The rip, p.24
The Rip, page 24
He doesn’t make sense and he’s clearly frazzled. I feel badly for the old man.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again and run up the steps, back through the galley and out past the canopy to the transom. Rosie jumps into the water, sliding the bodyboard towards her, and I drop the torch into the backpack, zip it up and slip in next to her.
‘Fuck,’ I say, heart hammering. ‘I did not expect that.’
We swim away from Black Swan before he can locate us in the water and grab on to the nearest mooring to catch our breath. We’re behind another boat, so he won’t see us.
‘Now what?’ Rosie says, flinging an arm up. ‘I can’t believe we just did that.’
‘It’s been unattended all day.’
‘It hasn’t. That old creepy dude has just been quiet in there.’
‘But you can understand how I thought it was the one.’
‘You said you had a vibe.’
‘And I did.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘What if he calls the police?’
I shake my head and listen in. I can’t hear yelling or calling out like I expected. ‘He won’t. He probably just thought we were both drunk and foolish. It’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not okay.’ She adjusts the board directly under her. ‘We’ve now got less than an hour until Nico does something to Edmund and—’ She doesn’t complete her sentence, because I know what this means.
I drift on my back for a moment, wetting the back of my hair. There are no stars, only dirty clouds, coloured by the lights of the mainland. There are no more boats. I cannot believe I got it wrong. But then again, of course I can. Did I really expect to find Edmund, to get away with taking drugs with a minor, to fool my husband into loving me again? For a short moment, a blink in time, I was able to live the life I wanted. And I screwed it up by screwing the tradesman. I’m sick of lying. I’m sick of trying. Lifting my head, I stare across the water towards the villas where Penny and Kav and Scott and my kids rest. It would be easier to let Rosie win. Tell your mum, tell Kav, tell them what I did. I’m never getting away with my mistakes. But then Rosie’s smartwatch flashes and it’s a message from Nico.
15 min left. Say bye bye to your bro.
Penny, 1.43 a.m.
Thunder shatters my dream, rousing me from the deepest sleep, but melatonin drags me back. Her absent body can be felt, even through unconsciousness. Rosie’s not with me. The sheets have slipped off the bed and I’m cold, remembering. Edmund’s gone. Edmund’s gone. And now Rosie.
My limbs are lifeless, unable to work, yearning for sleep. My eyelids remain stuck and I finger around the cold mattress for my daughter. Empty. Eventually, my brain signals to my eyes to open and they do, fluttering away the last vestiges of sleep.
The blurry phone reads 1.43 a.m. It’s Rosie’s phone. Where is she? It takes a few seconds for me to swing my legs off the mattress and stand. I’ve only felt exhaustion like this once, when Harry died, when my life evaporated in the space of seconds. Still, I need to know she’s okay.
Out in the kitchen, the fridge moans and creaks. Outside, the wind knocks the windows together. Kav’s snoring in our bedroom, oblivious to the storm. It’s dark. No light. No Rosie. She’s not on the balcony either. With my hands on my hips, I rotate, as though the couch, the sink, the dining table will present her to me. Instead, on the table there’s a note stuck under a glass, flicking in the breeze. I lift the glass and take the note, reading it under the light of my own phone that’s charging near the sink.
Mumma, I couldn’t sleep. The guilt I feel about Edmund missing is keeping me awake. I haven’t even hardly looked for him, either. I messaged Eloise and asked her to take me while you sleep and rest. She was happy to. I’ll be back in the morning.
Your Rose X
Sighing, I fold the note and leave it on the bench. I don’t know how I feel about this. Rosie asking Eloise to look for Edmund, Eloise taking Rosie. It’s the middle of the night, for one thing. And I understand Rosie’s guilt and need to look, but Eloise should know better. She should’ve told Rosie to wait until the morning. It’s not as though they’ll be able to see much during the night anyway, and with the rain coming. Still, I understand the desire to keep searching, because I too don’t want to stop. It’s our minds and bodies that need rest. I cup my stomach. Especially this body.
