Lawrence
Lawrence's mobile blasted out a particularly bad rendition of In da Club by rapper 50 Cent, and Lawrence was out of bed and in the lounge room answering it before he had even realised what had happened.
"Larry, mate, you awake man?" Ben sounded wired, as though he had been awake for hours, and Lawrence decided that he must be either on some heavy drugs or had been up around the clock, because he'd never known Ben to be out of bed before ten am otherwise. Ben was lucky enough to have parents who could support him through his uni degree, and he had so far managed to make a career out of changing his mind. Lawrence had calculated that Ben had spent somewhere close to seven years studying now, and he was no closer to finishing a degree than he had been five years ago. All this had added up to a lot of late night, drunken parties at Ben's house, and a lot of mornings where everyone except Ben had had to get up and go to work.
"I am now, aren't I?!" Lawrence answered grumpily, "What the hell do you want? What time is it anyway?" As Lawrence grumbled into the phone he glanced at the LCD display on the DVD player and gave a start - it was nearly 8 o'clock already, he was going to be late for work. What had happened to his alarm clock?
"Listen, Larry, did you ever see that chick you were chatting up again?"
"Huh? Which chick? When? What does this have to do with anything? Look, Ben, I'm gonna be late for work, I'll talk to you later, ok?" Lawrence had pulled the phone from his ear and was lining up the 'end call' button with his index finger when a tinny voice squawked from the receiver. Reluctantly, he brought the phone back to his ear, "What?! Ben, I've gotta go!"
"Larry, mate, this is important! Don't hang up on me, OK? Remember the chick you were chatting up on the weekend? Tall, dark hair, built like a peg?"
"Uhh," Lawrence searched his hazy memories of Saturday night, trying to piece together the events that had begun to, mercifully, fade from memory, "Umm. It was a funny name ... Aalia or something? That wasn't it ... but it was like that. Why?" He paused, then added, "And make it quick."
Ben ignored the question, sounding strangely far away now, "Aalia, you reckon? Hmm ... ok, thanks mate. Listen, I'll call you tonight, ok? Try and remember the name for me, alright?"
Lawrence stared at the phone for a second after Ben hung up and the shattered tone of the disconnected line started pulsing in his ear. Then he shook his head slightly and pressed the button to disconnect the call. He had no idea what that had been about, it just seemed as though Ben was on some weird drugs. He possibly was, but he had seemed rather lucid, if a little vague at the end.
Lawrence saw the clock on the DVD machine had ticked over eight o'clock, and he forced thoughts of Ben and the girl from the party from his mind. He dashed back into the bathroom, turned the hot water on, and stripped. Thinking of nothing now but getting to work on time, he jumped into the shower.
He was halfway through lathering himself with soap when the girl's name jumped into his head - Ariana! That had been it! He'd have to remember it and tell Ben when he called tonight, assuming Ben even remembered of course. Feeling slightly better, he finished washing, dressed, and ran all the way to the train station.
Elouise
Elouise couldn't find a parking spot at the station. Normally when she arrived, there were places right up close, but that was at six o'clock in the morning. By eight, she saw, all the good ones were gone. Kasey was in the car with her, happy because she had, for the first time in years, gotten a lift to the station. Elouise had felt that there had been a certain amount of suspicion from both Rob and Kasey over her decision to go in late today. She had brushed it off, saying she was just too tired after yesterday to go in early. Indeed, her face had been showing the strain of the sleepless night when she looked in the mirror this morning. Whether or not Rob had noticed, she didn't know, although she suspected he hadn't - he didn't generally notice things like that, she thought wryly to herself. What mattered was that she had seen it, and she had subsequently over compensated with makeup to cover it. She suspected by the greasy, heavy feel of the products on her face now, that she looked a little like a fairground clown. If she just opened her mouth and moved her head back and forth, she thought, and almost chuckled in spite of herself and her dismal mood. Kasey turned slightly, and gave her a funny sideways look, and Elouise quickly wiped the smile from her face.
"Mum," Kasey said slowly, like she couldn't find the right words, "Mum, are you ok? I heard you up last night. And you look tired."
Elouise was taken aback, when had her daughter gotten so astute? She felt a little tremor of shock run through her as she realised that her baby was turning into a woman, and she had a fleeting feeling of missing out on something major somewhere along the way. She realised that the pause was growing in the air between her and her daughter, and she struggled to put some words into it, if only to fill the void, "Oh yes, I'm OK," she said, "just tired I guess. I just couldn't seem to get my brain to shut down last night." Elouise gave a chuckle, but it sounded false to her. Like so much else she spoke at the moment, it was just a layer of lacquer over what was underneath, hiding it from view.
Kasey gave a half-hearted, "Hmm. OK then," but Elouise could tell she wasn't convinced. She sensed Kasey want to take the matter up further, but then stopped herself, and she wondered what she was thinking.
Suddenly, a parking spot appeared like a beacon in front of her sedan, and she hit the brakes quickly, and performed a neat reverse park into the gap. The two women, older and younger, got out of the car and retrieved briefcases and umbrellas from the car boot. Elouise locked the car with the remote key, and the two walked side by side down the rough footpath, sidestepping puddles. Neither woman looked at the other, the unspoken conversation hanging between them like threads of silken spider web - too dense to ignore their presence, but too difficult to wrap words around them and make some sense of the emotions. Suddenly, Kasey spotted Brianna up ahead, just about to cross the pedestrian overpass, and she called out to her.
Before racing off to meet her friend though, she turned to her mother, stopping her in her tracks.
"Mum?" she said softly, "I love you. Don't work late today OK?"
Elouise nodded mutely, struck by the depth of the emotion she felt buried in Kasey's words, and on an impulse, wrapped her arms around her daughter, their bags tangling together in an embrace of their own. Elouise could smell the fruity shampoo that Kasey had used in her hair this morning, the hair that was so much like her father's. She vowed to herself that, no matter what, she would be there for her daughter. Regardless of what she decided to do about her tangled relationships, she needed to ensure that she was never less than the best she could be - not for herself, not for her partner, whoever that turned out to be, but for Kasey. She owed her that much.
Reluctantly, Elouise pulled away from the embrace, and the two chuckled as they disentangled the various accessories - bags, earrings, umbrellas and identification tags had all gotten caught up with each other. Once they were separated once more, they smiled at each other and Elouise realised that, although the tension had lifted, Kasey still looked somewhat troubled. Still, Elouise felt marginally more relaxed, and somehow one step closer to a decision than she had been this morning.
Kasey ran ahead to meet with Brianna, and Elouise watched the two, heads together and talking seriously, as they crossed the overpass ahead of her, disappearing into the crowd of commuters that surrounded the station. Yes, maybe she knew what she had to do. She didn't have to decide between two men - she had to decide between a man and her daughter. And, not surprisingly, that decision was a lot easier.
Lawrence
Lawrence tore down the footpath as fast as he could go, praying that the broken concrete, slick with the drizzly rain that had been on and off all morning, wouldn't catch one of his shoes. These shoes were not designed for running in, he thought vaguely, as he watched his black dress shoes with the silver buckles thump the footpath in rhythmic foot falls. His breath was coming in ragged gasps now, and as he saw the pedestrian overpass looming ahead of him, the thought of getting over all those stairs made him feel like giving up. But then he saw Elouise's stern face in his mind's eye, and, knowing there was no way she would miss two days in a row, he used the last of his energy to propel him up the old wooden stairway. As he hit the catwalk at the top, he heard the crackly announcement from the platform, the words with their peculiar inflection common only to pre-recorded public transport announcements the world over, were distinguishable only because he had heard them so many times, "The train arriving on. Platform two is a. City train. Stopping. All stations to. Central." The announcement was cut off abruptly by the rumble of the train approaching, and the squeal of brakes as it pulled in to the station. Lawrence put the rest of his energy into getting down the stairs, and made it to the platform just as the guard's whistle blew. He stepped through the nearest pair of open doors, just as the too cheery warning announcement - "Doors closing! Please stand clear!" - chorused in every carriage, and the doors snapped close with a vengeance. He had made it!
As the train pulled away from the station, Lawrence stumbled slightly with the sudden movement, and grabbed the nearest handhold, which was suspended from the ceiling immediately in front of the double doors. He brushed against someone in his haste, and turned to mumble an apology, realising at the last minute that is was none other than his boss, Elouise.
"Oh! Elouise! Hi!" he said, still breathless, and trying unsuccessfully to not to show his surprise at seeing her in his voice. She was standing on the packed train, holding the dangling handhold next to the one he was hanging from, and her concentration appeared to be on the tiny silver phone in her hand. She appeared to be reading a text message, deep in thought, and she looked up vaguely when she heard her name.
"Hmm? Oh, Larry, hi. How are you?" The question was polite, not inquisitive, Lawrence noted, but answered anyway, in the interests of making polite conversation,
"Oh, pretty good thanks. Running a bit late today," he gave a rough laugh, a quick, "Heh," before he realised how peculiar he sounded. "It's, uh, it's a bit wet outside isn't it? Makes public transport fun, huh?"
Elouise's attention had returned to the phone, and Lawrence noted a slight crease had appeared between her eyes, was that confusion or irritation, he wondered. And was it directed to him, or to the phone?
She looked up again, distracted, and said "Huh? Oh, the rain. No ... I mean, yes, it is wet outside." She looked out the window as though it was only Lawrence’s pointing it out that had made her realise the miserable weather. Lawrence just watched her, her attitude confusing him. Drawing her attention back to the interior of the carriage, she spotted an empty seat and pointed to it, "I, um, might take a seat. These heels ..."
Lawrence nodded and watched as she moved to the empty seat, swaying with the motion of the train. Either she really didn't want to speak to him, or there was something very strange going on in her life right now, Lawrence thought. He turned his back to her and stared out the scratched and misted window instead, watching as the daggy old shopfronts and messy backyards sped past, his brain moving just as fast, wondering why everything seemed so topsy-turvy at the moment.
Brianna
Kasey and Brianna had wandered down to the far end of the city bound platform before the train pulled in. Mostly it was because they always rode in the end carriage, but today it had the extra advantage that it was out of earshot of Kasey's mother. The two teenagers sat down on the concrete of the platform, away from the other commuters, facing each other across their crossed legs, their school bags dumped unceremoniously on the ground next to them.
Kasey had been filling Brianna in on what had happened yesterday once they parted ways at the station. She told of going down to the local police station in the patrol car, about trying to answer all the questions that she had no answer to. They had checked her shoes, taken a print of the soles for matching and, eventually, had driven the three of them back to the train station, where they had gotten in the two cars they had abandoned there and headed home. In the middle of Kasey’s story, the train had arrived and they had gotten on, swaying from the hand straps in the centre of the carriage. It was busy even in the last carriage on this train as all the office workers who started at nine and most of the school kids caught this one.
When Kasey got to the end of the story, they were pulling out of Central station - only one more stop before they got school, and Kasey leaned in close to Brianna, her eyes twinkling slightly and a little smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Brianna realised that the initial shock seemed to have worn off completely and Kasey appeared to be caught up in the excitement of it all now that she was aware that it wasn't someone she knew, someone she was close to. Now it was just something out of the ordinary, something that not only had given her day off school, but something that would provide her with gossip to last days, possibly weeks. Brianna leaned forward to catch the snippet of information that Kasey was about to impart.
"I know who it was," Kasey breathed into her ear, and Brianna looked at her, eyebrows knitted in confusion,
"You know who did it?" Brianna breathed, shocked yet mystified.
But Kasey shook her head, "No, silly! If I knew that I'd still be down there at the police station, explaining it all to those hunky coppers. No, I mean I know who it was ... who the body was. I mean, I don't know her, but I know what her name was."
Brianna's eyes widened as she realised what Kasey was telling her, and she leaned in close again with the swing of the carriage, "Who?"
Kasey smiled with the increased stature of knowledge before imparting the little nugget of knowledge, preceded by a caveat, "Well, you didn't hear it from me, because I don't think I was supposed to hear it. But I had gone to look for the toilet in the police station, when a young copper - cute too, he was - came tearing into an office, yelling that they had worked out who it was. Her name was Ariana Mathers, he said."
Brianna took in the information, and frowned slightly. This was not the reaction Kasey had expected, it seemed, because she looked at Brianna strangely, her head tipped to one side, "Brianna ... ?" she asked, "What is it?"
Brianna looked up, into her friend's face, and gave a sudden, sunny smile "Oh, nothing, it's just that name seemed familiar. I can't place it though, must be a name I heard on TV or something." she brushed off the momentary chill that had passed over her, when her heart had stopped for a moment as she had tried to put a face to the name. She couldn't quite lose the feeling that there had just been a slight shift in the universe, though. As though something had tipped slightly, and the earth had just twisted a fraction of a fraction of a hair's breadth off course - enough that everything still seemed normal, but was something was just ... wrong.
Tuesday - 6:14am to the City
Shannen
Shannen had woken early, feeling worse than she had the night before, despite over eight hours in bed. She had resisted the pull of alcohol, alone, waiting for Ariana to call back, until shortly before nine o'clock. It was around then that the events of the day had started to catch up with her. She had been sitting on the balcony since the last light had seeped out of the day, reading a light-hearted paperback novel by flickering candle light and listening to classical music on the stereo. After a while she had been unable to concentrate on the page, felt compelled to force her eyes back to the top of the page again and again, because the words simply weren't making sense any more. Finally, she had given up trying to follow the story of the words in front her and closed the book. She stared at the cover for a little while, a picture of a house painted in airy watercolours with a tree and a horse-drawn carriage in the foreground, a strangely happy looking Clydesdale horse with a blade of grass dangling from the corner of a whiskered mouth. Overwhelmed by the cuteness of the picture, Shannen closed her eyes and let her head fall back on the arm of the couch, lying prone along the length of it, legs dangling from the knees over the opposite end. She had attempted to call Ariana several times throughout the night, had left messages the first few times and then had given up, disconnecting the call when Ariana's bright recorded "Hi...!" came over the line again and again. Eventually, she had picked her weary body up, and put herself to bed.
Shannen had not slept well however, her dreams filled with demons and cadavers, lost friends and failed relationships. She had woken throughout the night a number of times, had on one occasion gotten up to go to the toilet and had ended up wandering the small apartment, checking doors were locked, windows closed, blinds drawn. Reminding herself that no one was about in the house apart from herself, trying to convince her brain to just stop thinking, allow her to rest. Eventually she had gone back to bed, despite not feeling any more reassured than earlier, but with the knowledge that she had at least checked the house.
When the alarm clock shrieked at five am, Shannen had been awake for some twenty minutes already, had been steadily watching the second hand on her old-fashioned, op-shop bought clock tick down the minutes that she was not going to get any more sleep in. Fully awake, but far from refreshed, Shannen got out of bed and showered with the water turned as hot as her body could stand. When she wrapped the towel around herself, she noticed how red her skin had gone from the hot stream of water, and noted that it didn't seem to matter how hot the water was, she still felt the stench of death lingering on her skin. She hadn't touched the body, had seen nothing more of the body than a pink painted and slightly chipped toenail, but somehow she could still smell the scent of the corpse surrounding her.
Shannen found a clean uniform shirt and slipped it over her head, then found yesterday's pants lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. She picked them up, shook them out, inspected them half-heartedly, and climbed into them. She quickly pulled her dark hair back with a black elastic, the end of the pony tail skimming the back of her neck. She leaned forward, examining her face in the mirror. She was naturally slender, her cheek bones fairly prominent underneath the olive skin. She had brown eyes set beneath long dark lashes, and, as of this morning, she had dark crescent-moon shadows beneath them. When she looked closely, she could see the beginnings of crows' feet extending from the outside corners of her eyes, a slight vertical crease beginning at the top of her nose. Shannen considered putting on some make up to hide the worst of the stress showing on her face but a yawn caught her suddenly, stretching her mouth wide. She decided to just quickly smear some mascara on – any more than that would be just too much effort this morning. She performed the ritual quickly, then blinked and turned away from the mirror.
Shannen went to the kitchen and slowly made herself a cup of tea, which would serve as breakfast until she got into work. As she waited for the kettle to boil, she began thinking of Ariana again, wondering why she hadn't called back last night. She finished making the tea and sipped it slowly as she grabbed the phone, hit redial, and nestled it into her neck. It rang a while, then "Hi, this is Ariana's phone..."
Elouise
Elouise was startled awake by the jarring sound of the morning radio breakfast announcers suddenly braying synthetic-sounding laughter from the clock radio beside her bed. It was five am, and still caught up in her dreams as though they were lace curtains for her to peep through, she tried to make sense of the morning. Her body cried out to be allowed to go back to sleep, but then the thought of meeting Zach in an hour or so pried her eyes open. Until she remembered what had happened yesterday. With the sudden recollection of the angst she had been struggling with into the early hours of this morning, she closed her eyes. Zach's face, the comfort she knew he would offer, faded in her mind's eye, and Elouise allowed the call of further sleep to pull her back under, where she didn't have to make a decision between her husband and her lover - between surety and security and lust and laughter.
Walter
Walter lay in the narrow bed, eyes closed and dull pain coursing through his body. His mind was foggy, the memories of the past night hazy, and he wasn't entirely sure how he had ended up here, or even where here was. There had been nurses come in and out through the night, taking blood pressure, changing the bag hanging from the intra-venous drip, asking him to swallow more pain killers. He wasn't certain where the pain was located anymore. It had started in his hip, but the drugs, the fall on his doorstep and the general fogginess which now overtook him made it seem to be emanating from everywhere, and nowhere. He half opened his eyes and, without moving his head, took in the room around him. Hanging above the pitifully small hospital bed was the ever-present IV bag, hanging from a flimsy pole poking out of a groaning, whooshing pump. He followed the tubing down with his eyes to where it disappeared into his right wrist. He flexed his wrist experimentally but felt no pain, at least none associated with the drip as far as he could tell. Looking back up above him, he could see the oversized standard-issue bed head, upside down in his point of view, and completely rigged up with strange valves and spigots, incomprehensible acronyms on the labels below them. To his left, he could see a table, the sort that was designed to be rolled over the bed, it had an unopened newspaper and a nearly empty bottle of water on it, and was littered with the little plastic cups that they brought his tablets around in. Further to the left, there was a window. The view to outside was dingy and it was difficult to see, but he could discern the barren tops of high rise buildings in the middle distance, although everything beyond this was just haze under a grey sky. His gaze slipped from the view and suddenly alighted on a figure sitting in a chair beside the window, apparently staring out the window, watching the rain as it dropped from the sky.
