The Ones You Trust

by Caroline Overington

Maybe not!

  Cuppa with PJ and Roxie is supposed to be a totally new look for the Stellar Network, after all, which had been taking a pummelling from their rivals at Brew before the whole, horrific drama that was the Cardwell kidnapping.

  Cuppa is now back in the No. 1 spot, but that’s mainly because of all the viewer sympathy for Emma. Are those viewers going to stay around to watch racy Roxie? Looking at these pictures, we certainly think so!

  We tried to get a comment out of Stellar’s corporate communications guru, Maven, yesterday, and all we got was a big no comment, but if Maven thinks that’s going to stop us running some more of Roxie’s racy pictures, well . . . scroll down!!!

  ‘This is perfect.’

  Maven was seated in her office, scrolling through The Snoop on her laptop. She was wearing a new pair of patent-leather flats with a gold horse-shoe insignia, and she was showing them off by shoving them out at right angles, through the gap between the pedestals of her desk.

  A minion, trembling in the office doorway, said, ‘I don’t know what happened to the picture where Roxie’s got that Crocodile Dundee up-the-bum swimsuit on. I sent them that but they haven’t used it.’

  ‘Send it again,’ ordered Maven. ‘I want to see that up-the-bum shot trending by the end of the day.’

  The minion turned to hurry from the office. Maven’s mobile began to vibrate on the desktop. Seeing who it was, she added, ‘And close the door on your way out.’

  She picked up. ‘Oh, Roxie. I know. I’ve just seen it,’ Maven said. ‘They’re total arseholes at The Snoop. I’m sending them a copyright infringement notice right now. I just got off the phone to our lawyer. We’re coming down on them like a ton of bricks. But look, it’s not that bad! Now just calm down. It’s okay. They’re not new photographs. They’re old shots. They’re not racy. They’re sophisticated . . .’ She paused as Roxie continued to rant, then continued: ‘… Lose your job? Of course you’re not going to lose your job. Jock loves you. Leave it to me. I’ll take care of it. You take care of you. You hear me? You take care of you.’

  ‘Hi everyone!’

  Cassie Clay stepped off the Brew set into a crowd of well-wishers on the street. Like everyone at Saturn, she’d been encouraged to start doing a few more meet-and-greets with fans to try to win back those viewers who had gone back to Cuppa during the Cardwell Kidnap story, and who had then discovered Roxie, and found themselves liking her.

  ‘Hello there,’ Cassie said, reaching out to shake hands. ‘Great to see you all again. Hello, your name’s Annie, isn’t it? Haven’t I seen you at one of these before? How’s your daughter? Hello, hello, hello everyone.’

  Some in the crowd had Brew caps for Cassie to sign. Some had pictures of Cassie from back when she’d been on the pop star reality show, and others had Brew coffee cups, handed out by the interns, to make everyone look like a mega-fan. Most of the people in the group were young and female, but there was one older guy, standing towards the back of the bunch, using one hand to smooth his chestnut comb-over.

  Cassie turned to him, smiling broadly. ‘Hello, I’m Cassie. What’s your name?’ she asked, extending a hand. ‘So nice to meet you. What’s that? Do you have something for me?’

  The man grinned. He opened his green recyclable shopping bag and reached into it with dark fingernails.

  ‘Yes’ he said. ‘I think you’re beautiful. I was saving this for somebody special, but she has gone away now. Do you like chocolate?’

  PJ parked his Porsche in the car park under the apartment building that housed what had once been known to his mates as PJ’s Ultimate Bachelor Pad.

  Ruefully, he thought, Yeah, well, not anymore.

  Roxie Moore had moved in, and PJ wasn’t happy about it. He had lately been unhappy about a lot of things, but he was particularly unhappy about that. Because how exactly had it happened?

  He was still trying to figure that out.

  None of this had been his idea. Everything had been Roxie’s big idea. Okay, sure, he’d agreed to go along with the dumb-arse plan – kidnap Fox-Piper – with the idea that it would make him the hero of one of Stellar’s biggest ever stories, but how had he gone from plotting to living and working with a basically crazy person?

  Because however you looked at it, he was trapped.

