat in the microwave when she was ready. Emily had read most of the set text, The Mill on the Floss, but she had rather skimmed through it. The characters were interesting and there were intense sexual undertones, but they never seemed to realise their passions, instead, they just mooned about sighing for each other. Emily thought Maggie in the book should have run off with Stephen Guest and not worried what people thought. But then she wouldn’t have drowned at the end, which would have rather spoilt the story. In their other text, Anna Karenina, which she and Scarlett had chosen as their option, things were clearer. Anna was certainly doing it with Vronsky, that’s what the whole affair had been about. Emily understood Anna’s passion. But she couldn’t see the attraction to a man as superficial as Vronsky when you could have a woman—someone you trusted as much as she trusted Scarlett, warm and delicious in her arms. Emily certainly didn’t think Vronsky was worth Anna throwing herself under a train for.

  How long could she and Scarlett keep their relationship from their parents? Well, their mothers. She was sure Sally had no inkling of what they’d been up to while she welcomed babies in the birth suite. And Meredith had her own enormous problems just now; she certainly wasn’t thinking about her daughter’s sex life. But Emily felt they would have to come out soon. In fact, what she really wanted was to get up in school assembly and shout it to the whole world. But that was probably a bad idea—it was a religious school, after all.

  On Tuesday morning, Mai Ling and Dorcas had twigged immediately. Since they were all very close, Dorc and Mai Ling already knew how the two felt about each other. Well, how Emily felt about Scarlett. Maybe less about what Scarlett felt about Emily. Scarlett was... what was the word Emily was looking for? She was more contained. And while Emily had no doubts that she herself was gay, she did not feel so sure about Scarlett. Maybe Scarlett was bi? Or one of those people who’ll try things and then end up realising they’re hetero. Emily had seen how Scarlett sometimes looked at the boys at school. Year 12 boys, mostly. She seemed to be noticing them in a way that Emily never did.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Mai Ling had asked. Mai Ling had said many times that she and James had never gone all the way. ‘We have to wait until we’re engaged. Because we’re Asian,’ she said. ‘Like we’re both supposed to go to medical school or law school. That’s what Asian kids do!’

  ‘You really think we believe that?’ Dorcas had asked.

  Emily looked at the homework question she was supposed to be answering. It was hard to concentrate on the nineteenth century, so much was happening right now in her own twenty-first century life. She stood up and went to the window, peering out at the afternoon where the sun was still shining brightly. She wanted to get outside and do something, something active and spectacular. Something that would impress Scarlett.

  Well, her bike was here. And so were the binoculars. It would be light for another hour and a half. She could ride up the Lake Morris road, climb down and have another look at the McFadden house. She hated the thought of snakes, but she would wear jeans and just be careful where she put her feet. If she saw something interesting at the house, she could text Scarlett. Even if she didn’t, she would text to say she was there, and surprise Scarlett with a text from just behind the house. Scarlett would be impressed by that. This time she’d climb down closer, but she’d have to leave enough twilight to climb back up to the road through the bush. Once there, though, coasting downhill to the city would be easy. They’d done it on Sunday in about ten minutes. From there, it was bike paths all the way back to Scarlett’s place. Emily reckoned that she’d be back soon after seven. That would still give her time to eat dinner and have two hours to finish her homework.

  She pulled on a black sweatshirt, her jeans and sneakers and set out.

  ***

  It took Emily forty minutes of hard riding to reach the spot where she and Scarlett had left the Lake Morris road on Sunday. She pushed her bike off the road and into the same bushes where they’d hidden the bikes before. It occurred to her that it would have been a good idea to bring a torch, and she realised, too, that in her eagerness to get out of the house, she’d forgotten the Swiss Army knife. But there was still a fragment of the ribbon they’d left on the first tree leading to the path they’d followed, so very likely all the markers were still there. She began to make her way across to the spot where they’d looked down at the house, watching carefully for snakes. If she met one, she decided, she was going straight back to Scarlett’s.

  It took only a few minutes to reach the spot. Looking down, Emily saw that her journey had been worth it. There was the Chinese man crossing the yard, passing through the fence, and opening the door of the outbuilding again. And as he did so, Emily thought she heard a cry from inside the building. It was hard to be sure, the structure was several hundred metres away, and the front of the building was in shadow with the setting sun. Still, it sounded like a scream.

  Parked in the backyard was the same white truck they’d seen the other day, its tray covered with a blue tarpaulin.

