Times of Trouble

by Victoria Rollison

  ‘Just call her back, give her the number again. She might answer this time’

  I did as I was told. It didn’t hurt to show Kylie how urgently I needed to speak to her. She didn’t answer again, so I left a message with my number, and asked her to call as soon as she could. When I got off the phone, Liam had the car keys in his hand.

  ‘Where are you going? We have no idea where she even works.’

  Now he was headed for the door, I had to jog from the room to catch up.

  ‘If we are in the car ready, when she calls back she can tell us where she works, and we can go straight there.’

  It sort of made sense, but I couldn’t help but notice Liam was really jumpy. We had a lead, which was great, but he seemed frightened it would slip through our fingers. Maybe it was because of all the disappointments he had so far on the search that he couldn’t bear the idea of getting close, but not finding her.

  ‘What if Kylie doesn’t call back? We’ll just be driving around in circles, wasting petrol. We may as well wait and see where we’re heading. It might not be far, or it could be ages away.’

  Liam didn’t even pause to consider my objection. He was already getting into the driver’s seat and starting the car. There was even less point him driving away without me, I was the one with the phone. So I jumped in, and went along with his slightly crazy plan.

  ‘Just keep calling her,’ he instructed. ‘She’s bound to answer eventually.’

  ‘When she sees I have called, she will call back. When we find out where the medical centre is, what do we do then? Sophie has been there, but that doesn’t mean we’ll know exactly where she is now.’ I said.

  Liam looked at me like I was speaking a different language.

  ‘So? There are plenty of ways to track her down from there. She will have gone to a medical centre close by where she is staying. We'll go to all the closest hotels. We’ll stalk the streets if we have to, knocking on doors! And she might have left an address with the nurse, or even said where she was staying. Anything is possible.’

  ‘I really doubt she’s left an address with them… but it can’t hurt to go find out.’

  Kylie was a good lead, a great one, but it didn’t mean we had found Sophie. She might have gone somewhere a long way from there by now.

  ‘The quicker we can get there the better. It’s probably going to shut before 7:00, so we can’t waste any more time. Call Kylie again.’

  Not having any better suggestion, I called again, getting the same voice mail message for the third time. Liam appeared to be heading towards the city. But there weren’t likely to be many medical centres there.

  ‘Why don’t you head towards the suburbs past Newtown, otherwise we’ll just get stuck in the traffic in the city.’

  Liam pretended not to hear me. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tight that his elbows were bent, and he sat forward in his seat. I had to admit that three months of enquiries like we made today would drive me a bit nuts. And to think, when I met him, I worried he wasn’t interested in solving the case. This was, I knew now more than ever, a complete misjudgement on my part. He wanted to find Sophie as much as I did. I’m sure part of his motivation to find her came from his desire to prove himself as a private investigator, but there was more to it than that. The way he looked at Sophie’s photo, his expression definitely had an emotional edge to it. And add to that the phone call I overheard him having with his mum. As hard as it was to believe, it was as if he had somehow managed to form an attachment to her, even though he had never met her. Was Sophie so attractive that men could fall in love with her photo? It wouldn’t surprise me. Trust Sophie to have a guy like Liam give up his life to search for her, when she didn’t even know he existed! It was obvious I didn’t have that affect on him. He looked straight through me, just like every man I ever met.

  As I predicted, the city was in gridlock, and soon we were stuck in it. The lack of movement seemed to make Liam even more tense. He kept glancing at the phone on my lap, willing it to ring. It was obvious he wanted me to call again, and I had just picked it up to redial, when suddenly it started to vibrate, and I got such a shock I almost dropped it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, is that Ellen? This is Kylie.’ Thank god.

  Liam could obviously hear Kylie speaking, as he veered off the road, and pulled up at the curb, ready to decide which direction to drive in.

  ‘Hi Kylie, thanks so much for ringing me back. Sorry I called so many times. It’s just it’s a bit of an emergency.’