  PJ clicked the lock on his vehicle and went up in the elevator to the marble foyer of his apartment. It was early, and he was juggling two takeaway coffees on a tray and an organic blueberry muffin in a brown paper bag as he pushed open the door.

  ‘Babe?’

  Roxie didn’t answer. She sometimes got up after sending him out to do a coffee run on a Saturday morning, and he’d come back to find her in the kitchen in her knickers and one of his bespoke shirts, checking herself out on Instagram on his iPad. More often than not, he’d find her still in bed, checking herself out on her phone.

  PJ crossed the kitchen, pushed on the bedroom door with his foot, and saw Roxie’s caramel limbs extending from the sheets.

  ‘Finally.’ She pouted.

  ‘New barista. Bloody slow.’

  He put the takeaway cups and the muffin down, and went to take his shoes off.

  ‘Did you talk to Maven?’

  ‘What, this morning?’ he said. ‘Come on, Roxie. No.’

  ‘You said you would.’

  ‘I said I would today. I didn’t mean first thing.’

  Roxie pouted again. ‘I’m starting to think you don’t want her to announce that we’re a couple,’ she said. ‘What I don’t get is, why you don’t want people to know? Because you still want to play the field, right?’

  PJ dropped his head down. ‘No, babe,’ he said. ‘I do not want to still play the field. I never played the field, anyway, and not since I met you. You’ve only just started on the couch. You’re the sexy new thing. New kid on the block! I know what Maven’s going to say if I tell her we’re an item. She’s going to say it’s not good for the show. If you keep saying you’re single, they can do a lot of publicity, going on about how you’re trying to meet Mr Right.’

  ‘I’ve met my Mr Right,’ Roxie said, sulkily.

  ‘I get that,’ said PJ, turning towards her. ‘But these things, you’ve got to plan them. You should talk to Emma. Maven organised the proposal, the wedding, practically the due date of her babies . . .’

  Roxie relented, at least long enough for PJ to get his pants off and get back into bed.

  She picked up her coffee and sipped. ‘This is good,’ she said contentedly. ‘You should go back there tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, babe,’ sighed PJ. ‘I will.’

  He pretended to sip and savour, but inside he was seething, because again, how had this happened? No really, how? For sure, PJ had needed something to give his career a bit of a boost. For sure, he’d stayed too long on the Cuppa couch. For sure, people’s memory of him as a reporter – an actual journalist, who scored big interviews and broke big stories – had faded. For sure, he needed something to happen to help get him a gig as a top reporter on a show like Investigate before he went the way of Bunny and Brian. But kidnap?

  Absolutely no way. That’s what he’d told Roxie. Absolutely no way are we going near Emma’s kids. We’ve got to think of something else.

  ‘Like what?’ she’d replied. ‘You thinking we should maybe start a bushfire? Because I don’t see anything that’s as big as that One Black Day footage that Emma’s got in her reel.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy. Let’s just think of something else.’

  But what?

  PJ didn’t know, and eventually he’d let Roxie talk him round, because she was right, what was the big deal? Emma’s kids were forever being carted around by strangers. How often had she gone on about it on the show? The juggle! The fucking juggle. Picking one of them up from daycare wasn’t even kidnapping, it was more what happened to them every day of the fucking week. And it wasn’t as if the kid was going to be in any danger. They’d look after her, obviously. Not him. He couldn’t pe
rsonally pick the kid up, because he was PJ. And Roxie couldn’t, because she was Roxie, and Roxie liked to think of herself as famous.

  Instagram famous.

  PJ couldn’t remember how they’d come up with the idea of using Liam’s mum to pull it off. No, hang on, yes he could: Emma herself had mentioned doing something on her – a ‘Cuppa Love’ – because apparently she’d been a foster carer. They hadn’t ended up doing the ‘Cuppa Love’, but the idea had got PJ thinking. Foster carers took care of kids. That’s all they did. They took care of little kids. And hadn’t PJ been the one to introduce Liam to Stellar in the first place? The bloke had been doing shitty shifts in a prestige car yard with barking dogs in the middle of the fucking night when PJ had first met him in the gym. He’d lifted that guy’s arse out of a sorry situation. So he kind of owed PJ one, didn’t he?

