But he did nothing but stare down at his knees. Shoulders sloping forward, hands still in pockets. Silent. All of a sudden Bec got the overwhelming urge to pee. She jumped to her feet.
“Be back in a sec.”
She raced into the bathroom, pulled down her knickers and started peeing straightaway. Looking at herself in the adjacent mirror, she caught the pathetic look on her face. She forced on a smile. This was not how it was meant to go. It was just a false start. After she was finished, she closed her eyes, willed the negativity away, smiled again and went back into her bedroom. He liked her, she was sure. He was looking into his phone when she opened the door.
“Lizzie’s here,” he said.
“At the door?”
“Yeah.”
Forcing the smile to stay wrapped across her face, she turned on her heel and went back down the stairs. She had told Lizzie midnight; she was sure of it. Pulling the door open, she half hoped there would be no one there. But no, Lizzie was standing out front holding a shoe box and smiling genuinely.
“Is everything okay?” Her smile faltered slightly as she took in Bec’s face.
“Of course. Come in.”
She couldn’t believe that her time with Luke was over already. The disappointment dropped slowly in her body, a lead weight.
“You’re early,” she whispered to Lizzie as they climbed the stairs.
“Am I? Luke texted me when he was on his way from work.”
“I guess you both are.” Bec tried to cover, but Lizzie was already bounding into her bedroom.
“Hey, perv, sorry to interrupt,” she said to Luke, who was still sitting awkwardly on the bed. “Thought you’d be going through her undie drawer by now.”
“I already put some samples in my bag for later,” he said and Bec noticed his face soften and his shoulders drop. The lead weight got bigger, filling up her throat now.
“Can’t wait to show you guys what I got!” Lizzie held up the box in front of her. “Why are we up here, anyway? Shouldn’t we be down in the garage?”
“I was just waiting for you to get here, didn’t want to fight off the spiders alone,” Bec said, her smile real now.
Lizzie hated spiders. Bec watched as she began unconsciously rubbing the back of her neck and itching her hair, as though millions of spiders were already crawling all over her.
“Let’s go, then!” Bec said, not looking at Luke.
If she caught his eye the tears might come.
Bec was glad that Lizzie was walking in front of her when they got to the laundry. Averting her eyes, she heard Lizzie turn the handle and step into the garage like it was nothing. Just another room in the house. Her heart was beating fast, sending tremors down to her fingertips. This was so stupid; she wished she could just go to bed.
“Come on, slow coach,” said Luke’s voice from behind her, pushing her slightly. She turned and he was smiling at her again, the awkwardness from before completely gone. She didn’t understand him.
Staring into the gloom framed by the doorway like a portrait, she clenched her hands into fists and forced herself to step right into it.
13
2014
As I step through the front door, an unexpected anxiety comes over me. I’d had a great day in spite of the weird incident with the father in the morning. Now that I didn’t need to worry about the black van, I should be able to relax. Everything was all falling into place. Perhaps that was why I felt anxious. When things were going well, I usually did something to stuff them up. Not this time, though.
“How was your afternoon with Jack?” the mom says, holding a basket of laundry.
“Good,” I say, and it was good. It was great. He was an unbelievable kisser. Perhaps it was the endorphins leaking out of me after the confrontation with the journalist that had started it, but I didn’t care.
“What was I like as a kid?” I ask. The thought coming into my head and out my mouth at the same moment. “Was I naughty? Or shy? I can’t really remember.”
“You were… Well, I want to say you were perfect.” She laughed. I realized it was the first time I’d heard it. “But you were a bit bossy. Dressing up your little brothers like they were dolls and making them do fashion parades.”
“Really?” I try to imagine Paul and Andrew doing that. I can’t.
“You don’t remember that? I’m sure I’ve got some photos of it somewhere.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing them,” I say.
“Of course, honey. Do you need any clothes washed?” she asks.
“No, I’m okay,” I say. “Thank you, though.”
