Damien
Damien was doing his rounds of the general ward of the hospital. He checked his watch and decided that as soon as he had finished doing the observations for the last few patients, he would go down to the main entrance and hopefully get most of a cigarette in before Lawrence and his mad mate Ben showed up. He had a suspicion he knew what they wanted to talk to him about, and he thought that if he could get a good hit of nicotine into his system before they arrived it would help him answer their questions with a lot more calm and indifference than he actually felt.
He finished up with the second to last patient and wheeled his little blood pressure trolley into the next room, giving the police officer at the window a nod that was barely returned as he entered. It had been strange, at first, the cops hanging around this old man twenty four seven, but Damien had gotten to know a couple of them over the past day or two, and they were generally happy enough to have a chat to relieve the boredom. The old man had done nothing but sleep since he got here, and it was no wonder when Damien saw what drugs they had been pumping him with - enough to put a race horse to sleep for a few days, he thought. The young officer who was on duty now - Damien knew him only as Constable Platt - had been rather chatty last night, had let slip that Mister Walter Spinner, the old guy, had been witness to a murder down at Redton station, and he, Platt, was waiting around until he was awake enough to be questioned. Damien had pricked his ears up at that, and tonight he was determined to get some more information from him.
He leaned over Mister Spinner, and shook his shoulder gently, "Mister Spinner," he said in a slightly raised voice, "Mister Spinner, it's Damien Everett, I'm an orderly here at the hospital. I've come to do your obs - your blood pressure and such. Mister Spinner!"
As usual, the form in the bed muttered slightly, flapped his hands weakly, and fell back to sleep. Damien sighed loudly, disentangled the old man's arm from the blanket, and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around the old man's withered bicep. While the automatic blood pressure monitor sighed and moaned its way through its routine, Damien inserted the thermometer into a fresh disposable sleeve and stuck it into the corner of Mister Spinner's mouth, resting it carefully so it wouldn't fall out from between the slack lips. Instead of waiting idly while the measurements were taken, Damien turned to the police officer, watching him from his post by the window.
"So, Constable, how's things? Sick of waiting for His Nibs to wake up yet?" he said with a slight chuckle and a thumb jabbed in Walter's direction.
"Yeah, you bet," Platt answered, "You guys must have him on some heavy duty gear, he barely opens his eyes at all."
"Hmm. Yeah, it's pretty heavy painkillers he's on." Damien replied and then asked cagily, "So, do you reckon he did it?"
Platt laughed slightly, "Nah. No way he could in his condition, I reckon. But I reckon he could've seen who did do it. He's about the only half solid lead we've got right now. I want to be the one to question him. Earn me some brownie points with the boss." Platt winked roughly at his own quip, his face screwing up slightly as he did so. Damien stared at him, thinking how very young and inexperienced he must be to give so much away so easily, either that or extraordinarily bored, he thought wryly.
The blood pressure monitor squawked just then, and Damien turned back to the machine. He pulled Mister Spinner's chart out of its plastic holder on the end of the bed and scrawled the number displayed on the monitor into the book. He retrieved the thermometer from the old man's mouth and recorded that too. His eyes fell on the opposing pages as he did so, where there was a list of the different drugs that had been fed to him through the intra-venous drip. It was mostly saline to keep him hydrated, but they were giving him some pain killers intra-venously now that he wasn't waking up enough to take the tablets all the time. An idea began to blossom in Damien's mind. He became so pre-occupied with the thoughts in his head that he forgot to say goodbye to Platt. He realised later that he should have thanked him.
Megan
Megan stretched out in bed, feeling the muscles and tendons in her back relax and realign as she moved, causing pain that was the forerunner to total relaxation as the pressure came off her strained spine. The baby within her kicked and rolled as she stretched, finding room it hadn't had before and, she thought wryly, probably gearing up for a night of acrobatics. Dalton watched her as he undressed, the corner of his mouth lifting as he watched his wife's look of pleasure when she straightened out. He pulled on a pair of cotton boxer shorts and slid into bed beside her, his hand slipping over her satin-covered belly to feel the baby move, pulling himself as close to her as possible.
"How do you feel, honey?" he murmured gently,
"Mmm. Good. Tired." She yawned as she said it, then turned her head to look at him, "I'm glad we went to see Walter."
"Hm. Well. I guess it wasn't all as bad as I thought. Still, the trip wore you out. I don't think you should be doing so much walking."
"You're trying to change the subject." Megan said, playfully poking him in the ribs as she said it. "Besides, the baby can come along whenever she's ready to. Much as I don't really want to go through it, I'd rather have her out than in at the moment." She stuck her belly up as far as could to emphasis her point, "I feel like a beached whale."
Dalton laughed, "Yeah, but you're the cutest beached whale I've ever seen." He looked at her quizzically, "and since when was the baby a she, anyway?"
Megan winked, "Since Great Uncle Walter told me so."
"Ah, so that's what he told you is it? Any other prophesies I should know about, then?"
"Prophesies? No, I don't think so," she said airily and then, her tone becoming serious once more, "But he did go on about some strange stuff, I thought. Asking me to pass on messages."
"Oh really? What kind of strange stuff?"
Megan shrugged, the afternoon had taken a strange turn toward the end of the visit. "I don't know. I really don't know."
There was a pause as husband and wife got lost in their own thoughts. Megan was wondering if there was more than met the eye with her great uncle. When they had arrived, Walter had been in the room on his own, only barely awake and, after the initial introductions and a brief recapping of her mothers' branch of the family tree, he had nodded sagely and they had spoken of general things, centering mostly on the pregnancy and the imminent birth. They had been discussing using private versus public care (the Richmond's had chosen private due to the previous complications Megan had experienced), when a uniformed police officer had entered the room. He had only been young and, seeing guests, had nodded politely at Megan and Dalton, and had ducked back out of the room. Megan had at first thought he must have been visiting a sick relative of his own and had come to the wrong room by accident but as they had gone to leave, he had been sitting patiently outside, waiting for them to leave. Megan had started slightly at this, and had begun to replay the conversation she had held with her great uncle, sifting through it for clues as to the presence of the policeman. Unsuccessful, she had nodded politely at him and grabbed Dalton's arm, wondering if he was going to question the man or walk straight on past. It was then she had heard the wavering voice from within the room, calling, "Oh, Megan, love!". She had patted Dalton's arm then, to instruct him to remain where he was, and had gone back into the room.
Walter was sitting up slightly, looking worn out after the visit, yet a spark lit his eyes from within, as though he had a very important message for her. The uncomfortable thought crossed her mind that this was how he would look if he had a dying wish to impart, some final parting words on his deathbed, but she pushed the thought to the back of her mind. She doubted he was dying, just convalescing, recovering from his hip injury. She stepped to the bedside, the chairs they had been using had been replaced so she perched on the edge of the bed as best she could with her swollen belly. Walter had found her hand, his paper thin desiccated skin rasping against hers as he had spoken, "I want you to know something, lovey." and Megan had nodded, steadying herself. "There's a lot of bad eggs between your mother and I, but all of that is water under the bridge, now."
Megan nodded again, wondering if she would ever find out what 'a lot of bad eggs' might entail, and resolved to question her mother at length about it one day, when Walter continued, "But I want you to look up a name for me, find this girl's family, and pass on a message. Can you do that, love?" Walter's faded blue eyes pierced her suddenly, searching her face for honesty, and she nodded again. Finding her voice, she said "I can try, what's the name?"
Apparently satisfied with the answer she gave, he nodded sagely, and instructed her to find a piece of paper and a pen on the side table. She did as instructed and, using the cheap blue pen on a piece of paper emblazoned with the hospital's logo, she had written down the name as Walter spelled it out from memory.
"Find her mother, her father, and tell them this. I don't know what happened, but I am sorry, so sorry. No young person deserves what she got, and no parent deserves to have a child taken from them in that manner. I wish I could have done more. I should have done more, and I will live in debt to that family for not doing more. And now, seeing you with child, you need to make sure you keep that child tucked under your wing. Teach them how to fly, but always fly right by their side. Do you understand, child?"
Megan nodded yet again, mutely this time, not understanding what had caused this monologue, but somehow feeling its powerful undercurrent, the emotion behind them if not the meaning. She put down her pen, where she had been scribbling the message he had given her and wrapped both hands around her unborn child, caressing the skin as though her own body no longer existed as a shield between her and her offspring, and she stroked the skin of the child itself. Tears sprung to her eyes, unbidden, and she swiped at them quickly, forcing a chuckle when Walter looked at her questioningly, "Damn hormones," she muttered under her breath. But it was not hormones that caused the tears this time, it was the deep emotion she had felt in every one of her great uncle's words, even though she didn't fully understand the meaning.
Walter nodded again and, with a little burst of energy, he sat up slightly in bed and reached out with his hand, placing it feather light at the top of her belly, where the swell begun under her breasts. He had looked directly into her eyes, his gaze searching her own, and she had resisted the urge to look away, to blink. Eventually, he had dropped his eyes to her belly again, and looked back up. "She's going to be a lovely little girl, Megan. Healthy, too," he laughed as a kick swelled the skin around his hand. Then he lifted his chin towards the door, "You'd best be going, I think. Your husband is looking restless."
Megan looked up to see Dalton's head poking around the corner, and she smiled at him and stood up, smoothing her long maternity shirt over the elastic-waist pants she wore. She planted a kiss on Walter's rice paper cheek, and whispered as she did so, "I'll find them, I promise." As she lifted her head, she saw Walter's smile, and at that she turned and walked back to her husband. She grabbed his arm and the two had left the room, leaving Walter to sleep.
Once Megan had described all this to Dalton, he looked at her, bewildered, and sat up straight in bed. She smiled as he thought this over. She had always loved the way he thought things through slowly, so carefully, before making any move. He would not speak before he had ordered his thoughts, would not lift a tool before he had planned the project from start to finish, would not make a mark on paper until he knew what he was going to write.
Eventually, thoughts apparently organised, he lifted his head, and said, "I think he's just an old man, Meg. It's probably something that happened forty, fifty years ago. Look it up if you must, but the message seems hardly full of meaning."
Megan had nodded slightly, "It meant a lot to him, though, I think. I would like to do it. Maybe not now, immediately," she said, laying a hand on her stomach as reason, "but eventually."
Dalton nodded and sank back down into the sheets. Megan did likewise, turning on to her side. Her back was to her husband and Dalton wrapped a strong arm around her, pulling her in to the curve of his body. They lay together, breath slowing in duet, when, sleepily, Dalton murmured, "What was the name, anyway?"
Megan pressed back into the warmth of his body, enjoying the heat despite the warm night, and trying to sink further into sleep, not wanting to talk, said, "I don't know, it was a pretty name, Ariana something?"
Dalton's eyes flew open at the name, "Ariana Mathers?" he said, awake now.
Megan turned to look at him, relinquishing the thin hold on the threads of sleep that she had, "Yes, I think so. Why?"
Dalton looked suddenly pale and, whispering, said, "That was the girl at the station."
Megan started, and rolled over to look him in the eye, "The dead girl? Just the other day?" she questioned.
Dalton simply nodded. Neither got much sleep that night.
Lawrence
When Ben arrived at Lawrence's place at half past nine, they were both as jittery as each other. They had climbed into Ben's car and driven in silence for a while, before Lawrence had finally piped up, and asked Ben if he thought that Damien had had anything to do with it. Ben had thought about this for while, chewing at his bottom lip for a while, and when Lawrence had been about to ask the question again, he finally answered, very deliberately, "I don't know. I don't think so. But he can at least fill in the next part of the story. I mean, the last either of us saw her was when they left the party. He went with them, so I guess he will be able to tell us what happens next. Maybe he will be able to tell us if she went off with someone, what his name was. But I think that, if he knew anything of any significance, he would have said something by now. I mean, you live with the guy, you would have noticed if something was off, right?"
Lawrence nodded miserably, thinking that he probably wouldn't notice if something was "off", to use Ben's words. He'd had a few weird days himself with all Elouise's strangeness going on at work, and anyway, he didn't see Damien all that much when he was on night shifts. Lawrence shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wishing suddenly that Ben had never called him, and he had never gotten dragged into this mess.
Well before Lawrence was ready to confront his flatmate over the matter, Ben swung his car into the emergency entrance and stopped in the space marked "Reserved for Ambulance". They could see Damien leaning against the wall to the left of the main entrance doors, he had a smouldering cigarette in his hand that had burned down to the filter. As they got out of the car Damien took a last hopeful drag, dropped it on the ground amongst the dozens of others and squashed it under the heel of his soft-soled shoe. He looked up at them through half-closed lids as they approached. He graced Lawrence with a smile, a "Hey, Larry" in greeting and a small nod before turning to Ben and glaring at him. Ben dropped his head as though ashamed, and muttered, "Sorry about the calls mate, I forgot you were doing nights. I was a bit hyped."
"No shit." Damien deadpanned. He sighed slightly, "You're lucky I'm talking to you at all man. Now what to do you want? Did someone get a bit too wasted at your party and you're looking for someone to lay the shit on, huh? Well, I'll tell you, I'm not doing drugs anymore, okay? None, nada."
Lawrence saw the look on Ben's face as he reassured Damien that that was not the reason for the visit, thinking that Ben looked more frightened than he ought to for some reason. Lawrence suddenly realised that Ben thought Damien had done the girl in, despite what he had said in the car on the way over. He was frightened, Lawrence thought as he watched him talking, just about quaking in his boots, like he thinks Damien will do him in next.
Lawrence thought that he had to cut Ben off from talking, before he dug himself into a hole he couldn't get out of. Lawrence held up a hand to Ben to get him to shut up, for god's sake, just shut your mouth. Ben turned to him with wide eyes that were clearly asking Lawrence to help him out. Lawrence jumped in and started speaking,
"Ben. Mate. You know that girl Ariana that I was chatting up the other night at the party? Yeah?"
Damien looked vague for a minute and then said, "Ohh, you mean the brunette with the tits? Yeah, she was awesome. Did you get it on with her? Lucky asshole!"
"Nah, I wish!" Lawrence chuckled, settling into the banter and then called on all his social skills to get him through the next bit without sounding strained, "Well did you hear about the dead body they found at Redton station? Just near our place?"
Damien shook his head, and Lawrence ploughed on through, "Well, her name was Ariana Mathers, and it made me think, you know, maybe it was the same girl. I had a think about it, and the last I saw of her on Saturday night she was walking off down the road with a bunch of her mates form that lot that gatecrashed. The thing is I thought I saw you with them, and I thought that maybe you could tell us what happened after you all left the party. I mean, I didn't see you again until yesterday afternoon, and then Ben here called me about the dead girl they found at Redton and I thought maybe we had better see, you know," The rush of words faltered and stopped, and an awkward, somehow solid silence hung in the air between them as they waited for Damien's answer.