  ‘Yeah, I got that. So you’re looking for Sophie? How strange that I saw her on Saturday! When I got the message from Tina, I wrote straight back.’

  ‘Thanks so much. You have no idea what a huge help you’ve been. Can you tell me anything else that might help us to find out exactly where she is?’

  I could hear Kylie breathing into the phone. I was pleased she was giving it some thought, but Liam’s eyes were boring into me, waiting for directions.

  ‘Well, the medical centre is in Dee Why. Do you know where that is? It’s on the main street, Pittwater Road.’

  I had absolutely no idea, but Liam had also heard, and was pulling away from the curb. The car behind us beeped loudly as it avoided running into us, but Liam didn’t even hesitate, and we were back in the traffic.

  ‘How far away from the city is that?’ I asked.

  ‘About half an hour, maybe 40 minutes if there is a lot of traffic. Are you going there now? I’m not working today.’

  I still wasn’t sure exactly what we were doing, but I wasn’t going to tell Kylie this.

  ‘What time does it shut? We might visit now, if it’s still going to be open.’

  ‘It shuts in an hour so you should make it. I wasn’t working on the desk when Sophie came in, but I saw her in the waiting room.’

  ‘Are you sure it was her? It’s been a while since we were at school...’

  ‘I’m absolutely positive. I’m really good with faces, and I think she recognised me too. She was acting a bit strangely, though. Did Tina mention she had a baby?’

  ‘Yeah, she did. What do you mean by strange?’

  ‘Well, when I saw her I went over to say hello. It’s not often I see people I know in Sydney, but I knew it was her. And she sort of just pretended not to hear me.’

  Was it my job to apologise on her behalf? I didn’t think so, but Kylie was intimating it was.

  ‘She’s going through a hard time. That’s one of the reasons we’re desperate to find her.’

  A ‘hard time’ had been how mum had described my situation to Liam. But how hard had it been compared to Sophie’s?

  ‘Yeah, she did look a bit stressed, and really tired, too. I guess a baby can do that to you. Her baby was sick; I heard her say that to the nurse at the desk. And it was crying most of the time she was in the waiting room. I would have sat with her, but she was avoiding eye contact with me. I thought it was a bit strange really.’ Kylie definitely wanted to say ‘rude’ in the place of strange, but she didn’t have the heart.

  ‘Did she give an address where she was living?’ I asked, desperate to see how useful this lead really was.

  ‘Not sure. She would have had to fill in a form to see a doctor, so she might have put her address on that. If you get there tonight, the girl at the desk will be Charlene. I’ll call her now, and tell her to expect you. I’ll explain you’re looking for Sophie because you’re worried about her.’

  ‘Ok. Thanks so much Kylie. I can’t tell you how relieved we are to finally have some idea where she might be.’

  ‘No worries, glad to help. She has changed a lot since I last saw her, but I’m sure it was her.’

  I was about to hang up, but had one last question. ‘How has she changed? Do you mean her looks?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean she used to have that gorgeous long dark hair. We were all so jealous! But now it’s really short, like a crop cut, and it’s white blonde! She still looks stunning, but if I wasn’t so g
ood with faces I wouldn’t have picked it was her. Anyway, good luck finding her, I’ll definitely let you know if she comes in again.’

  ‘Thanks again Kylie.’ Well, that was extremely interesting.

  ‘Did you hear that? She’s cut her hair and dyed it blonde. Good idea to disguise herself. It might be one of the reasons they haven’t found her yet,’ I suggested, proud of Sophie for managing to evade her pursuers.

  ‘How do you know they haven’t found her? They might know exactly where she is, and just be waiting to...’

  Before Liam could finish his sentence, he looked at me, and realised his statement was not going to be useful.

  ‘So where is Dee Why? Kylie said it is half an hour away, and the medical centre shuts in an hour. It sounds like it would be in the middle of nowhere...’

  ‘It’s on the northern beaches. It won’t take long, once I get onto the bridge’.