She hurries back into the laundry and I sit down on the sofa. I don’t really want to be in Bec’s room right now, surrounded by all the remnants of her life. That journalist had really gotten to me; I couldn’t believe such a pathetic man had made me feel so scared. He didn’t care about Bec; he just saw the opportunity to further his career, to take his slice of the profits from her tragedy. How could he just see her as a paycheck rather than a real person? He thought something awful had happened to her, but that didn’t stop him from texting her, hounding her. Hounding me.
I can’t help but look up her name on my phone again, and this time I search for videos. I’m not sure why, but I want to see her moving, see her talking. I want to see her looking more alive than in just those static photographs.
There is only one video, and Bec isn’t in it. It’s titled City Mourns Missing Girl at Candlelight Vigil. Hundreds of people are standing in a city square, with a raised stage at the front. The camera weaves between the people, all holding glowing orange lanterns. Some of them are crying. There are large placards of Bec’s smiling face with Come Home written across them. I notice a young Lizzie in the crowd, her eyes darting around and her mouth gaping, like she can’t believe it. A lanky guy a bit older has his arm around her, but I can’t see his face. Bec’s father stands in front with a microphone.
“Please,” he manages to say, and then he puts a hand over his face and begins to cry.
People have put objects and photographs all over the steps. All of these pictures that could be of me. My chest feels a little tight. The camera focuses on a teenage girl dropping a bag of candy onto the pile. In the shadows behind her I see Lizzie’s dad dropping a McDonald’s cap. Bec’s mom walks slowly over to the microphone. She looks so different. This could be thirty years ago, rather than eleven, she’s aged so much since then. As she reaches the podium, she is not crying and her hands aren’t shaking.
“What are you watching?” Paul asks, sitting down next to me.
“Nothing,” I say, turning the phone off quickly. “Just mucking around on YouTube.”
He puts his arm around me.
“Do you want to do something tonight?” he asks. “Maybe go out for dinner?”
He strokes my hair, slipping it behind my ear. For a moment I wonder if he’s asking me on a date, which is ridiculous.
“That would be nice,” I say.
“Don’t want you getting cabin fever,” he says.
His body is so close to mine I can feel the heat radiating from it. I close my eyes for a second, feeling his fingers stroking my hair. I clench my fists and push him off. I can’t feel this way.
“Oi, stop it! You’re messing up my hair!” I force myself to say.
“Can’t get much messier!” he says, laughing. “I don’t know how to tell you this, sis, but you need a haircut.”
“I do not!” I say, mocking offense. This is better. I’ll have to stay in safe territory of childishness and teasing until I can get my feelings in check.
A squeak as a car pulls up in front of the house and the slamming of doors.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“I dunno. Vince?”
“Nah,” I say.
He gets up and strange flashes of light cross his face as he pulls open the front door.
“Andrew? Paul?” a voice says.
Paul slams the door shut with so much force
I almost jump.
“Fucking leeches!” he yells.
“What?” I ask. He looks so angry, his face has flushed red.
“Looks like dinner’s off,” he says and marches upstairs.
I get up and peer through the curtains. Three men stand out the front, one holding a microphone and the other two shouldering video recorders, still cameras with huge zoom lenses around their necks.
I guess I wasn’t as convincing as I’d thought.
By the time the sun goes down, there are eight vans out the front of the house. I sit with the family in the lounge room. No one speaks, but the room is filled with the sounds of excited chattering from outside. Every so often there’s a bang at the door or the window. Sometimes they yell Rebecca’s name. I desperately wish I could take back my confrontation with the journalist. Although this probably would have happened anyway. My phone buzzes. It’s Jack. Are you okay? There was a story about you on TV.
I hadn’t thought it could be this fast. I switch on the television, moving channels until I find the program. The host appears in midspeech.
“—eleven years ago, when walking home from her local bus stop.
“Missing Persons Senior Investigator Vincent Andopolis had little to say on the matter.”