Walter gave a start when he realised that someone was in the room with him. The chair had been turned halfway towards the window and the person sitting in it had turned to the rest of the way to look out, so their back was towards him. It was unlikely that they had realised he was awake, Walter realised. Walter examined the figure closer, a weedy body, thin shoulders clad in light blue serge, hair concealed underneath what appeared to be a policeman's cap. The figure was wearing dark blue pants to complement the lighter shirt, and Walter realised that the person was a police officer, although he could not determine of what gender. Why a policeman would be in his hospital room, he had no idea, but then he didn't understand why they had come to his door last night either. He guessed that there was something they needed to talk to him about, but why would that necessitate putting a policeman in his room, waiting for him to wake up?
How had he gotten here anyway? He knew he had been here for some time, since late the afternoon before, he assumed. The last thing he could remember was opening his door to the police officers the night before. He cast his memory back, tried to work out if one of those was the one here in his hospital room now, but couldn't make a positive identification either way. The policemen at the door must have called an ambulance, brought him here. Which would indicate that this was the large public hospital about twenty kilometres from his home. And now there was one of the boys in blue in the room, waiting.
The thought of having to face this police officer if it was discovered that he was awake made him nervous and upset. It occurred to him that if he continued to sleep, the event would at least be put off, if not cancelled. He shifted onto his side, so that the figure in the room was behind him and out of his range of vision, and closed his eyes again. He waited for the drugs to wash their foggy cloud over him and send him back to blissful, unknowing sleep. Eventually, they did, and Walter slept.
Shannen had woken early, feeling worse than she had the night before, despite over eight hours in bed. She had resisted the pull of alcohol, alone, waiting for Ariana to call back, until shortly before nine o'clock. It was around then that the events of the day had started to catch up with her. She had been sitting on the balcony since the last light had seeped out of the day, reading a light-hearted paperback novel by flickering candle light and listening to classical music on the stereo. After a while she had been unable to concentrate on the page, felt compelled to force her eyes back to the top of the page again and again, because the words simply weren't making sense any more. Finally, she had given up trying to follow the story of the words in front her and closed the book. She stared at the cover for a little while, a picture of a house painted in airy watercolours with a tree and a horse-drawn carriage in the foreground, a strangely happy looking Clydesdale horse with a blade of grass dangling from the corner of a whiskered mouth. Overwhelmed by the cuteness of the picture, Shannen closed her eyes and let her head fall back on the arm of the couch, lying prone along the length of it, legs dangling from the knees over the opposite end. She had attempted to call Ariana several times throughout the night, had left messages the first few times and then had given up, disconnecting the call when Ariana's bright recorded "Hi...!" came over the line again and again. Eventually, she had picked her weary body up, and put herself to bed.
Shannen had not slept well however, her dreams filled with demons and cadavers, lost friends and failed relationships. She had woken throughout the night a number of times, had on one occasion gotten up to go to the toilet and had ended up wandering the small apartment, checking doors were locked, windows closed, blinds drawn. Reminding herself that no one was about in the house apart from herself, trying to convince her brain to just stop thinking, allow her to rest. Eventually she had gone back to bed, despite not feeling any more reassured than earlier, but with the knowledge that she had at least checked the house.
When the alarm clock shrieked at five am, Shannen had been awake for some twenty minutes already, had been steadily watching the second hand on her old-fashioned, op-shop bought clock tick down the minutes that she was not going to get any more sleep in. Fully awake, but far from refreshed, Shannen got out of bed and showered with the water turned as hot as her body could stand. When she wrapped the towel around herself, she noticed how red her skin had gone from the hot stream of water, and noted that it didn't seem to matter how hot the water was, she still felt the stench of death lingering on her skin. She hadn't touched the body, had seen nothing more of the body than a pink painted and slightly chipped toenail, but somehow she could still smell the scent of the corpse surrounding her.
Shannen found a clean uniform shirt and slipped it over her head, then found yesterday's pants lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. She picked them up, shook them out, inspected them half-heartedly, and climbed into them. She quickly pulled her dark hair back with a black elastic, the end of the pony tail skimming the back of her neck. She leaned forward, examining her face in the mirror. She was naturally slender, her cheek bones fairly prominent underneath the olive skin. She had brown eyes set beneath long dark lashes, and, as of this morning, she had dark crescent-moon shadows beneath them. When she looked closely, she could see the beginnings of crows' feet extending from the outside corners of her eyes, a slight vertical crease beginning at the top of her nose. Shannen considered putting on some make up to hide the worst of the stress showing on her face but a yawn caught her suddenly, stretching her mouth wide. She decided to just quickly smear some mascara on – any more than that would be just too much effort this morning. She performed the ritual quickly, then blinked and turned away from the mirror.
Shannen went to the kitchen and slowly made herself a cup of tea, which would serve as breakfast until she got into work. As she waited for the kettle to boil, she began thinking of Ariana again, wondering why she hadn't called back last night. She finished making the tea and sipped it slowly as she grabbed the phone, hit redial, and nestled it into her neck. It rang a while, then "Hi, this is Ariana's phone..."
Elouise
Elouise was startled awake by the jarring sound of the morning radio breakfast announcers suddenly braying synthetic-sounding laughter from the clock radio beside her bed. It was five am, and still caught up in her dreams as though they were lace curtains for her to peep through, she tried to make sense of the morning. Her body cried out to be allowed to go back to sleep, but then the thought of meeting Zach in an hour or so pried her eyes open. Until she remembered what had happened yesterday. With the sudden recollection of the angst she had been struggling with into the early hours of this morning, she closed her eyes. Zach's face, the comfort she knew he would offer, faded in her mind's eye, and Elouise allowed the call of further sleep to pull her back under, where she didn't have to make a decision between her husband and her lover - between surety and security and lust and laughter.
Walter
Walter lay in the narrow bed, eyes closed and dull pain coursing through his body. His mind was foggy, the memories of the past night hazy, and he wasn't entirely sure how he had ended up here, or even where here was. There had been nurses come in and out through the night, taking blood pressure, changing the bag hanging from the intra-venous drip, asking him to swallow more pain killers. He wasn't certain where the pain was located anymore. It had started in his hip, but the drugs, the fall on his doorstep and the general fogginess which now overtook him made it seem to be emanating from everywhere, and nowhere. He half opened his eyes and, without moving his head, took in the room around him. Hanging above the pitifully small hospital bed was the ever-present IV bag, hanging from a flimsy pole poking out of a groaning, whooshing pump. He followed the tubing down with his eyes to where it disappeared into his right wrist. He flexed his wrist experimentally but felt no pain, at least none associated with the drip as far as he could tell. Looking back up above him, he could see the oversized standard-issue bed head, upside down in his point of view, and completely rigged up with strange valves and spigots, incomprehensible acronyms on the labels below them. To his left, he could see a table, the sort that was designed to be rolled over the bed, it had an unopened newspaper and a nearly empty bottle of water on it, and was littered with the little plastic cups that they brought his tablets around in. Further to the left, there was a window. The view to outside was dingy and it was difficult to see, but he could discern the barren tops of high rise buildings in the middle distance, although everything beyond this was just haze under a grey sky. His gaze slipped from the view and suddenly alighted on a figure sitting in a chair beside the window, apparently staring out the window, watching the rain as it dropped from the sky.
Walter gave a start when he realised that someone was in the room with him. The chair had been turned halfway towards the window and the person sitting in it had turned to the rest of the way to look out, so their back was towards him. It was unlikely that they had realised he was awake, Walter realised. Walter examined the figure closer, a weedy body, thin shoulders clad in light blue serge, hair concealed underneath what appeared to be a policeman's cap. The figure was wearing dark blue pants to complement the lighter shirt, and Walter realised that the person was a police officer, although he could not determine of what gender. Why a policeman would be in his hospital room, he had no idea, but then he didn't understand why they had come to his door last night either. He guessed that there was something they needed to talk to him about, but why would that necessitate putting a policeman in his room, waiting for him to wake up?
How had he gotten here anyway? He knew he had been here for some time, since late the afternoon before, he assumed. The last thing he could remember was opening his door to the police officers the night before. He cast his memory back, tried to work out if one of those was the one here in his hospital room now, but couldn't make a positive identification either way. The policemen at the door must have called an ambulance, brought him here. Which would indicate that this was the large public hospital about twenty kilometres from his home. And now there was one of the boys in blue in the room, waiting.
The thought of having to face this police officer if it was discovered that he was awake made him nervous and upset. It occurred to him that if he continued to sleep, the event would at least be put off, if not cancelled. He shifted onto his side, so that the figure in the room was behind him and out of his range of vision, and closed his eyes again. He waited for the drugs to wash their foggy cloud over him and send him back to blissful, unknowing sleep. Eventually, they did, and Walter slept.
Monday - 5:13pm Outbound
Lawrence
Lawrence watched the clock in the corner of his computer monitor count down the seconds to five o'clock. If it went any slower it would go backwards, he thought morosely as 4:46 ticked over. Figuring it would take him at least a few minutes to pack up, he stood with his coffee mug and wandered into the kitchen to wash it up. He dawdled back to his desk, realised only a minute had passed, and morosely hit the send/receive button on his email. Nothing. He heaved a sigh, and then decided to shut down his computer anyway. Elouise wasn't here, she would never know. He happily clicked his mouse, instructing the machine to shut down. The jingly, electronic tune of the machine's shut down process was music to his ears and, looking around furtively to see if anyone was paying any attention, he grabbed his empty briefcase and headed for the door.
The walk to Central station was a short stroll through a trendy shopping precinct, and Lawrence arrived on Platform Twelve just as the 4:59 pulled up to the station. Thanking his good fortune, Lawrence jumped onto the train, along with what seemed like hundreds of other commuters, all just as willing to get home slightly early as he was himself. The train was packed to the rafters and the chance of finding a seat was next to non-existent. Lawrence didn't bother, he wedged himself into a corner near the exit doors, and let his eyes drift into the unfocussed, dreamy gaze of a regular commuter.
Almost completely oblivious to his surroundings, only barely taking in which stations they were stopping at and tuning out everything else, Lawrence began to think about some of the stuff that had happened since the weekend. What a crazy day! Late on Sunday afternoon, he had wandered back around the block to his own flat from his mate Ben's place, and had stayed up pretty late playing Halo 3 on X-box. He had woken this morning feeling a bit tired and run down from the party, but the worst of the headache had gone. He still couldn't remember much of what had happened at that party - there had been a lot of people there, not all of whom he'd known - not all of whom even Ben had known, he suspected. Not that that was particularly unusual, Ben had a flair for throwing pretty wild parties that seemed to end up encompassing more people than anyone ever expected.
He had gotten to the station and caught the 7:56 into the city, arriving at the office shortly before half past eight, which was his designated starting time. Of course, that was when things had started to go really pear shaped. The phone in Elouise's office had rung and rung and he had been relieved when it stopped, transferring back to reception, and the pressure had been off him to answer it. But then it had started again and Lawrence had figured he'd better answer it. Elouise was rarely in much before nine, so there was no chance she was in her office ignoring it. And if it was important, she would be irritated if he hadn't gotten a message. So he had stepped, somewhat nervously, into Elouise's office, picked up the phone and spoke to Elouise's daughter Kasey, who had seemed upset and out of sorts, but who had not given him any information whatsoever. He thought it was strange that Kasey had seemed so surprised when Elouise wasn't in her office. Elouise had told him in the past that she usually caught the 8:23 into the office in the mornings, so she should have left home around about the time Kasey called him in the office, unless he had miscalculated somewhere along the line.
But then Elouise had finally arrived, right around the normal time, received a phone call on her mobile just as she walked into the office, and then had appeared all dreamy and worried and nervous, and had fled again. Lawrence hadn't seen or heard from her for the rest of the day, which was strange. In the two months Lawrence had been working with Elouise, he had not known her to even take a lunch break, let alone a whole day off at no notice.
Something familiar in the scenery made him snap out of his thoughts, and he realised that the train was beginning to pull into Redton station. He elbowed his way through the press of people and stepped through the doors as they opened onto the platform. A stench rolled off the air and hit him like a fist in the face as he did so, and he took a small involuntary step backwards before regaining his composure and his balance and starting to move toward the southern end of the platform, intending to duck through the narrow gap in the fence and through the car park towards his flat. As he neared the usually long grass, he thought at first that it had been mown, but then realised it had been trampled flat. The smell seemed to get worse as got closer to the edge of the concrete platform, and when he stepped through the gap in the fence onto the trampled grass, a fresh wave assaulted his nasal passages. The smell was remarkably similar to the kitchen bin in his house just before he got up the energy to take it out, and he guessed that an animal had died in the grass overnight, the heat of the daytime sun putrefying the flesh and creating the smell. Finally, he got to the car park, where he crossed the street and continued on his way. At least the air was a bit clearer here.
Shannen
Shannen twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door of her apartment open. It swung inwards, revealing her lounge room. The furniture was old, sourced from op shops and second hand dealers of dubious integrity, but the room was neat and clean. Shannen stepped over the threshold, placed her handbag on the old fashioned hall stand where it belonged, and went to the kitchen for a cup of tea. She had already switched the kettle on and reached up to the overhead cupboard for a mug before a thought suddenly hit her - alcohol would be so much more welcome right now, surely discovering a corpse on the way to work was enough to justify a Monday afternoon drink. She put the mug away and grabbed down a glass instead, then went to the top shelf of the pantry for the Baileys. She poured a good measure of the smooth smelling liquor into the bottom of the glass, hesitated, then sloshed in another fingerful, before recapping the bottle and returning it to its place. She topped up the glass with milk from the fridge and then took the glass to the balcony.
The sun was low on the horizon, although still about an hour away from setting. Shannen sat down on the low couch, which was wedged into a corner of her tiny balcony, and pulled her legs up to her chin. She had put the drink down on a small table beside the couch, and now she wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. She closed her eyes, but the only images dancing behind her eyelids were of a filthy blanket-wrapped body, a pink painted toenail, and the distrustful faces of police officers. In despair she opened them again, and watched the wind chime turn lazily in the only barely there breeze. The chime was unusual, the product of a lazy Sunday morning searching the more obscure markets held along the beaches south of the city. It had blown glass tubes in varying, swirled colours that produced a high pitched yet pleasant chime, but the most interesting part about it was the feature hanging from the central ball. It was a glass phoenix, wings lifted as it eternally rose from unseen ashes. She had bought it for its slightly quirky charm, but in the past twelve months it had come to symbolise a lot more to Shannen. The traditional symbolism of the phoenix represented rebirth and new life, and indeed the purchase of the chime had represented a new chapter in Shannen's life. It had ended the part of her life that had been concerned only with drinking, partying and general hell-raising, and had heralded the current chapter, where she had gone back to university, gotten and held a steady, albeit menial job, regained contact with her mother. She still missed the partying - not so much the drugs and alcohol, it was a refreshing change to wake up with a clear head in the morning - but more the social aspect, the friends (although many had turned out to be not so good friends in the end), the constant, yet often unsavoury, company. She craved the daily interaction with others, yet still somehow coveted her own space, which had made her very difficult to spend time with in recent years. She had had a boyfriend for a few months, on more than one occasion, but had been unable to reconcile time spent with a significant other and time spent alone, and the relationships had died rather natural deaths. Shannen had chalked them up as learning experiences. Through the confusion of departing false friends and strained personal relationships, one friend had risen up above it all, though. Ariana had offered her a hand up, a shoulder to cry on and most of all love, right when she needed it most. Many nights had been spent over endless cups of tea, and the occasional glass of wine, and the two had formed a strong bond as together, although it was an unspoken pact, the two young women tried to make some sense of their lives and rise, like the phoenix, from the ashes that their own teenaged selves had created.
When Shannen had started down this path of betterment and self-awareness, she had known she would face some hurdles. She knew that false friends would tempt her, that the partying would exert its pull, that the pills would call her name. And so they had, frequently, sometimes irresistibly. She hadn't always managed to stay away from the temptations, but she had always managed to get back on the ladder. It may have been a few rungs lower, but she never found herself right back at the bottom. Although all these things had been expected, that many battles had been fought and most had been won, she had never expected that being drawn into a murder investigation would be among them. The thought of drinking herself into oblivion, of finding a little something to take the edge off, of sinking into that wondrous world where everything sparkled and even strangers glowed with love (except for when they didn't), teased her, and she pushed the thought back down. Struggling a little at the moment, knowing the struggle was only going to get worse as the night wore on, she wondered what to do. If she could keep busy, maybe that would keep her mind occupied. If her mind was occupied, she wouldn't be thinking how she could obtain some pretty little pills, she wouldn't be thinking about the bottle of Bailey's in the pantry, or the gin stashed in the back of the cupboard.
Struck with an idea suddenly, Shannen got up from the couch and trotted into the lounge to snag the cordless phone from its charger base. She dialled the number from memory as she stepped back outside, and watched the sun dip its bottom edge below the horizon as the phone rang in her ear. It was picked up mid-ring, and Shannen opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again as she heard the pre-recorded voice, "Hi, this is Ariana's phone. I'm not answering, so leave a message. If you're sexy I'll call you back." The slight tinkle of laughter that came after the message was abruptly cut off by a jarring beep, and Shannen did as Ariana had instructed, "Hey, girlfriend. I was hoping you were free for a bit tonight. I've had an absolutely shitty day and the bed bugs are bitin'. Give me a call back, ok?" Shannen hit the button that terminated the call, laid back along the length of the couch, and hoped that Ariana would call back soon. Slowly, the sun sunk in the sky, and as the last few rays of light shone over the horizon, Shannen resigned herself to having to fight her demons alone. Resolutely, she got up, grabbed the glass of Bailey's and milk, and carried it into the kitchen. She poured the contents of the glass into the sink, watching the milky concoction swirl down the plughole, leaving a scummy trail behind it, then ran the tap for a few seconds to clear the drain. Shannen turned to the kettle, hit the switch with a vengeance and grabbed down a mug. She plopped a teabag in and waited for the water to boil.