Damien made a face and gave a nonchalant shrug, "Nah, nothing happened. There was me and few of the other guys, and that girl, what did you say her name was? She was all over a couple of the blokes, saying they were going to back to someone's place and have a threesome. She had pills in a little plastic bag in her pocket. I don't know what they were, but whatever it was she was enjoying it. E's I guess." Damien shrugged, "Anyway, I didn't want a bar of it, I'm off the gear now. Anyway, they went one way and I jumped on the train to Redton and went home. I only spent maybe ten minutes with them. Sorry mate. Do you really think it was her?"
Ben looked suspicious, Lawrence just felt relieved, and it showed on his face. He shrugged in response to Damien's question. Somehow it was seeming less and less likely that it was the same girl. He turned to Ben, "C'mon Ben. Let's go back. I'm totally had it. You've been dragging me all over town and I've gotta work tomorrow."
They were turning to leave when Damien suddenly piped up behind them, “Hey Ben!”
Ben whirled around quickly, and Lawrence caught a look at his face, stricken with terror. He stammered slightly but settled for gaping silently at Damien, waiting for him to speak.
"Ben, weren't you with that group? I thought I saw you loitering around in the background when the girl was handing out her pills."
Lawrence peered at Damien, trying to figure out if he was serious, or just winding them up.
"Nuh, not me mate." Ben replied, recovering his speech, "Must have been someone else you saw."
Damien looked doubtful for a second, then cracked a grin, "Gotcha there! See ya round." He said, and turned on heel to head back into the hospital, still chuckling.
Ben and Lawrence moved to the car, but Ben wasn't laughing. In fact, he looked furious, Lawrence thought.
Wednesday - 3:21pm Outbound
Ben
Ben had realised that he might have a bit of a problem when he had been idly surfing the internet late on Monday night. He had an assignment he was supposed to be handing in the next day. He was officially working on it, but in reality he was procrastinating - the internet was always good for procrastination. He told himself that he would just quickly check the headlines and then would go on to write another few hundred words. He didn't believe himself, but he went ahead and checked the headlines anyway. When he spotted the headline "Murder Victim Found at Suburban Rail Station", he thought it sounded moderately interesting, and his interest was piqued further when he realised it was a train station on the same line as the one that was only minutes walk from his house. He read on, and all thoughts of further essay writing left his head entirely when he saw the name of the murdered girl - Ariana Mathers. He was certain there had been a girl named Ariana at his party on Saturday night. He had never met her before, she had arrived with the gate-crashers, and she hadn't told him her surname, but how many Arianas could there be in the world? The coincidence was a little bit too peculiar for an Ariana to be at his party, and another totally different Ariana to show up dead at the railway station only two stops city-bound from here, wasn't it?
Ben had racked his brains all evening, trying to work out if it could possibly be the same girl. He stayed up all night, surfing the web, looking for references and trying to track back the events of the evening, work out if it could be the same girl. He had learnt a lot during the night. Ariana Mathers was the real person behind the fantasy author A. M. Alston, she was in her mid twenties and lived alone in Tallen Heights, the adjoining suburb to Redton where her body was found. He had even been able to read the first few pages of a couple of her books, thanks to Amazon.com. They weren't the kind of thing he generally read, he couldn't get his head around elves and dwarfs and all the names were unpronounceable.
He had been sitting on the couch, his computer warm on his lap, when he had looked up and noticed the sun was up, light pouring through the glass sliding door to where he sat. He was still too wired and nervous to be able to sleep and had instead decided to start calling people who were at the party to see if anyone else could shed some light on the situation. The first few numbers he had dialled were switched off or rung out. He glanced at the digital clock in the corner of his computer screen and realised that it was only barely eight o'clock. That would explain people's reluctance to talk to him, he guessed. He stared for a while at the clock, his mind almost completely blank through fatigue and stress, when a thought hit him like a bolt of lightning. Larry had been chatting up some girl, Ben could remember him crapping on about how lovely her tits were later in the night. Ben had a suspicion it could have been this Ariana girl, and he reached for the phone again.
Ben had been about to hang up when Lawrence had answered breathlessly. Ben didn't really care if Lawrence was going to be late for work, he needed to know the name of the girl. When Lawrence had fobbed him off with the name Aalia, Ben had felt a strange mix of relief that maybe it hadn't been the murdered girl, and suspicion that the name was just a bit too similar to Ariana for his liking.
The assignment had been forgotten entirely and Ben spent the rest of the day alternating between pacing around the house like a caged animal, running to the computer to check another half remembered fact, and dozing on the couch. He had started ringing Lawrence's house again around three o'clock, quizzing his flatmate until Damien lost his temper and stopped answering.
Then when Lawrence had finally called him and Ben had convinced him to come around, Lawrence had recalled Damien going off with her and group of others. They had talked around the implications for most of the rest of the day and eventually Ben, deciding to take action, had jumped up off the couch to find the phone. He picked it up and dialled a number from the memory in the handset. He stared at Lawrence as the line was picked up at the other end, "Hello?"
"Damo, mate - it's Ben. Sorry about yesterday afternoon, ringing like that."
Damien grunted in reply, still obviously pissed off about it, "What do you want, Ben?" he snapped.
"Uh, well, Larry is here at my place now and we've been having a chat. We've got something we need to tell you, it's pretty urgent. When do you knock off work? Can I buy you a beer?"
There was a pause as Damien considered the offer, and he answered cautiously, "My shift doesn't finish until half past five. But if you can come to the hospital at ten I'll take a break. You've got fifteen minutes." With that, he hung up in Ben's ear.
Lawrence looked at Ben, one eyebrow raised, as he waited to hear from him how Damien's side of the conversation had gone. Ben looked straight back at him. We're going to the hospital at ten, go home and get changed and I'll pick you up at a quarter to."
Shannen
Shannen hadn't moved from Ariana's dining room table all day. She had heard Grace wake up, had thanked her when she brought a cup of tea in, carefully clearing a space amongst the papers on the table for it to sit. She hardly registered it, but throughout the day in the background had come the sounds of Grace moving around the house as she packed things up, made arrangements with the funeral director, called Ariana's publisher, broke the news to her friends from Ariana's notebook by the phone. Grace had not questioned what Shannen was doing, intuiting that it was, on at least one level, the same as what Grace was doing - packing up the remnants of a life cut short too soon, a life that was not ready to packed up, still seemingly brimming with life.
Shannen had started with the papers, trying to sort them into some kind of order. At first, she had been sorting them by what was written or drawn on them - placing sketches of characters together, maps together and notes on language together. Then, as she examined each piece, she realised that the sketches and notes related to a few different stories. So she had picked up the piles she had created and started again, this time sorting them by storyline. More than once, as she worked, she cursed herself for never having found the time to read Ariana's books. Of course, she owned every one, each having been a gift from Ariana when the first editions had hit the shelf, but she had read one and then had never quite found the time to read the rest. She thought of the pristine row of six books on her shelf at home, feeling guilt wash over her, but then buried the emotion like she had buried so many other emotions that day, by concentrating on her seemingly banal task.
It was late in the afternoon when Shannen finally stared at three neat piles on the scratched and worn dining room table. The first, and smallest related to Ariana's fifth book, "The Legend of Venai". The second was for her sixth, "The Iveteff Mystery and The Journey to the Realm of the Titans". The third pile, and by far the largest in size, was for, it seemed, a work in progress. Shannen had found eight different characters, represented in close to two dozen hand drawn pictures from different angles, wearing different clothes and holding various implements - weapons and tools, charms and jewels. There were close to a hundred different maps, depicting countries, states, regions and provinces, each named meticulously and coloured with pencil. There were pages of notes on six different languages, describing dialect, slang and customary usage. There were sketches and description of taverns, weapons, animals and creatures of different species. All together, there were hundreds of pages describing a world that survived only in Ariana's imagination. Shannen felt as though she was poking were she did not belong, like she had seen Ariana suddenly and unwillingly bare, walked in on her in the shower, and for a moment she wanted to abandon the project entirely. She was about to gather up the papers, prepared to dump them all into a shoebox and pack them away in Ariana's cupboard where they would not be found, when her eyes took in Ariana's laptop, sitting lid closed on the corner of the table. Shannen had moved it out of the way, knowing that the interesting stuff would be in the papers. Ariana had always planned out all her novels in sketches and hand-written notes before sitting down to write, but, once she started writing, she did it almost entirely on her laptop.
Shannen became aware of a sudden desire to find out if Ariana had started work on the novel she had so meticulously planned out. She placed the pile of papers back down on the table, straightened the corners, and reached across to the laptop. She opened the lid, found the power button and waited while the machine booted up.
It didn't take much navigation through the simple file system on the machine to find where Ariana had stored her novels, and Shannen double-clicked on the one name that she was unfamiliar with: "The Grantoff Quest and What Happened When They Got There". The file opened with an electronic flourish, and Shannen was staring at the opening line, "Back in the days when he had been young, Laboeg Fairfox had gone on many adventures. But his adventuring days were over now, or so he had thought ..."
Shannen read on, enthralled.
Dalton
As they traipsed through the sterile halls of the sprawling public hospital, looking for the ward where Megan's great uncle was housed, Dalton tried to place his misgivings behind him. He had gotten home this afternoon and Megan had swept him off his feet with her breathy announcement that she had gotten in touch with her Great Uncle Walter. "Who?" Dalton had questioned, perplexed, and Megan had explained it all while fussing in the kitchen over cups of coffee. Finally, she had come back to the table where Dalton was sitting, a steaming mug in each hand. She pushed one across to him and as he lifted the strong smelling coffee to his mouth she had announced sweetly, "Visiting hours finish at 6."
Dalton set the drink down heavily on the table without drinking, "Are you serious?" he questioned.
"Of course. I think that he should know about the baby. Don't you think he would be touched?"
"I don't know. He might be estranged from your family for a reason." Dalton pointed out pragmatically, "I'm not sure that this is a great idea, Megan."
But, in the end, Megan had gotten carried away with the whole romantic notion and Dalton, unwilling to hold her back with unfounded fears, had traipsed along with her. Now, as they rounded the corner that led to the general practice ward, and Great Uncle Walter's room number loomed ahead of them, he began to wonder why he had given in so easily.
Brianna
Brianna hadn't been able to stop thinking about this cousin that she had lost before she even knew that she had one. She was lost in thought and sitting in the last carriage of the train. Kasey was beside her but for once they weren't deep in conversation. Kasey appeared pre-occupied also and so the two sat side by side in companionable silence. Brianna had managed to get a hold of her Aunt Grace's telephone number by hassling her father until he gave in. He had told her that they weren't on speaking terms anymore, not through any incident or falling out, he had hastened to explain, but simply because they no longer got along as well as they had - they occupied different worlds now. Subsequently, he had never met Ariana and, it seemed, held no desire to. He had told Brianna that should she decide to contact Grace to pass on his regards, but to not attempt to reconcile them. Brianna had been astonished at his passivity, but unsurprised. Her father lived in a world ruled by science and anything that did not fit in to that, sometimes very narrow, world view, was simply dismissed. It seemed as though Grace and her offspring had been successfully removed from his emotional capacity, and it renewed fears in Brianna that one day, too, she would join them in her father’s eyes. Nevertheless, she had a phone number, and she was slowly working up the courage to call it. When the train pulled into Redton station, the two girls got up and after exchanging casual farewells and promises to meet in the morning, Brianna watched Kasey wander away up the street. Instead of heading to her own home, though, Brianna came to a decision. She was going to phone Grace. She sat down on the curb at the drop off point in front of the station, fished her phone from her school bag, and very deliberately dialled the number she had scratched on a slip of paper in her pocket.
The phone at the other end of the line rang, and continued to ring, and just as Brianna was about to give up in disappointment the line clicked and a recorded voicemail message answered. Brianna had already decided not to leave a message, when the recording gave a mobile number. Brianna hung up immediately, found a notebook and a badly chewed ballpoint, and called the number again. This time she waited impatiently through the endless ringing, through the beginning of the message and then hurriedly scrawled the number as it was announced. She cancelled the call before the tone could sound for her to leave a message, and called the new number quickly, before her confidence could dissolve. It was only three rings in when a soft voice answered, "Hello?"
Ben had realised that he might have a bit of a problem when he had been idly surfing the internet late on Monday night. He had an assignment he was supposed to be handing in the next day. He was officially working on it, but in reality he was procrastinating - the internet was always good for procrastination. He told himself that he would just quickly check the headlines and then would go on to write another few hundred words. He didn't believe himself, but he went ahead and checked the headlines anyway. When he spotted the headline "Murder Victim Found at Suburban Rail Station", he thought it sounded moderately interesting, and his interest was piqued further when he realised it was a train station on the same line as the one that was only minutes walk from his house. He read on, and all thoughts of further essay writing left his head entirely when he saw the name of the murdered girl - Ariana Mathers. He was certain there had been a girl named Ariana at his party on Saturday night. He had never met her before, she had arrived with the gate-crashers, and she hadn't told him her surname, but how many Arianas could there be in the world? The coincidence was a little bit too peculiar for an Ariana to be at his party, and another totally different Ariana to show up dead at the railway station only two stops city-bound from here, wasn't it?
Ben had racked his brains all evening, trying to work out if it could possibly be the same girl. He stayed up all night, surfing the web, looking for references and trying to track back the events of the evening, work out if it could be the same girl. He had learnt a lot during the night. Ariana Mathers was the real person behind the fantasy author A. M. Alston, she was in her mid twenties and lived alone in Tallen Heights, the adjoining suburb to Redton where her body was found. He had even been able to read the first few pages of a couple of her books, thanks to Amazon.com. They weren't the kind of thing he generally read, he couldn't get his head around elves and dwarfs and all the names were unpronounceable.
He had been sitting on the couch, his computer warm on his lap, when he had looked up and noticed the sun was up, light pouring through the glass sliding door to where he sat. He was still too wired and nervous to be able to sleep and had instead decided to start calling people who were at the party to see if anyone else could shed some light on the situation. The first few numbers he had dialled were switched off or rung out. He glanced at the digital clock in the corner of his computer screen and realised that it was only barely eight o'clock. That would explain people's reluctance to talk to him, he guessed. He stared for a while at the clock, his mind almost completely blank through fatigue and stress, when a thought hit him like a bolt of lightning. Larry had been chatting up some girl, Ben could remember him crapping on about how lovely her tits were later in the night. Ben had a suspicion it could have been this Ariana girl, and he reached for the phone again.