Andopolis appears on the screen. His face is drawn and tired, but still, he looks livid.
“That is something I can neither confirm nor deny at this time,” he says into the multiple microphones pushing toward his face. “On behalf of the police department, and the Winter family, I request that the investigation be given the space and respect needed at this time.”
The screen flicks back to the host’s smug face. “However, if Rebecca Winter has in fact been alive all of this time, it calls into question the integrity of Detective Andopolis’s investigation as well as raising the possibility of gross police negligence.”
A new image appears on the screen. A still photograph. It’s from the day I walked home smoking. That reporter must have taken it while I fumbled with my house keys. The picture is pixelated and blurry, as though he took it through his windscreen. I’m pressed against the front door, slightly turned as though I’m just about to look over my shoulder. You can see only a fraction of my face. Just the edge of my cheek and the corner of my eye. It might be enough. For someone who really knew me, who could recognize the shape of my shoulders, the way I held myself. It might be enough for my dad.
“Turn it off,” Andrew says.
When the police arrive the next morning, I wonder for a moment if they’re coming for me. The blue and red lights fill the silent house. But they don’t even come inside. I hear them talking to the journalists who are camped out the front.
“What are they doing?” I ask the dad, who is eating his breakfast next to me in the kitchen. I’m too afraid to go and look out the window myself and I can’t let them get another photo of me.
“I called them early this morning. I need to get to work and those vans are blocking the street.”
“Will they really leave just because the cops tell them to?” I spin my cereal around in circles. I don’t feel like eating right now.
“Probably not. They’ll have to put a barrier at the end of the road,” he says. “This is exactly what happened before. They left eventually, when they got bored enough.”
The room goes back to silence. Eventually the dad gets up, tightens his tie and picks up his briefcase before walking out the front door. I hear the swell of noise as he leaves, questions being asked on top of each other, the cameras clicking.
I sit next to Paul on the couch. He’s wearing just cotton boxers and a tight white singlet and watching cartoons. I force myself to stare at the television instead of his amazing body. An animated tiger is wearing a red hooded jumper and riding a tram with his tiger family. I try to pay attention to the story, but really, I’m starting to panic. Now that the media had unknowingly called my bluff, had carried out the threat that I never had any intention to act on, the only leverage I had left with Andopolis was gone. He was going to be really angry with me and I had no idea how that would affect his next move. Plus, the house was now surrounded with cameras. I was literally trapped. Stuck inside my own lie with no room to move. I tried to take a deep breath; panic wouldn’t help me right now.
“Don’t think so hard,” Paul says, smiling. “You’re getting wrinkles.”
I hadn’t realized he’d been looking at me.
“Shut up!” I say, glad for a distraction.
“Sorry, sis. Just trying to look out for you.”
“You should look out for yourself,” I say. “I can see a nasty one appearing just there.”
I flick him right between the eyes. He looks at me, calmly, then jumps on top of me, pinning me to the couch.
“I can see lots right here,” he says and licks my forehead.
“Yuck!” I scream. “I can’t believe you just did that!”
“Believe it,” he says and starts tickling me under the arms.
“Stop it!” I squeal with laughter, writhing around underneath him. But he’s strong and I can’t move much. His hot weight is against me. Breathing in his sweaty sleep smell, I push against his chest with my hands and can’t help but notice the hard muscle underneath. My skin feels sparkly and sensitive. This is wrong. I try to pull myself out, but he only tickles me harder, his stomach pressed against mine.
He dips a spitball out of his mouth and lets it hover above my face.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” I scream, but still I can’t help shrieking and cackling like a little kid. My body is singing for his. He sucks it back up and grins at me, and for a moment I desperately want to kiss him. I desperately want to put my arm around his neck and pull him toward me. I want to feel his hot mouth on mine, his hands touching me.
“Hurry up, Andrew,” a voice says.
“Coming!” He pushes off me.
