Then
We get home to find Ben’s car parked on the street outside. Perfect. Ben’s on his phone and doesn’t notice us at first.
‘He’s here to pick me up,’ Lilia says, sounding annoyed. ‘I told him I’d Uber.’
‘Nothing hotter than a boyfriend who doesn’t listen to you,’ Patrick says. ‘Coming, Heidi?’
‘Hold on, Heidi,’ Lilia says, ‘can I speak to you … just for a sec?’
Patrick raises his eyebrows at me, but I hold up two fingers and he goes inside.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘I want to say thanks for, you know, including me today,’ Lilia says. ‘I’ve really missed hanging out with you.’
‘That’s not my fault,’ I tell my shoes, reverting to my default setting of being a little bit rude.
‘I know,’ she says quickly. ‘I’m the monster here, but I still want to say thanks and sorry, too, for everything.’
Everything (i.e. Ben) notices us and opens the driver’s side door.
‘You ready?’ Ben asks.
‘See ya,’ Lilia says to me quickly, then hurries to her side of the car before Ben can get out.
I go inside without waiting to see them drive off.
Elena is sitting alone in the living room, reading a book she sets down in her lap when I come in. ‘Hey Heidi, how’re you going?’
‘Fine.’ I drop onto the couch, still thinking about the Lilia and Ben of it all.
‘This is me being a nosy sister-in-law, but are you and Patrick okay?’ Elena asks gently.
I’m surprised she’s noticed that Patrick and I are anything. Then she goes on. ‘He came in here pretty loudly a minute before you.’
‘Does Patrick have a quiet setting?’
Elena smiles. ‘He’s a lot,’ she says. ‘But you guys seem like you’re getting on really well.’
I’m wondering what Elena’s driving at when she adds, ‘I’m glad you have someone to hang out with,’ and I realise what’s going on. Elena, the woman in the wheelchair with the dead husband, has twigged just how little I have going on these days and is trying to cheer me up. This is tragic.
‘I heard you talked to Jade and Haruto today.’ She doesn’t sound pleased about it, but I’m too busy fixating on the fact that Patrick told her what we were doing: another minor betrayal from someone I’d thought was on my side. Brilliant.
‘Right,’ I say, not sure how much to tell her. ‘Sorry. Patrick was so adamant that Felix wouldn’t have killed himself and he wanted you to get the life insurance money that he sucked me into believing there might have been something suspicious about it too.’
‘He’s good at that.’
‘Now, we’ve found out something that’s actually interesting.
’ I want to say suspicious, but I don’t want Elena to freak out, nor do I want to have to go into the specifics of what Haruto saw and who he was snogging at the time.
‘And Patrick’s acting like I’m the crazy one for being interested in this thing that he started. ’
Can you feel the awkwardness here? I’m talking to my (ex?) sister-in-law about the quasi investigation that her brother and I are doing into the death of my brother, who was also her husband, and it’s exactly as comfortable as that description suggests.
Elena doesn’t look like she’s regretting ever engaging me for a chat, though. She looks like she’s wondering whether to say something. I’m not that surprised when she says, ‘Heidi, can I talk to you about something?’
‘Sure. What?’
‘We’ve never really talked that much about Felix,’ she says carefully. ‘What was he like as a brother?’
I wonder how honest I’m supposed to be. ‘He was my only brother. It’s not like I had anything to compare him to,’ I say.
Then I think about the way that Elena and Patrick and Michael are with each other and how they seem to actually like each other.
‘We were never close. He was so much older than me. I felt like an only child most of the time.’ I know sometimes I wished I was.
‘We both know what he could be like,’ Elena says. ‘Charming but also cruel.’
‘Right.’
‘An arsehole,’ Elena says.
I laugh, but not because I think it’s funny. More because it’s awkward to discuss my dead brother this way, even if he was absolutely an arsehole. ‘Sometimes.’
‘And violent,’ she says. I look at her, too stunned to say anything. It’s not as though this is a complete surprise to me, but I never expected to hear it from Elena like this. ‘I think he was a sociopath,’ she says.
‘Is that the same as a psychopath?’
Elena seems relieved that I don’t immediately contradict her. ‘My knowledge of pop psychology comes from bad TV. You know what I’m talking about, though, right?’
Of course I know what she’s talking about.
Felix’s many cruelties to me, physical and otherwise.
The lies he would tell when he got caught out or one of his victims told their parents, a teacher or Aunty Sam.
His ability to manipulate people. All I say is, ‘Yeah.’ Then I try harder.
‘I wasn’t sure if he was like that with you too. ’
‘He was.’
I wait, in case she brings up any specifics, but she does not.
The first time Felix brought Elena home I wondered if I should warn her about him. Would she have believed me, then? But they had seemed happy, and I’d thought Felix might be capable of change.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I say, like it was all my fault.