Elouise
Elouise lay in bed, wide awake, mind reeling. Rob was asleep beside her, lying on his side, her back to his wife, his breathing heavy but not quite a snore yet. Elouise was, as usual, thinking about Zach. This time though, it wasn't a pleasant recollection of the times they had spent together, the time they had spent together this morning, the way his eyes undressed her, or the way his touch sent sparks into her groin. This time, she was trying to think what to do about the whole sorry mess. The events of this morning had completely disarmed her; she had been so totally unprepared, so completely wrapped up in her invincibility. The charm that had surrounded the affair from the beginning had always seemed to extend to the possibility of being found out. She had been so sure that she wouldn't slip up, that the only way Rob would ever find out would be through her own doing, that the possibility of it occurring through something as random as a murdered stranger and as simple as a phone call, something she had absolutely no control over, was almost mind boggling in its obviousness. Elouise realised that she had become complacent, and the thought of Rob finding out chilled her to the bone. However, the thought of breaking off the affair filled her with dread. How would she get up in the morning, without the thought of Zach meeting her at Central? How would she get through the day at work, without the memory of the morning she had spent with him, the animal scent of their sex still lingering on her skin? How would she get through the menial evenings as dutiful wife and attentive mother, without the prospect of doing it all again tomorrow?
She had been with Zach for so long now, had led a double life so successfully for so many years, that she wasn't sure if she would be able to go back to being what she thought of as 'normal'. Her choices, though, were limited. She could call it off with Zach tomorrow morning at Central, walk away as though the past three years had meant nothing, and go back to being wife to Rob, mother to Kasey, the morning commute suddenly a painful, endless chore. She could spill the truth to Rob, tell him all, beg him for forgiveness, and hope that they could salvage some love, some trust, some pitiful scrap of their relationship, their marriage. She could choose Zach instead, dump Rob in a blazing argument over his lack of attention, his dirty clothes on the floor, his resistance to going out for dinner more than once a month - any excuse would do - and then announce to Zach that she was all his, forever more. Elouise sighed under her breath, covered her face with her hands. None of those options were suitable. What she really wanted was to continue the way she had been - indefinitely. But after this morning, she knew that she had to make a decision - before a decision was made for her. Because in a flash of realisation today she had come to the conclusion that a decision surely would be made for her. And she knew that whatever that decision was, she probably wasn't going to like it.
Elouise sneaked a look at the clock - 11:47, nearly midnight - and sighed. Her body desperately needed the sleep after the series of stresses that the day had dealt her, but her mind refused to shut down, still filled with thoughts. Reluctantly, she got out of bed, ensuring that she didn't wake Rob, and slipped downstairs. She would sit up and watch late-night television with a herbal tea for a while, try and get her brain to shut down for the night.
Robert
Robert felt the bed rock slightly and rose slowly into consciousness just in time to see Elouise pad over to the bedroom door and head out to the stairs. He lay unmoving on his side, still climbing through the spider web threads of his dreams, attempting to sort out fantasy and dreams from the reality of the bedroom, his house. He listened to the muffled sounds coming from the kitchen - the tap running, the kettle set to boil, the clink of a cup and saucer. Eventually, the click as the kettle shut off, the liquid sound of boiling water sloshing into the cup, more clinking as the cup was picked up and taken away ... into the lounge room as far as he could tell. Then the sound of the television, too loud at first in the sleeping house, then quickly turned down.
Fully awake now, Robert realised that Elouise must have been having trouble sleeping. A herbal tea and bad late night television was her usual remedy for sleeplessness, although he hadn't noticed her do it in, well, possibly years, he realised. It made him wonder what was keeping her up, but put it down to the confusion and stress of the day. Once Kasey had seen Elouise and the last of the doubt and confusion had been cleared up, the family had spent most of the rest of the morning with the police, both at the railway and later at the local police station. It had been a harrowing day for all of them and all three had fallen into bed early after a quick take away dinner. Robert knew that he had fallen asleep almost instantly, sheer exhaustion taking over. It seemed as though Elouise hadn't been so lucky.
Robert considered going downstairs to talk to her, try and help her unravel her thoughts enough that it would allow her to sleep, but he always felt uncomfortable in the role of confidant with Elouise. She had never been the type to express her feelings to him, put her heart on her sleeve, so to speak. He assumed she did a lot more of this with her girlfriends, but recently, even those seemed to have drifted away. Elouise rarely had time for coffee mornings, casual dinners or telephone gossip sessions with her friends recently, it seemed. Suddenly and for the very first time, he wondered why that was. It had never occurred to him to question it before, put it down to increasing maturity on Elouise's part and a greater commitment to her work since she was promoted a few years ago. But now something niggled at him. With the clarity of hindsight, Rob realised that Elouise had definitely shown a change, and he tried to think back to when this change had occurred. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it centred around the time she was promoted. He guessed that perhaps the promotion could account for much of it, but there were other things that seemed strange, now he analysed it. She had gotten edgier somehow, less tolerant, more prone to fly off for a minor misdemeanour or a perceived slight. Never an early riser, she had started getting up in the pre-dawn hours, taking early trains to work. At first these had been accompanied by excuses - she had too much work on, her boss was coming in early, there was a big presentation first thing in the morning - and eventually it had become the norm, no more excuses given, or requested.
His thoughts jumped to the conversation they had held in his car, stopped at the red light on the way back to Kasey at Redton. At the time Elouise's explanation for her absence - that she had been sitting working on a report in the parklands near Central, seemed entirely reasonable. But now that he could give it more rational, less harried thought, it seemed strange. Elouise had never been an outdoors type. They had gone camping once, in the early days before Kasey was born, before they were married even, and Elouise had done nothing but complain bitterly the entire time. Needless to mention, they had never gone again. Robert knew Elouise well enough through nearly twenty years of marriage to know that she was simply not the type to want to sit in parklands and watch the sun rise over the lake. Unless she was undergoing a sudden want to get back in touch with nature as she got older.
Robert yawned, weariness overcoming him again. He dismissed his disturbed thoughts as paranoia, brought on by a stressful day, rolled over and readjusted the pillows, then closed his eyes and drifted into sleep again. He would ponder this more in the morning, when surely it would seem a lot more rational.
Lawrence watched the clock in the corner of his computer monitor count down the seconds to five o'clock. If it went any slower it would go backwards, he thought morosely as 4:46 ticked over. Figuring it would take him at least a few minutes to pack up, he stood with his coffee mug and wandered into the kitchen to wash it up. He dawdled back to his desk, realised only a minute had passed, and morosely hit the send/receive button on his email. Nothing. He heaved a sigh, and then decided to shut down his computer anyway. Elouise wasn't here, she would never know. He happily clicked his mouse, instructing the machine to shut down. The jingly, electronic tune of the machine's shut down process was music to his ears and, looking around furtively to see if anyone was paying any attention, he grabbed his empty briefcase and headed for the door.
The walk to Central station was a short stroll through a trendy shopping precinct, and Lawrence arrived on Platform Twelve just as the 4:59 pulled up to the station. Thanking his good fortune, Lawrence jumped onto the train, along with what seemed like hundreds of other commuters, all just as willing to get home slightly early as he was himself. The train was packed to the rafters and the chance of finding a seat was next to non-existent. Lawrence didn't bother, he wedged himself into a corner near the exit doors, and let his eyes drift into the unfocussed, dreamy gaze of a regular commuter.
Almost completely oblivious to his surroundings, only barely taking in which stations they were stopping at and tuning out everything else, Lawrence began to think about some of the stuff that had happened since the weekend. What a crazy day! Late on Sunday afternoon, he had wandered back around the block to his own flat from his mate Ben's place, and had stayed up pretty late playing Halo 3 on X-box. He had woken this morning feeling a bit tired and run down from the party, but the worst of the headache had gone. He still couldn't remember much of what had happened at that party - there had been a lot of people there, not all of whom he'd known - not all of whom even Ben had known, he suspected. Not that that was particularly unusual, Ben had a flair for throwing pretty wild parties that seemed to end up encompassing more people than anyone ever expected.
He had gotten to the station and caught the 7:56 into the city, arriving at the office shortly before half past eight, which was his designated starting time. Of course, that was when things had started to go really pear shaped. The phone in Elouise's office had rung and rung and he had been relieved when it stopped, transferring back to reception, and the pressure had been off him to answer it. But then it had started again and Lawrence had figured he'd better answer it. Elouise was rarely in much before nine, so there was no chance she was in her office ignoring it. And if it was important, she would be irritated if he hadn't gotten a message. So he had stepped, somewhat nervously, into Elouise's office, picked up the phone and spoke to Elouise's daughter Kasey, who had seemed upset and out of sorts, but who had not given him any information whatsoever. He thought it was strange that Kasey had seemed so surprised when Elouise wasn't in her office. Elouise had told him in the past that she usually caught the 8:23 into the office in the mornings, so she should have left home around about the time Kasey called him in the office, unless he had miscalculated somewhere along the line.
But then Elouise had finally arrived, right around the normal time, received a phone call on her mobile just as she walked into the office, and then had appeared all dreamy and worried and nervous, and had fled again. Lawrence hadn't seen or heard from her for the rest of the day, which was strange. In the two months Lawrence had been working with Elouise, he had not known her to even take a lunch break, let alone a whole day off at no notice.
Something familiar in the scenery made him snap out of his thoughts, and he realised that the train was beginning to pull into Redton station. He elbowed his way through the press of people and stepped through the doors as they opened onto the platform. A stench rolled off the air and hit him like a fist in the face as he did so, and he took a small involuntary step backwards before regaining his composure and his balance and starting to move toward the southern end of the platform, intending to duck through the narrow gap in the fence and through the car park towards his flat. As he neared the usually long grass, he thought at first that it had been mown, but then realised it had been trampled flat. The smell seemed to get worse as got closer to the edge of the concrete platform, and when he stepped through the gap in the fence onto the trampled grass, a fresh wave assaulted his nasal passages. The smell was remarkably similar to the kitchen bin in his house just before he got up the energy to take it out, and he guessed that an animal had died in the grass overnight, the heat of the daytime sun putrefying the flesh and creating the smell. Finally, he got to the car park, where he crossed the street and continued on his way. At least the air was a bit clearer here.
Shannen
Shannen twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door of her apartment open. It swung inwards, revealing her lounge room. The furniture was old, sourced from op shops and second hand dealers of dubious integrity, but the room was neat and clean. Shannen stepped over the threshold, placed her handbag on the old fashioned hall stand where it belonged, and went to the kitchen for a cup of tea. She had already switched the kettle on and reached up to the overhead cupboard for a mug before a thought suddenly hit her - alcohol would be so much more welcome right now, surely discovering a corpse on the way to work was enough to justify a Monday afternoon drink. She put the mug away and grabbed down a glass instead, then went to the top shelf of the pantry for the Baileys. She poured a good measure of the smooth smelling liquor into the bottom of the glass, hesitated, then sloshed in another fingerful, before recapping the bottle and returning it to its place. She topped up the glass with milk from the fridge and then took the glass to the balcony.
The sun was low on the horizon, although still about an hour away from setting. Shannen sat down on the low couch, which was wedged into a corner of her tiny balcony, and pulled her legs up to her chin. She had put the drink down on a small table beside the couch, and now she wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees. She closed her eyes, but the only images dancing behind her eyelids were of a filthy blanket-wrapped body, a pink painted toenail, and the distrustful faces of police officers. In despair she opened them again, and watched the wind chime turn lazily in the only barely there breeze. The chime was unusual, the product of a lazy Sunday morning searching the more obscure markets held along the beaches south of the city. It had blown glass tubes in varying, swirled colours that produced a high pitched yet pleasant chime, but the most interesting part about it was the feature hanging from the central ball. It was a glass phoenix, wings lifted as it eternally rose from unseen ashes. She had bought it for its slightly quirky charm, but in the past twelve months it had come to symbolise a lot more to Shannen. The traditional symbolism of the phoenix represented rebirth and new life, and indeed the purchase of the chime had represented a new chapter in Shannen's life. It had ended the part of her life that had been concerned only with drinking, partying and general hell-raising, and had heralded the current chapter, where she had gone back to university, gotten and held a steady, albeit menial job, regained contact with her mother. She still missed the partying - not so much the drugs and alcohol, it was a refreshing change to wake up with a clear head in the morning - but more the social aspect, the friends (although many had turned out to be not so good friends in the end), the constant, yet often unsavoury, company. She craved the daily interaction with others, yet still somehow coveted her own space, which had made her very difficult to spend time with in recent years. She had had a boyfriend for a few months, on more than one occasion, but had been unable to reconcile time spent with a significant other and time spent alone, and the relationships had died rather natural deaths. Shannen had chalked them up as learning experiences. Through the confusion of departing false friends and strained personal relationships, one friend had risen up above it all, though. Ariana had offered her a hand up, a shoulder to cry on and most of all love, right when she needed it most. Many nights had been spent over endless cups of tea, and the occasional glass of wine, and the two had formed a strong bond as together, although it was an unspoken pact, the two young women tried to make some sense of their lives and rise, like the phoenix, from the ashes that their own teenaged selves had created.
When Shannen had started down this path of betterment and self-awareness, she had known she would face some hurdles. She knew that false friends would tempt her, that the partying would exert its pull, that the pills would call her name. And so they had, frequently, sometimes irresistibly. She hadn't always managed to stay away from the temptations, but she had always managed to get back on the ladder. It may have been a few rungs lower, but she never found herself right back at the bottom. Although all these things had been expected, that many battles had been fought and most had been won, she had never expected that being drawn into a murder investigation would be among them. The thought of drinking herself into oblivion, of finding a little something to take the edge off, of sinking into that wondrous world where everything sparkled and even strangers glowed with love (except for when they didn't), teased her, and she pushed the thought back down. Struggling a little at the moment, knowing the struggle was only going to get worse as the night wore on, she wondered what to do. If she could keep busy, maybe that would keep her mind occupied. If her mind was occupied, she wouldn't be thinking how she could obtain some pretty little pills, she wouldn't be thinking about the bottle of Bailey's in the pantry, or the gin stashed in the back of the cupboard.
Struck with an idea suddenly, Shannen got up from the couch and trotted into the lounge to snag the cordless phone from its charger base. She dialled the number from memory as she stepped back outside, and watched the sun dip its bottom edge below the horizon as the phone rang in her ear. It was picked up mid-ring, and Shannen opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again as she heard the pre-recorded voice, "Hi, this is Ariana's phone. I'm not answering, so leave a message. If you're sexy I'll call you back." The slight tinkle of laughter that came after the message was abruptly cut off by a jarring beep, and Shannen did as Ariana had instructed, "Hey, girlfriend. I was hoping you were free for a bit tonight. I've had an absolutely shitty day and the bed bugs are bitin'. Give me a call back, ok?" Shannen hit the button that terminated the call, laid back along the length of the couch, and hoped that Ariana would call back soon. Slowly, the sun sunk in the sky, and as the last few rays of light shone over the horizon, Shannen resigned herself to having to fight her demons alone. Resolutely, she got up, grabbed the glass of Bailey's and milk, and carried it into the kitchen. She poured the contents of the glass into the sink, watching the milky concoction swirl down the plughole, leaving a scummy trail behind it, then ran the tap for a few seconds to clear the drain. Shannen turned to the kettle, hit the switch with a vengeance and grabbed down a mug. She plopped a teabag in and waited for the water to boil.
Elouise
Elouise lay in bed, wide awake, mind reeling. Rob was asleep beside her, lying on his side, her back to his wife, his breathing heavy but not quite a snore yet. Elouise was, as usual, thinking about Zach. This time though, it wasn't a pleasant recollection of the times they had spent together, the time they had spent together this morning, the way his eyes undressed her, or the way his touch sent sparks into her groin. This time, she was trying to think what to do about the whole sorry mess. The events of this morning had completely disarmed her; she had been so totally unprepared, so completely wrapped up in her invincibility. The charm that had surrounded the affair from the beginning had always seemed to extend to the possibility of being found out. She had been so sure that she wouldn't slip up, that the only way Rob would ever find out would be through her own doing, that the possibility of it occurring through something as random as a murdered stranger and as simple as a phone call, something she had absolutely no control over, was almost mind boggling in its obviousness. Elouise realised that she had become complacent, and the thought of Rob finding out chilled her to the bone. However, the thought of breaking off the affair filled her with dread. How would she get up in the morning, without the thought of Zach meeting her at Central? How would she get through the day at work, without the memory of the morning she had spent with him, the animal scent of their sex still lingering on her skin? How would she get through the menial evenings as dutiful wife and attentive mother, without the prospect of doing it all again tomorrow?
She had been with Zach for so long now, had led a double life so successfully for so many years, that she wasn't sure if she would be able to go back to being what she thought of as 'normal'. Her choices, though, were limited. She could call it off with Zach tomorrow morning at Central, walk away as though the past three years had meant nothing, and go back to being wife to Rob, mother to Kasey, the morning commute suddenly a painful, endless chore. She could spill the truth to Rob, tell him all, beg him for forgiveness, and hope that they could salvage some love, some trust, some pitiful scrap of their relationship, their marriage. She could choose Zach instead, dump Rob in a blazing argument over his lack of attention, his dirty clothes on the floor, his resistance to going out for dinner more than once a month - any excuse would do - and then announce to Zach that she was all his, forever more. Elouise sighed under her breath, covered her face with her hands. None of those options were suitable. What she really wanted was to continue the way she had been - indefinitely. But after this morning, she knew that she had to make a decision - before a decision was made for her. Because in a flash of realisation today she had come to the conclusion that a decision surely would be made for her. And she knew that whatever that decision was, she probably wasn't going to like it.
Elouise sneaked a look at the clock - 11:47, nearly midnight - and sighed. Her body desperately needed the sleep after the series of stresses that the day had dealt her, but her mind refused to shut down, still filled with thoughts. Reluctantly, she got out of bed, ensuring that she didn't wake Rob, and slipped downstairs. She would sit up and watch late-night television with a herbal tea for a while, try and get her brain to shut down for the night.