Ben had been about to hang up when Lawrence had answered breathlessly. Ben didn't really care if Lawrence was going to be late for work, he needed to know the name of the girl. When Lawrence had fobbed him off with the name Aalia, Ben had felt a strange mix of relief that maybe it hadn't been the murdered girl, and suspicion that the name was just a bit too similar to Ariana for his liking.
The assignment had been forgotten entirely and Ben spent the rest of the day alternating between pacing around the house like a caged animal, running to the computer to check another half remembered fact, and dozing on the couch. He had started ringing Lawrence's house again around three o'clock, quizzing his flatmate until Damien lost his temper and stopped answering.
Then when Lawrence had finally called him and Ben had convinced him to come around, Lawrence had recalled Damien going off with her and group of others. They had talked around the implications for most of the rest of the day and eventually Ben, deciding to take action, had jumped up off the couch to find the phone. He picked it up and dialled a number from the memory in the handset. He stared at Lawrence as the line was picked up at the other end, "Hello?"
"Damo, mate - it's Ben. Sorry about yesterday afternoon, ringing like that."
Damien grunted in reply, still obviously pissed off about it, "What do you want, Ben?" he snapped.
"Uh, well, Larry is here at my place now and we've been having a chat. We've got something we need to tell you, it's pretty urgent. When do you knock off work? Can I buy you a beer?"
There was a pause as Damien considered the offer, and he answered cautiously, "My shift doesn't finish until half past five. But if you can come to the hospital at ten I'll take a break. You've got fifteen minutes." With that, he hung up in Ben's ear.
Lawrence looked at Ben, one eyebrow raised, as he waited to hear from him how Damien's side of the conversation had gone. Ben looked straight back at him. We're going to the hospital at ten, go home and get changed and I'll pick you up at a quarter to."
Shannen
Shannen hadn't moved from Ariana's dining room table all day. She had heard Grace wake up, had thanked her when she brought a cup of tea in, carefully clearing a space amongst the papers on the table for it to sit. She hardly registered it, but throughout the day in the background had come the sounds of Grace moving around the house as she packed things up, made arrangements with the funeral director, called Ariana's publisher, broke the news to her friends from Ariana's notebook by the phone. Grace had not questioned what Shannen was doing, intuiting that it was, on at least one level, the same as what Grace was doing - packing up the remnants of a life cut short too soon, a life that was not ready to packed up, still seemingly brimming with life.
Shannen had started with the papers, trying to sort them into some kind of order. At first, she had been sorting them by what was written or drawn on them - placing sketches of characters together, maps together and notes on language together. Then, as she examined each piece, she realised that the sketches and notes related to a few different stories. So she had picked up the piles she had created and started again, this time sorting them by storyline. More than once, as she worked, she cursed herself for never having found the time to read Ariana's books. Of course, she owned every one, each having been a gift from Ariana when the first editions had hit the shelf, but she had read one and then had never quite found the time to read the rest. She thought of the pristine row of six books on her shelf at home, feeling guilt wash over her, but then buried the emotion like she had buried so many other emotions that day, by concentrating on her seemingly banal task.
It was late in the afternoon when Shannen finally stared at three neat piles on the scratched and worn dining room table. The first, and smallest related to Ariana's fifth book, "The Legend of Venai". The second was for her sixth, "The Iveteff Mystery and The Journey to the Realm of the Titans". The third pile, and by far the largest in size, was for, it seemed, a work in progress. Shannen had found eight different characters, represented in close to two dozen hand drawn pictures from different angles, wearing different clothes and holding various implements - weapons and tools, charms and jewels. There were close to a hundred different maps, depicting countries, states, regions and provinces, each named meticulously and coloured with pencil. There were pages of notes on six different languages, describing dialect, slang and customary usage. There were sketches and description of taverns, weapons, animals and creatures of different species. All together, there were hundreds of pages describing a world that survived only in Ariana's imagination. Shannen felt as though she was poking were she did not belong, like she had seen Ariana suddenly and unwillingly bare, walked in on her in the shower, and for a moment she wanted to abandon the project entirely. She was about to gather up the papers, prepared to dump them all into a shoebox and pack them away in Ariana's cupboard where they would not be found, when her eyes took in Ariana's laptop, sitting lid closed on the corner of the table. Shannen had moved it out of the way, knowing that the interesting stuff would be in the papers. Ariana had always planned out all her novels in sketches and hand-written notes before sitting down to write, but, once she started writing, she did it almost entirely on her laptop.
Shannen became aware of a sudden desire to find out if Ariana had started work on the novel she had so meticulously planned out. She placed the pile of papers back down on the table, straightened the corners, and reached across to the laptop. She opened the lid, found the power button and waited while the machine booted up.
It didn't take much navigation through the simple file system on the machine to find where Ariana had stored her novels, and Shannen double-clicked on the one name that she was unfamiliar with: "The Grantoff Quest and What Happened When They Got There". The file opened with an electronic flourish, and Shannen was staring at the opening line, "Back in the days when he had been young, Laboeg Fairfox had gone on many adventures. But his adventuring days were over now, or so he had thought ..."
Shannen read on, enthralled.
Dalton
As they traipsed through the sterile halls of the sprawling public hospital, looking for the ward where Megan's great uncle was housed, Dalton tried to place his misgivings behind him. He had gotten home this afternoon and Megan had swept him off his feet with her breathy announcement that she had gotten in touch with her Great Uncle Walter. "Who?" Dalton had questioned, perplexed, and Megan had explained it all while fussing in the kitchen over cups of coffee. Finally, she had come back to the table where Dalton was sitting, a steaming mug in each hand. She pushed one across to him and as he lifted the strong smelling coffee to his mouth she had announced sweetly, "Visiting hours finish at 6."
Dalton set the drink down heavily on the table without drinking, "Are you serious?" he questioned.
"Of course. I think that he should know about the baby. Don't you think he would be touched?"
"I don't know. He might be estranged from your family for a reason." Dalton pointed out pragmatically, "I'm not sure that this is a great idea, Megan."
But, in the end, Megan had gotten carried away with the whole romantic notion and Dalton, unwilling to hold her back with unfounded fears, had traipsed along with her. Now, as they rounded the corner that led to the general practice ward, and Great Uncle Walter's room number loomed ahead of them, he began to wonder why he had given in so easily.
Brianna
Brianna hadn't been able to stop thinking about this cousin that she had lost before she even knew that she had one. She was lost in thought and sitting in the last carriage of the train. Kasey was beside her but for once they weren't deep in conversation. Kasey appeared pre-occupied also and so the two sat side by side in companionable silence. Brianna had managed to get a hold of her Aunt Grace's telephone number by hassling her father until he gave in. He had told her that they weren't on speaking terms anymore, not through any incident or falling out, he had hastened to explain, but simply because they no longer got along as well as they had - they occupied different worlds now. Subsequently, he had never met Ariana and, it seemed, held no desire to. He had told Brianna that should she decide to contact Grace to pass on his regards, but to not attempt to reconcile them. Brianna had been astonished at his passivity, but unsurprised. Her father lived in a world ruled by science and anything that did not fit in to that, sometimes very narrow, world view, was simply dismissed. It seemed as though Grace and her offspring had been successfully removed from his emotional capacity, and it renewed fears in Brianna that one day, too, she would join them in her father’s eyes. Nevertheless, she had a phone number, and she was slowly working up the courage to call it. When the train pulled into Redton station, the two girls got up and after exchanging casual farewells and promises to meet in the morning, Brianna watched Kasey wander away up the street. Instead of heading to her own home, though, Brianna came to a decision. She was going to phone Grace. She sat down on the curb at the drop off point in front of the station, fished her phone from her school bag, and very deliberately dialled the number she had scratched on a slip of paper in her pocket.
The phone at the other end of the line rang, and continued to ring, and just as Brianna was about to give up in disappointment the line clicked and a recorded voicemail message answered. Brianna had already decided not to leave a message, when the recording gave a mobile number. Brianna hung up immediately, found a notebook and a badly chewed ballpoint, and called the number again. This time she waited impatiently through the endless ringing, through the beginning of the message and then hurriedly scrawled the number as it was announced. She cancelled the call before the tone could sound for her to leave a message, and called the new number quickly, before her confidence could dissolve. It was only three rings in when a soft voice answered, "Hello?"
Wednesday - 8:23am to the City
Brianna
Brianna would normally wait at the entrance to the pedestrian overpass for Kasey but it was a miserable day with more rain, so instead of huddling under an umbrella she walked over to the city bound platform and stood beneath the awning of the station master's booth, shoulder to shoulder with just about every other resident of Redton, it seemed. Yesterday, the name Ariana Mathers had buzzed around her all day, and when she had gotten home after singing classes, she had asked her mother about the name. Her mother had paled significantly, and had asked Brianna where she knew the name from. Brianna, unwilling to reveal who Brianna Mathers was until she knew the background, said that Kasey had mentioned the name and it had seemed familiar to her. Her mother had gone fairly serious then, and Brianna had made her a cup of coffee because that always seemed to make her open up more. Together they had sat at the kitchen table, her mother sipping the milky instant coffee as though her life depended on it, and Brianna nibbling around the edges of an apple from the fruit bowl on the table, more for something to do than because she was hungry. Her mother had told her a strange tale of deceit and unhappiness, falsehoods and damage. Brianna had sat in silence throughout, nodding occasionally, and had eventually gone to her room to take it all in. She wasn't upset or even angry, just kind of shocked. She could hear no noise in the kitchen so she imagined that her mother was sitting at the table still ... staring into the middle distance.
The story her mother had told started in a fairly inauspicious way, with a woman in a normal, middle-class family giving birth to twins. One of them had been Brianna's father, the other one a little girl named Grace. The two children had grown up side by side, a normal, reasonably happy and uneventful childhood. When the boy, John, had gotten to high school he had discovered science - been taken in by the sheer wonder of not just finding out how things worked but working out why they worked. Biology became his first love, and he threw himself into his studies with the vigour and dedication of an addict and when he graduated they offered him a place on the staff. Now he taught PhD students like himself, their eyes alight with the passion that he recalled feeling when he was a student, and the call of lab work was still like a drug that he just could not get enough of. But while John had discovered a passion for science, Grace had discovered a passion for boys. Brianna imagined it happening from Grace's point of view with all the imagination of a teenager in the grip of the very same hormones and for whom the memories were still so fresh. She thought of the stolen kisses at the bus stop, the quick nervous gropes behind the school buildings; eventually a fast, nervous and sweaty session in a bedroom, suppressing every noise, the threat of parents discovering them any minute very real. In the end Grace had fallen pregnant, the story went, and she tried to hide it from her parents for so long that, when they eventually found out, there had been no choice but to have the baby. What happened after that, as far as anyone knew, was that the little girl had been adopted to a middle-aged couple who had wanted children for years but had been so far unsuccessful in having any of their own. Grace went on to finish school and, having learnt her lessons in respect to young love and what can come of it, decided to enter the counselling profession. In a fit of self-diagnosis one day she had apparently decided to try and hunt down the child she had abandoned so many years ago. She had enlisted the help of many organisations and individuals, her twin brother included, and eventually one of the contacts she had made through her counselling was convinced to break a few rules and, somehow, the details of a child she had tried very hard to forget about, were scrawled on a piece of paper on her desk. Grace had filed the piece of paper away in a pocket of her vanity case in the top drawer of her dresser, and there the information had lived until she had finally gotten up the courage and determination to see where the scrap of paper would take her. Where it took her, eventually, was only about half an hour down the highway, to the door of an old Queenslander-style house in an inner-city suburb. She had bolstered herself to get this far and, emboldened with the thrill of the unknown, knocked. A tall, but solidly built young woman had opened the door, squinted at her in the late afternoon sun and said, "Yes?" The rest of the afternoon had been spent at the kitchen table - the dining room table was put to use as a desk and totally unusable for the purpose for which it had been built - trying to fill in the gaps in each others' memory spanning twenty years. The girl's name was Ariana Mathers, she was a published fantasy-fiction author, and Brianna's cousin.
A sudden announcement cut the humid air, and Brianna looked up, slightly confused. The train had arrived.
Megan
There was something about bringing a new life into the world that makes you reflect on your own family relationships, Megan mused to herself as she thumbed through her address book. She had been chatting to her mother on the phone earlier in the day, filling her in on the events of that morning's ultrasound (everything going well, no they still didn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl), when she had casually asked about Great Uncle Walter. Her mother had assured her that he was perfectly dotty and that she wasn't sure if he was still alive. Megan, unperturbed, had decided to look up her great uncle's name in the phone book anyway and was surprised to find that he lived only a few blocks from them. She had sat back in her chair, trying to recall memories of him, and had only been able to summon a very dim recollection of playing cards with him as a very small child at her grandparent's house. She remembered he had seemed terribly old to her then, but now, thinking back with an adults eyes, he couldn't have been much older than forty. Her grandmother's youngest brother, he was probably the only surviving relative on that side of the family now, and it pained her that her mother hadn't shown more concern with getting in touch with him again. Megan wondered idly if there was some bad blood under the bridge, but decided firmly that, even if there was, she was going to let him know that he was about to become a great great uncle. Or was that a great uncle once removed? Never mind. She picked up the telephone, hesitated only slightly, and dialled the number.
The phone rang and rang, and Megan was about to hang up, disappointed, when a lady's voice answered softly "Hello?"
"Oh, hello. I don't know if I have the right number. I'm looking for Walter Spinner." Megan stammered, put off by the unexpected female voice on the other end. "I'm his niece." she added as an afterthought.
"Oh hello, dear. My name is Rosemary, I'm from Home Nursing. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Mister Spinner is very ill in the hospital, I've just come back to collect some things for him. You're lucky you caught me, I was just leaving."
Megan's heart sank, it sounded as though she may have gotten in touch with her great uncle just in time for him to pass away.
"Thank you for letting me know Rosemary. Are you able to give me the hospital details?"
"Of course, dear," Rosemary rattled off the name of the hospital and a ward and room number. Megan dutifully copied them down, thanked Rosemary again, and hung up the phone. She sat in silence for a while, pondering the next course of action, and eventually decided to wait until Dalton got home, he would be able to help her decide what to do.
Lawrence
After talking to Ben on the phone last night, Lawrence had called the office. The receptionists had all gone home for the evening by that stage, but Lawrence went into battle with the voicemail system until it reluctantly allowed him to leave a message on Elouise's office phone. He had said that he had a personal emergency and would be taking the next day off to "sort some stuff out". He had no idea if that excuse was going to wash with his boss or not, but it was the best he could come up with, and this was something that was going to need a hell of a lot of sorting out, he thought ruefully.