  Roxie’s theory was that a kidnapping would lift PJ’s profile. It would get people at Stellar – principally Maven – thinking about making better use of his talent, especially if Cuppa was for the chopping block, or else they could use it to give the whole show a bit of a refresh. Because the minute Fox got found, Emma would have to leave. How could she stay, after the fact of her being famous had put her own daughter at risk?

  Not that Fox-Piper’s life would ever actually be in danger. But nobody would know that.

  Only Liam – provided he agreed – PJ and Roxie would know that. And provided that everything went to plan, Emma would leave the show, and PJ would get a leg-up to Investigate, and Roxie could have a red-hot go at getting on the Cuppa couch. Which wasn’t, to PJ’s mind, an unimaginable goal. Roxie wasn’t a nobody. She was a fitness model. A social media entrepreneur! She had a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. In the old days, maybe you had to know how to conduct an interview to be a TV star but these days, Instagram was it.

  But could they pull it off? They’d have to wait for a day when Emma was doing some kind of promotional event, like the Brushed Diamond lunch she did every year. They’d have to get Liam to drop her there, and get his mum to go and pick up Fox from daycare, and if anyone questioned her, she could tell them to call Liam, who would confirm that yes, he’d sent his mum to pick up Fox, because Emma wasn’t able to get there, because she was on stage.

  Like that would be new to them? Emma was forever not able to get to the phone.

  But let’s say they insisted on speaking to Emma. Let’s say they didn’t let Fox go, well, Liam would just have to tell Emma his idea had been to bring Fox to her at the lunch, as a surprise, since she was always missing out on ‘Mummy and Me’ time – and hope she didn’t freak out too much.

  But the ideal situation – the basis of the plan – was that nobody would even care that a nice lady had come to get Fox because wasn’t that situation normal? How many nannies had Emma had? Three, four? How many family members had been called upon? Heaps.

  So Liam’s mum would pick Fox up and take her home for the night. Then when Brandon came for Fox, she’d be missing. The staff would freak out, saying she’d been picked up and it would look like a kidnapping. Emma would be distraught. PJ would step up to anchor the marathon coverage. There might be CCTV but it would be grainy and who would recognise Liam’s mum? Nobody! The ransom demand would come in the next day and obviously it would get paid – no question, Jock would pay it – and Liam and PJ could even split it.

  Bitcoin. They’d need it in Bitcoin. Untraceable. And as soon as they had it, Liam would take Fox to Roxie, who would put the kid in a pram and leave her somewhere safe.

  Like where? That’s what PJ had wanted to know. Where can you leave a child that’s safe?

  Roxie had thought of the Bondi surf club. You could leave a pram there, covered in a sarong, with a sleeping baby inside, no problem.

  There were always cops nearby. The kid would be alone for what, a few minutes? Ten minutes?

  PJ hadn’t been convinced.

  What if you get seen?

  Who is going to see me? I’m just a nanny in a sunhat, with a baby in a pram under a sarong.

  Roxie hadn’t been remotely worried about getting caught, not even a little bit afraid. Was that a millennial thing? A make-me-famous-at-any-cost thing? A social media, ‘I’ll do anything for Facebook Likes’ thing?

  She’d urged PJ on, ordered him to at least start sounding Liam out. Because who knows how a bloke is going to react to an idea like that? Liam seemed pretty close to Emma, pretty protective of her, in a genuine way. But a million bucks is a million bucks, and in that man-of-few-words way of his, he’d agreed. Yes, he could get his mum – the foster carer – to collect Fox from daycare provided she didn’t have to know it was actually a kidnapping. Yes, they’d keep the kid for a night. Yes, he’d issue a ransom demand by email from a burner phone the next day.

  They’d all get paid. They’d return the child, and PJ would be the hero of the story, not only for his amazing coverage all night long and for his concern and sympathy and gallantry towards Emma, but because he’d also make sure he was there when Fox-Piper got found.

  So far, so good.

  Except that it had all gone so badly wrong.

  First up, that idiot Brandon had forgotten to pick his own daughter up from daycare. PJ had been out at the restaurant on the evening of the kidnapping, waiting, waiting, waiting for somebody – probably Maven – to call and tell him that Fox was missing and he should get into the studio as fast as possible, but no call had come, because it had taken Emma until 8 pm to even notice that her daughter wasn’t where she was supposed to be.