Robert
Robert felt the bed rock slightly and rose slowly into consciousness just in time to see Elouise pad over to the bedroom door and head out to the stairs. He lay unmoving on his side, still climbing through the spider web threads of his dreams, attempting to sort out fantasy and dreams from the reality of the bedroom, his house. He listened to the muffled sounds coming from the kitchen - the tap running, the kettle set to boil, the clink of a cup and saucer. Eventually, the click as the kettle shut off, the liquid sound of boiling water sloshing into the cup, more clinking as the cup was picked up and taken away ... into the lounge room as far as he could tell. Then the sound of the television, too loud at first in the sleeping house, then quickly turned down.
Fully awake now, Robert realised that Elouise must have been having trouble sleeping. A herbal tea and bad late night television was her usual remedy for sleeplessness, although he hadn't noticed her do it in, well, possibly years, he realised. It made him wonder what was keeping her up, but put it down to the confusion and stress of the day. Once Kasey had seen Elouise and the last of the doubt and confusion had been cleared up, the family had spent most of the rest of the morning with the police, both at the railway and later at the local police station. It had been a harrowing day for all of them and all three had fallen into bed early after a quick take away dinner. Robert knew that he had fallen asleep almost instantly, sheer exhaustion taking over. It seemed as though Elouise hadn't been so lucky.
Robert considered going downstairs to talk to her, try and help her unravel her thoughts enough that it would allow her to sleep, but he always felt uncomfortable in the role of confidant with Elouise. She had never been the type to express her feelings to him, put her heart on her sleeve, so to speak. He assumed she did a lot more of this with her girlfriends, but recently, even those seemed to have drifted away. Elouise rarely had time for coffee mornings, casual dinners or telephone gossip sessions with her friends recently, it seemed. Suddenly and for the very first time, he wondered why that was. It had never occurred to him to question it before, put it down to increasing maturity on Elouise's part and a greater commitment to her work since she was promoted a few years ago. But now something niggled at him. With the clarity of hindsight, Rob realised that Elouise had definitely shown a change, and he tried to think back to when this change had occurred. He couldn't be sure, but he thought it centred around the time she was promoted. He guessed that perhaps the promotion could account for much of it, but there were other things that seemed strange, now he analysed it. She had gotten edgier somehow, less tolerant, more prone to fly off for a minor misdemeanour or a perceived slight. Never an early riser, she had started getting up in the pre-dawn hours, taking early trains to work. At first these had been accompanied by excuses - she had too much work on, her boss was coming in early, there was a big presentation first thing in the morning - and eventually it had become the norm, no more excuses given, or requested.
His thoughts jumped to the conversation they had held in his car, stopped at the red light on the way back to Kasey at Redton. At the time Elouise's explanation for her absence - that she had been sitting working on a report in the parklands near Central, seemed entirely reasonable. But now that he could give it more rational, less harried thought, it seemed strange. Elouise had never been an outdoors type. They had gone camping once, in the early days before Kasey was born, before they were married even, and Elouise had done nothing but complain bitterly the entire time. Needless to mention, they had never gone again. Robert knew Elouise well enough through nearly twenty years of marriage to know that she was simply not the type to want to sit in parklands and watch the sun rise over the lake. Unless she was undergoing a sudden want to get back in touch with nature as she got older.
Robert yawned, weariness overcoming him again. He dismissed his disturbed thoughts as paranoia, brought on by a stressful day, rolled over and readjusted the pillows, then closed his eyes and drifted into sleep again. He would ponder this more in the morning, when surely it would seem a lot more rational.
Monday - 3:21pm Outbound
Dalton
Dalton felt pleasantly tired after work, and the gentle rocking motion of the 3:21 outbound train was soothing. He was sitting up the front of the train, hunched down on the seat with his legs splayed in front of him. His now empty cooler box lay on the empty seat beside him, and he could hear a bunch of raucous school kids horsing around behind him. He saw Redton station come into view through the graffiti-covered plexiglass window, swept up the cooler with one fist and swung himself into a standing position. Rolling with the rhythm of the train like a seasoned sailor, he moved to the exit then, as the train glided to a stop, he pressed the button that unlocked the doors and stepped out onto the platform. His good mood instantly evaporated as he took in the scene in front of him - what on earth had happened here? he thought as the swarm of school kids swept around him.
The first thing Dalton saw was the small huddle of police that were standing almost directly in front of him as he stepped off the train. The second thing Dalton noticed was the temporary, hastily erected black plastic scaffolding that surrounded the very end of the platform, where there should have been a gap in the fence leading to the car park through the long grass. The third thing Dalton noticed was the stench lingering in the air. The smell seemed to have substance all of its own, a foul, viscous mixture of rotting meat and flyblown household rubbish. Instinctively, Dalton began taking shallow breaths through his mouth. The smell made him feel like retching, and he swallowed thickly, trying to push the rising bile back down to his gullet.
Dalton's first instinct was to continue on his way and he began to turn towards the main exit from the platform, following the children. Suddenly the memory of the homeless man he had seen at the station that morning rose in his mind, and he wondered if there could be a connection. At odd times throughout the day, while he had been going about his business, his mind would retrieve the memory for him like a photograph - the old man with his head down on the bench, the bundle of old clothes in the grass. The more he had thought about it, the odder that bundle of clothes had seemed. Now he was being faced with a scene where the police were clearly present and there was something rotting on the air, he couldn't help but wonder what the old clothes may have concealed. His curiosity piqued, he turned back towards the police, who had almost instantly disregarded him, and resolutely started walking towards them.
There were three men standing together, two in the familiar blue uniforms of general duties officers, and one in casual pants and a collared shirt. Dalton assumed he was a detective of some sort, based only on his knowledge of American television shows. Of the two in uniforms one appeared older and slightly thicker around the waist. Dalton noticed he had two embroidered chevrons on his epaulet, but couldn't remember what rank that would make him. The other was younger and quite tall, his epaulets without ornament, fresh-faced and clean shaven yet his eyes were tired, the stresses of police work already beginning to show on his young face. The one in plain clothes appeared in his late-thirties, strong and lean and with an expression of distrust, not a man to pick a fight with, Dalton surmised. As he approached the small group their lacklustre conversation lulled and ceased, and the three turned towards him as one, suddenly alert - instinct raising invisible hackles and throwing up emotional shields. Suddenly the older cop opened his mouth and barked "Yes, Sir, how can we help you?" Dalton stopped a few paces short, the challenge apparently thrown down by the officer making him question his actions.
"Uh, I was just wondering, um ... I was just wondering what was going on. I was here this morning you see ..."
The officer who had spoken tilted his head to one side thinking, then eyed the detective meaningfully. The detective must have given some signal that Dalton didn't catch, because suddenly the cop's attitude changed. His features softened ever so slightly, although the suspicion never left his eyes, and he pulled a notebook from his uniform shirt's breast pocket. Fishing the pen from the spiral binding, he looked directly into Dalton's eyes, the human version of a polygraph, Dalton assumed, and asked him what train he had caught this morning. Dalton hesitated only slightly before telling him it was the 4:56 to the city, the same train he caught every day. The officer asked him his name and occupation, and Dalton gave him the requested information, spelling out his surname and the name of the construction company he worked for. This was dutifully copied down in the notebook and then an uncomfortable silence fell as the officer flicked back in the notebook two, three, four pages. He was still looking down at the indecipherable scrawl on the small page as he begun speaking again, "Look, Mister ... ah ... Richmond. I won't beat around the bush, there was a dead body found here at this station this morning, and we've begun an investigation into how that body, ah, came to be here. Now if you're right in your recollections, Mister Richmond, and you came through here at approximately 4:56, or slightly before, then I believe you may be able to help us in our investigation. Do you think that you might have something that you can add to this case, Mister Richmond?"
Dalton, realising immediately that the cop really didn't care what he thought, that he was going to be questioned regardless, nodded slightly, "You can call me Dalton, or Tony, if you want. Mister Richmond is my father. I, um, I don't have a lot to tell you, but it's been bugging me all day. Can I tell you here ... now? Or ... "
The cop gave a tight, humourless smile, nodded slightly and then responded, "All right Mister Richmond - Dalton. How about you start here and now, and we'll decide if we need to go to the station once we know what you saw? By the way, I am Senior Constable John Mitchell, this," he indicated to the plainly dressed man on his left, "this is Detective Sergeant David Ward, and this here," he nodded towards the young uniformed cop, "is Constable Michael Platt. Now, how about you start when you arrived at the station. Did you drive Mister ... Dalton?"
Dalton's mouth was suddenly dry and, though he knew he carried no guilt, he felt sure that Mitchell was capable of making him question his own innocence. Determined, now that he had started, to simply get through the interview which hopefully would be over soon, Dalton swallowed, tried to ignore the stench in his nostrils, and began, "I don't drive, I live just up the road. I know I left home about a quarter to five, so I got here around ten to. I was walking over the pedestrian overpass to the city bound platform ..." Dalton continued, uninterrupted, for ten minutes as he gave his impressions of the homeless man, the bundle of what he had mistakenly taken for clothes, and when he had finished, his story exhausted, Mitchell looked up his notes, nodded his head, and said gravely, "Mister Richmond, I think you had better accompany me down to the station. We'll need fingerprints from you, and a formal statement."
Without waiting for an answer, Mitchell turned away from the group, and spoke into the radio that had suddenly materialised in his hand. The conversation was unintelligible to Dalton, who stood slightly stunned, looking in confusion at the other two police officers who had not yet spoken a word, wondering if they would be able to tell him when he had gone from being a source of information to a suspect, and waited for Mitchell to turn back and deliver him his fate.
Zach
Zach paced up and down Platform Twelve at Central. Where the hell was she? The 3:21 outbound had been and gone. Zach checked his watch again, compared it to the station clock on the platform, and the arrivals board above him. The next outbound train came through at 3:38. He paced a little more, considered waiting in case she had missed the usual train, then decided that he had better things to do than wait around after a bit of arse. Yeah, it was great arse, but he had no doubt it would be there for him tomorrow too. Sullenly, and thinking of the romp he was missing out on, Zach stalked back out of Central Station, up the stairs and to his car. He hit the button to roll the top down on the convertible and, the wind in his hair making him feel at least slightly better, decided to go home and paint something. He decided he was going to use a lot of dark colours to match his mood - red and black, crimson and pitch. To hell with women, they caused nothing but trouble.
Walter
Walter had stumbled home from the station as soon as his hip had allowed him to stand and walk again. Even the trains had not been able to take his mind from the horrors that lay in the grass to his left, and the station had lost its appeal, at least for today. He just wanted to be home, where people didn't show up unexpectedly dead, wrapped in filthy old blankets and left out in the cold for strangers to find them. It had taken him close to an hour to traverse the kilometre or so back to his house, and when he had arrived he had collapsed into bed with exhaustion, fear and anguish crowding his mind. After ten minutes of lying in agony, the confusion of the morning refusing to allow him to slip into sleep, he snagged the bedside phone by its cord with shaking fingers, and punched a speed dial button. His niece’s husband had set the phone system up for him years ago, patiently sitting beside him one Sunday afternoon, teaching him how to use the speed dials, and which one to use for what service. Since then, he had had a falling out with his niece’s family, they had accused him of being senile since all he did was stare at trains. Later, when he had refused to go into an assisted living facility because it was too far from the train line his niece and her husband had ceased contact and now he hadn’t heard from them in years. Most of his old friends had passed away or moved out of town, and so Walter rarely had visitors anymore. Although he missed the company, at least he didn't have to explain to anyone why he was at the station so much. He could come and go as frequently and at whatever time he wished, without having to justify the action.
The line was picked up at the other end, startling Walter out of his memories, and for a moment he forgot who he was calling and why. Then the pain in his hip reminded him, not so subtly, and he asked in a soft voice whether or not Rosemary would be able to come around that afternoon. He had had a bad night, he told the nurse on the telephone, and a bit of a scare this morning, and he was in a bit of pain. Although Walter's words did not reveal the level of discomfort he was in, the nurse was practised and had heard from Walter often enough to know from the sound of his voice that he was in urgent need of medical attention. When Walter ended the call with a pleasant, "Thank you, Lovey." she immediately dialled Rosemary's personal mobile and called her in on her day off. She knew that Walter needed the best care right now, and that Rosemary would provide just that.
After swallowing two pain killers from the bottle above the bathroom sink, Walter finally found peace in the form of drug-induced sleep for a few hours, and was woken when he heard Rosemary knocking on the front door, calling out, "Walter! Dear, are you home? It's Rosemary, from Home Nursing". He slowly and carefully rolled out of bed, throwing aside the last remnants of pleasantly dream-free sleep, and padded in his socks to the front door. He unlocked it with the key he kept in a jar on the window sill, and checked above the chain before opening the door wide. Rosemary entered with an undisguised look of relief on her face. Chattering pleasantly, apologising for being late and saying how worried she had been about him, she grabbed his elbow and gently steered him back to the bedroom. Walter allowed himself to be led back into bed, let her check him over, Rosemary exclaiming over his bumps and bruises. She noticed the pain evident in his eyes as she gently manipulated his leg to gauge the damage in his hip and then went to her bag for some appropriate medication. Walter took the pills without question, swallowed them with the glass of water she fetched for him. She elicited promises from him that he would go and see the specialist, both of them knowing full well that he wouldn't. Rosemary waited, engaging Walter in general, light hearted conversation, as the drugs took effect, and once he was again asleep, Rosemary slipped out of the room and left the house, ensuring the door was locked tightly behind her.
Walter awoke some hours later and lay in bed listening to the sound of the trains as they passed behind his small house. Judging by their frequency, it was late in the afternoon. After an hour or so of daydreaming as the last vestiges of the medication faded away, Walter rolled over to check the clock - nearly half past three. He had virtually slept the day away, he realised, and with a resolve found from the faded pain in his hip, and a trace of unfounded guilt at sleeping for so long, he carefully rose from his bed, and shuffled into the kitchen.
With his half full coffee mug in one hand and toast crumbs clinging to his lips, Walter shifted into the living room, and studied his model trains. He set the coffee down carefully on a side table and picked up an engine from the collection at the miniature rail yard. Placing it on the track, he had just flicked the switch to set the train in motion when a knock came on the door. He assumed that it must be Rosemary returning, perhaps she had forgotten something, and he switched the power off and went to the door.
He unlocked the door with the key and, because the chain hadn't been replaced when Rosemary had left the house, opened the door wide. Instead of the friendly face of the home care nurse, though, Walter saw the stern faces of a pair of police officers - one older, one younger. Walter gave an involuntary cry and fainted on the doorstep.
Dalton felt pleasantly tired after work, and the gentle rocking motion of the 3:21 outbound train was soothing. He was sitting up the front of the train, hunched down on the seat with his legs splayed in front of him. His now empty cooler box lay on the empty seat beside him, and he could hear a bunch of raucous school kids horsing around behind him. He saw Redton station come into view through the graffiti-covered plexiglass window, swept up the cooler with one fist and swung himself into a standing position. Rolling with the rhythm of the train like a seasoned sailor, he moved to the exit then, as the train glided to a stop, he pressed the button that unlocked the doors and stepped out onto the platform. His good mood instantly evaporated as he took in the scene in front of him - what on earth had happened here? he thought as the swarm of school kids swept around him.
The first thing Dalton saw was the small huddle of police that were standing almost directly in front of him as he stepped off the train. The second thing Dalton noticed was the temporary, hastily erected black plastic scaffolding that surrounded the very end of the platform, where there should have been a gap in the fence leading to the car park through the long grass. The third thing Dalton noticed was the stench lingering in the air. The smell seemed to have substance all of its own, a foul, viscous mixture of rotting meat and flyblown household rubbish. Instinctively, Dalton began taking shallow breaths through his mouth. The smell made him feel like retching, and he swallowed thickly, trying to push the rising bile back down to his gullet.
Dalton's first instinct was to continue on his way and he began to turn towards the main exit from the platform, following the children. Suddenly the memory of the homeless man he had seen at the station that morning rose in his mind, and he wondered if there could be a connection. At odd times throughout the day, while he had been going about his business, his mind would retrieve the memory for him like a photograph - the old man with his head down on the bench, the bundle of old clothes in the grass. The more he had thought about it, the odder that bundle of clothes had seemed. Now he was being faced with a scene where the police were clearly present and there was something rotting on the air, he couldn't help but wonder what the old clothes may have concealed. His curiosity piqued, he turned back towards the police, who had almost instantly disregarded him, and resolutely started walking towards them.
There were three men standing together, two in the familiar blue uniforms of general duties officers, and one in casual pants and a collared shirt. Dalton assumed he was a detective of some sort, based only on his knowledge of American television shows. Of the two in uniforms one appeared older and slightly thicker around the waist. Dalton noticed he had two embroidered chevrons on his epaulet, but couldn't remember what rank that would make him. The other was younger and quite tall, his epaulets without ornament, fresh-faced and clean shaven yet his eyes were tired, the stresses of police work already beginning to show on his young face. The one in plain clothes appeared in his late-thirties, strong and lean and with an expression of distrust, not a man to pick a fight with, Dalton surmised. As he approached the small group their lacklustre conversation lulled and ceased, and the three turned towards him as one, suddenly alert - instinct raising invisible hackles and throwing up emotional shields. Suddenly the older cop opened his mouth and barked "Yes, Sir, how can we help you?" Dalton stopped a few paces short, the challenge apparently thrown down by the officer making him question his actions.
"Uh, I was just wondering, um ... I was just wondering what was going on. I was here this morning you see ..."