Lawrence had slept fitfully last night, his mind racing trying to recall the all too hazy, alcohol-addled memories of last Saturday night. A few blurry details had come to him, nothing that, on their own, would mean anything to anyone, but something all the same. He had to get his thoughts in order before he spoke to Ben, which is why he hadn't gone around there straight away.
And now here he was, over tired, grumpy, and very, very frightened, walking down to Redton station to go the two stops outbound to Ben's place, and praying that he wouldn't run into Elouise at the station. Thankfully, he ran into no one he knew, although he noted Elouise's car in the car park. In short order the outbound train arrived and he jumped on to it. He alighted at Hawkswater station and was knocking at Ben's door within ten minutes of leaving Redton. Ben opened the door, not with his usual happy bound, but with a frown and dark shadows under both eyes.
"Hey, Ben. How you going?" Lawrence asked, his voice low because he knew the answer just by looking at his friend.
"This is bad news, man," Ben answered, shaking his head, "You had better come in - we need to talk."
Ben stepped aside to let Lawrence in and, after closing and locking the door behind them he walked into the kitchen to make them both a coffee. Despite pointing out that they needed to talk, Ben seemed extremely reluctant to do so, and Lawrence had no desire to get the ball rolling either. The two stood in silence, listening to the kettle boil and showing apparent great interest in the process of making two cups of instant coffee.
Once the coffee was made, and the two men had taken their chipped and mismatched mugs into the lounge room, kicking detritus off the couch so they could sit down on it, Ben reluctantly started the inevitable conversation.
"So." he said with an obvious groan, "What do you remember?"
Lawrence sighed, looked up to the ceiling, trying to gather his fleeing thoughts like lost sheep. Haltingly at first, and then with more detail as his recall improved with the telling, Lawrence started to talk through the events of Saturday night.
He had arrived at Ben's house with his flatmate Damien around six o'clock on Saturday night, and they had both immediately started drinking, despite there only being a few people there at that time. The place had started to fill up from about then on, and by eleven o'clock there had been quite a throng of people. He could remember a big group turning up around ten, and someone from that group, a stranger whose name Lawrence didn't know or couldn't remember, telling him that they had been at a party down the road for someone's birthday but it had finished up early so they had started walking to find another and stumbled onto Ben's. It hadn't particularly surprised Lawrence at the time, Ben's place was renowned as a party house so it wasn't unusual for strange groups to turn up uninvited. They were always welcomed and no serious harm had come of it. Yet.
One of the strangers had been Ariana, and Lawrence had first spotted her across the room, she was lying across the legs of two men who were sitting on the lounge that was out on the verandah. All three of them had been laughing hysterically as the two guys copped a few feels and she let them do it. Thinking back on it, it was pretty obvious that Ariana had not just been drunk, but had consumed some other, more potent, substance also. At the time, though, all Lawrence could think was that she was a great piece of arse, and obviously up for it, so he had decided to give her a shot.
He had spent the next hour or so manoeuvring as close to her as possible, and had succeeded in talking to her for a while. Maybe she had started to come down though, because he had had no luck whatsoever when he had tried for a feel of his own. She had turned away from him quickly when he tried, as though she had heard her name called, and it had only been a few minutes later that she said she needed to go to the toilet. He had spotted her later, across the room again, this time sitting quietly on the ground in a corner of the balcony, cuddling a drink and staring with wild eyes at the writhing mass of people around her. He remembered thinking that, if only he hadn't been quite as drunk as he was, he could have made a better move with her, could have gotten lucky.
He had sat down as close to her as possible which was still too far for conversation. They were separated by a significantly large group of people. He had nursed his own drink feeling sorry for himself but enjoying the eye candy and people watching nevertheless. And it was because if this strangely melancholic mood, seemingly mirroring Ariana's own, that he had seen the group of guys - about five of them and including those that had been frolicking on the couch with Ariana earlier - approach her. He was not close enough to hear their words, but an intense conversation took place, and eventually they had all stood up. Ariana had looked kind of pissed off, but she went with them and Lawrence had followed them with his eyes. The group, huddled together as they laughed and chatted with Ariana in the middle - arms crossed and still looking pissed - wandered down the stairs from the house and onto the road, then disappeared in the direction of the station. At first, Lawrence had thought they were all from the group of gatecrashers, all friends of Ariana's, he assumed. But at the last moment someone had come tearing out of the house to catch them up, waving a beer in one hand as he pelted down the stairs off the balcony, "Wait up for me, guys!" the man had yelled, and Lawrence had turned to look, realising instantly who it was - his flat mate, Damien.
Lawrence finished his story and looked up at Ben with suddenly haunted eyes. Ben looked downcast and, after a beat or two of silence, said softly, "Do you think it was him? Who were the others?"
Lawrence shook his head slowly, "It depends what they were doing. Where were they going? The others, well, I couldn't see them. It was dark, I was pissed as a newt. I thought they were all from the group of gatecrashers, but, really, it could have been anyone. It could have been no-one I knew, or it could have been my brother. It could have been you for all I know. I wouldn't have been able to tell you then - I certainly can't tell you now." Lawrence's voice faltered as he said this, and he looked up into his mate's face, but Ben had quickly hidden the look of shock that had overtaken his features and all Lawrence saw was a look of disappointment.
"Sorry, man," Lawrence said eventually, "I don't know who they were. They could have been anyone. The only one I'm sure of was Damo."
Brianna would normally wait at the entrance to the pedestrian overpass for Kasey but it was a miserable day with more rain, so instead of huddling under an umbrella she walked over to the city bound platform and stood beneath the awning of the station master's booth, shoulder to shoulder with just about every other resident of Redton, it seemed. Yesterday, the name Ariana Mathers had buzzed around her all day, and when she had gotten home after singing classes, she had asked her mother about the name. Her mother had paled significantly, and had asked Brianna where she knew the name from. Brianna, unwilling to reveal who Brianna Mathers was until she knew the background, said that Kasey had mentioned the name and it had seemed familiar to her. Her mother had gone fairly serious then, and Brianna had made her a cup of coffee because that always seemed to make her open up more. Together they had sat at the kitchen table, her mother sipping the milky instant coffee as though her life depended on it, and Brianna nibbling around the edges of an apple from the fruit bowl on the table, more for something to do than because she was hungry. Her mother had told her a strange tale of deceit and unhappiness, falsehoods and damage. Brianna had sat in silence throughout, nodding occasionally, and had eventually gone to her room to take it all in. She wasn't upset or even angry, just kind of shocked. She could hear no noise in the kitchen so she imagined that her mother was sitting at the table still ... staring into the middle distance.
The story her mother had told started in a fairly inauspicious way, with a woman in a normal, middle-class family giving birth to twins. One of them had been Brianna's father, the other one a little girl named Grace. The two children had grown up side by side, a normal, reasonably happy and uneventful childhood. When the boy, John, had gotten to high school he had discovered science - been taken in by the sheer wonder of not just finding out how things worked but working out why they worked. Biology became his first love, and he threw himself into his studies with the vigour and dedication of an addict and when he graduated they offered him a place on the staff. Now he taught PhD students like himself, their eyes alight with the passion that he recalled feeling when he was a student, and the call of lab work was still like a drug that he just could not get enough of. But while John had discovered a passion for science, Grace had discovered a passion for boys. Brianna imagined it happening from Grace's point of view with all the imagination of a teenager in the grip of the very same hormones and for whom the memories were still so fresh. She thought of the stolen kisses at the bus stop, the quick nervous gropes behind the school buildings; eventually a fast, nervous and sweaty session in a bedroom, suppressing every noise, the threat of parents discovering them any minute very real. In the end Grace had fallen pregnant, the story went, and she tried to hide it from her parents for so long that, when they eventually found out, there had been no choice but to have the baby. What happened after that, as far as anyone knew, was that the little girl had been adopted to a middle-aged couple who had wanted children for years but had been so far unsuccessful in having any of their own. Grace went on to finish school and, having learnt her lessons in respect to young love and what can come of it, decided to enter the counselling profession. In a fit of self-diagnosis one day she had apparently decided to try and hunt down the child she had abandoned so many years ago. She had enlisted the help of many organisations and individuals, her twin brother included, and eventually one of the contacts she had made through her counselling was convinced to break a few rules and, somehow, the details of a child she had tried very hard to forget about, were scrawled on a piece of paper on her desk. Grace had filed the piece of paper away in a pocket of her vanity case in the top drawer of her dresser, and there the information had lived until she had finally gotten up the courage and determination to see where the scrap of paper would take her. Where it took her, eventually, was only about half an hour down the highway, to the door of an old Queenslander-style house in an inner-city suburb. She had bolstered herself to get this far and, emboldened with the thrill of the unknown, knocked. A tall, but solidly built young woman had opened the door, squinted at her in the late afternoon sun and said, "Yes?" The rest of the afternoon had been spent at the kitchen table - the dining room table was put to use as a desk and totally unusable for the purpose for which it had been built - trying to fill in the gaps in each others' memory spanning twenty years. The girl's name was Ariana Mathers, she was a published fantasy-fiction author, and Brianna's cousin.
A sudden announcement cut the humid air, and Brianna looked up, slightly confused. The train had arrived.
Megan
There was something about bringing a new life into the world that makes you reflect on your own family relationships, Megan mused to herself as she thumbed through her address book. She had been chatting to her mother on the phone earlier in the day, filling her in on the events of that morning's ultrasound (everything going well, no they still didn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl), when she had casually asked about Great Uncle Walter. Her mother had assured her that he was perfectly dotty and that she wasn't sure if he was still alive. Megan, unperturbed, had decided to look up her great uncle's name in the phone book anyway and was surprised to find that he lived only a few blocks from them. She had sat back in her chair, trying to recall memories of him, and had only been able to summon a very dim recollection of playing cards with him as a very small child at her grandparent's house. She remembered he had seemed terribly old to her then, but now, thinking back with an adults eyes, he couldn't have been much older than forty. Her grandmother's youngest brother, he was probably the only surviving relative on that side of the family now, and it pained her that her mother hadn't shown more concern with getting in touch with him again. Megan wondered idly if there was some bad blood under the bridge, but decided firmly that, even if there was, she was going to let him know that he was about to become a great great uncle. Or was that a great uncle once removed? Never mind. She picked up the telephone, hesitated only slightly, and dialled the number.
The phone rang and rang, and Megan was about to hang up, disappointed, when a lady's voice answered softly "Hello?"
"Oh, hello. I don't know if I have the right number. I'm looking for Walter Spinner." Megan stammered, put off by the unexpected female voice on the other end. "I'm his niece." she added as an afterthought.
"Oh hello, dear. My name is Rosemary, I'm from Home Nursing. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Mister Spinner is very ill in the hospital, I've just come back to collect some things for him. You're lucky you caught me, I was just leaving."
Megan's heart sank, it sounded as though she may have gotten in touch with her great uncle just in time for him to pass away.
"Thank you for letting me know Rosemary. Are you able to give me the hospital details?"
"Of course, dear," Rosemary rattled off the name of the hospital and a ward and room number. Megan dutifully copied them down, thanked Rosemary again, and hung up the phone. She sat in silence for a while, pondering the next course of action, and eventually decided to wait until Dalton got home, he would be able to help her decide what to do.
Lawrence
After talking to Ben on the phone last night, Lawrence had called the office. The receptionists had all gone home for the evening by that stage, but Lawrence went into battle with the voicemail system until it reluctantly allowed him to leave a message on Elouise's office phone. He had said that he had a personal emergency and would be taking the next day off to "sort some stuff out". He had no idea if that excuse was going to wash with his boss or not, but it was the best he could come up with, and this was something that was going to need a hell of a lot of sorting out, he thought ruefully.
Lawrence had slept fitfully last night, his mind racing trying to recall the all too hazy, alcohol-addled memories of last Saturday night. A few blurry details had come to him, nothing that, on their own, would mean anything to anyone, but something all the same. He had to get his thoughts in order before he spoke to Ben, which is why he hadn't gone around there straight away.
And now here he was, over tired, grumpy, and very, very frightened, walking down to Redton station to go the two stops outbound to Ben's place, and praying that he wouldn't run into Elouise at the station. Thankfully, he ran into no one he knew, although he noted Elouise's car in the car park. In short order the outbound train arrived and he jumped on to it. He alighted at Hawkswater station and was knocking at Ben's door within ten minutes of leaving Redton. Ben opened the door, not with his usual happy bound, but with a frown and dark shadows under both eyes.
"Hey, Ben. How you going?" Lawrence asked, his voice low because he knew the answer just by looking at his friend.
"This is bad news, man," Ben answered, shaking his head, "You had better come in - we need to talk."
Ben stepped aside to let Lawrence in and, after closing and locking the door behind them he walked into the kitchen to make them both a coffee. Despite pointing out that they needed to talk, Ben seemed extremely reluctant to do so, and Lawrence had no desire to get the ball rolling either. The two stood in silence, listening to the kettle boil and showing apparent great interest in the process of making two cups of instant coffee.
Once the coffee was made, and the two men had taken their chipped and mismatched mugs into the lounge room, kicking detritus off the couch so they could sit down on it, Ben reluctantly started the inevitable conversation.
"So." he said with an obvious groan, "What do you remember?"
Lawrence sighed, looked up to the ceiling, trying to gather his fleeing thoughts like lost sheep. Haltingly at first, and then with more detail as his recall improved with the telling, Lawrence started to talk through the events of Saturday night.
He had arrived at Ben's house with his flatmate Damien around six o'clock on Saturday night, and they had both immediately started drinking, despite there only being a few people there at that time. The place had started to fill up from about then on, and by eleven o'clock there had been quite a throng of people. He could remember a big group turning up around ten, and someone from that group, a stranger whose name Lawrence didn't know or couldn't remember, telling him that they had been at a party down the road for someone's birthday but it had finished up early so they had started walking to find another and stumbled onto Ben's. It hadn't particularly surprised Lawrence at the time, Ben's place was renowned as a party house so it wasn't unusual for strange groups to turn up uninvited. They were always welcomed and no serious harm had come of it. Yet.
One of the strangers had been Ariana, and Lawrence had first spotted her across the room, she was lying across the legs of two men who were sitting on the lounge that was out on the verandah. All three of them had been laughing hysterically as the two guys copped a few feels and she let them do it. Thinking back on it, it was pretty obvious that Ariana had not just been drunk, but had consumed some other, more potent, substance also. At the time, though, all Lawrence could think was that she was a great piece of arse, and obviously up for it, so he had decided to give her a shot.
