His colleague had already taken a bite from it. Victor, shaking his head, watched in growing panic as his companion bit innocently into the apple again. Was Victor’s nightmare, previously confined to his sleep, now invading his waking hours?
The nurse presenting the half-eaten apple. Victor refusing it. Objecting that someone had already bitten into it. But this time, his lucid nightmare, for the first time ever, continued.
‘You bit it, remember?’ she said. Over loud. Close to his ear.
‘No one else has been eating it. You forgot you were in the middle of eating your own apple, that’s all.’
Looking around, he saw that he was in a dementia ward, next to his mother. If he was to escape, he knew what he had to say. ‘Oh, I remember, yes. You’re right, nurse. So I don’t need to be here.’
But the most frightening part of the nightmare was that Victor did not remember eating the apple. He was lying so he could go home. But the more he tried to convince the nurse that he had recovered his memory, the more bored she became. He knew what she was thinking. Just another oldie, to be humoured…
‘Hey, Mad Victor’s away with the fairies again.’
‘Can’t believe he used to be in charge. Hey, time to go, mate.’
Right in Victor’s ear, like the nurse in his dream. He jerked his head away. Nothing to do but to mechanically follow their lead, still hoping to pass as just one of the gang. In comradely silence they straightened their clothes, finger-combed their hair, gathered strength for the night shift ahead.
Before they left the balcony, the others threw their apple cores into the ocean. Victor wished he could rid himself as easily of his own nightmare fruit.
15
YOGA FOR RELAXATION
On the swimming pool deck Tibetan prayer flags fluttered over the mock Victorian gas lamps, which disguised the security cameras. Lily’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the rainbow prisms sent out into the foggy night air.
Teacher Shanti was lying on her back on a yellow yoga mat, her Ecokup by her side. She was wearing flowing red pants and a tight black singlet, even in this freezing night air, and from this distance, she looked half her age. Just as she had while dancing, lithe and barefoot, in the ballroom.
Lily gingerly made her way through neat rows of blue mats on which a dozen other punters were lying on their backs, copying Shanti, eyes closed. It was only when Lily almost tripped over a pile of folded blankets that she realised how drunk she must be. But Shanti must have known, surely, that people would arrive drunk? How could anyone be expected to concentrate? To top it off, Shanti’s soft harp music was drowned out by the wail of a far-off folksinger doing soulful Dylan.
Lily settled down on her mat and let out a loud sigh, glad she had changed into her track suit. In front of the class, Shanti was still in the same pose, extending it, perhaps, until everyone had arrived. Lily was afraid that she might snore, so she was anxious for the class to start before she drifted off.
Lying still like this, with nothing to do, always set her fretting. About getting her cruise story published. About her son. Deliberately, she distracted herself by trying to recall other yoga classes she had attended. Would this one be similar? Awareness exercises, turning their heads from side to side, observing their surroundings? Fingertip exercises? Toe twirls? She raised her big toe now, trying to keep the others down. She could do that. But when would Shanti start her instructions?
Inevitably, given the puzzling presence of her old neighbours aboard the ship, Lily started to think about the old days. Teddy of course. Another woman’s husband, true, but all she had wanted was a sperm donation. At first, anyway. She just had this urgent craving for a baby and she was getting older every day. Her previous three boyfriends had been scared off by her obsession, so that no-strings donation, with no relationship at all, had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. The fact that Teddy was married was supposed to mean that he was even less likely to get attached. But then, the unexpected.
Once she was pregnant, Teddy had become so attentive. So manly and fatherly. They had run off together. She had moved out first, then he told Shanti he was leaving a few weeks later, so she could never put two and two together. Thank god she didn’t know. It would have made this cruise … But then Teddy had left Lily and the baby for someone else in the end. So maybe she could tell Shanti now that they were, literally, in the same boat.
But when on earth was the class going to start? She closed her eyes and was soon far away. Having a bath, the bathwater getting alarmingly lower, gurgling loudly down the plughole until she was startled awake by a rattling sound.