  So Sophie was staying further out from Sydney than we guessed. Our search would have been useless, if Kylie hadn’t sent us in the right direction. Liam had never mentioned that Sophie might have been living somewhere other than close to the centre of Sydney. But it made sense to me now. She was a sitting duck in the city. Just as we never considered an outer suburb, the people after her wouldn’t have either. And anyway, there were so many places to choose from.

  ‘Let’s just hope she put her address on the form. If Charlie is sick, she would have done whatever she could to get a doctor to see him, and maybe you need to give an address before you can get an appointment.’

  ‘She could have made it up,’ Liam added, though he looked desperately like he hoped that wasn’t the case.

  He was driving too fast, accelerating at the cars in front, and then swerving around them as if they were in his way. I held onto my seat to avoid swaying with the car as we made our way in spurts over the bridge. Out my window, I watched the harbour fly past. The water looked cool and calm, with boats bobbing in the bays, and ferries chugging towards Circular Quay. I hadn’t felt calm since before I found out about the mortgage. I realised now that mum had probably been frantic with worry for months, knowing something was scaring Sophie.

  And Sophie probably couldn’t remember what it felt like to be calm, either. How could she send that email to mum, and then not make contact again? Why involve us, and then make it near impossible to find her? I knew I still resented her for leaving, and not trying to stay in contact. Was it possible she was too ashamed of what she was doing for a living to talk to us? Maybe it wasn’t anything to do with her forgetting us, or not caring about what we were doing.

  A niggling anxiety that I had been trying to suppress resurfaced as I thought about Sophie’s absence from my life. Why hadn’t I tried to contact Sophie before now? In the last seven years, I could have made some sort of effort to find her, even just joining Facebook or Googling her name. But I never tried. And I knew why. At first I was too busy trying to prove I could succeed. Then when I failed, I felt ashamed and didn’t want Sophie to know what a failure I was. I’d always convinced myself that as soon as I made it as a pianist, I would find her, and tell her how amazing my life was. But since that hadn’t happened, I hadn’t any motivation to speak to her. Was that selfish of me? Or just plain pathetic? I’d always thought Sophie was living a marvellous life, and that was why she didn’t have time for her family. But maybe she wasn’t contacting me for the same reason I wasn’t contacting her. Maybe she was just as embarrassed about her life as I was about mine. I suddenly wanted more than anything to tell her I still loved her, that I still needed her in my life. And that it didn’t matter what trouble she was in.

  The memory of the last fight I had with Sophie suddenly flooded into my mind. I’d avoided thinking about it, because of the feeling of guilt that came with it. Mum and I had been fighting with her so much, we hardly ever saw her. She had dropped out of university at the beginning of her second year, and was working in a bar. She said she felt a drama degree wasn't going to help her get acting work; I remember mum asking her how bar work was going to contribute. She moved out as soon as she finished school, living with four friends, and hardly ever coming home to visit. She dropped in occasionally, usually when she needed something. Like to borrow money off mum.

  I remembered that this particular time, she came in to do her washing. I was particularly annoyed with her because she hadn't bothered to come to my latest concert; it had been a really important night for me. I was doing some washing, so she asked me to do hers as well. I said I would, to avoid a fight. But I was really pissed off because she had literally three loads of washing in a huge suitcase. I angrily shoved the first load in the machine, checking pockets for tissues. But instead of tissues, I found something in her jeans pocket that made me angrier than ever before with her. It was a tiny zip lock bag, with what I assumed was dope in it. The smell was unfamiliar, but pungent enough to make me fairly sure I was right. I didn't hide what I’d found. I took it straight to mum, and told her what I thought it was. What a self righteous little goody two-shoes I was! Mum was furious. She went over to Sophie's house, and yelled at her in front of her friends. The next day, Sophie woke me up by barging into my room, screaming that I was a little snitch. She looked like she wanted to strangle me.