He had spent the next hour or so manoeuvring as close to her as possible, and had succeeded in talking to her for a while. Maybe she had started to come down though, because he had had no luck whatsoever when he had tried for a feel of his own. She had turned away from him quickly when he tried, as though she had heard her name called, and it had only been a few minutes later that she said she needed to go to the toilet. He had spotted her later, across the room again, this time sitting quietly on the ground in a corner of the balcony, cuddling a drink and staring with wild eyes at the writhing mass of people around her. He remembered thinking that, if only he hadn't been quite as drunk as he was, he could have made a better move with her, could have gotten lucky.
He had sat down as close to her as possible which was still too far for conversation. They were separated by a significantly large group of people. He had nursed his own drink feeling sorry for himself but enjoying the eye candy and people watching nevertheless. And it was because if this strangely melancholic mood, seemingly mirroring Ariana's own, that he had seen the group of guys - about five of them and including those that had been frolicking on the couch with Ariana earlier - approach her. He was not close enough to hear their words, but an intense conversation took place, and eventually they had all stood up. Ariana had looked kind of pissed off, but she went with them and Lawrence had followed them with his eyes. The group, huddled together as they laughed and chatted with Ariana in the middle - arms crossed and still looking pissed - wandered down the stairs from the house and onto the road, then disappeared in the direction of the station. At first, Lawrence had thought they were all from the group of gatecrashers, all friends of Ariana's, he assumed. But at the last moment someone had come tearing out of the house to catch them up, waving a beer in one hand as he pelted down the stairs off the balcony, "Wait up for me, guys!" the man had yelled, and Lawrence had turned to look, realising instantly who it was - his flat mate, Damien.
Lawrence finished his story and looked up at Ben with suddenly haunted eyes. Ben looked downcast and, after a beat or two of silence, said softly, "Do you think it was him? Who were the others?"
Lawrence shook his head slowly, "It depends what they were doing. Where were they going? The others, well, I couldn't see them. It was dark, I was pissed as a newt. I thought they were all from the group of gatecrashers, but, really, it could have been anyone. It could have been no-one I knew, or it could have been my brother. It could have been you for all I know. I wouldn't have been able to tell you then - I certainly can't tell you now." Lawrence's voice faltered as he said this, and he looked up into his mate's face, but Ben had quickly hidden the look of shock that had overtaken his features and all Lawrence saw was a look of disappointment.
"Sorry, man," Lawrence said eventually, "I don't know who they were. They could have been anyone. The only one I'm sure of was Damo."
Wednesday - 6:14am to the City
Walter
Walter woke again, with a start this time, certain that he had just missed a train going past. He lifted his shoulders off the bed to catch the last glimpse of the carriage as it sped out of view, eyes popping open, and soon realised that he was still in the hospital room, not at the station, much to his chagrin. The police officer, who had turned out to be a fine boned young woman, had finally gotten to him yesterday afternoon. She had been fairly gentle with Walter, all things considered, but the endless rounds of questions that all sounded the same to him was tiring, and he had slept almost continuously since she had left in the darkening hours of early evening, woken only by the nurses interruptions at regular intervals. But now he was awake again and when he thought about it he realised that he wasn’t feeling too bad, although still groggy. He wondered if that was effect of the drugs the nurses had been giving him or the relief that the policewoman had left. Walter sat up slightly in the bed and looked around himself properly for the first time. He spotted a remote control beside the bed and pointed it at the television. To his surprise, instead of the television turning on, the bed head adjusted itself, tilting upwards. Smiling now at his own surprise, he adjusted the bed to a sitting position, laid back on the pillows, and eventually managed to turn the television on. There was a pair of talking heads on a breakfast program, and he watched them in silence for a few minutes, his mind completely blank. He was hungry he had decided, and he wanted some breakfast.
Eventually Walter nodded back off to sleep. A nurse came in and lowered the bed slightly and an orderly arrived to serve his breakfast. Not willing to wake him, the breakfast was left on the table beside him. Walter slept on and another police officer slipped into the room silently to start a new shift.
Elouise
Elouise awoke to the sound of canned laughter from the morning deejays on her clock radio. Her mind had been playing stop-motion movies of the coming morning to her all night, and this morning she felt drained, as though she had lived a full week while she had been asleep. Nevertheless, she finally felt as though a decision had been reached. The decision was tinged with guilt - she had used her very own daughter as a counsellor, and she vaguely remembered reading in some parenting how-to guide that was one of the most heinous sins for a parent to commit. She tried to justify it, after all, Kasey had asked her to tell her what was going on, but she realised what had really happened. Elouise had needed to discuss the matter to be able to get her head around it, and she picked the only person not directly involved - Kasey. The poor girl, Elouise thought, she had had no idea what Elouise was going to land her with, how could she have dumped that amount of emotion and angst on her sixteen year old shoulders? Yet, she rationalised, what she was doing was for Kasey's sake, surely a home with two parents was a better environment for a teenage daughter than a single mother, alone and cast flailing into the world?
Elouise got out of bed reluctantly, and stripped off while she ran the shower, waiting for the water to get hot. She jumped in, almost scalding herself in the steaming water, and forced herself to take the heat. When her body temperature adjusted and she didn't feel like she was being roasted anymore, she grabbed the shampoo and starting working it through her chestnut hair. As she did a totally irreverent thought came to her, the vision of a young actress washing her hair in the middle of a South Pacific setting, singing mightily, "I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair, I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair," and the thought, silly as it was, brought an unexpected smile to her lips. The thought that was hot on its heels though - how she was actually going to perform this act - made her knees feel weak and her bowels turn to water.
The burning question was how much to tell Rob. Last night after talking to Kasey she had been so full of bravado and determination that she could quite probably have spilt the beans there and then, over the tough, over cooked stir fry she had served up. If it wasn't for the fact that she had already decided to break it off with Zach first, then she quite probably would have.
Trying to concentrate not on how nervous she was about doing it, but how good she would feel once it was done, Elouise finished showering while Robert snored his way through his dreams in the room next door. She was going to be free, she was going to be able to stop worrying. Damn, she thought wryly, she was going to have to try and entice Rob to get some excitement in the bedroom.
Shannen
Shannen was awake. She did not know how long she had slept, she did not remember going to sleep. But when she awoke she was in Ariana's bed, still fully clothed in her work uniform from yesterday. At first, blissfully, she couldn't remember what had happened, only that something had, but it was mere seconds before the grief hit her like a brick wall at high speed, and events of yesterday came flooding painfully back. She got up, out of Ariana's bed that smelled of her perfume, and padded down the hall into the bathroom. She went to the toilet, washed her hands, and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. What looked back at her was the horrid shell of a person who has had their heart ripped out. The traces of the small amount of makeup that she had applied twenty four hours ago were now smeared across her cheeks and chin in black rivulets formed by tears. Shannen briefly considered the futility of washing her face, knowing that Ariana could never do that again, and then mentally poked herself. That's crazy talk, girl! Ariana's voice said in the back of her head. Shannen opened the bathroom cabinet, feeling like an intruder, and found some face wash. She filled the sink with warm water and washed her face slowly, thoroughly. Some tears leaked from under her closed lids, it was funny how that seemed to be happening more or less constantly now, and she washed her face with them too. She dried her face with Ariana's bath towel, thinking that the exercise was reasonably futile, given the quantity of tears she was producing right now, and went into the lounge room. Grace was asleep on the couch, also fully dressed. Shannen thought she looked as though she had just fallen there out of sheer exhaustion, and then realised that that was probably what she had looked like too.
Padding back into the kitchen, Shannen stood by the door, suddenly unaware of what she should be doing. It seemed way too normal to do something as routine as make a cup of tea, or some toast for breakfast. Besides, she didn't really want anything. What she wanted, in lieu of the fact that she couldn't immerse herself in Ariana's physical presence, was to immerse herself in Ariana's world. A flash of inspiration made its way through the storm clouds that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Shannon's mind - she would go through Ariana's papers. Ariana had never quite lived in the same world as everyone else Shannen knew, she had always had one foot in a world of her own creation, where forests where green and welcoming, lakes were sparkling blue and inviting, and every little rural town had a tavern inhabited by Tolkien-esque creatures willing to share a pint of mead with a weary traveller. Yes, that was Ariana's world, and Shannen made a conscious decision to go and inhabit it herself for a while. She stepped into the dining room cum study, and contemplated the mess of papers, books and random free-flowing ideas that inhabited every inch of space. She was going to be here for a while.
Walter woke again, with a start this time, certain that he had just missed a train going past. He lifted his shoulders off the bed to catch the last glimpse of the carriage as it sped out of view, eyes popping open, and soon realised that he was still in the hospital room, not at the station, much to his chagrin. The police officer, who had turned out to be a fine boned young woman, had finally gotten to him yesterday afternoon. She had been fairly gentle with Walter, all things considered, but the endless rounds of questions that all sounded the same to him was tiring, and he had slept almost continuously since she had left in the darkening hours of early evening, woken only by the nurses interruptions at regular intervals. But now he was awake again and when he thought about it he realised that he wasn’t feeling too bad, although still groggy. He wondered if that was effect of the drugs the nurses had been giving him or the relief that the policewoman had left. Walter sat up slightly in the bed and looked around himself properly for the first time. He spotted a remote control beside the bed and pointed it at the television. To his surprise, instead of the television turning on, the bed head adjusted itself, tilting upwards. Smiling now at his own surprise, he adjusted the bed to a sitting position, laid back on the pillows, and eventually managed to turn the television on. There was a pair of talking heads on a breakfast program, and he watched them in silence for a few minutes, his mind completely blank. He was hungry he had decided, and he wanted some breakfast.
Eventually Walter nodded back off to sleep. A nurse came in and lowered the bed slightly and an orderly arrived to serve his breakfast. Not willing to wake him, the breakfast was left on the table beside him. Walter slept on and another police officer slipped into the room silently to start a new shift.
Elouise
Elouise awoke to the sound of canned laughter from the morning deejays on her clock radio. Her mind had been playing stop-motion movies of the coming morning to her all night, and this morning she felt drained, as though she had lived a full week while she had been asleep. Nevertheless, she finally felt as though a decision had been reached. The decision was tinged with guilt - she had used her very own daughter as a counsellor, and she vaguely remembered reading in some parenting how-to guide that was one of the most heinous sins for a parent to commit. She tried to justify it, after all, Kasey had asked her to tell her what was going on, but she realised what had really happened. Elouise had needed to discuss the matter to be able to get her head around it, and she picked the only person not directly involved - Kasey. The poor girl, Elouise thought, she had had no idea what Elouise was going to land her with, how could she have dumped that amount of emotion and angst on her sixteen year old shoulders? Yet, she rationalised, what she was doing was for Kasey's sake, surely a home with two parents was a better environment for a teenage daughter than a single mother, alone and cast flailing into the world?
Elouise got out of bed reluctantly, and stripped off while she ran the shower, waiting for the water to get hot. She jumped in, almost scalding herself in the steaming water, and forced herself to take the heat. When her body temperature adjusted and she didn't feel like she was being roasted anymore, she grabbed the shampoo and starting working it through her chestnut hair. As she did a totally irreverent thought came to her, the vision of a young actress washing her hair in the middle of a South Pacific setting, singing mightily, "I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair, I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair," and the thought, silly as it was, brought an unexpected smile to her lips. The thought that was hot on its heels though - how she was actually going to perform this act - made her knees feel weak and her bowels turn to water.
The burning question was how much to tell Rob. Last night after talking to Kasey she had been so full of bravado and determination that she could quite probably have spilt the beans there and then, over the tough, over cooked stir fry she had served up. If it wasn't for the fact that she had already decided to break it off with Zach first, then she quite probably would have.
Trying to concentrate not on how nervous she was about doing it, but how good she would feel once it was done, Elouise finished showering while Robert snored his way through his dreams in the room next door. She was going to be free, she was going to be able to stop worrying. Damn, she thought wryly, she was going to have to try and entice Rob to get some excitement in the bedroom.
Shannen
Shannen was awake. She did not know how long she had slept, she did not remember going to sleep. But when she awoke she was in Ariana's bed, still fully clothed in her work uniform from yesterday. At first, blissfully, she couldn't remember what had happened, only that something had, but it was mere seconds before the grief hit her like a brick wall at high speed, and events of yesterday came flooding painfully back. She got up, out of Ariana's bed that smelled of her perfume, and padded down the hall into the bathroom. She went to the toilet, washed her hands, and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. What looked back at her was the horrid shell of a person who has had their heart ripped out. The traces of the small amount of makeup that she had applied twenty four hours ago were now smeared across her cheeks and chin in black rivulets formed by tears. Shannen briefly considered the futility of washing her face, knowing that Ariana could never do that again, and then mentally poked herself. That's crazy talk, girl! Ariana's voice said in the back of her head. Shannen opened the bathroom cabinet, feeling like an intruder, and found some face wash. She filled the sink with warm water and washed her face slowly, thoroughly. Some tears leaked from under her closed lids, it was funny how that seemed to be happening more or less constantly now, and she washed her face with them too. She dried her face with Ariana's bath towel, thinking that the exercise was reasonably futile, given the quantity of tears she was producing right now, and went into the lounge room. Grace was asleep on the couch, also fully dressed. Shannen thought she looked as though she had just fallen there out of sheer exhaustion, and then realised that that was probably what she had looked like too.
Padding back into the kitchen, Shannen stood by the door, suddenly unaware of what she should be doing. It seemed way too normal to do something as routine as make a cup of tea, or some toast for breakfast. Besides, she didn't really want anything. What she wanted, in lieu of the fact that she couldn't immerse herself in Ariana's physical presence, was to immerse herself in Ariana's world. A flash of inspiration made its way through the storm clouds that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Shannon's mind - she would go through Ariana's papers. Ariana had never quite lived in the same world as everyone else Shannen knew, she had always had one foot in a world of her own creation, where forests where green and welcoming, lakes were sparkling blue and inviting, and every little rural town had a tavern inhabited by Tolkien-esque creatures willing to share a pint of mead with a weary traveller. Yes, that was Ariana's world, and Shannen made a conscious decision to go and inhabit it herself for a while. She stepped into the dining room cum study, and contemplated the mess of papers, books and random free-flowing ideas that inhabited every inch of space. She was going to be here for a while.