The officer who had spoken tilted his head to one side thinking, then eyed the detective meaningfully. The detective must have given some signal that Dalton didn't catch, because suddenly the cop's attitude changed. His features softened ever so slightly, although the suspicion never left his eyes, and he pulled a notebook from his uniform shirt's breast pocket. Fishing the pen from the spiral binding, he looked directly into Dalton's eyes, the human version of a polygraph, Dalton assumed, and asked him what train he had caught this morning. Dalton hesitated only slightly before telling him it was the 4:56 to the city, the same train he caught every day. The officer asked him his name and occupation, and Dalton gave him the requested information, spelling out his surname and the name of the construction company he worked for. This was dutifully copied down in the notebook and then an uncomfortable silence fell as the officer flicked back in the notebook two, three, four pages. He was still looking down at the indecipherable scrawl on the small page as he begun speaking again, "Look, Mister ... ah ... Richmond. I won't beat around the bush, there was a dead body found here at this station this morning, and we've begun an investigation into how that body, ah, came to be here. Now if you're right in your recollections, Mister Richmond, and you came through here at approximately 4:56, or slightly before, then I believe you may be able to help us in our investigation. Do you think that you might have something that you can add to this case, Mister Richmond?"
Dalton, realising immediately that the cop really didn't care what he thought, that he was going to be questioned regardless, nodded slightly, "You can call me Dalton, or Tony, if you want. Mister Richmond is my father. I, um, I don't have a lot to tell you, but it's been bugging me all day. Can I tell you here ... now? Or ... "
The cop gave a tight, humourless smile, nodded slightly and then responded, "All right Mister Richmond - Dalton. How about you start here and now, and we'll decide if we need to go to the station once we know what you saw? By the way, I am Senior Constable John Mitchell, this," he indicated to the plainly dressed man on his left, "this is Detective Sergeant David Ward, and this here," he nodded towards the young uniformed cop, "is Constable Michael Platt. Now, how about you start when you arrived at the station. Did you drive Mister ... Dalton?"
Dalton's mouth was suddenly dry and, though he knew he carried no guilt, he felt sure that Mitchell was capable of making him question his own innocence. Determined, now that he had started, to simply get through the interview which hopefully would be over soon, Dalton swallowed, tried to ignore the stench in his nostrils, and began, "I don't drive, I live just up the road. I know I left home about a quarter to five, so I got here around ten to. I was walking over the pedestrian overpass to the city bound platform ..." Dalton continued, uninterrupted, for ten minutes as he gave his impressions of the homeless man, the bundle of what he had mistakenly taken for clothes, and when he had finished, his story exhausted, Mitchell looked up his notes, nodded his head, and said gravely, "Mister Richmond, I think you had better accompany me down to the station. We'll need fingerprints from you, and a formal statement."
Without waiting for an answer, Mitchell turned away from the group, and spoke into the radio that had suddenly materialised in his hand. The conversation was unintelligible to Dalton, who stood slightly stunned, looking in confusion at the other two police officers who had not yet spoken a word, wondering if they would be able to tell him when he had gone from being a source of information to a suspect, and waited for Mitchell to turn back and deliver him his fate.
Zach
Zach paced up and down Platform Twelve at Central. Where the hell was she? The 3:21 outbound had been and gone. Zach checked his watch again, compared it to the station clock on the platform, and the arrivals board above him. The next outbound train came through at 3:38. He paced a little more, considered waiting in case she had missed the usual train, then decided that he had better things to do than wait around after a bit of arse. Yeah, it was great arse, but he had no doubt it would be there for him tomorrow too. Sullenly, and thinking of the romp he was missing out on, Zach stalked back out of Central Station, up the stairs and to his car. He hit the button to roll the top down on the convertible and, the wind in his hair making him feel at least slightly better, decided to go home and paint something. He decided he was going to use a lot of dark colours to match his mood - red and black, crimson and pitch. To hell with women, they caused nothing but trouble.
Walter
Walter had stumbled home from the station as soon as his hip had allowed him to stand and walk again. Even the trains had not been able to take his mind from the horrors that lay in the grass to his left, and the station had lost its appeal, at least for today. He just wanted to be home, where people didn't show up unexpectedly dead, wrapped in filthy old blankets and left out in the cold for strangers to find them. It had taken him close to an hour to traverse the kilometre or so back to his house, and when he had arrived he had collapsed into bed with exhaustion, fear and anguish crowding his mind. After ten minutes of lying in agony, the confusion of the morning refusing to allow him to slip into sleep, he snagged the bedside phone by its cord with shaking fingers, and punched a speed dial button. His niece’s husband had set the phone system up for him years ago, patiently sitting beside him one Sunday afternoon, teaching him how to use the speed dials, and which one to use for what service. Since then, he had had a falling out with his niece’s family, they had accused him of being senile since all he did was stare at trains. Later, when he had refused to go into an assisted living facility because it was too far from the train line his niece and her husband had ceased contact and now he hadn’t heard from them in years. Most of his old friends had passed away or moved out of town, and so Walter rarely had visitors anymore. Although he missed the company, at least he didn't have to explain to anyone why he was at the station so much. He could come and go as frequently and at whatever time he wished, without having to justify the action.
The line was picked up at the other end, startling Walter out of his memories, and for a moment he forgot who he was calling and why. Then the pain in his hip reminded him, not so subtly, and he asked in a soft voice whether or not Rosemary would be able to come around that afternoon. He had had a bad night, he told the nurse on the telephone, and a bit of a scare this morning, and he was in a bit of pain. Although Walter's words did not reveal the level of discomfort he was in, the nurse was practised and had heard from Walter often enough to know from the sound of his voice that he was in urgent need of medical attention. When Walter ended the call with a pleasant, "Thank you, Lovey." she immediately dialled Rosemary's personal mobile and called her in on her day off. She knew that Walter needed the best care right now, and that Rosemary would provide just that.
After swallowing two pain killers from the bottle above the bathroom sink, Walter finally found peace in the form of drug-induced sleep for a few hours, and was woken when he heard Rosemary knocking on the front door, calling out, "Walter! Dear, are you home? It's Rosemary, from Home Nursing". He slowly and carefully rolled out of bed, throwing aside the last remnants of pleasantly dream-free sleep, and padded in his socks to the front door. He unlocked it with the key he kept in a jar on the window sill, and checked above the chain before opening the door wide. Rosemary entered with an undisguised look of relief on her face. Chattering pleasantly, apologising for being late and saying how worried she had been about him, she grabbed his elbow and gently steered him back to the bedroom. Walter allowed himself to be led back into bed, let her check him over, Rosemary exclaiming over his bumps and bruises. She noticed the pain evident in his eyes as she gently manipulated his leg to gauge the damage in his hip and then went to her bag for some appropriate medication. Walter took the pills without question, swallowed them with the glass of water she fetched for him. She elicited promises from him that he would go and see the specialist, both of them knowing full well that he wouldn't. Rosemary waited, engaging Walter in general, light hearted conversation, as the drugs took effect, and once he was again asleep, Rosemary slipped out of the room and left the house, ensuring the door was locked tightly behind her.
Walter awoke some hours later and lay in bed listening to the sound of the trains as they passed behind his small house. Judging by their frequency, it was late in the afternoon. After an hour or so of daydreaming as the last vestiges of the medication faded away, Walter rolled over to check the clock - nearly half past three. He had virtually slept the day away, he realised, and with a resolve found from the faded pain in his hip, and a trace of unfounded guilt at sleeping for so long, he carefully rose from his bed, and shuffled into the kitchen.
With his half full coffee mug in one hand and toast crumbs clinging to his lips, Walter shifted into the living room, and studied his model trains. He set the coffee down carefully on a side table and picked up an engine from the collection at the miniature rail yard. Placing it on the track, he had just flicked the switch to set the train in motion when a knock came on the door. He assumed that it must be Rosemary returning, perhaps she had forgotten something, and he switched the power off and went to the door.
He unlocked the door with the key and, because the chain hadn't been replaced when Rosemary had left the house, opened the door wide. Instead of the friendly face of the home care nurse, though, Walter saw the stern faces of a pair of police officers - one older, one younger. Walter gave an involuntary cry and fainted on the doorstep.
Monday - 09:32am Outbound
Elouise
The phone call from Brianna had been strange, to say the least. Elouise had hung up the phone deliberately, and stared at her blank computer monitor for a moment while she waited for the swirling thoughts in her head to subside. She had just sat down at her desk as the phone had rung, had not yet fired up her desktop machine. She had not even had a coffee yet this morning, and she briefly considered the possibility that she was still lying in Zach's bed, dreaming the morning away. She couldn't quite make herself believe that little fantasy though. She watched as Lawrence walked past her door, looking in from the corner of his eye as he did so. She called his name, and he stopped, retraced his last two steps, and stuck his head in. Elouise, wrapped up in the strange events of the morning, did not notice the sallowness of his skin, or the grey pouches under his eyes. If she had, she would have mentioned them. Lawrence examined Elouise, wondering what on earth was going on with her this morning. The phone call from Kasey had been cryptic enough, but now Elouise had turned up at work and gone from acting normal, sunny even, to this strange staring creature with a haunted face.
"Is ... Um, is everything ok, Elouise?" Lawrence stammered.
"Ahh. Yes, I think so," Elouise responded slowly, "but something has come up that I really need to deal with. Is Mister Schultz in his office yet?"
Lawrence said that he hadn't seen their boss arrive yet this morning, but offered to investigate, and Elouise asked him to please do so. As soon as his head had disappeared from her door, she looked back at the blank monitor, searching it for answers that it did not have to give.
The phone on her desk sprang into life with the shrill bell of an internal call, and Elouise jumped, startled out of her blank reverie. She picked up the phone and spoke her name, trying not to sound shaken, but her normally brusque "Elouise Walker" nevertheless came out sounding flat and wary, even to her own ears.
"Oh, Elly, it's Francine over in Mister Bird's office, are you alright? You sound tired," Francine and Elouise had worked side by side as personal assistants to two of the partners of the firm since they had been promoted together from the secretarial team a little over three years ago - right about the time Elouise had started seeing Zach.
"Fran, hi, yes I'm alright, I think. I've just had a little personal emergency, and I'm going to have to go home though. It seems as though Kasey has gotten herself into some trouble. But what were you calling for?"
"Look, Elly, Kasey is much more important, I'll bug one of the other PA's with this one. You go to Kasey and I'll cover you today."
"Thanks, Fran, I appreciate that. Hopefully I'll be back this afternoon, but I'll send you a message and let you know what's happening."
"Don't come back today, Darl, just get things sorted out. We'll all still be here in the morning. Now go!" Francine's tone told Elouise there was no point arguing further and, knowing her co-worker and friend would be able to handle things for the morning at least, Elouise said goodbye, hung up the phone and reached for her handbag.
Elouise was back at Central station, waiting for the next outbound train and practising reasons for her absence from work this morning by the time Lawrence stuck his head back in her office. Lawrence frowned, figuring it must have been pretty urgent. At least he wouldn't have Elouise looking over his shoulder all day now. He turned to his own computer terminal, opened a browser window, and called up Facebook.
Kasey
Still sitting in the gutter with her back to the train station and what she suspected was her mother's body, Kasey strained her ears to hear Brianna's hushed conversation. She couldn't hear anything other than an occasional word here and there - 'train station', 'police everywhere', 'I don't know', 'it's closed off', 'yeah, ok'. She guessed that Brianna was asking someone to come to the station and get them, letting her parents know what was going on, probably. Kasey kept her head down on the knees, feeling as though she wanted the ground to swallow her up, how had today gone so terribly, terribly wrong so very, very quickly? She heard Brianna hang up the phone with a 'See you soon, then. Bye." and the crunch of the rough bitumen as her friend came back and sat down. She felt Brianna touch her arm, and smelled the musk of her body spray as she leaned in close. Brianna spoke softly in Kasey's ear, her breath tickling the fine hairs on her cheek. Kasey heard the words she spoke, understood each of them individually, but could not make sense of them as they were strung into a sentence. She looked up, and stared at Brianna, disbelief and misunderstanding clouding her pretty features, "Don't lie to me Bree," she said under her breath, enunciating each word carefully and with a touch of malice, "That will not help right now". Brianna shook her head, "I'm not lying Kase," she said, a smile starting to play on her face now, "I just spoke to your Mum, she's okay, she's on her way here now". The second time the words were spoken, the meaning started to crystallise, and ever so slowly, and completely unexpectedly, a smile crept up on Kasey too.
The friends held each other closely, this time crying tears, not so much of happiness, but more of relief and release. Slowly, the tension in the air began to unravel, like threads from a torn woollen jumper, flapping in the breeze as it dried on the line. Kasey felt layers of stress peel off her back, her shoulders and though doubt would continue to linger until she could lay her eyes on her mother, alive and well, she suddenly felt a fool. With this realisation came the understanding that her father was down there on the platform, what could he be doing, if it was not her mother's body lying in the grass? Kasey stood suddenly, left her school bag lying on the footpath, and ducked under the police tape leading down to the outbound platform, "Dad!" she yelled as she ran, "Dad! Dad, she's alright! Mum's ok, Dad, she's ok!"
People made a path for her as she ran, and like looking down the aisle of a church, she saw her father sitting, broken, with his back against the fence at the end of the platform. She watched as he ever so slowly raised his head, noticed the gleam of hope shine in his eyes quickly followed by a sharp sliver of doubt. He tilted his head to the side, trying to work out what she was doing and as she collapsed beside him on the hard ground he gathered her head up into his shoulder, resting his blonde head on top of hers, their hair flowing together, indistinguishable from each others, "Baby-girl, tell me again, she's okay ... ?" Kasey heard the upward inflection of hope, her father’s statement that was somehow a question, but the lump in her throat prevented her from speaking, so she nodded her head against his white shirt, leaving a trail of tears and snot on his shoulder. Finally, she managed to get something past her tears, and she whispered, "She's ok, Dad, she's ok. We're going to be ok."
Elouise
Elouise sat on Platform Twelve at Central Station, waiting for the next train that would take her out to Redton. Her mind was totally occupied, thoughts jostling each other for room, for her attention, for enough time at the forefront of her mind to be explored fully. Brianna had told her that there had been some kind of body found at the train station and that Kasey had for some reason that it was her, Elouise, when Lawrence had told her that she hadn't arrived at the office yet. Brianna had also said that her husband, Robert, had arrived at the station and had been talking to the police. Elouise wondered how he had gotten there so fast. It seemed so unlike him to put thought into action so quickly, although she had never seen him under this much pressure. It made her realise how much she must mean to him, for him to react so violently, without thinking the matter through fully. The thought disturbed her, she had always thought that he felt much the same way she did - the relationship was okay, they had fallen into a rhythm long ago, and each played their role, husband, wife, mother, father. She had even assumed that he had probably had relationships of his own outside the marriage, although she only had her own infidelity as proof of his.
Elouise felt curiously elated at the fact that no one had suspected what she had been up to, why she was really late to work, although the fact that everyone had thought her dead was reasonably discomforting in itself. Though it didn't help her explain where she had been. How was she going to explain away the missing two hours or so from her morning? Another thought suddenly hit her, and the force of it made her reel - it wasn't just Robert and Kasey who she was going to have to explain the missing hours to, her explanation was likely going to have to withstand the scrutiny of the police also. Elouise swallowed uncomfortably. She checked her watch - and realised that she had only about twenty five minutes to come up with a story that was sufficient enough to hold up under questioning by the police, and also wash with her husband and daughter. She did not for a minute think that the truth would suffice. She had no intention of leaving Robert, and, until now, no intention of leaving Zach either. The problem, she realised, was that she had gotten away with it for so long now, she had started to get complacent. She idly wondered if she was going to be forced to choose now, if Robert had gotten wind of the situation.
The train pulled into the station on a noxious cloud of fumes and squealing brakes. Elouise stood as the train slowed to a stop and she stepped into the carriage, her mind like a shaken gumball machine full of high-bouncers. She took a seat near the window on the near empty train, rested her head against the cool glass, and tried not to think about the fact that she now had less than fifteen minutes, and still no excuses. She watched the buildings flick past the window through unseeing eyes, the cars on the highway alongside the rails. Everyone was in such a hurry, it seemed, when all Elouise wanted was for the train to suddenly reverse directions, rewind through time and take her back to Zach's studio, Zach's bed, where she never had anything to worry about, unless it was where she had left her underwear. What on earth could she say? To have 'lost' two hours was quite an achievement. She couldn't blame it on a meeting - it would work on Robert, but the police would be sure to check it out. Could she have been having breakfast somewhere, alone? They would check the venue, she imagined, so that wouldn't work. Elouise tried to think up something she could have been doing, alone, that wouldn't be verifiable. Her mind was far from blank, in fact it was positively filled with thoughts, unfortunately one of them were providing her with a suitable excuse for her absence this morning. She was being posed a lot more questions this morning than she had answers for.
Before Elouise was even close to ready, she saw Redton station pulling into view ahead of them, and prepared to rise on wobbly legs. She was busy concentrating on making her legs hold her weight, when she realised that the train wasn't slowing for the station. A typically unintelligible announcement came over the train's public address system, she caught none of it, but she could tell that they weren't stopping at Redton. As this thought went through her mind, Redton station flashed past the windows in a blur of signs, seats, buildings, and blue uniforms. Elouise sat back down with a bump. Redton had been shut - there had been an 'incident'. All of a sudden, it seemed even more real than it had previously. Her mind had been so occupied with trying to come up with an excuse that she had given no thought at all to the fact that someone had been murdered, she wondered who they had been, where they had come from. She knew so many people by sight at the station - did she know the victim? Her stomach churned, to match the liquidity of her legs and, suddenly, the train pulled in to the next station, slowed, stopped. The doors opened. Elouise stood shakily, and virtually fell onto the platform, keeping her feet only barely in her heels - the heels she had been so proud of this morning, and which seemed so terribly unimportant now.
Robert
Robert was back in the car, heading west along the train line to Eaglehill, the next station out from Redton. It had taken some time for Kasey's words to sink in to his brain, and somehow he had still not been able to believe it until he heard Elouise's sweet voice on the phone. She had sounded distant, somehow apologetic and mournful to his ears, which seemed strange, illogical. It was not Elouise's fault that Kasey, and Robert for that matter, had jumped to conclusions, certainly no one blamed her for the misunderstanding. Elouise rarely reacted mildly, he was so used to her flying off the handle whenever something went wrong, that to hear her sounding forlorn and sorry in this situation, which was not remotely of her own doing, seemed at cross purposes, like a single red sock in a load of white washing. All Robert could feel at this moment was sweet, pure relief - his baby was alive, well. He pushed the thoughts from his mind, attempting to convince himself that he was over-analysing the situation, and tried to concentrate on driving instead.