  As Emily watched, a black four-wheel drive came up Holliday Close and into the backyard as the back gate opened automatically. Emily shrank b
ack against the trees. A man Emily thought might be Martin McFadden got out and went into the main house through the back door. Lights went on inside the house. At this point, the Chinese man came out of the outbuilding, got into the white truck and drove it out the gate, then parked it on the nature strip close to the gate.

  The moon was just beginning to appear above the mountain across the inlet near Yarrabah, and hundreds of bats began to crowd the sky, heading for the fig trees in the southern suburbs. Emily decided she still had some time, so she stood watching for several more minutes. At this point, the Chinese man came out of the back door with a can in his hand and tipped the contents into a dog bowl near the wooden fence. He must have called the dog, because the German shepherd came around the house from the far side.

  Suddenly the moon disappeared behind a bank of clouds, plunging the forest into darkness. Emily started to feel panic rising when she realised that she could no longer see where she and Scarlett had marked the trees with ribbon. Slowly, she moved back towards where she thought the path she’d followed began, crashing into a tree. Two yellow-crested cockatoos took to the air, screeching their annoyance at being disturbed. Shit, that would definitely have been heard in the McFadden yard.

  For a moment she was overcome, her heart beating wildly. Then, taking a deep breath she began to think more clearly about her situation. There was a perfectly good alternative to going back to the road above her. She could climb further down towards the top of Holliday Close, wait behind the back wall of the house until it was completely dark and then make her way into the Close. She could then cross to the other side of the street and run rapidly down it to the main road, where she’d be back in the suburb of Bayview. It was just a twenty-minute walk from there to Palmlands Motel. She could borrow money from Scarlett or just wait there and go home with her. Surprise her with what she’d seen. And collect her bike tomorrow.

  Cautiously she began to find her way downhill through the lower rainforest scrub. Moving slowly, she reached an area clear of trees about a hundred metres from the back wall of the house. Crossing this, she almost tripped and fell. For a brief moment the moon reappeared from behind the clouds, and Emily could see the ground she stood on more clearly. She could see that it was raised in a rectangle more sparsely covered with weeds than the adjacent earth. Looking at this, Emily had a sharp memory of going to the cemetery when she was about ten, where her grandfather had been buried weeks before. That had been just how this patch of ground seemed. Like a grave. Don’t be stupid, Emily told herself, you’re imagining things, but again she could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

  At that moment the moon disappeared again and the dog began to bark in the McFaddens’ yard. Emily thought of how big that dog had seemed when she and Scarlett had ridden their bikes up Holliday Close on Saturday. Shit, she thought. This expedition was not a good idea, after all. The dog barked and barked.

  Now she began to get very spooked. She was breathing fast and her legs were shaking. Just a few minutes more and she would be safely on the street. She tucked her mobile into her pocket so she had both hands free to feel any bushes in front of her, trying to move faster. Then, closer to the wall, she caught her foot on a root and began to fall, rolling down the hill with a crash of snapping branches. She stopped and lay very still. The moon had still not reappeared, and the only light was the faint glimmer from the streetlight at the top of Holliday Close. She was suddenly very frightened, her whole body shivering.

  She must text Scarlett. She’d be able to get out of this herself, but it would be a good idea to tell Scarlett where she was. She reached in her pocket for her phone. It was not there. It must have fallen out when she was rolling down the hill. Freaking shit! She began to search for it, crawling on all fours and feeling about on the ground. She was now thinking a lot about snakes.

  Then there was the noise of barking very close by. She got to her feet just as a bright light was shone directly on her. Dazzled, she had just time to see the dog, which bounded out of the shadows and knocked her over. She heard a man’s voice cry: ‘Ha! You again.’ He grabbed her by the wrists and put a hand right across her mouth. She felt herself being dragged towards the house and in through the back gate.

  ***

  Scarlett sat at Reception in Palmlands thinking about what she should do. It was now eight o’clock. The evening had been busy with lots of arrivals and some quite demanding interstate tourists. It was good news for Jan who had been worried that business would be affected by the recent death in her motel. When Scarlett had arrived after school there had been a message from Sally to say she had to work tonight because someone had called in sick. She wouldn’t be home until very late, so she said that Scarlett should take a taxi home and her mum would pay for it.

