THEN #2
‘Sleep disturbance can be a symptom of depression,’ Lilia says quietly, but we both ignore her.
‘Sleep disturbance can be a symptom of depression,’ I say to Patrick.
‘Everyone has trouble sleeping sometimes.’
‘Have you ever been prescribed sleeping tablets for it?’ I ask him.
‘Yes, actually.’
‘You were supposed to say no so I could make my point.’
‘Which was?’
‘I forget.’
I take out my phone to snap photos of the file, because who knows when it might come in handy, but the battery’s down to one per cent. Dammit.
‘Can I borrow your phone?’ I ask Patrick, miming taking a photo.
He shakes his head. ‘I told you. I’ve lost it.’
‘Here?’
I have a moment of panic at the idea of Ben’s dad finding Patrick’s phone down the back of a filing cabinet while reading up on Graham Brown’s hernia operation.
(I’m not snooping. Graham Brown works at the local IGA and tells anyone who will listen, and many more who would rather not, about his hernia operation.)
‘No, I haven’t seen it since the party.’
‘That was two days ago. Haven’t you even tried calling it from Aunty Sam’s landline?’
‘I never thought of that,’ Patrick says flatly.
‘Sorry. Have you tried Find My?’
‘I never set it up.’ Patrick lowers his voice. ‘I think someone took it deliberately. It went straight to voicemail when I called.’
‘Why would anyone take it?’
‘The photos I took at Elena and Felix’s were on that phone,’ he says.
‘So?’
‘Maybe there was something important on there? Something someone else didn’t want us to have,’ Patrick says.
I want to talk more about this, but I also want to get out of here.
‘Ben?’ I say, because he’s nearest. ‘Can I borrow your phone?’
‘Uh, why?’
‘I’m starting to suspect you’re cheating on me,’ I say, deadpan, and only Patrick laughs. ‘I need to take some photos of Felix’s file and my battery’s gone,’ I add quickly.
‘Uh,’ Ben says, clearly reluctant even as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. ‘Sure, I guess.’
I hold out my hand to take it and key in his passcode, which is still the year of his birth. (Ben’s bad privacy settings are no longer my concern.) Then I snap photos of anything even remotely interesting in Felix’s file and go to WhatsApp the photos to myself.
It’s while I’m in Ben’s messages that I see it.
(Am I snooping now? Absolutely yes, but also aren’t I entitled to?) Halfway down the list of recent messages there’s one from Felix, which makes no sense because he and Ben were never on messaging terms. The only line I can read without opening the chat says: Are you going to tell her?
‘Why were you messaging Felix?’ I ask stupidly. Before I can open it, Ben lifts the phone out of my hand.
‘It’s nothing,’ he says.
‘Since when did you message each other? And why were you messaging on the day Felix died?’ (Because, yeah, did I mention that part?)
Patrick looks up. ‘What’s this about?’
‘It’s nothing to do with any of this,’ Ben says firmly.
‘Ben, if you know something you have to tell me,’ I say. ‘What does that message mean: Are you going to tell her?’
Lilia comes out of the bathroom, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a wet mop (so I really hope she’s getting paid for this too). She looks between the two of us. ‘What’s happening?’
I could tell Lilia about the message. She would probably make Ben show it to her.
But what I want even more than a look at Ben and Felix’s chat history is to get out of here and to not ask Lilia for anything.
So I give Ben the same look Aunty Sam gives me when I tell her nothing is wrong when something is very clearly wrong and I stuff Felix’s file back where it belongs.
‘Come on, Patrick,’ I say.
‘You’re just gonna—’
‘It’s late,’ I say, which makes no sense because it’s barely six p.m.
It’s enough to get Patrick moving and we grunt goodbyes at Lilia and Ben, who still have to finish cleaning.
‘What the hell,’ Patrick says when we’re outside. ‘Are you going to tell her? What do you think that means?’
‘I have no idea. I didn’t even know Ben had Felix’s number. They didn’t like each other.’
‘At least this wasn’t a pointless exercise,’ Patrick says. ‘That text is more interesting than Felix’s rogue testicle.’
‘Ew, that’s my brother.’
‘Now you know how much fun it was for me speculating on whether my sister was shagging around.’
My head feels overstuffed with WhatsApp messages and European trips and the imprint of Patrick’s fingers on my arm. I want to go home.