Despite his best efforts, his mind wandered back to his wife. Robert knew the relationship had gotten tired, but he tended to view his marriage like a favourite armchair. It fit him perfectly, they worked well together, it was comfortable and relaxed and he certainly had no wish to see it end. He wouldn't dare express that comparison to Elly, she certainly wouldn't appreciate being compared to old furniture, but he assumed she felt the same way, although she would definitely have a more glamorous analogy to describe it. He, like many of his similarly married friends, was comfortable in his relationship. He could appreciate a fine figure or a shapely thigh when he saw one, but the thought of straying never crossed his mind. The very idea of seeing someone new, someone he had to impress, flatter and notice, filled him with dread. He knew that Elouise knew how much he loved her, he knew that Elouise knew that he wasn't all that observant, he knew that Elouise knew that he appreciated the little things that she did for him, day after day, year after year. He knew that Elouise knew that he had eyes only for her, and that she had eyes only for him. They were two of the lucky ones. So many of his friends had been separated, divorced, and he and Elly just kept on keeping on. It was a wonderful feeling, and when he thought he had lost her so suddenly, it was like his whole world had opened up, yawning at his feet, begging him to just step on down.
Robert snapped out of his reverie when he noticed the street sign pointing to Eaglehill station, the little stylised picture of a steam engine directing him down a narrow back street. He indicated at the last minute, turned the corner a little too fast and braked suddenly when he saw Elouise stepping carefully across the broken footpath towards the drop off point in ridiculously high heels. The sight of her was like balm to his eyes, she was okay!
Elouise
Elouise picked her way across the footpath in front of the Eaglehill railway station. She heard a car taking the corner too fast and looked up to see Robert's company car come speeding around the bend. Rob, eyes wild and hair sticking up in tufts, peered through the windscreen at her, as if he was trying to determine if it was, indeed, Elouise. When the identification was positive, he grinned like a mad man and hit the brakes. The little hybrid car came to a screeching halt in the centre of the road in front of Elouise, and he leaned across the passenger seat to open the door for her. Elouise plastered a smile on her face in return, although she could feel that it wasn't quite reaching her troubled eyes, and climbed into the open car. She had hardly gotten both feet into the footwell when Rob had reached across the centre console, grabbing her and holding her tight. She felt, rather than saw his tears - smelt rather than heard his relief.
"I love you Elly," he murmured, "I love you so much, when I thought you were ... well. I'm glad you're not, anyway. I am just so happy you're okay."
Elouise wasn't sure how to cope with the rush of emotion, and her throat clamped up. She was nervous, petrified, but most of all, guilty. Her guilt was like a living thing inside her - a black, viscous slug of a being, writhing and threatening to choke her if she so much as opened her mouth to offer her husband a platitude. She nodded her head against Robert's chest, unable to speak, and hoped that he would take her reticence as being overcome by emotion, rather than overcome by pure, filthy guilt.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity to Elouise who had not dared to break the embrace, Robert released his hold on her, sat back in the driver's seat, and gently appraised her with his eyes. She tried to smile, but it felt like a tight, false thing, so she relaxed the muscles around her mouth again, and looked back at him, wondering when his questions would start. Surprisingly, Robert didn't say anything. He simply turned to look through the windscreen and, with a small irrepressible smile playing around the corners of his mouth he dropped the car into gear and pressed the accelerator.
Elouise's reprieve did not last long, however. They had been driving for mere minutes when Robert pulled up at a red light, turned to her and, looking almost sheepish, said softly "You gave Kasey and me a hell of a scare this morning. And Brianna too. What happened? Where were you, Hun?"
Although she had been expecting it, the question when it came was like a blow to Elouise, the air rushing instantly out of her lungs, leaving her breathless and gasping. Slowly, she swallowed, trying to gain some composure, then, stuttering, "Well, you see, it's ... well, recently I've been spending some time in the mornings in the park. You know, the one near Central there? It has a little man-made lake in it. And I have been spending some time there. Just, you know, working on reports and such. Nothing ... nothing else, really. This morning, well, I guess this morning time got away from me. I spent longer than normal there, didn't get in to the office until late. It was, it is, rather ... well. Rather unfortunate. I guess." The words, which had been so difficult to come up with in the first place, were surprisingly easy to say in the end. Once they had left her mouth, though, Elouise could feel them hanging in the air between them. She realised she was holding her breath, waiting for Robert to give some kind of indication of whether or not he believed her. Eventually, Robert smiled, nodded slightly, and Elouise released the breath she had been holding.
"It would be nice weather in there at the moment. Early in the morning it would be quite pleasant, I bet. I wish I could do something like that before work". Elouise relaxed further, felt a smile come to her face. A real smile this time, not a fake, plastered on one. Finally, she felt able to respond to Robert's declarations of love, and she looked him in the eye, reached a soft, manicured hand to his stubbled cheek, and whispered, "I love you too, Rob. Thank you." Robert grinned in response, the light changed to green, and they sped off, reconciled, at least for now.
The phone call from Brianna had been strange, to say the least. Elouise had hung up the phone deliberately, and stared at her blank computer monitor for a moment while she waited for the swirling thoughts in her head to subside. She had just sat down at her desk as the phone had rung, had not yet fired up her desktop machine. She had not even had a coffee yet this morning, and she briefly considered the possibility that she was still lying in Zach's bed, dreaming the morning away. She couldn't quite make herself believe that little fantasy though. She watched as Lawrence walked past her door, looking in from the corner of his eye as he did so. She called his name, and he stopped, retraced his last two steps, and stuck his head in. Elouise, wrapped up in the strange events of the morning, did not notice the sallowness of his skin, or the grey pouches under his eyes. If she had, she would have mentioned them. Lawrence examined Elouise, wondering what on earth was going on with her this morning. The phone call from Kasey had been cryptic enough, but now Elouise had turned up at work and gone from acting normal, sunny even, to this strange staring creature with a haunted face.
"Is ... Um, is everything ok, Elouise?" Lawrence stammered.
"Ahh. Yes, I think so," Elouise responded slowly, "but something has come up that I really need to deal with. Is Mister Schultz in his office yet?"
Lawrence said that he hadn't seen their boss arrive yet this morning, but offered to investigate, and Elouise asked him to please do so. As soon as his head had disappeared from her door, she looked back at the blank monitor, searching it for answers that it did not have to give.
The phone on her desk sprang into life with the shrill bell of an internal call, and Elouise jumped, startled out of her blank reverie. She picked up the phone and spoke her name, trying not to sound shaken, but her normally brusque "Elouise Walker" nevertheless came out sounding flat and wary, even to her own ears.
"Oh, Elly, it's Francine over in Mister Bird's office, are you alright? You sound tired," Francine and Elouise had worked side by side as personal assistants to two of the partners of the firm since they had been promoted together from the secretarial team a little over three years ago - right about the time Elouise had started seeing Zach.
"Fran, hi, yes I'm alright, I think. I've just had a little personal emergency, and I'm going to have to go home though. It seems as though Kasey has gotten herself into some trouble. But what were you calling for?"
"Look, Elly, Kasey is much more important, I'll bug one of the other PA's with this one. You go to Kasey and I'll cover you today."
"Thanks, Fran, I appreciate that. Hopefully I'll be back this afternoon, but I'll send you a message and let you know what's happening."
"Don't come back today, Darl, just get things sorted out. We'll all still be here in the morning. Now go!" Francine's tone told Elouise there was no point arguing further and, knowing her co-worker and friend would be able to handle things for the morning at least, Elouise said goodbye, hung up the phone and reached for her handbag.
Elouise was back at Central station, waiting for the next outbound train and practising reasons for her absence from work this morning by the time Lawrence stuck his head back in her office. Lawrence frowned, figuring it must have been pretty urgent. At least he wouldn't have Elouise looking over his shoulder all day now. He turned to his own computer terminal, opened a browser window, and called up Facebook.
Kasey
Still sitting in the gutter with her back to the train station and what she suspected was her mother's body, Kasey strained her ears to hear Brianna's hushed conversation. She couldn't hear anything other than an occasional word here and there - 'train station', 'police everywhere', 'I don't know', 'it's closed off', 'yeah, ok'. She guessed that Brianna was asking someone to come to the station and get them, letting her parents know what was going on, probably. Kasey kept her head down on the knees, feeling as though she wanted the ground to swallow her up, how had today gone so terribly, terribly wrong so very, very quickly? She heard Brianna hang up the phone with a 'See you soon, then. Bye." and the crunch of the rough bitumen as her friend came back and sat down. She felt Brianna touch her arm, and smelled the musk of her body spray as she leaned in close. Brianna spoke softly in Kasey's ear, her breath tickling the fine hairs on her cheek. Kasey heard the words she spoke, understood each of them individually, but could not make sense of them as they were strung into a sentence. She looked up, and stared at Brianna, disbelief and misunderstanding clouding her pretty features, "Don't lie to me Bree," she said under her breath, enunciating each word carefully and with a touch of malice, "That will not help right now". Brianna shook her head, "I'm not lying Kase," she said, a smile starting to play on her face now, "I just spoke to your Mum, she's okay, she's on her way here now". The second time the words were spoken, the meaning started to crystallise, and ever so slowly, and completely unexpectedly, a smile crept up on Kasey too.
The friends held each other closely, this time crying tears, not so much of happiness, but more of relief and release. Slowly, the tension in the air began to unravel, like threads from a torn woollen jumper, flapping in the breeze as it dried on the line. Kasey felt layers of stress peel off her back, her shoulders and though doubt would continue to linger until she could lay her eyes on her mother, alive and well, she suddenly felt a fool. With this realisation came the understanding that her father was down there on the platform, what could he be doing, if it was not her mother's body lying in the grass? Kasey stood suddenly, left her school bag lying on the footpath, and ducked under the police tape leading down to the outbound platform, "Dad!" she yelled as she ran, "Dad! Dad, she's alright! Mum's ok, Dad, she's ok!"
People made a path for her as she ran, and like looking down the aisle of a church, she saw her father sitting, broken, with his back against the fence at the end of the platform. She watched as he ever so slowly raised his head, noticed the gleam of hope shine in his eyes quickly followed by a sharp sliver of doubt. He tilted his head to the side, trying to work out what she was doing and as she collapsed beside him on the hard ground he gathered her head up into his shoulder, resting his blonde head on top of hers, their hair flowing together, indistinguishable from each others, "Baby-girl, tell me again, she's okay ... ?" Kasey heard the upward inflection of hope, her father’s statement that was somehow a question, but the lump in her throat prevented her from speaking, so she nodded her head against his white shirt, leaving a trail of tears and snot on his shoulder. Finally, she managed to get something past her tears, and she whispered, "She's ok, Dad, she's ok. We're going to be ok."
Elouise
Elouise sat on Platform Twelve at Central Station, waiting for the next train that would take her out to Redton. Her mind was totally occupied, thoughts jostling each other for room, for her attention, for enough time at the forefront of her mind to be explored fully. Brianna had told her that there had been some kind of body found at the train station and that Kasey had for some reason that it was her, Elouise, when Lawrence had told her that she hadn't arrived at the office yet. Brianna had also said that her husband, Robert, had arrived at the station and had been talking to the police. Elouise wondered how he had gotten there so fast. It seemed so unlike him to put thought into action so quickly, although she had never seen him under this much pressure. It made her realise how much she must mean to him, for him to react so violently, without thinking the matter through fully. The thought disturbed her, she had always thought that he felt much the same way she did - the relationship was okay, they had fallen into a rhythm long ago, and each played their role, husband, wife, mother, father. She had even assumed that he had probably had relationships of his own outside the marriage, although she only had her own infidelity as proof of his.
Elouise felt curiously elated at the fact that no one had suspected what she had been up to, why she was really late to work, although the fact that everyone had thought her dead was reasonably discomforting in itself. Though it didn't help her explain where she had been. How was she going to explain away the missing two hours or so from her morning? Another thought suddenly hit her, and the force of it made her reel - it wasn't just Robert and Kasey who she was going to have to explain the missing hours to, her explanation was likely going to have to withstand the scrutiny of the police also. Elouise swallowed uncomfortably. She checked her watch - and realised that she had only about twenty five minutes to come up with a story that was sufficient enough to hold up under questioning by the police, and also wash with her husband and daughter. She did not for a minute think that the truth would suffice. She had no intention of leaving Robert, and, until now, no intention of leaving Zach either. The problem, she realised, was that she had gotten away with it for so long now, she had started to get complacent. She idly wondered if she was going to be forced to choose now, if Robert had gotten wind of the situation.
The train pulled into the station on a noxious cloud of fumes and squealing brakes. Elouise stood as the train slowed to a stop and she stepped into the carriage, her mind like a shaken gumball machine full of high-bouncers. She took a seat near the window on the near empty train, rested her head against the cool glass, and tried not to think about the fact that she now had less than fifteen minutes, and still no excuses. She watched the buildings flick past the window through unseeing eyes, the cars on the highway alongside the rails. Everyone was in such a hurry, it seemed, when all Elouise wanted was for the train to suddenly reverse directions, rewind through time and take her back to Zach's studio, Zach's bed, where she never had anything to worry about, unless it was where she had left her underwear. What on earth could she say? To have 'lost' two hours was quite an achievement. She couldn't blame it on a meeting - it would work on Robert, but the police would be sure to check it out. Could she have been having breakfast somewhere, alone? They would check the venue, she imagined, so that wouldn't work. Elouise tried to think up something she could have been doing, alone, that wouldn't be verifiable. Her mind was far from blank, in fact it was positively filled with thoughts, unfortunately one of them were providing her with a suitable excuse for her absence this morning. She was being posed a lot more questions this morning than she had answers for.
Before Elouise was even close to ready, she saw Redton station pulling into view ahead of them, and prepared to rise on wobbly legs. She was busy concentrating on making her legs hold her weight, when she realised that the train wasn't slowing for the station. A typically unintelligible announcement came over the train's public address system, she caught none of it, but she could tell that they weren't stopping at Redton. As this thought went through her mind, Redton station flashed past the windows in a blur of signs, seats, buildings, and blue uniforms. Elouise sat back down with a bump. Redton had been shut - there had been an 'incident'. All of a sudden, it seemed even more real than it had previously. Her mind had been so occupied with trying to come up with an excuse that she had given no thought at all to the fact that someone had been murdered, she wondered who they had been, where they had come from. She knew so many people by sight at the station - did she know the victim? Her stomach churned, to match the liquidity of her legs and, suddenly, the train pulled in to the next station, slowed, stopped. The doors opened. Elouise stood shakily, and virtually fell onto the platform, keeping her feet only barely in her heels - the heels she had been so proud of this morning, and which seemed so terribly unimportant now.
Robert
Robert was back in the car, heading west along the train line to Eaglehill, the next station out from Redton. It had taken some time for Kasey's words to sink in to his brain, and somehow he had still not been able to believe it until he heard Elouise's sweet voice on the phone. She had sounded distant, somehow apologetic and mournful to his ears, which seemed strange, illogical. It was not Elouise's fault that Kasey, and Robert for that matter, had jumped to conclusions, certainly no one blamed her for the misunderstanding. Elouise rarely reacted mildly, he was so used to her flying off the handle whenever something went wrong, that to hear her sounding forlorn and sorry in this situation, which was not remotely of her own doing, seemed at cross purposes, like a single red sock in a load of white washing. All Robert could feel at this moment was sweet, pure relief - his baby was alive, well. He pushed the thoughts from his mind, attempting to convince himself that he was over-analysing the situation, and tried to concentrate on driving instead.
Despite his best efforts, his mind wandered back to his wife. Robert knew the relationship had gotten tired, but he tended to view his marriage like a favourite armchair. It fit him perfectly, they worked well together, it was comfortable and relaxed and he certainly had no wish to see it end. He wouldn't dare express that comparison to Elly, she certainly wouldn't appreciate being compared to old furniture, but he assumed she felt the same way, although she would definitely have a more glamorous analogy to describe it. He, like many of his similarly married friends, was comfortable in his relationship. He could appreciate a fine figure or a shapely thigh when he saw one, but the thought of straying never crossed his mind. The very idea of seeing someone new, someone he had to impress, flatter and notice, filled him with dread. He knew that Elouise knew how much he loved her, he knew that Elouise knew that he wasn't all that observant, he knew that Elouise knew that he appreciated the little things that she did for him, day after day, year after year. He knew that Elouise knew that he had eyes only for her, and that she had eyes only for him. They were two of the lucky ones. So many of his friends had been separated, divorced, and he and Elly just kept on keeping on. It was a wonderful feeling, and when he thought he had lost her so suddenly, it was like his whole world had opened up, yawning at his feet, begging him to just step on down.
Robert snapped out of his reverie when he noticed the street sign pointing to Eaglehill station, the little stylised picture of a steam engine directing him down a narrow back street. He indicated at the last minute, turned the corner a little too fast and braked suddenly when he saw Elouise stepping carefully across the broken footpath towards the drop off point in ridiculously high heels. The sight of her was like balm to his eyes, she was okay!
Elouise
Elouise picked her way across the footpath in front of the Eaglehill railway station. She heard a car taking the corner too fast and looked up to see Robert's company car come speeding around the bend. Rob, eyes wild and hair sticking up in tufts, peered through the windscreen at her, as if he was trying to determine if it was, indeed, Elouise. When the identification was positive, he grinned like a mad man and hit the brakes. The little hybrid car came to a screeching halt in the centre of the road in front of Elouise, and he leaned across the passenger seat to open the door for her. Elouise plastered a smile on her face in return, although she could feel that it wasn't quite reaching her troubled eyes, and climbed into the open car. She had hardly gotten both feet into the footwell when Rob had reached across the centre console, grabbing her and holding her tight. She felt, rather than saw his tears - smelt rather than heard his relief.
"I love you Elly," he murmured, "I love you so much, when I thought you were ... well. I'm glad you're not, anyway. I am just so happy you're okay."