  Talk about a clusterfuck.

  They’d all been not daring to speak to one another, until finally, the story had broken. Finally, he’d gone on air. Finally, they’d gotten through the night, and been able to issue the ransom demand and then, fucking Pap!

  Pap had found Fox-Piper before the ransom had even been paid. Talk about amateur hour. And what had he done? He’d told Maven – fucking Maven! – who decided to tell Brandon, so they could all see Fox being rescued by her dad.

  What a fucking disaster. Because how was that story going to end? Brandon would turn up at Liam’s place, and what would Liam say?

  PJ told me to do it.

  That’s what he’d say.

  And PJ would go to jail. That’s what he’d been thinking after Maven had called him to meet her at the McDonald’s car park to tell him that Fox had been found. That’s what he’d been thinking as they all headed to Liam’s house: I am going to jail.

  Because Brandon was going to barge in there, and Liam was not going to cover for PJ, because why would he cover for PJ? None of it had even been his idea.

  And then, out of the blue, a miracle.

  Brandon had brought his handgun and he’d blown Liam away. Which was, on one hand, a bit of a shame. On the other hand, PJ had undeniably dodged his own metaphorical bullet, because who else besides Liam had been in on the plan?

  Not his mum, Ellen. Liam hadn’t wanted her involved. Not Maven. Not Brandon. Not Emma.

  Just him, and bloody Roxie, which explained how he’d ended up where he now found himself, in her web.

  And if that weren’t bad enough, Emma had his job on Investigate. The job he’d been meant to get. And Roxie? She’d ended up on the couch. Not only that, she had him by the balls, and what could he do about it?

  Not a fucking thing.

  ‘Your new barista is good,’ she said, purring a little over the disposable cup. ‘Definitely go back there tomorrow.’

  PJ glanced at her. Jesus fucking Christ. She had him over a barrel, and she knew it.

  Wednesday 27 January

  4 pm

  (Fifteen Weeks Later)

  Franklin sat in his office, examining the footage from Gallery Main Street – not for the first time, or the second, or even the third, but perhaps the one-thousandth time. He leaned in. He zoomed. The problem with CCTV was the images were never great. They were always grainy. He had to squint to see what he needed to see.

 
; There was Fox, standing alone. There was the security guard, getting down to speak to her. There was the woman he now knew to be Ellen, rushing up to take Fox into her arms before walking away.

  Okay, good.

  He switched to another screen, and there, near the butcher, was Brandon. Franklin checked the time stamps again: Fox had been loose and alone at Gallery Main Street at 1:16 pm, and Brandon at 1:12.

  What were the chances?

  He’d been buying ribs, he said. His butcher had confirmed that. No, he hadn’t seen Fox. He’d gone in and straight out.

  Was it possible? Of course it was. Just as it was possible that Brandon had forgotten to collect Fox on the day she’d disappeared. But something about the story – the whole story, from go to whoa and back again – made Franklin uneasy. Something didn’t add up. Maybe it wasn’t Brandon’s story. Maybe Brandon’s story was true.

  But something didn’t add up.

  He called up the images from Liam’s mother’s house, including all the footage – thousands of stills as well as video – shot by Pap. He watched Brandon kicking the door in. He watched him storming down the hallway. He saw him pause and look in on Ellen. He saw him thunder into the kitchen and out the back door. He watched the confrontation in the garden. He saw Liam looking up from inside the cage, saying, ‘Where’s Emma?’

  Where’s Emma?

  Why ‘Where’s Emma?’

  One thing Franklin had long known was that Emma had received a message from Liam before the alarm had been raised.

  She had texted Liam: Everything okay for tomorrow?

  Easy to explain. Liam picked her up every day.

  He had texted: Yes, all good, see you tomorrow.

  Like he might do on any ordinary day.

  Except it hadn’t been an ordinary day. Did those messages mean something else? Where’s Emma? Something about it didn’t add up. It just didn’t add up.

  Thursday 28 January

  Noon

  ‘We all wish her well, of course. Just repeating a little real estate news: that was Emma Cardwell’s home, selling there at auction for a very good price . . .’