Then
Stalking someone is not like the old days when you needed patience and a newspaper to hold in front of your face for hours at a time.
It costs me fifty dollars to buy an Apple AirTag and two minutes to slip it into the pocket of Patrick’s messenger bag.
It’s not a foolproof plan – he doesn’t take the bag everywhere – but it’s the only plan I’ve got.
Research (okay, Google) tells me that AirTags are supposed to alert people to their presence, to prevent exactly what I’m trying to do.
I’m counting on the fact that Patrick’s dodgy Android Marketplace phone might be running on an old operating system that won’t pick it up.
(This is the advice I received on Reddit from a bunch of guys who, if I’m honest, all seemed to be determinedly stalking their girlfriends for reasons I’d really rather not think about.)
So, yes, I’m stalking people now. Which is not great. But Patrick is lying to me and I have to know why. So here we are.
Or, rather, here I am, leaning my bike against the wall outside the café where Patrick – or, at least, Patrick’s messenger bag – is hanging out. I’m hovering by the takeaway when I hear the worst possible thing: my name.
‘Heidi?’
It’s not Patrick, having discovered that I’m stalking him. That’s the good news. The bad news?
‘Lilia?’
It’s not a complete shock to see her here. We used to come here all the time, it being so close to Aunty Sam’s, and I’m pretty sure Lilia is hooked on their Portuguese tarts.
‘You missed those tarts too, huh?’ she says right away.
‘Actually, I’m kind of in the middle of something,’ I say, not sure how much to tell her. Surely the first rule of being a stalker is not telling anyone you’re a stalker. (Random dudes on Reddit notwithstanding.)
‘Something that’s not coffee?’ she asks.
‘Hi ladies! Who’s gonna order?’ the barista at the takeaway window asks.
‘Me,’ I say, edging closer to the counter so I can see past the blackboard, with its chalked-up list of coffee varietals, through to the café inside. Patrick is sitting at a table, not facing me.
‘So what do you want?’ the barista asks when I fail to give him my order.
I don’t answer, because someone sits down at Patrick’s table. Elena. There’s nothing weird about a brother and a sister going out for a coffee, but they left the house separately.
‘Hello?’
The sound of the barista’s annoyance brings me back to the takeaway window.
‘Oat mocha please.’ I’m still watching Patrick and Elena, who are talking intently, and the barista has to ask me twice to scan my card.
‘Heidi?’ Lilia says.
‘What?’ I’m irritated. I’ve let her tag along (okay, maybe slightly more than tag along) as my Patrick stand-in – but that doesn’t mean we’re friends again. Does it?
‘Do you mind?’
It’s then I realise I’m blocking her from putting in her coffee order. I step to the side, and lose my view of Patrick and Elena. What I need is some kind of listening device or … Dammit, maybe I do need a giant newspaper to hide behind.
Lilia orders her coffee, then comes to stand beside me, not quite close enough to indicate we’re together, but close enough that, if she was a stranger, I’d be concerned. ‘Are you spying on Patrick and Elena?’ she asks.
‘What?’
‘Because if you are, you’re not doing a great job of it,’ she says.
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Is it what you said in the car about Patrick arriving in Perth before Felix died? You honestly think he might have been involved?’
I’ve got to start remembering how many conversations Lilia has tagged along for.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I mumble. My suspicions about Patrick are bad enough. To discuss them with Lilia would be a different kind of betrayal.
‘Okay,’ she says, in her you’re being unreasonable voice.
A beat.
‘I could go in there,’ Lilia says. ‘I could spy on Patrick and Elena. I don’t think Elena would recognise me, and I can sit behind Patrick.
’ I take a look at Lilia, dressed down in her Lorna Jane athleisurewear and (unusually) her glasses, looking like every other basic bitch out for a morning coffee.
‘Plus, Patrick knows how you feel about me. Even if he does see me, he won’t think you’re involved. ’
‘Why would you do that?’ I ask.
‘So you can find out what they’re saying without first completing a lip-reading qualification.’
I rephrase my question. ‘I mean, why would you do that for me?’
‘I thought we were in this together now.’
Are we?
‘Plus, you don’t think I owe you?’ Lilia adds.
Obviously.
‘Also, I’m invested now.’
The only reason to say no is to annoy Lilia, which would once have been enough. It’s not anymore. ‘Make it quick,’ I say. ‘Who knows how long they’ll stay.’
Without waiting for her coffee, Lilia jogs around the corner.
I hear the front bell jingle, which means she’s inside.
I watch through the takeaway window. There’s an unpleasant exchange when a middle-aged woman reaches the table closest to Patrick and Elena at the same time as Lilia.
I know Lilia’s default would be to give up the table, but, hey, recent events have shown she can fight for something she really wants.
Sure enough, Lilia is victorious, and neither Patrick nor Elena appear to have noticed the minor ruckus.
‘Here you go.’ The barista bangs down my oat mocha and Lilia’s iced coffee and I pick them up. ‘Who’s next?
I have to give up my view of the café to let more customers through.
It’s another twenty minutes before Lilia comes back, rounding the corner with a skip in her step. Both (empty) coffee cups have been abandoned in the bin nearby and my heart feels like it’s opened its own postcode outside my chest.
As Lilia gets closer, she waves her hand at me, like she’s trying to shoo a pigeon away from a café table.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Walk away,’ she hisses, and I’m about to ask why when I see Patrick and Elena come around the corner behind her. Shit. I make eye contact with Elena and it’s officially too late to flee, so I smile instead. Lilia smiles too. And so does Patrick. This is too much smiling.