‘You’re a kid, Heidi, none of it is your fault,’ she says. ‘But Felix is dead. I don’t know how he died. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or if it was an accident or even if someone hurt him. I just don’t know. But I do know that he’s gone and we’re not and we have to move on.’
‘You want me to drop it?’
‘I think you should drop it for your own sake.’
It’s a subtle distinction. And I think about it. I really do.
I think about it all afternoon, while doing my laundry and tidying my room.
I think about it while I’m in the bath, re-reading my old Hunger Games books, because somehow a dystopian nightmare is my comfort reading.
I think about it while I help Aunty Sam set the table for dinner, which turns out to be the best carbonara I’ve ever had in my life.
Then this happens.
‘What did everyone get up to today?’ Aunty Sam asks brightly.
I’m too busy forking up long strands of spaghetti to answer.
‘I had a meeting with my boss to talk about going back to work,’ Elena says. This is news to me, although maybe it wouldn’t be if I’d thought to ask her a single question about her life during our chat.
‘That’s great,’ Aunty Sam says. ‘When are you thinking of going back?’
‘Probably when the school term starts.’ Elena smiles at me. ‘That’s how I knew you saw Haruto today. I called him to let him know.’
Patrick didn’t tell her after all. A knot in my shoulders loosens, just a bit.
‘Who’s Haruto?’ Aunty Sam asks.
‘A friend from work,’ Elena says. ‘Patrick and Heidi met him and his wife Jade today to, uh, get some closure?’ She meets my eyes and there’s a question there I’m not quite ready to answer. Am I dropping this? Can I drop this?
‘I thought you were dropping this,’ Michael says to Patrick.
Am I paranoid or is there something new in the look the brothers give each other?
‘We are,’ Patrick says.
I can’t help myself. ‘Haruto thinks he saw someone outside the house the night Felix died,’ I say and everyone looks at me.
‘Heidi,’ Aunty Sam says, shaking her head.
‘Did he tell the police?’ Michael asks.
‘I don’t know. He wasn’t sure what he saw,’ I admit.
‘He said it might have been a cat,’ Patrick says, wisely deciding not to bring up the wallaby theory and open himself up to fresh ridicule from his siblings.
‘Patrick said it might have been a wallaby,’ I say disloyally. He gives me a look that’s at least fifty per cent amused, so I stick my tongue out at him and some of the tension flies out the window.
‘If someone was out there, the police will have found evidence,’ Michael says. ‘It probably was a cat.’ Then he smirks at Patrick. ‘You think they have wallabies running around the streets of Perth, bro?’
‘I said maybe,’ Patrick says. ‘And that was in confidence, Heidi.’
‘I thought I might go up to the house tomorrow,’ I say, even though I’ve only just thought of this, ‘and see if I can find any tracks or … clues or something.’ I stuff the last of the pasta into my mouth, keen to leave the table so I can think.
‘How are you going to get out there?’ Michael asks.
‘I don’t know, bike and train.’
‘I’m not endorsing any of this. But I can give you a lift if Sam doesn’t mind lending me the car.’
I’m surprised by the offer. Michael hasn’t been Team Investigate. If anything, he’s been Team Wet Blanket.
Patrick looks surprised too, flashing Michael a look I can’t translate.
‘I thought you’d dropped this, Heidi,’ Aunty Sam says.
‘It’s not like I have anything better to do.’
‘You could help me clear out the shed.’
‘Death by redback spider bite doesn’t count as something better to do. Elena needs things from the house,’ I point out.
Aunty Sam looks from me to Michael. ‘Just the two of you?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say. And, at this point, I don’t know it’s a lie.
‘Okay,’ she says.
The family movie for the evening is Rear Window (Michael’s choice), and I’m grudgingly forced to admit it’s a classic for a reason.
Plus, I can finally see the fuss about a young Grace Kelly, who’s a good enough actress that I almost believe she finds her on-screen love interest – a guy twice her age who wears pyjamas all day – hot.
The autumn weather is settling in. When we pause for a popcorn (Aunty Sam) and a toilet break (Patrick), I go hunting for my favourite jumper, the sparkly one Patrick borrowed and never returned. I go straight to Patrick and Michael’s room, feeling only a bit sneaky as I push open the door.
The floor is covered in dirty clothes and the laundry basket is overflowing – a sneak peak of what their Melbourne place must look like most days.
I find my jumper in the wardrobe, actually hung up, although it slithers from its hanger when I try to liberate it.
As I pick it up from the floor, a paper tag flutters free.
It’s Patrick’s luggage tag: P Maidenhead and an address in Fitzroy that must be his.
I’m about to leave with my jumper, and wondering how I’ve never teased Patrick about his surname before now, when my brain catches up with what my eyes are seeing.
The date on the luggage tag is not what it should be.
Because Patrick told me – he definitely told me – he came to Perth after Felix’s death.
He came here to comfort Elena and attend the funeral.
So why does this luggage tag say that Patrick arrived in Perth a full two days before Felix was killed?