She had been snoring with her mouth open. Embarrassed, she wiped her mouth, sat up and looked around. Where was everyone? All the other mats were empty. Lily’s watch showed that two hours had passed.
At the front of the improvised classroom, Shanti was still lying on her mat. Was she transcending? The rest of the students must have given up, politely tiptoeing away instead of disturbing her deep meditative state. Only Lily, shoes in hand, lingered by Shanti’s side, calling her name softly. Sweat was pouring from Shanti’s brow and upper lip, though she looked pale and cold.
Pose of the Corpse?
Lily screamed. She started running for help but immediately crashed into the sudden bulk of Parson Paul, who had appeared as if from nowhere.
Paulie had been right. The bittersweet sludge of Shanti’s green smoothie had masked the acrid drug he had injected through the wall of the Ecokup. A good reason not to drink superfoods or dabble in the devilry of yoga. The drug he had chosen was even stronger than the powder he had given Kirstin to slip into Monica’s drink at the banquet after she had gone off-piste. All in the name of the Lord, for the Prosperity Church must prosper.
‘As the ship’s medical officer, I am personally taking charge of this emergency,’ he assured Lily.
And, at least at first, the way he swung into action inspired Lily’s confidence. The authoritative way he summoned a hospital trolley and began wheeling Shanti away to the infirmary. But when Lily made a move as if to accompany the trolley, he blocked her way so abruptly that she was less sure that Shanti was in safe hands.
‘Don’t worry. You just go with these guys, Lily.’
She froze. How did he know her name? Just then, two burly security guards appeared, one on each side of her.
‘They’ll take you for a coffee to restore yourself, my dear.’
And so she was escorted in silence down the lift and into the Bali Hai, where she felt calmed neither by the projections of crashing waves on its three walls, nor by the sound of monkeys chattering over the rumble of nearby engines.
The Bali Hai had all the appearance of being a discreetly secure area, with tall bamboo and rush screens failing to disguise three solid metal walls. She feared that a fourth might slam down at any moment, cutting her off from the surrounding cafés.
16
THE BALI HAI
It was three in the morning and Lily, her raised shoulders betraying her extreme anxiety, was still sitting in the straw-thatched Bali Hai. Had hours passed or only minutes since that yoga class? In spite of her fear, Lily, intrepid journalist, could sense a huge story. So far, no fourth wall had slammed down, but she still did not want to be uselessly sitting under that ridiculous raffia umbrella, coconut water on the table. But the security guards were slouching at the next table. And she was over-tired and jumpy. Next thing she would be imagining that she could hear strange moans from behind the bamboo walls or glimpse ghosts in bathing suits.
With a sudden clatter of chairs, the security guards rose to attention, saluting the captain as she swept in. She ignored her men and surprised Lily by sitting down at her table, having first pulled the chair a little farther away from her. Removing her cap so carefully that Lily wondered if her glamorous hair was a wig, the captain cleared her throat and began a speech that flowed so easily that Lily guessed it had been rehearsed. It was so full of legalese that Lily did not quite gra
sp its meaning at first, then certain ominous words clarified her fatigued mind.
‘… detain you in order that you may assist us with our investigations … the only one on board who had a relationship with both victims.’
Victims? Was Shanti okay? But either way, what did it have to do with her? What in hell was the captain talking about? Gazing at her white gloves as she rotated her cap, the captain shook her head at Lily’s bewilderment, as if at schoolgirl intransigence.
‘Better come clean, Lily. Your friend Shanti has been poisoned. Your old enemy Ariadne has disappeared.’
‘She’s not my …’
‘Tell me, whose idea was it for you three ladies to all meet up on board?’
‘It’s just a coincidence,’ Lily protested.
It sounded weak, even to her own ears.
‘Sure. Three women. Four if we include Monica Frequen.’
‘How is she involved?’
The captain raised her eyebrows sceptically.
‘Also disappeared.’
‘But there was a note on the cabin doors saying she was ill.’