‘Thanks for coming with me.’ Patrick’s sincerity (?) is so out of character that I’m waiting for the joke when he keeps going. ‘You probably can’t stand being around Ben and Lilia, and I know you only did it to help me.’
The truth is that I can and can’t stand to be around them. Part of me bloody yearns to step back into our old life when the three of us could spend a day together doing nothing at all.
‘Yeah,’ I say, then add, ‘But weirdly I miss them too.’
He shrugs. ‘I get it.’
‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ I try to gauge the amount of product in his hair. ‘Or boyfriend?’
Patrick doesn’t answer. Maybe he doesn’t hear. ‘We should probably get home. Michael’s finally flying in and he’ll probably be at your place by now.’
It takes me a beat to place the name. ‘Your brother, Michael?’
‘The very same.’
‘What’s he like?’ I vaguely remember a brown-haired man gyrating on the dance floor at Felix and Elena’s wedding, but my memory can’t fill in his facial features.
‘You’ll love him. Everyone does.’ Patrick nods his head down the street. ‘Bus stop’s that way. Should we go?’
‘Uh, sure. Shouldn’t we arrive home separately, though?’’
‘I’m a fast walker. You’ll dawdle. It’s fine.’
The front door to the doctor’s office opens as Patrick and I start walking, and Ben jogs out, holding up his hand to stop us.
‘Hold on,’ he says. ‘I should have asked – what’s our next move?’
‘Our next move?’ Patrick asks.
‘Yeah. To figure out what happened to Felix. What do we do next?’
‘There’s no our, cupcake,’ Patrick says.
‘There’s a me. At most, maybe there’s a we.
’ He nods at me. ‘This was your chance to make it up with Heidi, and I think you made things worse, which before today I would have said was impossible.’ He brightens.
‘Unless you’ve come out here to tell us what that message between you and Felix meant? ’
‘I told Heidi already. It’s nothing.’
‘Then bye.’ Patrick starts to walk off down the street, only stopping when he realises I’m not next to him.
He hasn’t noticed Lilia in the doorway to the surgery.
‘If you really are, um, investigating Felix’s death,’ – she says the word investigating like she’s embarrassed for me (fair enough, honestly) – ‘I might be able to help.’
‘Like I said to your boyfriend, there’s—’ Patrick starts to say, but I cut him off.
‘How?’ I can still read Lilia. I know she’s got something to say.
‘I know one of Elena’s friends, one of the women who was there the night he died,’ she says. ‘I could introduce you.’
Dammit. ‘How do you know her?’
‘Sarah’s my piano teacher.’
‘And yet you’ve never mentioned it.’ I don’t really think Lilia would lie about this just to get back in with me, but I never thought she’d steal my boyfriend either.
‘I didn’t know she knew Elena and Felix until my last lesson when I mentioned going to the funeral. Apparently, she didn’t even know it was happening.’
I look at Patrick, who will never win even a single hand at poker based on his utter inability to conceal the way he feels about this development.
‘What do you think, Patrick?’ I ask him, like I don’t know.
‘It’s an idea,’ he says with more restraint than I was expecting. Then he cracks and grins. I take only some comfort in the fact that the grin is directed my way, not at Lilia. ‘Come on, this is what we need, right?’
I nod and smile in a way that I hope conveys to Lilia and Ben that they’re still excluded from the we here.
‘You’d introduce us to this Sarah?’ Patrick asks Lilia.
She nods like maybe she regrets this already. (Letting Patrick loose on her piano teacher, who is also a suspect in a death that Patrick desperately wants to be murder? I’d be regretting it too.) ‘Yeah. But—’
‘Of course there’s a but,’ I say.
‘But you have to let me help you,’ Lilia says.
‘Help us with what?’ Patrick asks, but he knows.
‘This … whatever you’re doing. Felix’s death.’
Patrick looks at me and he must know that I hate this idea, but maybe he also knows me well enough to realise I’m not going to throw away a chance to help Elena because of my friendship drama. I offer the tiniest of shrugs.
‘Okay,’ he says.
‘Me too,’ Ben says, looking smugly at Patrick. Some of the smugness evaporates when nobody responds. Ben looks at Lilia, who’s frowning. ‘Lilia,’ he says.
Lilia nods, but slowly. ‘Sure. Ben too.’
‘If we must,’ Patrick says, still looking chipper. ‘Come on, Heidi, we’ve got to get the bus home. Lilia, we’ll be in touch. Ben, try being less of a massive dick.’