‘What are you doing here, Heidi?’ Elena asks pleasantly when she’s close enough to do so. She’s not in her wheelchair but is using a stick today.
‘Heidi was supposed to meet me,’ Lilia says easily. ‘But you’re late, Heidi – I’ve already been inside for a coffee. I thought you must have forgotten.’
‘Right,’ I say, scrabbling to catch up. ‘I thought we said two o’clock?’
‘One-thirty.’
Patrick is looking at me and I have a bad feeling he can see through my veneer to the bullshit within. Normally, it’s one of the reasons I like him, but right now I hate it.
‘You two really are friends again,’ he says. ‘I guess Lilia’s been punished enough now she has to go out with Ben.’
‘Patrick,’ Elena says, horrified, then to us, ‘Sorry, we’re all really hoping he might develop a filter at some point, but it’s not looking good.’
‘Perth’s a small town,’ I say. ‘We thought we should catch up and clear the air.’
‘It’s so stupid to ruin a friendship over a boy,’ Elena agrees.
Ben was not A Boy. He was my boyfriend. Lilia was not just A Friend. She was my best friend.
But all I say is: ‘Exactly.’
‘This is wonderful news,’ Elena says, beaming. ‘We’ll have to have you over for dinner, Lilia.’
‘I’d love that,’ Lilia says, sounding like she means it. Bloody hell, she probably does mean it.
‘Are you free tonight?’
‘Uhhhh.’ Lilia hesitates and looks at me.
I’m smiling, but inside I’m waving a red flag at Lilia. She can’t. She won’t.
‘Sure,’ Lilia says.
My smile is pulled so tight my teeth could fall out and I wouldn’t notice.
‘I’d better get off my feet,’ Elena says. ‘We’ll see you tonight at the house. Six-ish?’
‘Great,’ Lilia says.
Elena starts walking, but Patrick lingers.
‘Do you want a lift home, Heidi?’ he asks. ‘Elena’s got the car. Or are you staying for that catch-up with Lilia?’
‘I’ll stay,’ I say.
‘Great.’ Then he reaches out and rubs his thumb against my cheek. The blush starts at my collarbone. He’s looking straight into my eyes.
‘You’ve got … whipped cream … on your face,’ he says. Then he walks away.
‘What was that about?’ I ask.
‘You did have cream on your face,’ Lilia says. ‘Do you think he guessed?’
‘Not that. Why did you say yes to dinner?’ I clarify.
‘It would have been rude not to.’
‘It’s going to be a lot ruder when I won’t let you in the house.’
‘Heidi.’ Lilia’s half-laughing, not sure if I’m joking.
I’m not sure if I am either.
‘Don’t Heidi me like we’ve had a minor falling out over cinema etiquette,’ I say.
‘You’re too uptight about the trailers,’ Lilia says.
‘The trailers are … no.’ I stop myself. ‘Don’t distract me – you know that’s my catnip.’
Lilia crosses her arms across her chest.
‘Are we seriously never going to be friends ever again? That’s it? It’s done? Over Ben?’ There’s something about the way she says his name that makes me think things might not be as cosy between them as they appear from the outside, but I choose not to fixate on that.
Not now anyway. I’ve gotta save something to obsess over at three a.m. when I can’t sleep. ‘It’s not about Ben,’ I tell her. ‘It’s about you.’
She opens her mouth, then snaps it shut. ‘I recorded their conversation,’ she says, ‘in the café.’ For a moment, I forgot why we were even here. ‘You know, when I was doing you a favour,’ she adds.
‘The going rate for betrayal is twenty minutes of spy work, is it?’
‘Do you want to know what they were talking about or not?’
‘Obviously!’
‘Are you ladies planning on ordering anything else or am I interrupting book club?’ asks the barista, loudly. We take a few steps away so we’re next to my bike.
‘Patrick was really angry,’ Lilia says. ‘He was giving Elena a hard time about something, I couldn’t really tell what. He was saying something like it’s not that simple or maybe it’s not that easy. I can’t remember, exactly.’
‘What did Elena say?’
‘She seemed like she was defending herself,’ Lilia says. ‘One of them mentioned you. I think it was Patrick.’
‘What did he say?’ I ask.
‘He said, What about Heidi?’
‘What about me?’
‘I can’t remember everything. It was intense.’ For a moment Lilia gets a look like there’s something she doesn’t want to say. It passes. ‘I’ll send you the recording,’ she said, tapping on her phone to Airdrop it.
I’m so impatient that, when it pops up, I slide in an earbud and hit the play button. The sound in my ear is all clattering forks, buzzing coffee grinders and something barely distinguishable that might be Patrick’s voice. I pull out the earbud. ‘I can barely hear it.’
‘It was kind of noisy in there,’ Lilia says apologetically. Then she perks up. ‘I could try boosting the audio at home.’
Lilia plays in a band. Not a cool band or the kind that play proper gigs; it’s a folk band she’s in with her mum and two of her mum’s fifty-something friends.
Because she’s the token gen Z, Lilia handles the tech side of things, so she knows about audio editing and how to operate their garage full of equipment.
(I would probably set it on fire if I touched any of it.)
‘I could bring it over tonight?’ she asks, almost shyly.
I shrug. ‘Okay. I’m gonna take off.’ I stick my helmet on my head and swing my leg over my bike.
‘And Heidi?’ Lilia says, as I’m about to push off.
‘Yeah?’
‘Ben wasn’t worth it.’
Because I’m not ready to ask her what she means by that, I put my feet on the pedals and leave her standing on the footpath alone.