Elouise wasn't sure how to cope with the rush of emotion, and her throat clamped up. She was nervous, petrified, but most of all, guilty. Her guilt was like a living thing inside her - a black, viscous slug of a being, writhing and threatening to choke her if she so much as opened her mouth to offer her husband a platitude. She nodded her head against Robert's chest, unable to speak, and hoped that he would take her reticence as being overcome by emotion, rather than overcome by pure, filthy guilt.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity to Elouise who had not dared to break the embrace, Robert released his hold on her, sat back in the driver's seat, and gently appraised her with his eyes. She tried to smile, but it felt like a tight, false thing, so she relaxed the muscles around her mouth again, and looked back at him, wondering when his questions would start. Surprisingly, Robert didn't say anything. He simply turned to look through the windscreen and, with a small irrepressible smile playing around the corners of his mouth he dropped the car into gear and pressed the accelerator.
Elouise's reprieve did not last long, however. They had been driving for mere minutes when Robert pulled up at a red light, turned to her and, looking almost sheepish, said softly "You gave Kasey and me a hell of a scare this morning. And Brianna too. What happened? Where were you, Hun?"
Although she had been expecting it, the question when it came was like a blow to Elouise, the air rushing instantly out of her lungs, leaving her breathless and gasping. Slowly, she swallowed, trying to gain some composure, then, stuttering, "Well, you see, it's ... well, recently I've been spending some time in the mornings in the park. You know, the one near Central there? It has a little man-made lake in it. And I have been spending some time there. Just, you know, working on reports and such. Nothing ... nothing else, really. This morning, well, I guess this morning time got away from me. I spent longer than normal there, didn't get in to the office until late. It was, it is, rather ... well. Rather unfortunate. I guess." The words, which had been so difficult to come up with in the first place, were surprisingly easy to say in the end. Once they had left her mouth, though, Elouise could feel them hanging in the air between them. She realised she was holding her breath, waiting for Robert to give some kind of indication of whether or not he believed her. Eventually, Robert smiled, nodded slightly, and Elouise released the breath she had been holding.
"It would be nice weather in there at the moment. Early in the morning it would be quite pleasant, I bet. I wish I could do something like that before work". Elouise relaxed further, felt a smile come to her face. A real smile this time, not a fake, plastered on one. Finally, she felt able to respond to Robert's declarations of love, and she looked him in the eye, reached a soft, manicured hand to his stubbled cheek, and whispered, "I love you too, Rob. Thank you." Robert grinned in response, the light changed to green, and they sped off, reconciled, at least for now.
Monday - 08:23am to the City
Kasey
While her mother was busy getting dressed so that Zach could drive her to work, Kasey was wandering down to the train station to go to school. Kasey was due to finish Year Eleven in two weeks and after that there was only a year to go before she was blessedly free of the public school system. For Kasey, the end of high school couldn't come soon enough. She was a moderately good student, but would definitely not be getting dux this year, she was enough of a realist even at sixteen to recognise that. Kasey had a dream of living on her own, maybe with a few good friends, of working somewhere so that she had own money to spend on whatever she wanted, with no parents telling her what was 'sensible', or what was a 'waste of money'. She was considering going to university, only because her parents expected it, and thought that perhaps doing an arts degree would be a good way to spend a few years of her life. That way, her parents would be happy because she was doing further study, and she would be doing something that, she assumed, wouldn't be too taxing on the brain. Above all, Kasey disliked studying. If she could get a degree by drawing a few pictures and being Creative, then that was what she intended to do.
Kasey had developed a love for art since she met her boyfriend two and half months ago. He was quite a lot older than her, older than her mother even, although she would never dare to tell her about him. He didn't act like an old guy though, he was daring and funny and, more to the point, artistic. He did fabulous oil paintings with what seemed thousands of swirled colours that made her feel as though she was falling into a hole like Alice down the rabbit hole - down into a crazy, mixed-up world where colour became touch, taste, and scent all at once. Kasey found drawings of recognisable pictures - cows and fruit and vases of flowers - to be predictable and boring. But her boyfriend's paintings were imaginative, complex and completely enthralling. Yesterday after school, she had stood in front of one of his paintings for close to twenty minutes, and would have stayed longer if her boyfriend hadn't started to undress her as she stared, entranced. He was so passionate, she mused, recalling how they had spent the afternoon curled up on his bed, him teaching her things no boy her own age would ever know. She felt so lucky to have such an imaginative, talented and loving man. And a man too, not a boy like the kids she went to school with. How could Brianna, her best friend, be even remotely interested in those boys? She just couldn't see the attraction in them at all.
Absorbed in her ponderings, Kasey did not at first notice the commotion around the train station, but as she came closer a small group of people broke away from the larger mob near the car park end of the platform. Through the gap they left Kasey suddenly noticed a strip of tape, flapping loosely in the slight breeze. Although she had never before seen it in real life, she had certainly seen enough cop shows on television to recognise it for what it was - police tape. Thoughts of boys, art and friends suddenly banished from her mind, she stopped, shielded her eyes against the November sun sitting low on the horizon and tried to work out what was going on.
Directly in front of her was the wooden stairs that led up and over the train line to the city-bound platform, which was where Kasey had been heading. Police tape was now covering the span between the hand rails not just on this side but also, she realised, from the other side of the tracks as well. While the staircase was empty, people having been deterred by the copious amounts of tape, and the city-bound platform appeared deserted, the outbound platform was packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder. There were also people standing in huddles through the long grass at the end of the platform, spilling out into the car park, which was full. On closer inspection she saw her mother's silver Fairlane, with the ELOU15 vanity number plates, surrounded on all sides by police vehicles, parked hastily and haphazardly across the white painted lines. All the people, both in uniform and those without, appeared to just be standing around, Kasey couldn't see what the cause of the commotion was, but it appeared to be out in the grass near her mother's car, just on the other side of the little white fence at the end of the outward-bound platform. She knew her mother usually took the 6:14 to the city in the morning, and that she had left that morning at the usual time, so it was not strange that her car was here - after all, Kasey saw it parked in the same spot every morning when she came down to catch the train to school. She had complained that Elouise should go in to work at a normal time, like regular people, so that she could drive Kasey to the station and save her the walk, but her mother had fobbed her off, explaining that it was important that she be at work early. Her mother was the personal assistant to one of the three partners of a big legal firm in the city, and she had explained to Kasey that she needed to make sure she was at work before her boss, so that she could have everything ready for him. Kasey thought that it sounded like an awful lot of arse kissing, but had wisely kept this opinion to herself.
Kasey didn't feel frightened, standing on the footpath down the road slightly from the station, watching the commotion. If anything, she was excited - something different was happening! After all, it wasn't every day you got to see the station wrapped up like a birthday present with police tape and with cops crawling all over it. Seeing her mother's car in the middle of all the chaos made her slightly uneasy, but the sheer excitement of the event was overshadowing any nervousness she might be feeling, at least for now. Snapping back to reality, Kasey realised that she wasn't going to be able to get to school this morning. She wasn't displeased, at least she had a fantastic story to tell.
Kasey swung her backpack off one shoulder, so she could paw through it for her mobile phone. She found it in a front pocket, pulled it out and speed-dialled her Mum's work number. It rang and rang ... paused slightly, then rang again, indicating that her call had been transferred to the front reception desk. Kasey thought that her mother must be in a meeting with her boss - it was likely that the CEO had just arrived and Elouise was busy running around getting him a cup of coffee or something she supposed. After what felt like an eternity of ringing, finally a prim voice said "Woodworth, Schultz and Bird, can I help you?"
"Ah, hi. I need to talk to Elouise Walker? I'm her daughter, and it's an emergency?"
"Please hold. I'll transfer you to her desk."
Kasey did as she was told, watching the activity on the station and praying she didn't run out of credit on her phone before Elouise answered. The phone rang five more times before it was finally picked up again, this time by a man with an uncertain, "Er ... Hello? Elouise's desk."
"Hi, who's this? I'm looking for Elouise Walker, it's Kasey ..."
"Oh hi, Kasey, this is Lawrence - Larry - your Mum isn't in yet. Can I give her a message or something?"
Kasey frowned as Lawrence gave her this information, staring over at the station as pieces slowly slotted into place - her Mum's sedan in the usual place, the police cars in the car park, the tape everywhere, her Mum not at work ... "Oh ... My God ..." she breathed into the phone, "Larry, I think something awful might have happened ..."
"Something awful?" Larry repeated, dumbstruck, "What do you mean, Kasey? Kasey?" But the line was dead, Kasey was gone.
Brianna
Despite the loud music pouring into her ears from the mp3 player, Brianna noticed that there was something going on at the station as soon as she turned the corner. She approached from the car park end of the platform, and as a general rule she met Kasey at the foot of the stairs leading over the tracks. This morning, however, there was definitely some kind of a problem - cars, much more than normal, were parked in no particular order all over the car park, there was a massive amount of people milling around, although none seemed to be actually doing anything to speak of. The centre of the melee seemed to be in the long grass in between the car park and the end of the outbound platform, but Brianna couldn't see what the focus of their concentration was on, there was too much of a crowd, and whatever it was was well hidden in the paspalum.
Brianna slowed her pace, in order to more fully concentrate on the commotion at the platform. She was merely curious, had not yet realised the implications of what might be going on. Only as she noticed the large amount of uniforms, and the swinging, flapping police tape that was draped liberally around the place, did she start to realise that something pretty majorly serious must have happened. Oblivious to the turmoil Brianna was now experiencing, Avril Lavigne continued to yell in her ears, "'Cause life's like this. Uh huh, uh huh, that's the way it is". Brianna stepped onto the coarse gravel at the farthest end of the car park, and stopped to pull the headphones out of her ears. Avril was reduced to a tinny whistle from the ear bud speakers until Brianna killed even that by hitting the power button on the iPod. The silence was pierced only by the murmur of voices from the railway platform.
Brianna's usually sunny face had clouded over, and she surveyed the scene with troubled eyes, wondering where her friend might be, and worrying that she might not be able to find Kasey's familiar face in the crowd. Then, thankfully, her eyes fell on a familiar figure in a school uniform close to the bottom of the pedestrian overpass. Brianna broke into a run and, as she drew closer to Kasey she saw her friend bring her phone down from her face, and stare at it as though she had no idea what it was.
"Kasey!" she yelled as she ran towards her, "Kasey!"
Kasey turned as though in a daydream, and Brianna could see her speaking although she could not hear the words. As Brianna drew alongside her, she wrapped her arms around her oldest friend, "Kasey, what's happened? What's going on? Are you ok?"
Kasey pulled away from her grasp, and Brianna looked her in the eyes, trying to decipher what lay behind them. Contraband mascara ran down Kasey's tear-streaked face as she dragged her eyes from Brianna's gaze and dropped her eyes to the ground. She pressed her lips together tightly, as though she didn't want to let the words out, and kicked a coke bottle lid along the ground with the scuffed toe of her school shoe. Brianna reached out a hand and swiped the black tinted tears from her friend's face, creating a ghoulish grey blusher on both sides of her nose, and Kasey looked up again, her lips still pressed together. All the blood appeared to have drained from her face, and her hair had come loose from the elastic holding it. "Bree," she said in a whisper, "I think that might be my Mum down there."
Robert
Summonsed by an hysterical phone call from his daughter's best friend, Robert had no idea what kind of situation he was about to drive into but, whatever it was, he was getting there fast. Pushing his work car to its limit, he had run every yellow light from work to the Redton train station, his brain on hold, simply refusing to entertain any kind of possibilities, in fact pretty much refusing to think of anything at all except the fastest way to get back to Redton. He screamed through the final intersection, hooked a sharp right hand turn on to Station Road, just about putting the Prius onto two wheels, its little electric engine protesting. The crowd around the station hove into view through Robert's passenger side window and he suddenly braked, stopping the car in the middle of the road, and taking a bare second to take in the scene that suddenly presented itself to him. For some reason he had believed that, once he got here, it would turn out that the girls had played a practical joke, that there would be nothing out of the ordinary. He would be able to yell at Kasey for wasting his time, and his perfectly ordinary life could go on in its perfectly ordinary manner. In the same second, he had realised all along that that was not going to happen, that it had been a mere hope, and that he had known this as soon as he had heard Brianna's strangled voice on the telephone, and Kasey's weeping in the background.
Robert slowly eased the car to the side of the road, hardly tearing his eyes from the cluster of people at the station, and stepped out onto the road. He left the keys in the ignition - they weren't important right now. Right now, he needed to find his daughter, and then, he needed to find out what had happened to his wife. Panicky, his gaze skittered over the crowd, searching for a school uniform and blonde hair - he couldn't remember how Kasey had done her hair this morning, and he mentally cursed himself for not taking more notice. Then, above the murmur of the crowd, he heard a voice yell out, "Dad! Rob! Over here!" Robert whipped his head around to see his daughter bearing down on him at a run from the other end of the station, finally crash tackling him with an embrace. Brianna was not far behind her, and he met her eyes over Kasey's head. Brianna shrugged, as if to say she had no idea what was going on. Rob thought she probably had a better idea than he did, but didn't push the issue, the poor girl looked petrified.
Slowly, he extricated himself from Kasey's grasp, bent his head slightly to look in her eyes, and asked her to tell him what had happened. Haltingly at first and eventually with a gush of words that flowed without the benefit of punctuation, Kasey told her story, from walking to the station and seeing the police tape, to ringing the law firm and speaking to Lawrence. Slowly, like a gushing tap slowing to a drip, Kasey's flow of words slowed, then halted. She looked as though she had sagged, somehow, Rob thought absently, as his mind whirled trying to piece together the information he had just received. His natural ability to deny, deny, kicked in and his first thought was that nothing was confirmed, it was a series of events that were not necessarily linked. Simultaneously, and in contradiction to his better reasoning, he started to panic.
With a massive effort, he took a breath, grabbed Kasey around the shoulders, and led her to the kerb to sit down. Kasey looked shrunken, haunted. Rob watched her pull her knees into her chest and curl into a tight ball, and he wrapped what he hoped was a fatherly, comforting arm around her. Brianna sank down on the other side of her friend, and copied the gesture, looking like what she really wanted was someone to do the same for her.
Softly, trying not to upset her, Rob asked her if she had gone down to the platform to speak to any of the police lingering there. Kasey shook her head, no. Rob fell silent, pondering his next move, then spoke again, "Kasey, baby-girl, I'm going to walk down there and see what I can find out. I'm not going to be gone for very long. Can you sit here with Brianna for a little while?"
Kasey responded with silence, and Rob thought that she hadn't heard him. He opened his mouth to repeat himself, but then saw Kasey's shoulders lift slowly, and fall, "OK" she said softly, barely audible.
Rob rose, planting a kiss on the top of her head, "I love you, Kiddo. I'll be right back." he murmured into the tangle of blonde hair.
Rob steeled himself mentally for what might come next, ducked under a line of police tape, and headed down into the crowd of people. Once he reached the platform, it became obvious that there were not as many people as it had seemed from the car park. He elbowed his way through to the centre of the crowd, most of whom were in emergency services uniforms. It seemed as though people were just standing around in knots, waiting for something to happen. Rob and the two teenage girls had proven to be a distraction for most, it seemed, and they were curious. Rob got to the end of the platform and stopped before stepping into the trampled grass. The scene that had been obscured by milling people before, now laid itself out before him, and he drew a sharp breath as he took it in. The body, for it was clear that was what it was, despite it being shrouded by a filthy blanket, seemed to be lying on its side, with knees drawn up into its chest. The position reminded him horribly of how Kasey had sat drawn up on the kerb. He fought down the bile that rose in the back of his throat, and turned his face skyward to ward off the tears that threatened. Only slightly calmed, he looked down again, to find he was being stared at by a man in a blue police uniform. Robert cleared his throat softly, willing his voice to work, and opened his mouth to speak. Before any words had formed on his tongue, though, the police officer rebuked him, "Sir, I don't know what you think you are doing, but this is my crime scene. You had better have a good reason for having trampled on it." the voice was rough, the words callous, but Robert sensed that he had been given a chance, albeit minor, to offer his case before being hauled off the platform.
"Umm, I don't ... My wife ... She ..." Words failing him, Robert pointed with a shaking finger at the body that lay under the blanket, felt the bile rise in his throat and his eyes wash with tears. He vomited violently on the concrete of the platform, his knees gave way, and he sank to the ground, hands grabbing his body as he went down. Robert let them take him, all the fight having left him.
Brianna
Brianna sat silently beside Kasey on the kerb, awash with emotion. She was afraid, scared, nervous, upset, but somehow recognised that what she was feeling was not even a fraction of what Kasey must be going through. She was starting to come to grips with the situation though, starting to lose that feeling that the world had just been set afloat on an uncertain and unpredictable sea.
She heard a commotion down on the platform and decided to stand up and have a look at what was going on down there. She stood, but didn't move away from the kerb - she didn't want Kasey to think that she was going to leave. Through the scrubby trees at the edge of footpath, Brianna could see down onto the platform. There didn't seem to be as many people now and those that were there all appeared to be in uniforms of one description or another. She could see a huddle of people right on the edge of the platform, where the gap next to the fence let you step down onto the grass. A group of people leaned over someone who appeared to be lying on the ground. With a start she realised that it was Kasey's Dad, it looked like he had passed out or something. Her heart stopped, and then she watched as they got him to sit up on the edge of the platform, his back to the fence and his knees pulled up to his chest. Brianna let go of the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding as he lifted his head, spoke to someone, and took an offered bottle of water. He was alright, it seemed.
Brianna let her gaze move over into the grass. Large pieces of black plastic had been put up around the grassed area to block the site off from public scrutiny, but it did not hamper the views from above. The police officers, noticeable in their neat hats and light blue, short-sleeved shirts, all appeared to be hanging back a bit more now. It looked as though some forensic investigators had arrived, and gloved and gowned, they were now poking around in the grass. Finally, she let her eyes fall on what she had been so far avoiding, the shrouded bundle in the centre of the trampled grass. She couldn't adequately see through the trees, but it definitely appeared to be a body, covered over with a blanket or something similar. She shuddered slightly, trying to keep her composure, and wondered if it could really be Kasey's Mum. She knew Elouise arrived early to the train station, Kasey had bitched about it often - that if Elouise left later Kasey would be able to get a lift - and Briana assumed that something could have happened to Elouise when she arrived. There wouldn't be very many people around at that time of day, she assumed.