‘We didn’t want to cause panic on board. Look, back to the facts. We have four women on board who at one time shared the same apartment block and had reason to dislike each other.’
‘But we hardly even knew each other. We had no reason to hate each other.’
‘We have a witness who contradicts you.’
‘Who?’
‘All in good time. We know all about Ariadne Jones’s poison-pen letters. Nasty girl. She revealed that Teddy was the father of your child in a letter slipped under Shanti’s door.’
At this news, Lily’s jaw dropped so much that it was now lower than her raised shoulders.
‘You and Teddy had to run away because of her, when what you had really planned was being the secret mistress of a married man who lived almost next door.’
Lily shuddered. What kind of investigative journalist was she if Shanti had known all this time? And the conspiracy which the captain was outlining was horribly plausible. It was crazy, but it was at least as convincing a conspiracy as the CIA stories which she herself had fallen for. She could see that she would never get to write her feature about the cruise ship. Instead, some other hack would write one about Lily Zelinski’s shipboard crimes. She saw herself falsely accused, even convicted. As a journalist, she knew how much people wanted to believe what they were told, to trust in authority. She could see no way out. She was trapped in this tropical café, this bamboo cage, imprisoned on the ship. At the captain’s mercy.
‘You didn’t count on Paulie … er … the ship’s medical officer turning up so soon after you’d spiked Shanti’s drink bottle while she was lying on her mat, did you?’
Lily tried to head off the attack. ‘But you can’t blame me for Monica’s disappearance too?’
‘She was the only one of you who had made anything of her life, wasn’t she? You a hack, she a star. Bad feeling there. Yes, highly unlikely that it is just a coincidence, you three coming on the ship together, when she was to be the keynote speaker. No smoke without fire. Any jury would agree.’
Jury? At the word, Lily slumped, her chin in her hands, elbows on the table, while she heard herself, in a small voice now, protest once more that they had all simply won raffle tickets for the cruise.
‘Nice try’, the captain sneered, as she carefully replaced her cap. ‘But one of you must have arranged it. The tickets are fake.’
‘What about Monica’s so-called son?’ asked Lily in desperation. After all, sometime during her dark eclipse, he had abandoned his ‘mother’. ‘Whoever he is, he must be at the bottom of all this.’
‘Toyboy was in bed with Kylie from the gym. Alibi.’
So. Lily finally accepted the impossible. She stood accused of being a murderer. Spiking Shanti’s drink would hardly have taken much strength, just an overdose of ordinary sleeping pills. At last the captain thumped her open hand on the table, resting the case for the prosecution.
But at that exact moment, when the accused, hearing the sound of the judge’s gavel after judgement, should abandon all hope, Lily’s survival instincts instead became fiercely aroused. The case was far from closed. Just who was this mystery witness the captain intended to produce?
Lily knew that uncovering that anonymous accuser was her only hope of escaping this nightmare ship.
17
A CRACK IN THE HEART
Across the wide blue sea of tiles that separated the Bali Hai from the nearby staff café, the Hacienda, Mad Victor was watching the captain harangue Lily.
Apparently lost in a smoker’s reverie, Victor was on his second break with a few other menials. They had been working hard, mopping up bars that were closed in rotation. The prolonged physical labour had had the effect of forcing Victor to focus on the present. The heavy work, the repetitive motion, had at last settled his nerves.
The hand not holding his cigarette was jammed deep into his jacket pocket, protecting the treasure it contained. Victor knew that he must tread carefully. The captain was clearly playing for higher stakes than usual, but this time Victor was not the leader of her gang. Once he would have gone along, star-struck, with whatever was demanded of him, just for the satisfaction of earning her praise. Now, removed from that old self, Victor was carefully feeling his way into his new one. And he found his new self repulsed by the tall, imposing captain who was bullying that last woman he had danced with, the one who had asked him what he was thinking. The one who reminded him of his mother, with that green twist of ectoplasm rising above her head.