Tuesday - 5:13pm Outbound
Lawrence
Lawrence had come home on the 5:13 outbound, arriving at Redton at about half past five, and he was now making the fifteen minute trek back to the house that he shared with Damien. Damien worked the night shift as an orderly at the hospital down the road, so Lawrence generally saw him when he got back just as Damien was racing out of the door to start. It worked well, it meant that they both virtually had the house to themselves at the times they were there, but the helping hand with the rent certainly made a difference. Lawrence hadn't thought too much more about the call from Ben this morning, figuring that he would have gotten over whatever high he was on this morning by the time he was supposed to call, or that the matter would no longer hold interest for him and would be dropped. He had, however, jotted the name Ariana down in corner of his desk diary at work, so that he wouldn't forget it, just in case Ben did call back.
Lawrence trudged the final few steps up the driveway, grabbing a handful of junk mail out of the letterbox as he went past and dropping it unceremoniously in the garbage bin three steps later, without even rifling through it. Ben unlocked the front door with his key and pushed it open, calling a greeting to Damien as he did so. It was answered by a muffled thump and a curse from Damien's room, before Damien appeared hair sticking up and wearing nothing more than a pair of boxer shorts that had seen better days.
"Sleep in, Damo? Seems to be a minor epidemic." Lawrence said casually as he dumped his briefcase on the lounge and followed it closely with his own body. He fished around in the crevices and creases of the cushions for the remote control, eventually finding it, a crumpled receipt for fuel, and a slightly furry potato chip down the back. He discarded the docket and the chip by pushing them back down into the couch and used the remote control to switch the television on.
"Uh, yeah. But it's your bloody fault," Damien complained. Lawrence looked up, questioning, and Damien continued, "Yeah, your mad mate - Ben - he's been ringing up every hour on the hour since about three o'clock, wondering if you were home yet. I tried telling him, man, but he sounds like he's going nuts. And I was going to go nuts if he called here again, I can tell you!"
"Oh, gawd." Lawrence moaned, "Sorry, Damo, I don't know what his problem is. He woke me up this morning too, wanting to know the name of that girl I was chatting to on the weekend."
"Well do you think you could ring him up, Larry? Put the man out of everyone else's misery?"
Lawrence nodded miserably as Damien disappeared back into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Lawrence closed his eyes and laid his head back on the couch. What on earth was Ben up to? He heaved himself back out of the couch, and hunted around for the cordless phone, eventually finding it hiding under a dirty sock on the lounge room floor. He picked it up, hesitated for a second as he pondered what he was about to discover, and dialled Ben's number.
Shannen
Together, they had sat together in the kitchen, sometimes sipping but more often ignoring too hot cups of weak tea. Ariana's mum, Grace, had cried, Shannen had cried, and eventually the story had been told. Grace had been some half an hour into the whole torrid chain of events when Shannen suddenly realised that she was talking about the very same chain of events that she, herself, had been involved in only the day before. The body wrapped in the blanket that she had tripped over, the body with the pink-polished, neatly cut toenail, had been her best friend, her only ally in the long-running struggle that had consumed her so suddenly for so long now. A fresh wave of emotion - not yet grief but some harsh and acidic forerunner to that - boiled behind her eyes and in her heart, and the words were knocked out of her. Between the two women, a ripple had passed. They had not comforted each other, neither was able to deal with their own emotions sufficiently enough to reach out to the other yet, but they sat beside each other and that, for now at least, was the only thing that could be done.
Eventually - she had no concept of how much time had passed - Shannen had gotten up from the table. She said nothing, and left a half drunk cup of tea on the table. She wandered into the next room, the dining room, and saw the papers scattered across the desk. Shannen recalled the sight of Ariana sitting here, as she had so often when Shannen came to visit, surrounded by papers, an amazing array of coloured ballpoint pens and a light-weight laptop buried somewhere underneath it all. And books, Shannen thought, always books, everywhere. No discernible thread between them, but somehow Ariana had been able to glean little nuggets of truth, half-truth and falsities from between their covers, and weave them into a narrative. Shannen sat down at the dining room table as it groaned underneath the weight of Ariana's abandoned work. Shannen’s hands stayed primly on her lap as she let her eyes sift through the papers, seeing half-scrawled unintelligible notes, discarded chocolate foil with crumbs of the contents still clinging to the wrinkled wrappers, scribbled pictures of faces, hands, animals, trees, houses and cars, the ring pulls from possibly hundreds of soft drink cans, some twisted into abstract shapes, open books with pages tagged by fluorescent sticky notes, the rings from a countless number of coffee cups leaving their signatures over the lot.
Shannen sat, stunned into a reverie of shock by the news that Grace had so recently imparted, by the knowledge that she had been so close to Ariana, post-life, without realising it; by the fact that she was here, sitting where Ariana was supposed to be sitting, not writing where Ariana had written so much. For being so full of life, when Ariana had given hers up so recently, so suddenly, and so very, very unfairly.
Shannen lifted her hands finally, placed them on the table carefully atop the clutter, without disturbing a single piece of paper or causing a single pen to roll. It felt libellous somehow, sacrilegious almost, to be even contemplating looking through these papers without Ariana's permission. Ariana had never shared her work until she had considered it ready for even a very limited public showing. And now she was thinking of sifting through something that was not even planned, in some cases, and barely dry on the page in others. Unable to make herself do it, she lifted her hands again, paper sticking slightly to her sweaty palms as she did so, and watched as they fluttered the short distance back to the table. She dropped her hands to her lap again, lowered her head and let the tears fall silently, only getting up for a tissue when she realised that the ink was running on some of Ariana's sketches and notes. How could this have happened, and more to the point, who could have done this to someone like Ariana? It didn't stand to reason, didn't stand to reason at all.
Elouise
Elouise pulled the car into the garage, closed the door with the remote control on her keying, and switched off the ignition. The sound of the engine ricocheted around the enclosed space for a second or two before dying away. The only sound was the ticking of the cooling engine, loud now in the sudden silence, and the musical tinkle of her keys knocking against each other as they swung from the steering column. Elouise left her hands lying as light as birds on the top of the steering wheel, and leaned back in the driver's seat with her eyes closed. A total tiredness had overcome her, and the sudden cessation of noise and movement when she had turned the car off had caused the weariness to jump up and hit with a force that was completely unexpected. She sat that way, not moving, for a stretch of time before a noise in the house above her brought her back to reality. She opened her eyes and looked around her, as though she had forgotten where she was, what she was supposed to be doing. The thought of going upstairs and being cheery and normal with her family, cooking dinner and doing all those normal things seemed totally incongruous when there was so much turmoil going on within her. She hadn't seen Zach for close to thirty-six hours now, and she had given him nothing in explanation for her absence - uncertain as to how to deal with the situation. But Zach had sent her a text message this morning, which she had received just as she was getting onto the train to work this morning. It had shocked her, confused her, and she had not known how to respond to it, had, in fact, not attempted a response at all. She had let the text message drop into a dead radio silence, and now she could only wonder what Zach might make of that.
She heaved a sigh and tried to clear the crease from her forehead that she could feel there - had felt there all day, if she was to be honest. She opened the driver's side door and propped it open with the pointed toe of her high heel as she reached over to the passenger side to grab her handbag. She snagged it with a finger and pulled herself out of the car with a groan. She doubted that she had ever felt as tired as she did right now. She knew it wasn't just lack of sleep making her feel this way, but a total mental exhaustion.
One foot in front of the other, she climbed the stairs slowly, taking note of the sound of the television blaring out canned pop music as she gradually rose into the lounge room. The television was blaring to an empty room, it seemed, and as she walked past she snapped it off at the switch on the set. An immediate outcry came from the kitchen, which opened off the lounge room. "Mum! I was watching that!" Kasey yelled, hidden by the open pantry door as she scrabbled around inside.
"Sorry, Kase, didn't know you were there," Elouise responded, but didn't turn it back on. She walked into the kitchen and dumped her handbag and ID card on the island bench with the rest of the clutter borne of a dual-income family - keys, change, used train tickets and stray lanyards. "What are you ratting about in there for?" she said distractedly, "I'm about to start cooking dinner."
"Er. Nothing much." The door shut quickly and Kasey emerged from behind it, still in her uniform, and with a mouth full.
Elouise gave a sigh, looked pointedly at Kasey chewing, and raised an eyebrow. Kasey shrugged slightly, a look of half-hearted apology on her face, and pushed past her mother to go and flop back on to the couch. Elouise heard the television snap back on, the recurrence of the music like a slap in the face.
Elouise bustled around in the kitchen, getting the ingredients together to cook a stir-fry - pre-packaged sliced vegetables, chicken strips, a jar of teriyaki sauce and some noodles. She had no energy for anything more complex at the moment. Hastily and haphazardly throwing the ingredients together into a wok, thoughts flew through her head. She made a conscious effort not to dwell on any of them. She tried to picture each thought as a little covered dish revolving on a sushi train. Each one arrived and she inspected it briefly, then let it go past her without lifting the lid and digging around in it.
Caught up as she was in this process, concentrating so intently on her mental sushi train, she didn't notice Kasey leaning against the doorjamb watching her until she turned around to wash her hands under the kitchen tap and came face to face with her. Elouise jumped slightly then covered it quickly with a smile. "You that hungry, Kasey?" she joked lightly as she turned back to the meat frying quickly in the wok.
"Nah, not really." Kasey paused, not laughing, and Elouise looked back over her shoulder as she stirred the ingredients. Kasey's face was set, and Elouise frowned slightly. Then, she tipped the ingredients out of the wok into a waiting dish, even though it wasn't quite ready yet, turned the heat off and walked over to her daughter, resting her backside against the edge of the island bench so she could study her face.
"What's up, sweetness? You look troubled."
"Um. Yeah. I guess I am. A bit." Kasey stumbled over her words slightly, as though they had a reluctance to be heard. Elouise didn't respond, just watched as her daughter struggled over the words she was about to say, forming them into a logical progression to be transmitted from her mouth to her mother's ears.
"Mum," she started, then paused again to regroup, "Mum, I'm a bit worried about things. You seem kind of, well kind of distant, sort of. Is there something going on between you and Dad?"
Elouise was shocked. She recalled the thought she had had that morning on the way to the train station, about Kasey suddenly having become astute, and that she had just realised that her daughter had somehow discovered insight and empathy also. What's more, Elouise didn't know how to answer. There was nothing going on between her and Rob. Perhaps that was the problem, she reflected with irony. Elouise took a deep breath and with the courage borne of fear and a desire to get this monkey off her back, she opened her mouth and spilled the contents of her mind to her teenage daughter.
Lawrence had come home on the 5:13 outbound, arriving at Redton at about half past five, and he was now making the fifteen minute trek back to the house that he shared with Damien. Damien worked the night shift as an orderly at the hospital down the road, so Lawrence generally saw him when he got back just as Damien was racing out of the door to start. It worked well, it meant that they both virtually had the house to themselves at the times they were there, but the helping hand with the rent certainly made a difference. Lawrence hadn't thought too much more about the call from Ben this morning, figuring that he would have gotten over whatever high he was on this morning by the time he was supposed to call, or that the matter would no longer hold interest for him and would be dropped. He had, however, jotted the name Ariana down in corner of his desk diary at work, so that he wouldn't forget it, just in case Ben did call back.
Lawrence trudged the final few steps up the driveway, grabbing a handful of junk mail out of the letterbox as he went past and dropping it unceremoniously in the garbage bin three steps later, without even rifling through it. Ben unlocked the front door with his key and pushed it open, calling a greeting to Damien as he did so. It was answered by a muffled thump and a curse from Damien's room, before Damien appeared hair sticking up and wearing nothing more than a pair of boxer shorts that had seen better days.
"Sleep in, Damo? Seems to be a minor epidemic." Lawrence said casually as he dumped his briefcase on the lounge and followed it closely with his own body. He fished around in the crevices and creases of the cushions for the remote control, eventually finding it, a crumpled receipt for fuel, and a slightly furry potato chip down the back. He discarded the docket and the chip by pushing them back down into the couch and used the remote control to switch the television on.
"Uh, yeah. But it's your bloody fault," Damien complained. Lawrence looked up, questioning, and Damien continued, "Yeah, your mad mate - Ben - he's been ringing up every hour on the hour since about three o'clock, wondering if you were home yet. I tried telling him, man, but he sounds like he's going nuts. And I was going to go nuts if he called here again, I can tell you!"
"Oh, gawd." Lawrence moaned, "Sorry, Damo, I don't know what his problem is. He woke me up this morning too, wanting to know the name of that girl I was chatting to on the weekend."
"Well do you think you could ring him up, Larry? Put the man out of everyone else's misery?"
Lawrence nodded miserably as Damien disappeared back into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Lawrence closed his eyes and laid his head back on the couch. What on earth was Ben up to? He heaved himself back out of the couch, and hunted around for the cordless phone, eventually finding it hiding under a dirty sock on the lounge room floor. He picked it up, hesitated for a second as he pondered what he was about to discover, and dialled Ben's number.
Shannen
Together, they had sat together in the kitchen, sometimes sipping but more often ignoring too hot cups of weak tea. Ariana's mum, Grace, had cried, Shannen had cried, and eventually the story had been told. Grace had been some half an hour into the whole torrid chain of events when Shannen suddenly realised that she was talking about the very same chain of events that she, herself, had been involved in only the day before. The body wrapped in the blanket that she had tripped over, the body with the pink-polished, neatly cut toenail, had been her best friend, her only ally in the long-running struggle that had consumed her so suddenly for so long now. A fresh wave of emotion - not yet grief but some harsh and acidic forerunner to that - boiled behind her eyes and in her heart, and the words were knocked out of her. Between the two women, a ripple had passed. They had not comforted each other, neither was able to deal with their own emotions sufficiently enough to reach out to the other yet, but they sat beside each other and that, for now at least, was the only thing that could be done.
Eventually - she had no concept of how much time had passed - Shannen had gotten up from the table. She said nothing, and left a half drunk cup of tea on the table. She wandered into the next room, the dining room, and saw the papers scattered across the desk. Shannen recalled the sight of Ariana sitting here, as she had so often when Shannen came to visit, surrounded by papers, an amazing array of coloured ballpoint pens and a light-weight laptop buried somewhere underneath it all. And books, Shannen thought, always books, everywhere. No discernible thread between them, but somehow Ariana had been able to glean little nuggets of truth, half-truth and falsities from between their covers, and weave them into a narrative. Shannen sat down at the dining room table as it groaned underneath the weight of Ariana's abandoned work. Shannen’s hands stayed primly on her lap as she let her eyes sift through the papers, seeing half-scrawled unintelligible notes, discarded chocolate foil with crumbs of the contents still clinging to the wrinkled wrappers, scribbled pictures of faces, hands, animals, trees, houses and cars, the ring pulls from possibly hundreds of soft drink cans, some twisted into abstract shapes, open books with pages tagged by fluorescent sticky notes, the rings from a countless number of coffee cups leaving their signatures over the lot.