Rosie’s guilt is a leftover symptom of how I’ve always made her feel. The blame, the distance, the withholding of love. She wants to do her part to show that she cares, but she doesn’t need to prove anything to me anymore. I love her. She’s more than enough. And tonight, our long-overdue conversation and affection has spurred Rosie’s determination. She wants to attest her care for me, her brother and this family. So, for that, I’m not angry. I’m just wondering why she always leans towards Eloise?
I take a clean glass and fill it with water, groggy and sore in all parts of my body. I drink it down, imagining the liquid swimming through my arteries, swelling them with life.
Eloise is young at heart, I suppose, with her high-end fashion, teeny bikinis, blonde extensions. She’s the Barbie doll teenage girls strive to be. Anyway, I’m certain this is just Eloise’s way of sucking up to me. For what? I’m the one who did the yelling last night. I should be making amends with her. But what does she want from me? To form some kind of friendship?
My head eddies with fatigue. I shouldn’t have screamed at her. I need to apologise to her for that. I head back into the bedroom, readjusting the pillows and sheets. I guess it’s nice of her to take Rosie. Then again, the difference between nice and nasty is a messy distortion right now. How can I be the judge and jury on such things after my own past? How can I consider anything in my exhausted state of mind?
Climbing back under the covers, my body seems to heave, settling itself into a comfortable position. I can’t deliberate anymore. I’m too, too tired. There’s no thinking of Edmund, nor where he’s gone. Eloise’s face is blank to me, a stolen canvas. Rosie isn’t anyone anymore. Kav’s snores blend with the crashing waves. The baby in my stomach is now only breath and air. The room is black space. I am nothing. Only sleeping.
We met on an autumn night when the chill licked my cheek and the cold bit my nose. We met on a street crammed with cafés and wine bars. Orange, red, brown, yellow, lime-green leaves curled around tree trunks, glistening with fairy lights. People in scarfs, long black coats and beanies exhaled mist from their mouths, stepping inside cosy cafés, filled with warmth, open fires, couches and romance. The bar belonged to a street that belonged to a town that belonged on a movie set. Friendly faces where friendly people dined, where expensive black SUVs rolled, where mansions with large gates opened to people with large wallets. He lived up the street. In one of the mansions. I lived ten kilometres away, with my parents and Rosie, in a bed with a trundle attached.
It was my friend’s idea to go to this area, to snag a rich guy, to act rich, to drink expensive wine and to pretend we belonged here. You see, I didn’t deserve it. Not the rich guy, the niceties of the venue, the time alone to be a single woman, looking for a man. An undeserving sense followed me through life like a stale perfume I could never wash off. I felt self-conscious the moment I followed the trench-coat-clad couple inside the café and bar. They knew how to do it, to unravel their scarfs, hand them to the manager, to point to a table and get given it, and to order French wines, pronouncing them correctly. I sat behind them, waiting for my friend, stifling hot in my coat and scarf, feeling too insecure to ask the manager to store it. I didn’t know how to pronounce the name of the wine under the white wine section, so I ordered a sparkling water instead. My father would have known. If I was him, I would have felt like I belonged here.
I sat in the bar, people-watching, jealous of the carefree way they spoke to one another, with laughter and smiles coming naturally. I wanted to be like them again. The way I was before Harry came along.
I sipped my bitter sparkling water, sucked on the lemon and watched the door, the clientele exiting and entering. The chair opposite me remained empty. My friend was fifteen minutes late and I was getting hotter. I shrugged the coat off and then felt two hands take it from me from behind. It was Kav. A man who smiled and then motioned for the waiter to come and take my coat. A man who I remembered from high school. His face was instantly recognisable. The dimples, the sharp nose, those eyes. At school he was new, only coming during the last year of high school. I never got to speak to him properly. He was cool, yet kept to himself a lot of the time, never came to parties, always with a book under his arm. Now I know why. He was studying to get first-class grades for med school.
‘You look hot.’
‘Roasting, actually.’
He clicked his fingers. ‘Penny, right?’
I smiled, sipping my water. ‘How do you remember my name?’
He shrugged and didn’t respond to that. ‘Well, what’s mine?’
‘Kav. But yours is unusual.’
‘I’m glad you remember.’ He pulled up a chair and ran a hand through his blond-grey hair. I eyed up his hands, eyed up his empty ring finger. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’m waiting for someone, and they haven’t shown.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Same.’
