THEN #2
It takes a while, but that’s only because the bushes are scratchy and Michael’s jacket gets briefly caught on a tree branch, which makes him swear a lot.
‘Is it expensive?’ I ask, because it looks like it is.
‘It’s Patrick’s,’ he says, then grins. ‘So what am I even worried about?’
‘What’s it like, the two of you living together in Melbourne?’
‘Better now I don’t have to pack his school lunchbox,’ he says.
‘You guys have lived together since your mum died?’
‘Yeah, Patrick was only twelve, I think. Elena and I hadn’t lived out of home for that long, so we moved back in. We’ve always been close.’
‘Still, that was sweet of you,’ Lilia says.
‘What else could we do?’ Michael says, bending over to tie a loose shoelace with all the speed of a six-year-old who’s just learned how. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on the foster system to inflict Patrick on them.’
I laugh.
‘Not every brother would do it,’ Lilia says and I know she’s thinking about Felix.
‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’ Michael asks her, finally straightening up.
‘No,’ Lilia says.
We’ve only taken about two steps towards the house when I trip over a crushed soft drink can half-buried in the dirt.
I stop myself from falling only by grabbing Lilia’s shoulder, accidentally dragging her into a prickly bush.
(I realise this seems implausible, but it’s the truth!) ‘What the hell?’ I say, brushing twigs from my pants.
Lilia, who has somehow emerged from the bush prickle-free and with a flush to her cheeks that makes her look like she’s popped on a slick of blush, is not interested. ‘It’s rubbish,’ she says.
‘Still, we probably shouldn’t leave it,’ Michael says, while making no move towards the can himself.
I pick it up and, as I do, I see a slip of paper caught in the mouth of the can. It’s crushed and the blue ink on the paper has run a bit, but it’s still legible as I open it and read the two words written on it: I’M SORRY.
‘What is it?’ Lilia asks. I show her, but pass the note to Michael.
‘What the hell,’ he says, reading it quickly before handing it back to me. ‘Where did you find this?’
‘Caught in that Coke can.’
‘What do you think it means?’ Michael asks.
‘I don’t know. It might have come from anywhere. Who knows how long it’s been out here.’
But we’re all thinking it.
I’M SORRY.
It’s not a great suicide note.
I turn the paper over and can see faintly raised lettering. It’s almost as white as the paper, but I tip it towards the light to make it out: Novotel.
‘Novotel,’ I repeat. ‘Have you heard of it?’
‘The hotel?’ Michael asks.
‘It’s printed on the paper.’ I hand it to him to look.
‘Your vision must be twenty-twenty.’ Michael takes the note back and rubs at his eyes. ‘Is this what middle age feels like?’
‘You’re still better than Aunty Sam,’ I say.
‘She put chutney instead of jam on her toast the other day,’ Michael says. ‘Why doesn’t she get glasses?’
‘That would mean acknowledging the passage of time.’
Lilia takes the note and examines it. ‘Doesn’t this seem a little too convenient?’ she says. ‘We come out here and stumble on, what, a suicide note?’
‘It’s probably nothing, Lilia,’ I say. ‘If it was anything important, the cops would have taken it away as evidence.’
‘Assuming they looked this far off the path,’ Michael says, accepting the note back and pocketing it. ‘But I agree, it’s probably nothing.’ His face suggests the opposite.
I pull out my phone and snap half a dozen photos of the ground, the Coke can and the window above us on the side of the house. Just in case.
We push through the shrubs with the house on our left and the river behind us, all the way to the road behind the house. At the edge of the bitumen, caught in one of those spiky shrubs Australia specialises in, the ones designed to shred your skin, I find a golden thread.
When I show it to Michael, he holds it up to the light, then slides it into his pocket along with the probably-not-a-suicide-note.
‘Good work,’ he says, but I’m not sure he means it.
‘Do you think it’s from someone’s clothes?’ I ask.
‘Why would anyone come up this far from the house?’ Michael says.
‘Maybe it was the person Haruto saw,’ Lilia says.
Michael looks sceptical. ‘How well do you reckon he could even see through that window?’
We look back down the slope and I see his point: the bedroom window Haruto was looking out of is half-obscured by trees, trunks doubled over from the wind.
I look glumly at the scene, as if a perfectly preserved bloody handprint might materialise if I think about it hard enough.
‘What do you think?’ I ask Michael as we walk back down the hill. ‘Be honest.’
‘Do you mean, what do I think happened to Felix?’
‘Yeah.’
Michael sighs. ‘Honestly, the drama queen in me wants to say that he was murdered and there’s a suspect at large.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I’m an actor, we’re inclined towards the dramatic.’
‘You could play Felix in the mini-series,’ I joke, and he sputters a laugh. ‘But?’ Because there’s very clearly a but hovering over his sentence.
‘But the pragmatist in me says the simplest explanation is probably the right one. I reckon Felix slipped and fell. Or maybe he did it to himself. Sorry.’
Lilia’s hand rests, for the briefest of moments, on my shoulder but I shrug it off under the pretence of pushing a branch out of my way.
We make it back to the path, then pick up the pace down to the house. Michael goes inside to collect the items that Elena has requested, and I reset the alarm before we all get back in the car.