I look around. Paul is walking down the stairs, fully dressed. It was Andrew who I was just mucking around with, not Paul. His hair was unstyled, so I hadn’t noticed. How could that be? I pull myself up into a sitting position, feeling like I’ve just been caught out doing something disgusting. Andrew jogs up the stairs to get dressed. I feel tricked somehow, even though there was no way he would have thought I could barely tell them apart. Guilt swirls in my stomach.
Bec would hate me if she knew I was lusting over her little brothers. Although she would probably already hate me by now regardless. Plus, I can’t help but think of Jack.
After a few hours I begin to feel trapped. Andopolis didn’t turn up, and I can’t go outside. Andrew and Paul went out somewhere a few hours ago and they’re not back yet. I watch daytime television and lie on the couch, letting the mom bring me plates of food. I text Jack, asking him to come over. If I have to stay here, at least Jack would be a distraction. He might momentarily stop the feeling of the walls closing in around me. He texts back: I’m at work. Wish I wasn’t. Frustration washes over me. I’m about to throw my phone away when it dings, Jack again. I can’t stop thinking about kissing you.
I flick through the channels until The Young and the Restless comes on. I pick up on the storylines again quickly. Right after I dropped out of uni, it was the highlight of my day. I’d never miss an episode. I’d started the first semester being sure I was going to make something of myself, but it didn’t last. I’d still get dressed every morning and leave home just before Dad did, my bag full of textbooks. Then I’d just go down to the bakery on the corner and sit in the back eating sour cherry custard tarts and flipping through their trashy magazines with my sticky fingers. When I was sure he’d have left for work, I’d go home and lie on the couch until he got home.
When I was at university it was suddenly okay for me to not have a job and to still live at home. I knew Dad was proud of me. He looked at me like he really did love me. If I told him I’d quit I knew that would change. He’d ask me what I was planning to do with my life and I wouldn’t have an answer.
Eventually the three o’clock news comes on. The top story: Has Rebecca Winter Returned? They feature the same blurry photograph of me, zooming in to the side of my face. I turn it off. I can’t watch this.
“I hope this isn’t upsetting you, honey,” says the mom, hovering in the doorway.
“I’m fine,” I say, getting up and trying to smile at her.
In Bec’s room, the wall of photographs of Bec and her friends stretches out in front of me, like she couldn’t possibly have a care in the world. Andopolis’s words come back to me. What had he said? Something about looking at a photo.
I’d look into your eyes and try to understand the secrets you must have held.
I look closely at the pictures of her. She’s sitting on the grass with a group of girls, all wearing the same ugly school uniform. A photo of her and Lizzie pouting for the camera, both wearing a huge amount of makeup. One of Bec smiling sweetly, the sun illuminating her from behind. I look into her eyes, the eyes that look so much like my own. He’s right. There’s a sadness there, something that doesn’t match the smile. Maybe she did have secrets.
I whip open the closet, happy to have finally found something to do. I know the cops have probably done all this before. But somehow I feel like I might be able to find something they didn’t. They had missed that weird seance spell that had been in Bec’s pocket. Maybe there was more they’d been too incompetent to find. It’s more than just that, though. I feel like she might have left something, just for me.
I look through the pockets of all her clothes. Nothing but a few dirty tissues. I find a handbag hanging on the inside door. It’s got her student ID, makeup and a scrunched-up ticket stub for Catch Me If You Can. I pull off the pillowslips, remembering hiding unsent love notes in there when I was her age. Nothing. I pull the mattress up, seeing if there is anything slid between it and the slats. Nothing. I stop and look at it. If this was my room, where would I hide something?
Of course. The bed. The frame is made from white iron tubes, sealed on each side with black plastic plugs. I take one off and look inside. Nothing. But the other holds something, right at the bottom. Something circular and shiny. I sit down on the carpet and put my arm in as far as it reaches. I realize what it is before I pull it the whole way out. A bottle of vodka. It’s half-empty. I open the lid and take a sip, and it burns down my throat.
Only Daughter Page 15