Shannen sat, stunned into a reverie of shock by the news that Grace had so recently imparted, by the knowledge that she had been so close to Ariana, post-life, without realising it; by the fact that she was here, sitting where Ariana was supposed to be sitting, not writing where Ariana had written so much. For being so full of life, when Ariana had given hers up so recently, so suddenly, and so very, very unfairly.
Shannen lifted her hands finally, placed them on the table carefully atop the clutter, without disturbing a single piece of paper or causing a single pen to roll. It felt libellous somehow, sacrilegious almost, to be even contemplating looking through these papers without Ariana's permission. Ariana had never shared her work until she had considered it ready for even a very limited public showing. And now she was thinking of sifting through something that was not even planned, in some cases, and barely dry on the page in others. Unable to make herself do it, she lifted her hands again, paper sticking slightly to her sweaty palms as she did so, and watched as they fluttered the short distance back to the table. She dropped her hands to her lap again, lowered her head and let the tears fall silently, only getting up for a tissue when she realised that the ink was running on some of Ariana's sketches and notes. How could this have happened, and more to the point, who could have done this to someone like Ariana? It didn't stand to reason, didn't stand to reason at all.
Elouise
Elouise pulled the car into the garage, closed the door with the remote control on her keying, and switched off the ignition. The sound of the engine ricocheted around the enclosed space for a second or two before dying away. The only sound was the ticking of the cooling engine, loud now in the sudden silence, and the musical tinkle of her keys knocking against each other as they swung from the steering column. Elouise left her hands lying as light as birds on the top of the steering wheel, and leaned back in the driver's seat with her eyes closed. A total tiredness had overcome her, and the sudden cessation of noise and movement when she had turned the car off had caused the weariness to jump up and hit with a force that was completely unexpected. She sat that way, not moving, for a stretch of time before a noise in the house above her brought her back to reality. She opened her eyes and looked around her, as though she had forgotten where she was, what she was supposed to be doing. The thought of going upstairs and being cheery and normal with her family, cooking dinner and doing all those normal things seemed totally incongruous when there was so much turmoil going on within her. She hadn't seen Zach for close to thirty-six hours now, and she had given him nothing in explanation for her absence - uncertain as to how to deal with the situation. But Zach had sent her a text message this morning, which she had received just as she was getting onto the train to work this morning. It had shocked her, confused her, and she had not known how to respond to it, had, in fact, not attempted a response at all. She had let the text message drop into a dead radio silence, and now she could only wonder what Zach might make of that.
She heaved a sigh and tried to clear the crease from her forehead that she could feel there - had felt there all day, if she was to be honest. She opened the driver's side door and propped it open with the pointed toe of her high heel as she reached over to the passenger side to grab her handbag. She snagged it with a finger and pulled herself out of the car with a groan. She doubted that she had ever felt as tired as she did right now. She knew it wasn't just lack of sleep making her feel this way, but a total mental exhaustion.
One foot in front of the other, she climbed the stairs slowly, taking note of the sound of the television blaring out canned pop music as she gradually rose into the lounge room. The television was blaring to an empty room, it seemed, and as she walked past she snapped it off at the switch on the set. An immediate outcry came from the kitchen, which opened off the lounge room. "Mum! I was watching that!" Kasey yelled, hidden by the open pantry door as she scrabbled around inside.
"Sorry, Kase, didn't know you were there," Elouise responded, but didn't turn it back on. She walked into the kitchen and dumped her handbag and ID card on the island bench with the rest of the clutter borne of a dual-income family - keys, change, used train tickets and stray lanyards. "What are you ratting about in there for?" she said distractedly, "I'm about to start cooking dinner."
"Er. Nothing much." The door shut quickly and Kasey emerged from behind it, still in her uniform, and with a mouth full.
Elouise gave a sigh, looked pointedly at Kasey chewing, and raised an eyebrow. Kasey shrugged slightly, a look of half-hearted apology on her face, and pushed past her mother to go and flop back on to the couch. Elouise heard the television snap back on, the recurrence of the music like a slap in the face.
Elouise bustled around in the kitchen, getting the ingredients together to cook a stir-fry - pre-packaged sliced vegetables, chicken strips, a jar of teriyaki sauce and some noodles. She had no energy for anything more complex at the moment. Hastily and haphazardly throwing the ingredients together into a wok, thoughts flew through her head. She made a conscious effort not to dwell on any of them. She tried to picture each thought as a little covered dish revolving on a sushi train. Each one arrived and she inspected it briefly, then let it go past her without lifting the lid and digging around in it.
Caught up as she was in this process, concentrating so intently on her mental sushi train, she didn't notice Kasey leaning against the doorjamb watching her until she turned around to wash her hands under the kitchen tap and came face to face with her. Elouise jumped slightly then covered it quickly with a smile. "You that hungry, Kasey?" she joked lightly as she turned back to the meat frying quickly in the wok.
"Nah, not really." Kasey paused, not laughing, and Elouise looked back over her shoulder as she stirred the ingredients. Kasey's face was set, and Elouise frowned slightly. Then, she tipped the ingredients out of the wok into a waiting dish, even though it wasn't quite ready yet, turned the heat off and walked over to her daughter, resting her backside against the edge of the island bench so she could study her face.
"What's up, sweetness? You look troubled."
"Um. Yeah. I guess I am. A bit." Kasey stumbled over her words slightly, as though they had a reluctance to be heard. Elouise didn't respond, just watched as her daughter struggled over the words she was about to say, forming them into a logical progression to be transmitted from her mouth to her mother's ears.
"Mum," she started, then paused again to regroup, "Mum, I'm a bit worried about things. You seem kind of, well kind of distant, sort of. Is there something going on between you and Dad?"
Elouise was shocked. She recalled the thought she had had that morning on the way to the train station, about Kasey suddenly having become astute, and that she had just realised that her daughter had somehow discovered insight and empathy also. What's more, Elouise didn't know how to answer. There was nothing going on between her and Rob. Perhaps that was the problem, she reflected with irony. Elouise took a deep breath and with the courage borne of fear and a desire to get this monkey off her back, she opened her mouth and spilled the contents of her mind to her teenage daughter.
Tuesday - 3:21pm Outbound
Kasey
Kasey's train pulled into Central station. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Brianna had dance and singing rehearsals, Kasey travelled the single station from school to Central, and got off there to meet her boyfriend before continuing the journey home on a later train. She never had to explain the hours or so absence to her parents, as both of them worked full time and neither arrived home before six, as long as she got home before then. She had always assumed that if she was ever asked she could claim to have been studying in the library, but she hadn't been questioned yet, and this had been going on for over a month now – almost forever in Kasey’s reckoning.
Kasey was on her feet as the train stopped and the doors opened, and she fairly bounced out of the train with her excitement. She had missed seeing him yesterday, and wanted to make up for it double time today. She looked to the far end of Platform Twelve and her heart stuttered as she spotted him standing apart from the small crowd on the platform. She picked up her pace, trotting up to him, smiling.
Zach smiled back at her as she came towards him, and he held his arms out to her, wrapping her in a hug that lifted her off her feet. They kissed passionately, Kasey trying to apologise between breaths for missing yesterday, Zach trying to get her to stop talking and just kiss him, damn it! Zach's hand stole into Kasey's school blouse, and she wondered how he had gotten the button undone so fast and with such stealth. She gasped and pulled away as he squeezed her breast, then slipped his thumb inside her bra and brushed her nipple. She gave him a look of mock anger, and looked down at her chest as she buttoned her blouse. She noticed both her nipples were showing, badly, through the thin material and she looked up at him again, pushing her chest out to show him the evidence of her arousal, "Now look what you've done!" she scolded playfully, and he gave her a puppy dog look in return, before they both cracked up laughing and fell into another embrace.
Zach bent down and whispered in her ear, "Hey, Baby, let's get out of here, huh? I can't do what I want to do to you here on the platform." He punctuated the statement with a gentle bite on her neck and a low growl and Kasey smiled her agreement. The couple separated and, her hand stuck in the back of Zach's jeans pocket, they walked out to his convertible, and drove around to Frank Street.
Dalton
Dalton sat on the nearly empty train, his feet up on the facing seat in front of him, a commuter's discarded daily paper open on his lap. The pages of the newspaper were soft from being thumbed by who knew how many hands throughout the day. He flicked the pages idly, not really reading, just skimming the headlines, looking at the grainy photos. Dalton wasn't much of a reader - like the old song said, he could get all the news he needed from the weather report - but it was nice to have a distraction on the train sometimes. As he lazily turned the pages of the worn paper, his thoughts drifted back to the day before at the police station. They had taken prints of his shoes, prints of his fingers, a DNA sample. They had questioned him, repeatedly and from all angles, about what had happened that morning - where he had walked, what he had seen, what the old man had done, what he had looked like. Dalton had learned a few things about what had happened, although the officers had been pretty determined not to let any more facts go than they had to. But he had learned that the old man, the man he had taken for a vagrant, was most possibly a train spotter who was known to the police. He had also learned that the bundle of clothes was a body - a body belonging to a young woman. He had asked who she was, but nobody was willing to give up the information, regardless of how many times he asked. Finally, after hours of questioning and putting through no less than three phone calls to his panicked wife, Dalton was escorted home, where he had proceeded to recount the entire experience yet again, this time to a rapt Megan. She had been shocked by the events, at the speed with which they had escalated, and asked him why he had not called her in the morning. Dalton had explained that it hadn't seemed significant at all then, that it hadn't, in fact, become significant until he stepped off the train and saw the police on the platform.
Dalton's brush with the law had been somewhat exciting, an interesting break from his usually dull daily routine, mostly because he knew he wasn't involved enough to be accused, once the initial shock of being dragged down to the police station for questioning had worn off. However, he was glad it was over. Dalton was not a man who took well to uncertainty, in any form. He had been young when he married Megan, although so had she, and they had very easily fallen into a steady pattern of daily chores, work and snatched private moments. It just seemed to suit them both, and their marriage had become a solid foundation, the centrepiece around which the rest of the world revolved. Now that Megan was pregnant, and with the knowledge of the past miscarriages, though, Dalton had realised how tenuous life could be. The thought he could lose Megan, even as he gained a child, was almost unbearable. He knew he had become overly cautious with her recently. Even now, when the pregnancy was nearly at its end, and the idea of having a real live baby was becoming more sure by the day, he worried. What if something went wrong with the labour, or the baby was born deformed or, worse, stillborn – there was still so much for him to worry about.
Dalton flipped a page idly, and a headline in the local section grabbed his eye - "Murder Victim Found at Suburban Rail Station". He frowned slightly, and read on,
In the early hours of yesterday morning, at a suburban City Rail station, a regular commuter came across the shock discovery of a body. The victim is believed to be a local resident, Ariana Grace Mathers, 22, of Tallen Heights. The cause of death is as yet unknown, and police are appealing to the public for assistance. If you saw anything on ...
Dalton ignored the plea for help at the end of the article, he had certainly assisted as much he possibly could already. But now he had a name to place to the face. Ariana. It was a pretty name, he thought idly. On an impulse, he tore out the corner of the newspaper that contained the story and tucked it into his breast pocket. He carefully refolded the paper and placed it on the seat, ready for the next commuter who needed some reading material, then stood up. His station was next.
Damien
The piercing ring of the phone cut into the dreamy half sleep that Damien had been in. It was afternoon, and he was working the night shift at the hospital tonight. His alarm wasn't due to go off for another few hours yet. Cursing people who felt they had to do things during the daytime, he pulled himself out of bed, and padded out into the lounge room, following the madly bleeping phone to its hiding place under a pile of papers on the kitchen bench. He retrieved it just as it stopped ringing and, swearing under his breath, took it back to bed with him. If it was important, he thought, they would ring back.
Damien lay awake for a while, still cursing the damn phone, and was just slipping back into that sweet place between awake and asleep where all adults become children, and nothing seems important anymore, when the telephone went off again. Damien jumped up, startled fully awake, groped for the phone that was now tangled somewhere in the sheets. He found it, punched a button, and held it to his ear, "H'lo?" he grunted,
"Damien! It's Ben! Is Larry home?"
"No. Why would he be? Call after six. See ya, Bye." Damien hung up without ceremony, dropped the phone onto the carpet, and laid back down in bed. He rolled onto his side and tried to reclaim the sensation of floating he had experienced only moments before.
It was close to four when the phone rang again, and Damien was fully in the grips of a dream. It took a few rings for the signal to reach his brain, and for his brain to send the appropriate messages to his limbs. He sat up in bed, leaned down for the handset and picked it up again, "H'lo?" he grunted again.
"Damien! Larry there, mate?"
"Ben," Damien said, threateningly, "I don't know what shit you're on, but he won't be here until after six. Goodbye." He punched the button to disconnect the call, then, on second thoughts, held it down until the backlight on the screen lit up and instantly died, turning the handset off. He dropped it to the carpet, rolled back over, and dropped back to sleep.
When the phone rang for a fourth time, it rang only at the second handset, which was hidden beneath the couch cushions. Damien didn't hear it, but his dreams were full of ringing telephones and he slept lightly for the rest of the afternoon.
Kasey
Kasey was lying on the king size bed in Zach's studio. She was flat out on her back, arms thrown wide and a grin on her face as she watched Zach drink up the view. The blouse of her school uniform was unbuttoned, and the bra she was wearing just reinforced to Zach that she was a sixteen year old. It was a blue gingham pattern, with white lace edging, and it just made her look even more like a school girl. This had a mixed effect on Zach. He experienced a tinge of guilt over it, a little bit of caution, which was not a familiar feeling for him, but the overriding emotion was one of this being a sweet, sweet taboo. What made it all the sweeter was the knowledge that, unbeknownst to either, he was fucking mother and daughter - one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Just thinking of it again made him hard and, in his sudden angry need, he reached down to Kasey and pulled her skirt up, revealing matching briefs. He growled, an instinctive, animal sound low in his throat and rested his weight on top of her prone body. She smiled, wrapped her arms and legs around him, then said huskily, "How badly do u want it, baby?"
"You have no idea how badly I need you right now, baby doll." he responded, nibbling at her ear, pushing his nose through her hair, breathing in her scent - fruit, tinged by the musky smell of sex.