Michael tells us about the play he’s going to be in soon, then asks us polite questions about what we want to do after school.
Lilia claims to want to be a volcanologist, which is the same answer she’s been giving to this question since she was ten.
When I say I’m thinking about studying psychology, Michael’s grin seems sincere.
‘I can see it,’ he says. ‘You’re interested in people. Patrick’s the same. I’d never say it to his face, but he would be good at helping people.’
‘You think?’
‘Yeah.’ Michael’s face softens a little. ‘I know he likes to come off as this bitchy arsehole, but he’s actually a sweetheart.’
‘He said he wants to study electrical engineering?’
‘A future STEM graduate in our family, such a disappointment,’ Michael says. Then he gets serious and I’m sure he’s thinking about our conversation in the car earlier. ‘But Patrick is a good egg, Heidi.’
I think about what it’s been like to spend all my spare time with Patrick since he moved in with us.
He dragged me into this thing, but I let him because it felt good to be around him.
And that’s not only because he’s been a distraction from the aftermath of Felix’s death, but because he’s Patrick: funny, rude and sometimes just a bit too much.
None of that negates the fact that he lied to me about when he got to Perth.
We pull up outside Aunty Sam’s house to see a man in a suit hammering a For Sale sign outside next door. ‘Looks like you’re going to have new neighbours,’ Michael says. ‘Unless your aunt is still planning to sell?’
‘Aunty Sam’s not selling the house.’ I undo my seatbelt. ‘Where did you get that idea?’
‘Wasn’t your aunt talking about selling?’ Michael asks.
‘Aunty Sam would never.’
‘I just thought … but I guess now she’s got this US tour and everything she doesn’t have to,’ Michael says, getting out of the car.
Lilia and I follow him.
‘I’d better go home,’ she says.
There’s no sign of either her mum’s car or Ben’s, so maybe I should care how she plans on doing that, but I’m too distracted by what Michael’s just said.
Inside the house, I track Patrick down in the kitchen, just in time for him to open the fridge door into my knee.
‘Ah!’ I yell.
‘Shit. Sorry. Are you okay?’ Patrick asks.
I try to play it down. ‘I’m fine. Scars are cool, right?’
‘Sorry. I didn’t hear you.’ Patrick pulls his over-ear headphones off his head with one hand and puts a carton of milk down on the bench with the other. ‘How did you guys go?’
I think about telling him it’s none of his business, now that he’s decided he doesn’t care about investigating Felix’s death. But, come on, I don’t have that kind of self-restraint.
‘We found a note and a thread that might be from someone’s clothes,’ I say, going straight to the highlights.
‘What note?’
‘It was a piece of paper with the words I’m sorry on it.’
‘Just lying around?’ Patrick looks as sceptical as Lilia was. It’s annoying.
‘It has the name of some hotel on it, too,’ I say. ‘Plus we found this yellow-gold thread caught on a bush near the road.’
Patrick has an expression that tells me he’s not planning to break down the door of the local police station to deliver this crucial new evidence.
‘They probably mean nothing, though, right? Otherwise the cops would have spotted them,’ I say. Then I remember the best bit. ‘I’m more interested in the fact that Ben rang Felix the night he died.’
It’s only now I remember that not only has Patrick tapped out of this investigation, he’s landed himself on the list of suspects. The cops surely don’t discuss evidence with their suspects. But despite my suspicions, I can’t quite help myself. Or maybe I want to suck him back in.
‘How do you know that?’ Patrick asks, looking impressed for the first time. He flicks on the kettle and gets out a mug and a teabag. ‘Do you want one? There’s English breakfast or one of Elena’s ginger monstrosities.’
I shake my head.
‘Lilia checked his phone.’
‘That’s quite bad-arse,’ Patrick says and the twist in my stomach feels like jealousy. ‘Do I still have to hate her?’
‘I don’t even know anymore.’
‘Are you two … friends again?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I say immediately.
‘Forget I said anything.’
‘I’d love to,’ I say.
Patrick pours hot water into his mug and takes his time bobbing the teabag around before adding the milk. It’s soothing to watch.
‘What are you up to now?’ Patrick asks, putting the milk back in the fridge and tucking an open packet of Tim Tams under his arm.
‘Protecting the Tim Tams from you?’
‘You know, we never got around to watching Nosferatu,’ he says.
‘I was hoping you’d forgotten that.’
‘How can you love horror movies and hate vampire movies?’
‘I have taste.’
‘If I promised you a biscuit, would you come and hate-watch it with me?’
I’m not made of stone.
In the living room we flop onto opposite couches, stretching out, and it’s almost like the last few days haven’t happened.
The curtains are closed, in Patrick’s words ‘to heighten the cinematic experience’, and the film is about to start when I decide I can’t help myself.
I’ve always hated movies where a simple conversation is all that’s needed to clear up a misunderstanding between two people, but it’s never allowed to happen for plot purposes. Why am I living my life like that?
‘Hey, Patrick, you only came to Perth after Felix died, right?’ I ask. ‘Not before?’
He seems baffled. ‘That’s why I came here. Why?’
My insides go as dark as the bloody lighting on Nosferatu. ‘No reason.’