With his newly grounded mind, Victor now clearly saw it was just a piece of light green chiffon, twisted into a headband, with the ends floating free. Moving in the breeze. Ethereal, yes, but just a piece of cloth on the head of the woman who, if he recalled, had told him that she was a journalist.
Hand deeper in his jacket pocket now, Victor rubbed a finger over the diamante-encrusted heart-shaped pendant. One of the gang, when he was on room-service duty refreshing the towels, had taken it from the neck of a drunk woman passed out on a bed. When the pendant had been informally auctioned among the gang, as stolen items often were, Victor had felt a remnant of his old rogue self rising. It wasn’t as if it was of any value, and no one else wanted it, so he had won it with a maiden bid, intending to give the cheap little jewel to his girlfriend. She loved such romantic tokens.
Across from the Hacienda, the captain was still laying out her case against that poor woman, point by indisputable point. How had she crossed MacKinley? Eventually, the woman struggled to her feet, supporting herself with her hands on the table. Victor heard her plead the call of nature, seeming to be far more frail than he remembered from the dance floor.
‘You know what we mature ladies are like in that department,’ she apologised to the captain, with a tremor in her voice. Was she going to crack under the strain? He knew from experience that any shock could bring on that first fall. Before the captain could disallow her request, he heard the woman add, ‘We wouldn’t want a little accident right here, would we, Captain?’
The captain grimaced in disgust.
To reach the Ladies, Lily had to pass the Hacienda. Victor, who was sitting with his back to his work mates, placed his chair right in her path, his legs extended. As she brushed by him, he unexpectedly took her hand, delaying her a moment. His eyes warned her to not speak as he pressed something small and warm into her hand. Her old instincts for a story activated by this mysterious gift, Lily was turning back into the newshound of old.
When the bathroom door clicked shut behind her, Lily headed straight into a cubicle, walking more sprightly than ever. She snibbed the door and sat, fully dressed, on the furry toilet lid, examining the shiny jewel that Victor had pressed on her. The diamante-encrusted heart-shaped pendant was familiar. Where had she seen it before? It had a tooled vertical split. A romantic heart that fell into two pieces, one for each partner. Such romantic tokens always made L
ily regret that she had not had more success with love in her life. Was that Dance Boy smitten? What would people say? He was the same age as her son. Still. If they were discreet … Did he want her to wear one side and give him the other side of the heart? She pulled at the join, trying to find the opening.
It resisted a moment, then fell apart. She gasped at what it revealed and, old habits again triumphing over romantic illusion, she thrust it deep into the security of her bag.
Paranoia was catching.
ME #8
‘Idiot.’
Why was the captain abusing me like this, after summoning me to her quarters at four in the morning? Neither of us had slept all night, and she looked worse than I did. Being such a meticulously groomed woman, this may have excused the rage she was in. Even her hair was somehow lopsided.
‘Why did you call the Hobart port authority to ask about our fireworks permit?’
I stared at her, not understanding the ridiculous question. ‘Why would I do what, Captain?’
‘Some idiot used your ID and password, and now if we don’t turn back they’re sending a helicopter. So if it wasn’t you …’
Eventually she calmed down enough to make sense to me. Talk about overkill for failing to lodge a fireworks permit application. For one so meticulous about paperwork, it turned out that Captain Perfect had failed to obtain a pyrotechnic permit. She had tried to explain to the idiots — I was relieved that everyone was an idiot now — that she didn’t need one because they were holographic fireworks. Health and safety issues did not apply.
She was furious, of course at being ordered back, and was threatening high court injunctions. You couldn’t blame her for getting a little panicky at this unexpected turn of events.
‘Right now, we have rather a lot of housekeeping to do before they come aboard. First of all …’
Not many passengers believed the official explanation they found in the information baskets on their cabin doors. But, following the captain’s orders, I insisted that my menials never deviate from the official ludicrous excuse for turning the ship around. An iceberg the size of Tasmania had broken away from an Antarctic glacier and was heading towards the ship.
5 Ways to be Famous Now Page 11