He pulled back up onto his knees, bringing her upper body up with him, and stripped off her shirt and bra quickly, efficiently. She moaned and arched her back as he lowered his head to her breast, sucking and biting at her nipple until she pushed him away. He let her pull his t-shirt off clumsily, assisting her a little when she couldn't get it over his head, and then laid her back down again. He slipped a hand down between their bodies, into her briefs, and she stifled a little squeal, her breath catching in her throat as his fingers slipped inside her. Oh she was ready alright, Zach thought, and he quickly finished undressing her. He would have to get her home to her parents soon.
Shannen
The train came to a screeching halt at Redton station and Shannen stepped off amid a crowd of jostling, laughing school children, dodging their swinging school bags as she did so. She wasn't paying attention to the kids, though, her mind was busy worrying about Ariana. She hadn't heard back from her all day, her calls had gone unanswered except by Ariana's recorded voice. It was certainly unlike her to be this reticent, a message on Ariana's voicemail rarely had time to cool its heels before it was picked up and called back. Shannen could think of only one possibility, and it wasn't a comforting thought. Her mind's eye involuntarily brought up a vision of Ariana, passed out, only possibly alive, lying on the kitchen floor. Depending on exactly how apocalyptic Shannen was feeling, this scene was accompanied by blood, effluent or spilt alcohol and broken glass, sometimes a combination of all. With determination borne of friendship and fear of what she might find, she decided as she walked out of the station precinct that she would go around to Ariana's house now - immediately - and check.
Shannen walked back out to the car park, oblivious to the school children calling to each other, throwing things across the street. She found her car, fished in her bag for the keys, and slid behind the wheel as she jabbed the key into the ignition. The car started and she checked over her shoulder as she pulled away from the parking spot, the station fading behind her as she drove down the street. At the main street, instead of turning left to head down to her own apartment building, she turned right and drove towards the old pre-war Queenslander style house where Ariana lived in Tallen Heights.
Shannen pulled up to the house, parked on the street with two wheels up on the kerb. She got out and locked the car, praying that she wouldn't be rear-ended while she was parked there. From the footpath, her nervousness suddenly hit her again, and she stopped, looking up at the house, its iron-laced verandah suddenly looking imposing and fortress-like. She swallowed, worried about what she might find, and walked up the steps to the front door.
She lifted her hand to the door, knocked once, twice and then lowered it again. She stared at the paint, peeling in sheets from the door and chewed at her bottom lip as she strained her ears for any sound coming from within the house. She lifted her hand, knocked again, called out Ariana's name. Nothing. She chewed her lip some more, and vaguely noted that it had started to bleed. She was debating with herself what to do, when she heard a shuffling noise behind the door, a scrabbling at the lock, and it suddenly swung open.
The woman who stared back at her had deep lines around her eyes, the corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She looked suspiciously at Shannen, but said nothing.
"Uh, hi." Shannen stammered, reeling slightly from the shock of seeing someone who was very definitely not her friend, "Umm. I'm looking for Ariana?"
"Ariana?" The woman said, as though she had never heard the name before, and her swollen eyes closed as though speaking the name had caused her physical pain, "Ariana. Ariana's gone, love. I'm sorry. I'm Ariana's mum, I'm here to ... well, to clean up her things. You had ... well I guess you had better come in."
The woman stepped aside, and Shannen stepped over the threshold she had stepped over so many times before. But this time she stepped over it as a stranger.
Kasey's train pulled into Central station. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Brianna had dance and singing rehearsals, Kasey travelled the single station from school to Central, and got off there to meet her boyfriend before continuing the journey home on a later train. She never had to explain the hours or so absence to her parents, as both of them worked full time and neither arrived home before six, as long as she got home before then. She had always assumed that if she was ever asked she could claim to have been studying in the library, but she hadn't been questioned yet, and this had been going on for over a month now – almost forever in Kasey’s reckoning.
Kasey was on her feet as the train stopped and the doors opened, and she fairly bounced out of the train with her excitement. She had missed seeing him yesterday, and wanted to make up for it double time today. She looked to the far end of Platform Twelve and her heart stuttered as she spotted him standing apart from the small crowd on the platform. She picked up her pace, trotting up to him, smiling.
Zach smiled back at her as she came towards him, and he held his arms out to her, wrapping her in a hug that lifted her off her feet. They kissed passionately, Kasey trying to apologise between breaths for missing yesterday, Zach trying to get her to stop talking and just kiss him, damn it! Zach's hand stole into Kasey's school blouse, and she wondered how he had gotten the button undone so fast and with such stealth. She gasped and pulled away as he squeezed her breast, then slipped his thumb inside her bra and brushed her nipple. She gave him a look of mock anger, and looked down at her chest as she buttoned her blouse. She noticed both her nipples were showing, badly, through the thin material and she looked up at him again, pushing her chest out to show him the evidence of her arousal, "Now look what you've done!" she scolded playfully, and he gave her a puppy dog look in return, before they both cracked up laughing and fell into another embrace.
Zach bent down and whispered in her ear, "Hey, Baby, let's get out of here, huh? I can't do what I want to do to you here on the platform." He punctuated the statement with a gentle bite on her neck and a low growl and Kasey smiled her agreement. The couple separated and, her hand stuck in the back of Zach's jeans pocket, they walked out to his convertible, and drove around to Frank Street.
Dalton
Dalton sat on the nearly empty train, his feet up on the facing seat in front of him, a commuter's discarded daily paper open on his lap. The pages of the newspaper were soft from being thumbed by who knew how many hands throughout the day. He flicked the pages idly, not really reading, just skimming the headlines, looking at the grainy photos. Dalton wasn't much of a reader - like the old song said, he could get all the news he needed from the weather report - but it was nice to have a distraction on the train sometimes. As he lazily turned the pages of the worn paper, his thoughts drifted back to the day before at the police station. They had taken prints of his shoes, prints of his fingers, a DNA sample. They had questioned him, repeatedly and from all angles, about what had happened that morning - where he had walked, what he had seen, what the old man had done, what he had looked like. Dalton had learned a few things about what had happened, although the officers had been pretty determined not to let any more facts go than they had to. But he had learned that the old man, the man he had taken for a vagrant, was most possibly a train spotter who was known to the police. He had also learned that the bundle of clothes was a body - a body belonging to a young woman. He had asked who she was, but nobody was willing to give up the information, regardless of how many times he asked. Finally, after hours of questioning and putting through no less than three phone calls to his panicked wife, Dalton was escorted home, where he had proceeded to recount the entire experience yet again, this time to a rapt Megan. She had been shocked by the events, at the speed with which they had escalated, and asked him why he had not called her in the morning. Dalton had explained that it hadn't seemed significant at all then, that it hadn't, in fact, become significant until he stepped off the train and saw the police on the platform.
Dalton's brush with the law had been somewhat exciting, an interesting break from his usually dull daily routine, mostly because he knew he wasn't involved enough to be accused, once the initial shock of being dragged down to the police station for questioning had worn off. However, he was glad it was over. Dalton was not a man who took well to uncertainty, in any form. He had been young when he married Megan, although so had she, and they had very easily fallen into a steady pattern of daily chores, work and snatched private moments. It just seemed to suit them both, and their marriage had become a solid foundation, the centrepiece around which the rest of the world revolved. Now that Megan was pregnant, and with the knowledge of the past miscarriages, though, Dalton had realised how tenuous life could be. The thought he could lose Megan, even as he gained a child, was almost unbearable. He knew he had become overly cautious with her recently. Even now, when the pregnancy was nearly at its end, and the idea of having a real live baby was becoming more sure by the day, he worried. What if something went wrong with the labour, or the baby was born deformed or, worse, stillborn – there was still so much for him to worry about.
Dalton flipped a page idly, and a headline in the local section grabbed his eye - "Murder Victim Found at Suburban Rail Station". He frowned slightly, and read on,
In the early hours of yesterday morning, at a suburban City Rail station, a regular commuter came across the shock discovery of a body. The victim is believed to be a local resident, Ariana Grace Mathers, 22, of Tallen Heights. The cause of death is as yet unknown, and police are appealing to the public for assistance. If you saw anything on ...
Dalton ignored the plea for help at the end of the article, he had certainly assisted as much he possibly could already. But now he had a name to place to the face. Ariana. It was a pretty name, he thought idly. On an impulse, he tore out the corner of the newspaper that contained the story and tucked it into his breast pocket. He carefully refolded the paper and placed it on the seat, ready for the next commuter who needed some reading material, then stood up. His station was next.
Damien
The piercing ring of the phone cut into the dreamy half sleep that Damien had been in. It was afternoon, and he was working the night shift at the hospital tonight. His alarm wasn't due to go off for another few hours yet. Cursing people who felt they had to do things during the daytime, he pulled himself out of bed, and padded out into the lounge room, following the madly bleeping phone to its hiding place under a pile of papers on the kitchen bench. He retrieved it just as it stopped ringing and, swearing under his breath, took it back to bed with him. If it was important, he thought, they would ring back.
Damien lay awake for a while, still cursing the damn phone, and was just slipping back into that sweet place between awake and asleep where all adults become children, and nothing seems important anymore, when the telephone went off again. Damien jumped up, startled fully awake, groped for the phone that was now tangled somewhere in the sheets. He found it, punched a button, and held it to his ear, "H'lo?" he grunted,
"Damien! It's Ben! Is Larry home?"
"No. Why would he be? Call after six. See ya, Bye." Damien hung up without ceremony, dropped the phone onto the carpet, and laid back down in bed. He rolled onto his side and tried to reclaim the sensation of floating he had experienced only moments before.
It was close to four when the phone rang again, and Damien was fully in the grips of a dream. It took a few rings for the signal to reach his brain, and for his brain to send the appropriate messages to his limbs. He sat up in bed, leaned down for the handset and picked it up again, "H'lo?" he grunted again.
"Damien! Larry there, mate?"
"Ben," Damien said, threateningly, "I don't know what shit you're on, but he won't be here until after six. Goodbye." He punched the button to disconnect the call, then, on second thoughts, held it down until the backlight on the screen lit up and instantly died, turning the handset off. He dropped it to the carpet, rolled back over, and dropped back to sleep.
When the phone rang for a fourth time, it rang only at the second handset, which was hidden beneath the couch cushions. Damien didn't hear it, but his dreams were full of ringing telephones and he slept lightly for the rest of the afternoon.
Kasey
Kasey was lying on the king size bed in Zach's studio. She was flat out on her back, arms thrown wide and a grin on her face as she watched Zach drink up the view. The blouse of her school uniform was unbuttoned, and the bra she was wearing just reinforced to Zach that she was a sixteen year old. It was a blue gingham pattern, with white lace edging, and it just made her look even more like a school girl. This had a mixed effect on Zach. He experienced a tinge of guilt over it, a little bit of caution, which was not a familiar feeling for him, but the overriding emotion was one of this being a sweet, sweet taboo. What made it all the sweeter was the knowledge that, unbeknownst to either, he was fucking mother and daughter - one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Just thinking of it again made him hard and, in his sudden angry need, he reached down to Kasey and pulled her skirt up, revealing matching briefs. He growled, an instinctive, animal sound low in his throat and rested his weight on top of her prone body. She smiled, wrapped her arms and legs around him, then said huskily, "How badly do u want it, baby?"
"You have no idea how badly I need you right now, baby doll." he responded, nibbling at her ear, pushing his nose through her hair, breathing in her scent - fruit, tinged by the musky smell of sex.
He pulled back up onto his knees, bringing her upper body up with him, and stripped off her shirt and bra quickly, efficiently. She moaned and arched her back as he lowered his head to her breast, sucking and biting at her nipple until she pushed him away. He let her pull his t-shirt off clumsily, assisting her a little when she couldn't get it over his head, and then laid her back down again. He slipped a hand down between their bodies, into her briefs, and she stifled a little squeal, her breath catching in her throat as his fingers slipped inside her. Oh she was ready alright, Zach thought, and he quickly finished undressing her. He would have to get her home to her parents soon.
Shannen
The train came to a screeching halt at Redton station and Shannen stepped off amid a crowd of jostling, laughing school children, dodging their swinging school bags as she did so. She wasn't paying attention to the kids, though, her mind was busy worrying about Ariana. She hadn't heard back from her all day, her calls had gone unanswered except by Ariana's recorded voice. It was certainly unlike her to be this reticent, a message on Ariana's voicemail rarely had time to cool its heels before it was picked up and called back. Shannen could think of only one possibility, and it wasn't a comforting thought. Her mind's eye involuntarily brought up a vision of Ariana, passed out, only possibly alive, lying on the kitchen floor. Depending on exactly how apocalyptic Shannen was feeling, this scene was accompanied by blood, effluent or spilt alcohol and broken glass, sometimes a combination of all. With determination borne of friendship and fear of what she might find, she decided as she walked out of the station precinct that she would go around to Ariana's house now - immediately - and check.
Shannen walked back out to the car park, oblivious to the school children calling to each other, throwing things across the street. She found her car, fished in her bag for the keys, and slid behind the wheel as she jabbed the key into the ignition. The car started and she checked over her shoulder as she pulled away from the parking spot, the station fading behind her as she drove down the street. At the main street, instead of turning left to head down to her own apartment building, she turned right and drove towards the old pre-war Queenslander style house where Ariana lived in Tallen Heights.
Shannen pulled up to the house, parked on the street with two wheels up on the kerb. She got out and locked the car, praying that she wouldn't be rear-ended while she was parked there. From the footpath, her nervousness suddenly hit her again, and she stopped, looking up at the house, its iron-laced verandah suddenly looking imposing and fortress-like. She swallowed, worried about what she might find, and walked up the steps to the front door.
She lifted her hand to the door, knocked once, twice and then lowered it again. She stared at the paint, peeling in sheets from the door and chewed at her bottom lip as she strained her ears for any sound coming from within the house. She lifted her hand, knocked again, called out Ariana's name. Nothing. She chewed her lip some more, and vaguely noted that it had started to bleed. She was debating with herself what to do, when she heard a shuffling noise behind the door, a scrabbling at the lock, and it suddenly swung open.
The woman who stared back at her had deep lines around her eyes, the corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She looked suspiciously at Shannen, but said nothing.
"Uh, hi." Shannen stammered, reeling slightly from the shock of seeing someone who was very definitely not her friend, "Umm. I'm looking for Ariana?"
"Ariana?" The woman said, as though she had never heard the name before, and her swollen eyes closed as though speaking the name had caused her physical pain, "Ariana. Ariana's gone, love. I'm sorry. I'm Ariana's mum, I'm here to ... well, to clean up her things. You had ... well I guess you had better come in."
The woman stepped aside, and Shannen stepped over the threshold she had stepped over so many times before. But this time she stepped over it as a stranger.
Tuesday - 8:23am to the City
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.
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.
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