  The next time we saw her, she announced she was moving to London, having booked her flight with the entirety of her life’s savings. Mum and I dropped her at the airport, and we managed to be quite civil with each other. Sophie was too excited to leave us angry. And when we got the post card, with the loving message from her, it made us feel like the fighting was forgotten. But I always thought that was the final straw for our relationship, when I dobbed on her to mum. If I’d known she would disappear from my life as a result of it, I would never have said a thing. The article about Danny's murder had said that drugs were found in the apartment. Had Sophie graduated from marijuana to cocaine? I desperately hoped not.

  The traffic became clearer as we got further from the bridge, and eventually Liam said he thought we were only a few minutes from Dee Why. As we drove up the main road along the coast, I noticed there were literally hundreds of different apartment buildings on every street coming off the main road. Was it possible Sophie was living in a flat? And if so, how on earth would we work out which one? An address would really help...

  ‘Can you look out your side for something that could be a medical centre? I thought it would be obvious, but this place is bigger than I thought,’ Liam conceded.

  Maybe I should have asked Kylie for a street number. I lurched forward suddenly as Liam screeched on the brakes.

  ‘There it is! We just went past it!’

  I looked behind us, and saw the distinctive blue cross on the sign above a big white building. Liam parked on the road, and we both jumped out, almost running towards the front doors. As we entered the waiting room, forty eyes turned and stared at us, trying to see what the emergency was. But as they all registered that we looked completely healthy, they went back to their magazines. Liam got to the desk first, and before he could say anything, the woman sitting behind it said: ‘Are you the people looking for their sister?’

  God bless Kylie! She had called as she promised.

  ‘Yes,’ we both said in unison.

  ‘Did she leave an address?’ Liam wasted no time asking the question.

  The nurse was already rifling through a pile of paperwork as she explained: ‘When Kylie called, I had a look through the new patient forms. I remember your sister. She was very worried about her baby. What a gorgeous child he is, such beautiful coloured skin. But there was something else as well. She just seemed really on edge...’

  ‘Yeah, she would be.’ I didn’t offer any other explanation. It had to be Sophie.

  ‘I remember approximately what time she was here. I was about to finish. So this must be her... is her name Grace Patterson?’

  Liam and I both looked at each other, and shook our heads. Why would she use that name? Unless it was totally ran
domly made up. Before we could answer, a man who must have been a doctor came through a door from behind the reception area, and asked the nurse for a patient’s file. As the nurse went to the filing cabinet, I picked up the sheet that she had been looking at.

  ‘I think it’s her handwriting,’ I said.

  Liam looked at me with eyebrows raised, as if to ask whether I would remember her handwriting after all this time. Why wouldn’t I? Hand writing doesn’t change that much. But then I saw the address section filled in, and knew it was definitely Sophie. Back to her old Beatles code, she had written 15 Jude St, Peppers Hill, NSW. Didn’t anyone notice that this suburb doesn’t exist? Liam noticed...

  ‘Peppers Hill, is there such place? Doubt it...’

  ‘No, it’s her Beatles code again. That’s a fake address...Hey Jude and Sergeant Pepper.’

  The nurse could see the disappointment on our faces.

  ‘Did she put a fake address? I haven’t entered these in the computer yet. I probably would have noticed once I did...’

  ‘Back to the drawing board,’ I said, feeling like a deflated balloon.

  Liam wasn’t ready to let the wind go out of his sails yet. ‘Do you keep a file, even if the information isn’t put in the computer?’ he asked. ‘Would there be a record of her appointment with a doctor?’

  The nurse didn’t say anything, but she kept her head still, and directed her eyes at the doctor, who was flicking through the file she had given him. Then she put her finger to her lips, and we both understood. She wasn’t allowed to show us someone’s file, as medical records were private. Of course they were. We should have thought of that. None of us said anything as we stood and watched the doctor reading. After what seemed like minutes, he finally put the file back in the cabinet, and left through the door he had come in by.