Idly, Brianna pieced together the story Kasey had blurted to her father only minutes before, and tried to work out how Kasey could be so certain that something terrible had befallen her mother. It seemed as though it was possible that this event could have happened after Elouise passed through, or even before, if no one had discovered it yet. Although that didn't explain why she wasn’t at work when Kasey had called. On impulse, Brianna pulled her own mobile phone out of her pocket, still there from when she had called Robert. She knew she had to call her own parents at some stage, let them know what had happened, but first she wanted to try and call Elouise.
Kneeling down beside Kasey again, Brianna touched her lightly on the arm, and told her that she was just going to go and make a phone call, that she'd be right back. She waited for Kasey's nod, and wandered over towards the empty end of the railway station, hopefully out of earshot of her friend. She brought up the contacts lists stored in her phone, and scrolled down to E, she smiled slightly as she found the number she wanted and pressed the call button. The mobile phone in Elouise's handbag began to ring and Brianna heard a click then a familiar voice, "Elouise Walker speaking".
While her mother was busy getting dressed so that Zach could drive her to work, Kasey was wandering down to the train station to go to school. Kasey was due to finish Year Eleven in two weeks and after that there was only a year to go before she was blessedly free of the public school system. For Kasey, the end of high school couldn't come soon enough. She was a moderately good student, but would definitely not be getting dux this year, she was enough of a realist even at sixteen to recognise that. Kasey had a dream of living on her own, maybe with a few good friends, of working somewhere so that she had own money to spend on whatever she wanted, with no parents telling her what was 'sensible', or what was a 'waste of money'. She was considering going to university, only because her parents expected it, and thought that perhaps doing an arts degree would be a good way to spend a few years of her life. That way, her parents would be happy because she was doing further study, and she would be doing something that, she assumed, wouldn't be too taxing on the brain. Above all, Kasey disliked studying. If she could get a degree by drawing a few pictures and being Creative, then that was what she intended to do.
Kasey had developed a love for art since she met her boyfriend two and half months ago. He was quite a lot older than her, older than her mother even, although she would never dare to tell her about him. He didn't act like an old guy though, he was daring and funny and, more to the point, artistic. He did fabulous oil paintings with what seemed thousands of swirled colours that made her feel as though she was falling into a hole like Alice down the rabbit hole - down into a crazy, mixed-up world where colour became touch, taste, and scent all at once. Kasey found drawings of recognisable pictures - cows and fruit and vases of flowers - to be predictable and boring. But her boyfriend's paintings were imaginative, complex and completely enthralling. Yesterday after school, she had stood in front of one of his paintings for close to twenty minutes, and would have stayed longer if her boyfriend hadn't started to undress her as she stared, entranced. He was so passionate, she mused, recalling how they had spent the afternoon curled up on his bed, him teaching her things no boy her own age would ever know. She felt so lucky to have such an imaginative, talented and loving man. And a man too, not a boy like the kids she went to school with. How could Brianna, her best friend, be even remotely interested in those boys? She just couldn't see the attraction in them at all.
Absorbed in her ponderings, Kasey did not at first notice the commotion around the train station, but as she came closer a small group of people broke away from the larger mob near the car park end of the platform. Through the gap they left Kasey suddenly noticed a strip of tape, flapping loosely in the slight breeze. Although she had never before seen it in real life, she had certainly seen enough cop shows on television to recognise it for what it was - police tape. Thoughts of boys, art and friends suddenly banished from her mind, she stopped, shielded her eyes against the November sun sitting low on the horizon and tried to work out what was going on.
Directly in front of her was the wooden stairs that led up and over the train line to the city-bound platform, which was where Kasey had been heading. Police tape was now covering the span between the hand rails not just on this side but also, she realised, from the other side of the tracks as well. While the staircase was empty, people having been deterred by the copious amounts of tape, and the city-bound platform appeared deserted, the outbound platform was packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder. There were also people standing in huddles through the long grass at the end of the platform, spilling out into the car park, which was full. On closer inspection she saw her mother's silver Fairlane, with the ELOU15 vanity number plates, surrounded on all sides by police vehicles, parked hastily and haphazardly across the white painted lines. All the people, both in uniform and those without, appeared to just be standing around, Kasey couldn't see what the cause of the commotion was, but it appeared to be out in the grass near her mother's car, just on the other side of the little white fence at the end of the outward-bound platform. She knew her mother usually took the 6:14 to the city in the morning, and that she had left that morning at the usual time, so it was not strange that her car was here - after all, Kasey saw it parked in the same spot every morning when she came down to catch the train to school. She had complained that Elouise should go in to work at a normal time, like regular people, so that she could drive Kasey to the station and save her the walk, but her mother had fobbed her off, explaining that it was important that she be at work early. Her mother was the personal assistant to one of the three partners of a big legal firm in the city, and she had explained to Kasey that she needed to make sure she was at work before her boss, so that she could have everything ready for him. Kasey thought that it sounded like an awful lot of arse kissing, but had wisely kept this opinion to herself.
Kasey didn't feel frightened, standing on the footpath down the road slightly from the station, watching the commotion. If anything, she was excited - something different was happening! After all, it wasn't every day you got to see the station wrapped up like a birthday present with police tape and with cops crawling all over it. Seeing her mother's car in the middle of all the chaos made her slightly uneasy, but the sheer excitement of the event was overshadowing any nervousness she might be feeling, at least for now. Snapping back to reality, Kasey realised that she wasn't going to be able to get to school this morning. She wasn't displeased, at least she had a fantastic story to tell.
Kasey swung her backpack off one shoulder, so she could paw through it for her mobile phone. She found it in a front pocket, pulled it out and speed-dialled her Mum's work number. It rang and rang ... paused slightly, then rang again, indicating that her call had been transferred to the front reception desk. Kasey thought that her mother must be in a meeting with her boss - it was likely that the CEO had just arrived and Elouise was busy running around getting him a cup of coffee or something she supposed. After what felt like an eternity of ringing, finally a prim voice said "Woodworth, Schultz and Bird, can I help you?"
"Ah, hi. I need to talk to Elouise Walker? I'm her daughter, and it's an emergency?"
"Please hold. I'll transfer you to her desk."
Kasey did as she was told, watching the activity on the station and praying she didn't run out of credit on her phone before Elouise answered. The phone rang five more times before it was finally picked up again, this time by a man with an uncertain, "Er ... Hello? Elouise's desk."
"Hi, who's this? I'm looking for Elouise Walker, it's Kasey ..."
"Oh hi, Kasey, this is Lawrence - Larry - your Mum isn't in yet. Can I give her a message or something?"
Kasey frowned as Lawrence gave her this information, staring over at the station as pieces slowly slotted into place - her Mum's sedan in the usual place, the police cars in the car park, the tape everywhere, her Mum not at work ... "Oh ... My God ..." she breathed into the phone, "Larry, I think something awful might have happened ..."
"Something awful?" Larry repeated, dumbstruck, "What do you mean, Kasey? Kasey?" But the line was dead, Kasey was gone.
Brianna
Despite the loud music pouring into her ears from the mp3 player, Brianna noticed that there was something going on at the station as soon as she turned the corner. She approached from the car park end of the platform, and as a general rule she met Kasey at the foot of the stairs leading over the tracks. This morning, however, there was definitely some kind of a problem - cars, much more than normal, were parked in no particular order all over the car park, there was a massive amount of people milling around, although none seemed to be actually doing anything to speak of. The centre of the melee seemed to be in the long grass in between the car park and the end of the outbound platform, but Brianna couldn't see what the focus of their concentration was on, there was too much of a crowd, and whatever it was was well hidden in the paspalum.
Brianna slowed her pace, in order to more fully concentrate on the commotion at the platform. She was merely curious, had not yet realised the implications of what might be going on. Only as she noticed the large amount of uniforms, and the swinging, flapping police tape that was draped liberally around the place, did she start to realise that something pretty majorly serious must have happened. Oblivious to the turmoil Brianna was now experiencing, Avril Lavigne continued to yell in her ears, "'Cause life's like this. Uh huh, uh huh, that's the way it is". Brianna stepped onto the coarse gravel at the farthest end of the car park, and stopped to pull the headphones out of her ears. Avril was reduced to a tinny whistle from the ear bud speakers until Brianna killed even that by hitting the power button on the iPod. The silence was pierced only by the murmur of voices from the railway platform.
Brianna's usually sunny face had clouded over, and she surveyed the scene with troubled eyes, wondering where her friend might be, and worrying that she might not be able to find Kasey's familiar face in the crowd. Then, thankfully, her eyes fell on a familiar figure in a school uniform close to the bottom of the pedestrian overpass. Brianna broke into a run and, as she drew closer to Kasey she saw her friend bring her phone down from her face, and stare at it as though she had no idea what it was.
"Kasey!" she yelled as she ran towards her, "Kasey!"
Kasey turned as though in a daydream, and Brianna could see her speaking although she could not hear the words. As Brianna drew alongside her, she wrapped her arms around her oldest friend, "Kasey, what's happened? What's going on? Are you ok?"
Kasey pulled away from her grasp, and Brianna looked her in the eyes, trying to decipher what lay behind them. Contraband mascara ran down Kasey's tear-streaked face as she dragged her eyes from Brianna's gaze and dropped her eyes to the ground. She pressed her lips together tightly, as though she didn't want to let the words out, and kicked a coke bottle lid along the ground with the scuffed toe of her school shoe. Brianna reached out a hand and swiped the black tinted tears from her friend's face, creating a ghoulish grey blusher on both sides of her nose, and Kasey looked up again, her lips still pressed together. All the blood appeared to have drained from her face, and her hair had come loose from the elastic holding it. "Bree," she said in a whisper, "I think that might be my Mum down there."
Robert
Summonsed by an hysterical phone call from his daughter's best friend, Robert had no idea what kind of situation he was about to drive into but, whatever it was, he was getting there fast. Pushing his work car to its limit, he had run every yellow light from work to the Redton train station, his brain on hold, simply refusing to entertain any kind of possibilities, in fact pretty much refusing to think of anything at all except the fastest way to get back to Redton. He screamed through the final intersection, hooked a sharp right hand turn on to Station Road, just about putting the Prius onto two wheels, its little electric engine protesting. The crowd around the station hove into view through Robert's passenger side window and he suddenly braked, stopping the car in the middle of the road, and taking a bare second to take in the scene that suddenly presented itself to him. For some reason he had believed that, once he got here, it would turn out that the girls had played a practical joke, that there would be nothing out of the ordinary. He would be able to yell at Kasey for wasting his time, and his perfectly ordinary life could go on in its perfectly ordinary manner. In the same second, he had realised all along that that was not going to happen, that it had been a mere hope, and that he had known this as soon as he had heard Brianna's strangled voice on the telephone, and Kasey's weeping in the background.
Robert slowly eased the car to the side of the road, hardly tearing his eyes from the cluster of people at the station, and stepped out onto the road. He left the keys in the ignition - they weren't important right now. Right now, he needed to find his daughter, and then, he needed to find out what had happened to his wife. Panicky, his gaze skittered over the crowd, searching for a school uniform and blonde hair - he couldn't remember how Kasey had done her hair this morning, and he mentally cursed himself for not taking more notice. Then, above the murmur of the crowd, he heard a voice yell out, "Dad! Rob! Over here!" Robert whipped his head around to see his daughter bearing down on him at a run from the other end of the station, finally crash tackling him with an embrace. Brianna was not far behind her, and he met her eyes over Kasey's head. Brianna shrugged, as if to say she had no idea what was going on. Rob thought she probably had a better idea than he did, but didn't push the issue, the poor girl looked petrified.
Slowly, he extricated himself from Kasey's grasp, bent his head slightly to look in her eyes, and asked her to tell him what had happened. Haltingly at first and eventually with a gush of words that flowed without the benefit of punctuation, Kasey told her story, from walking to the station and seeing the police tape, to ringing the law firm and speaking to Lawrence. Slowly, like a gushing tap slowing to a drip, Kasey's flow of words slowed, then halted. She looked as though she had sagged, somehow, Rob thought absently, as his mind whirled trying to piece together the information he had just received. His natural ability to deny, deny, kicked in and his first thought was that nothing was confirmed, it was a series of events that were not necessarily linked. Simultaneously, and in contradiction to his better reasoning, he started to panic.
With a massive effort, he took a breath, grabbed Kasey around the shoulders, and led her to the kerb to sit down. Kasey looked shrunken, haunted. Rob watched her pull her knees into her chest and curl into a tight ball, and he wrapped what he hoped was a fatherly, comforting arm around her. Brianna sank down on the other side of her friend, and copied the gesture, looking like what she really wanted was someone to do the same for her.
Softly, trying not to upset her, Rob asked her if she had gone down to the platform to speak to any of the police lingering there. Kasey shook her head, no. Rob fell silent, pondering his next move, then spoke again, "Kasey, baby-girl, I'm going to walk down there and see what I can find out. I'm not going to be gone for very long. Can you sit here with Brianna for a little while?"
Kasey responded with silence, and Rob thought that she hadn't heard him. He opened his mouth to repeat himself, but then saw Kasey's shoulders lift slowly, and fall, "OK" she said softly, barely audible.
Rob rose, planting a kiss on the top of her head, "I love you, Kiddo. I'll be right back." he murmured into the tangle of blonde hair.
Rob steeled himself mentally for what might come next, ducked under a line of police tape, and headed down into the crowd of people. Once he reached the platform, it became obvious that there were not as many people as it had seemed from the car park. He elbowed his way through to the centre of the crowd, most of whom were in emergency services uniforms. It seemed as though people were just standing around in knots, waiting for something to happen. Rob and the two teenage girls had proven to be a distraction for most, it seemed, and they were curious. Rob got to the end of the platform and stopped before stepping into the trampled grass. The scene that had been obscured by milling people before, now laid itself out before him, and he drew a sharp breath as he took it in. The body, for it was clear that was what it was, despite it being shrouded by a filthy blanket, seemed to be lying on its side, with knees drawn up into its chest. The position reminded him horribly of how Kasey had sat drawn up on the kerb. He fought down the bile that rose in the back of his throat, and turned his face skyward to ward off the tears that threatened. Only slightly calmed, he looked down again, to find he was being stared at by a man in a blue police uniform. Robert cleared his throat softly, willing his voice to work, and opened his mouth to speak. Before any words had formed on his tongue, though, the police officer rebuked him, "Sir, I don't know what you think you are doing, but this is my crime scene. You had better have a good reason for having trampled on it." the voice was rough, the words callous, but Robert sensed that he had been given a chance, albeit minor, to offer his case before being hauled off the platform.
"Umm, I don't ... My wife ... She ..." Words failing him, Robert pointed with a shaking finger at the body that lay under the blanket, felt the bile rise in his throat and his eyes wash with tears. He vomited violently on the concrete of the platform, his knees gave way, and he sank to the ground, hands grabbing his body as he went down. Robert let them take him, all the fight having left him.
Brianna
Brianna sat silently beside Kasey on the kerb, awash with emotion. She was afraid, scared, nervous, upset, but somehow recognised that what she was feeling was not even a fraction of what Kasey must be going through. She was starting to come to grips with the situation though, starting to lose that feeling that the world had just been set afloat on an uncertain and unpredictable sea.
She heard a commotion down on the platform and decided to stand up and have a look at what was going on down there. She stood, but didn't move away from the kerb - she didn't want Kasey to think that she was going to leave. Through the scrubby trees at the edge of footpath, Brianna could see down onto the platform. There didn't seem to be as many people now and those that were there all appeared to be in uniforms of one description or another. She could see a huddle of people right on the edge of the platform, where the gap next to the fence let you step down onto the grass. A group of people leaned over someone who appeared to be lying on the ground. With a start she realised that it was Kasey's Dad, it looked like he had passed out or something. Her heart stopped, and then she watched as they got him to sit up on the edge of the platform, his back to the fence and his knees pulled up to his chest. Brianna let go of the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding as he lifted his head, spoke to someone, and took an offered bottle of water. He was alright, it seemed.
Brianna let her gaze move over into the grass. Large pieces of black plastic had been put up around the grassed area to block the site off from public scrutiny, but it did not hamper the views from above. The police officers, noticeable in their neat hats and light blue, short-sleeved shirts, all appeared to be hanging back a bit more now. It looked as though some forensic investigators had arrived, and gloved and gowned, they were now poking around in the grass. Finally, she let her eyes fall on what she had been so far avoiding, the shrouded bundle in the centre of the trampled grass. She couldn't adequately see through the trees, but it definitely appeared to be a body, covered over with a blanket or something similar. She shuddered slightly, trying to keep her composure, and wondered if it could really be Kasey's Mum. She knew Elouise arrived early to the train station, Kasey had bitched about it often - that if Elouise left later Kasey would be able to get a lift - and Briana assumed that something could have happened to Elouise when she arrived. There wouldn't be very many people around at that time of day, she assumed.
Idly, Brianna pieced together the story Kasey had blurted to her father only minutes before, and tried to work out how Kasey could be so certain that something terrible had befallen her mother. It seemed as though it was possible that this event could have happened after Elouise passed through, or even before, if no one had discovered it yet. Although that didn't explain why she wasn’t at work when Kasey had called. On impulse, Brianna pulled her own mobile phone out of her pocket, still there from when she had called Robert. She knew she had to call her own parents at some stage, let them know what had happened, but first she wanted to try and call Elouise.
Kneeling down beside Kasey again, Brianna touched her lightly on the arm, and told her that she was just going to go and make a phone call, that she'd be right back. She waited for Kasey's nod, and wandered over towards the empty end of the railway station, hopefully out of earshot of her friend. She brought up the contacts lists stored in her phone, and scrolled down to E, she smiled slightly as she found the number she wanted and pressed the call button. The mobile phone in Elouise's handbag began to ring and Brianna heard a click then a familiar voice, "Elouise Walker speaking".
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