‘Well, then let’s get a drink.’
He ordered us the French rosé and pronounced it correctly. He ordered us frites and mayonnaise and beef cheeks and cauliflower purée. He ordered us more wine, this time red, and I already knew I could love him. Because I told him right then and there about Rosie, about Greg, about trauma. I didn’t tell him about Harry. But being a doctor, he listened, understood, empathised and nodded. And I knew if I went home with him that night, I’d have to resume the role of Perfect Penny, only this time I’d do it right. I’d fuck him when he needed it. I’d fill his fridge with meals. I’d get his clothes dry-cleaned and I’d watch every movie he wanted. He’d never leave me. He’d never neglect me. He’d do as I asked, because I’d be perfect. And everyone would know about us, and everyone would want to be us. We’d have our own babies and this time I’d love them all equally. Kav, the baby, Rosie. We’d live happily ever after.
Only it seemed we couldn’t have babies. And so, we could only adopt.
And everything was working. Until Edmund went missing.
Eloise, 1.44 a.m.
He needs to give us more time, thirty minutes, fifteen – anything; we need more time. Rosie’s shiny face looks to me for instruction, and as we cling on to a mooring, our legs dangling below us into the deep, it’s the first time I have nothing to give. I shake my head. And she shakes hers back. ‘Tell me what to do,’ she shrieks, unfazed if anyone hears. I clap her mouth but she pushes my hand away, scratching my finger with her sharp nails.
‘My brother is about to be killed.’ She gasps, swallowing a mouthful of salty water, which she gags on, coughing. I’m aware of that. So aware of it I can’t think. She coughs and cries, screams under water.
‘We need more time,’ I say, also dipping my face under the water. I open my eyes to deliberately sting them. It’s black down there. So black. Rosie lifts my chin.
‘How will I ask him for more?’ Her voice is shrill, panicked, like I’m letting her down. And I feel like now I am. But I’m also frozen with fear.
‘Is he really capable of killing?’ I ask.
She gives me a foul look of disgust. ‘You want to wait to find out?’
‘No, I just mean, is this all a big threat, how do we know—’
‘His own life is on the fucking line, Eloise.’ Her face is wild. ‘He will never stop, not on Edmund, on me, until he gets the money he owes.’
‘But is he capable—’
‘Yes he’s fucking capable.’ Her voice wobbles. ‘I know he’s capable because he’s kidnapped my brother, drugged him and this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this. I’ve heard the fucking rumours, okay?’ She starts swimming away from me, back to shore, as though utterly repulsed by me and my questioning. But her answers terrify me to the point of blankness. I can’t move, I can’t think, I can’t speak. And for the first time, I wait for Rosie to tell me what to do.
After a few metres, she stops and swims around to look at me. ‘Eloise, seriously, hurry the fuck up.’ Her voice is deep and it breaks me out of my frozen fear. So I follow, releasing the mooring and kicking my legs to catch up to her. My body is absolutely freezing cold, my chin shivering uncontrollably. I try to silence my teeth chattering by clamping my jaw.
‘We need to ask for more time,’ I repeat to her back. She’s like a bobbing seal. ‘And we can only do that if we give him something.’
She stops and paddles around to me. We’re beside a dark yacht, its mast swinging and chinking in the wind. ‘But you have no money. You said.’
‘What can we give him?’ I’m feeling breathless and my shivering doesn’t help. We need to get to the sand and solid ground so I can think logically about this. ‘We need to give him something that will waylay him a bit so we know where he is.’
‘You still think he’s on a boat?’ Rosie keeps swimming beside me this time. ‘We checked them all.’
What if I was wrong and he’s not on a boat? What if he’s tucked in a villa somewhere? I ask Rosie for the time. She checks her watch. We have ten minutes to come up with a plan to buy us more time.
When our feet finally stroke the sand, my body loosens a little. We’re on land, no longer free-dangling in the dark. I sit in front of an overturned dinghy and cuddle my knees, gazing out to the boats, all facing north. Rosie joins me, tapping at her watch.
‘We need more time, please, Nico.’
‘Wait, we need to offer him something first, or else he might go ballistic.’