  Scarlett had had a few minutes’ break at around seven to eat her dinner, so had texted Emily. No reply. At a quarter to eight Scarlett sent another text hi what ru up 2?? Still no response. She called Emily’s number, and got put through to voicemail. What was going on? She tried her own home number. Emily was supposed to be there. Voicemail again. Ten minutes later she tried again in case Emily had been in the shower. Still no answer.

  She considered calling Meredith but remembered that Meredith’s mobile was at the top of Scarlett’s own wardrobe. She didn’t quite agree with this, but it was what Emily wanted. She could try to find Faith’s home number, but she really didn’t want to worry Meredith when there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for her friend being out of touch. Still less did she want to call her own mother who would be fully occupied until the end of her shift.

  Scarlett was starting to think that if Emily had suddenly decided to go off somewhere on her own, she had a pretty good idea of where that might be. If she’d been going to meet Meredith, or even her father, she would have told Scarlett what she was doing. But if she had gone back to look at the McFaddens’ house again, she might have wanted to surprise Scarlett with some new information. And maybe surprise the detectives as well.

  It had been dark for more than an hour. Emily should have been well and truly back at North Cairns by now. Should she call Cass Diamond? But if then Emily turned out to have a simple explanation, like losing her phone, then Scarlett would feel really stupid. Besides, the detective probably wasn’t even at the police station at this time of night.

  Scarlett decided that she would keep trying the numbers for Emily until ten o’clock, and if there was still no reply, she would go straight away from work to Bayview and scout around the McFadden house herself. And if she still hadn’t heard from Emily, then she would call for help.

  ***

  There was still no answer from Emily at five minutes to ten. Okay, thought Scarlett, it would take her fifteen minutes to get to the McFaddens’ house, if she ran. Twenty at the most.

  Scarlett decided to jog to Bayview—that would arouse much less attention than a girl walking alone. Joggers on the streets of Cairns at night were common because it was much cooler to run once the sun was down.

  She remembered that Holliday Close was divided by a median strip with hibiscus bushes growing on it, so there was good cover, at least towards the bottom end. There were also trees on the verge outside the only house anywhere near the McFaddens, which was across the street and lower down. She could quietly jog up looking as disinterested as possible.

  Scarlett was wearing a white T-shirt with the motel logo, dark tracksuit bottoms and sneakers, but she had her school jumper in her bag which would easily cover the T-shirt. She should be fairly inconspicuous.

  Maybe she would see nothing at the house. Then she’d call her mother, and the police. Maybe she could call Cass Diamond direct; she had her number. Was ten o’clock too late to call a detective? If Emily really was missing, the time wouldn’t matter. She’d have to explain the whole McFadden thing to Cass, what they’d seen on Sunday and Marcie at the café.

  Scarlett remembered Erin’s warning on Sunday: ‘If you girls come across anything that worri
es you, call the cops.’ Well, she was worried, but she just wanted to check out the house first. In case. At the back of her mind was the nagging thought that the McFaddens might be perfectly respectable people with a perfectly good reason why they had a locked building behind their house, and that maybe Em had gone to a movie or forgotten to charge her phone, and she, Scarlett, was just being hysterical. But more overwhelming was a feeling that something was happening and that she must do this. This was almost certainly because last week after Dorrie’s death she’d been surprised there were no omens. There was no scientific basis for all of this, she knew. But all the same she felt very strongly that she must go now and look for Emily.

  ***

  Right on ten o’clock Scarlett switched the Palmlands phone to voicemail, locked the back office, and turned off the front lights except for the Vacancy sign—there were three rooms left and if someone came in late there were instructions by the front gate directing them to call Jan. She pulled on her sweater, zipped her mobile into her tracksuit pants pocket, tucked her iPad into her backpack, locked the front door and the gate, and dropped the keys she always left for Jan, into the mailbox.

  Earlier in the evening she’d noticed clouds about and thought there might be rain. But now the cloud had blown away and there was a full moon high above her, coldly brightening the street. In direct contravention of her mother’s instructions, she did not call a taxi, but turned onto the highway outside Palmlands and set off at a brisk pace towards Bayview.

  That’s when she saw the owl.

  Perched on a low branch of a eucalypt in the park, the owl surveyed Scarlett in absolute silence. A Venetian mask of dark feathers surrounded his large black eyes, his breast was a deep grey and his wings spotted. Scarlett stopped abruptly. She had seen owls like this in rainforest but never in the suburbs of Cairns. He appeared to be alone.