Something scurries beside us and Rosie yelps. It’s a water rat. Our movements scare it. It sprints back into the spinifex grass and rustles its way to safety. And then it hits me like a wave to the face. I lean back against the upturned dinghy and laugh out loud to the cloudy night sky. And Rosie looks at me, waiting. Why didn’t I think of this all along? Nico is a fucking rat. And we just need to coax him out like we would a rat. With cheese, with treats, with something irresistible.
Eloise, 2.29 a.m.
He’s agreed. The rat has said yes, just like I knew he would. This is an added extra, a bonus for being a good boy and letting us have more time. But he doesn’t realise, because he’s too greedy, that when he scurries out of his hidey-hole, we’ll be watching.
My fifty-thousand-dollar Cartier diamond watch will be hidden for him at the cliffs on the edge of the bay. I’m certain the rat has matched our picture of the watch with photos online and I’m certain he’ll peek from his hidey-hole, squinting his beady eyes to make sure we’re planting the watch there. That’s why he’s agreed to give us until 6 a.m. Not that we’ll need it. I’m so pumped, so ready to rescue Edmund from his predicament, that we only need one thing: to wait for the rat to exit his hole.
After sneaking past a sleeping Scott and grabbing my watch from my jewellery case, we messaged Nico from up on the street near our villa, where we hid the backpack and bodyboard. Once we’d snapped a shot of the watch, we made sure we came down from the street together, to nestle the watch among the rocks. We made sure to wrap it with one of our T-shirts to prevent scratches and damage. And now we’ve headed away from the cliffs and back up the steps alongside Brett and Sal’s, dripping wet and cold, to wait and wonder how long and from where the rat will emerge.
We’re quiet, so quiet we’ve not spoken since we hid the watch. It’s the calm before the storm and we both feel it. This is a much better plan, and hopefully soon we’ll discover where Nico has been hiding Edmund.
I have my pack on my back with a knife inside a long sock of Levi’s. Should we need it, I will use it. I’m done with this crim.
I told Rosie we may have to wait a while. Because Nico has a rat’s cunning, aware of roving police and holidaymakers who are all on alert for suspicious activity. Plus, he’ll have to ensure Edmund is kept secure from accidental discovery. He also may have an accomplice, so we need to be aware of that.
I’m scanning the darkened villas, the steps and walkways leading down to the beach. I’m scanning the sand for movement. I’m listening in to chinking bike chains, the whirl of wheels. I’m aware of the wind picking up, the soft pelts of sporadic rain. And then finally, fifteen minutes after waiting against the shadow of Brett and Sal’s villa, shivering and holding Rosie’s icy cold hand, we hear it. A dinghy starting up somewhere out on the bay near the ferry jetty. Rosie squeezes my hand, but I whisper, ‘Just wait. It may be someone else.’ But I’m aware of the time, the pub being closed, nothing else open, everyone sleeping, the exhausted island resting. So, it could be Nico. ‘Just wait.’
But I’m staring towards the sound.
‘There.’ Rosie releases my hand and points towards a cluster of boats near the jetty and a dinghy riding off between them in the direction of the cliffs. There’s one man steering the dinghy. It came from a large, family-sized cruiser adjacent to the ferry jetty. It’s him. We’re certain it’s him.
We can’t risk being seen, yet we have to move fast. If Nico spots us, that’s it. So, I direct Rosie along the street to the furthest walkway down to the beach and tell her to run. He can’t see us behind villas and it’s much easier to run on concrete than over sand. My backpack jostles against my wet back, my bare feet sting on the road, but we rush as fast as we can to the walkway leading down to the pavilions. We are at the other end of the bay, furthest away from Nico and the cliffs. And his dinghy drones in the distance. Great. He won’t hear us. Once on the sand, we sprint to the water and dive in, kicking and splashing and swinging our arms through the ocean towards the cruiser. Towards Edmund.
Eloise, 3.09 a.m.
Maybe Black Swan was the practice run, a stepping stone into the real deal. What did I learn from it? Never judge a book by its cover, I suppose. Now, I feel we need to be more prepared, skilled, quiet, thinking smartly about where Edmund would be kept. Still, we have to be so quick and so quiet.
