THEN
Normal life starts to assert itself.
Michael and Patrick have bought their return tickets to Melbourne and I still haven’t asked Patrick about his conversation with Elena at the café.
Part of it is cowardice, part of it is not being sure what I think it all means.
Clearly, Patrick and Elena know something about Felix’s death that I don’t and they’re not telling me.
It doesn’t mean that they killed him, but it does make them co-conspirators and it makes Patrick a big fat liar.
I want to ask Patrick about it, but once I do, I won’t be able to walk it back. That scares me.
So, I do nothing. The coward’s choice, maybe, but also that of the pragmatist who still has to live in the same house as these people.
Patrick and I banter about bad TV, good music and the merits of Tim Tams vs Kingston biscuits, but not about Felix’s death.
Lilia has called and messaged, but I haven’t worked out how I feel about her yet.
And I’m going back to school in less than a week.
Uncertainty about the next step in my investigations into Felix’s death turns me into a hermit and I slide into a rut of TV and daytime naps. At one point I get so bored, I even wash and iron my own school uniform – an act so sad I only perform it when everyone else is out of the house.
Things change the day before Michael and Patrick are scheduled to fly back to Melbourne.
Aunty Sam proposes a family excursion to pack up the house and get it ready to be sold, now that Elena is definitely not moving back in.
Armed with rubbish bags, spray-and-wipe and cardboard boxes, we head off. Lilia calls and I switch my phone to silent.
On the drive, Michael and Aunty Sam talk about how Melbourne’s changed since she lived there in her twenties (everything, apparently), while Patrick, Elena and I sit in the back, like little kids getting driven to school by Mum and Dad.
‘How do you feel about flying back tomorrow?’ I ask Patrick when I can no longer feign interest in Melbourne laneway culture.
‘This was not the most relaxing holiday of my life, if I’m honest.’
‘How can you say that when you’re about to spend your last day of it cleaning out your sister’s house?’
Patrick grins and it’s almost enough to make me forget about all those pesky secrets he’s keeping from me. ‘You’re right, what an opportunity to experience everything Perth has to offer: from scrubbing toilets to clearing out wardrobes.’
‘Hold on, aren’t you the one thinking about moving here?’
Patrick shakes his head but doesn’t get to say anything because Aunty Sam jumps in. I hadn’t realised she was listening.
‘You’re moving to Perth, Patrick?’
‘I was thinking about it,’ he says.
‘Patrick actually flew over here just before Felix died to check out some unis,’ Elena says, and I don’t think I imagine her glance at me.
I nearly let it go, but why would I? ‘You went to see multiple unis? I thought it was just for a UWA open day?’
‘That’s right,’ Patrick says quickly. ‘But I did a little unofficial tour of some others while I was here.’
‘That’s what I meant,’ Elena says. ‘There’s even some pretty good practically-on-campus accommodation at UWA. It’d be like boarding school.’
‘Boarding schools always seemed so chic and European to me as a kid,’ Aunty Sam says a little dreamily. ‘Heidi, are you sure you don’t want to go back to Switzerland? I’m sure the school could make it happen.’
‘I’m sure.’ I really, really am.
‘How long were you supposed to stay?’ Michael asks me from the front seat.
‘Another month or so.’
‘Heidi’s dipshit best friend, Lilia, was supposed to be with her, but instead she hooked up with Heidi’s ex,’ Patrick says helpfully.
‘Patrick!’ Elena says.
‘Sorry about my brother,’ Michael says.
‘Me too,’ I say, even if I kind of enjoyed Patrick calling Lilia a dipshit. I wish I’d recorded him, so I could play it back the next time I think about replying to one of her messages.
‘That Lilia,’ Michael says, putting the pieces together. ‘She seemed nice.’
‘Not what Heidi needs to hear, bro,’ Patrick says, winking at me.
Maybe it’s because we’re squished into the back seat together or the fact that I can smell that he’s still using my goddamn shampoo, but the urge to be back on the same team as Patrick is almost overwhelming.
For a moment, it feels like the air’s been taken from my lungs and I need to remind myself to breathe.
‘We’re here,’ Elena says.
I breathe in. I’m fine. I’m fine.
Inside, Elena gives instructions about what needs to be packed up (almost everything) and what can be binned (almost nothing).
Patrick and I are assigned the task of boxing up Felix’s clothes.
We talk about everything but Felix while sorting pants and shorts and too many t-shirts into boxes marked CHUCK and DONATE.
Patrick tells me about his friends back in Melbourne, and how they’re all a bit too into gaming for his taste.
I tell him about how much I’m dreading going back to school, where I’m used to spending every lunch and recess with Lilia and Ben.
‘You’ll make new friends,’ Patrick says, like it’s as easy as breathing.
‘Will I, though? I haven’t had to make a new friend in years.’
‘What about me?’ Patrick asks and when I look up from Felix’s alarmingly large band t-shirt collection, he’s grinning at me.
‘I think of you more as my nemesis,’ I say, throwing Felix’s favourite Wilco t-shirt at his head to avoid a serious response. The yellow cloth, so bright it’s practically fluoro, lands on his face, so I don’t have to look at it.
I don’t intentionally go snooping.
It’s just that when I go to the bathroom an hour later, the door to Felix’s study is open. Nobody is inside. There’s an unlocked filing cabinet sitting right there (Felix was old-school about paperwork). I’m not immune to temptation.
I find a folder on Aunty Sam’s house immediately and experience an ethical crisis that lasts ten seconds. Then I read it.
At first, it’s anticlimactic. Nothing in the folder tells me anything I don’t already know or suspect: Felix and Aunty Sam jointly owned the house, blah, blah, blah, fixed-rate mortgage, blah, blah, blah.
Then – aha! – I find a piece of paper with a list of real estate agents and phone numbers next to them.
And, finally, a report about recent valuations in Mount Lawley, a suburb so gentrified it has two rival organic wine bars.
This might all mean nothing, but it could suggest that Felix was thinking about selling.
That would give Aunty Sam a reason to be mad with him.
Mad with him, but not enough to push him down a cliff, I remind myself.
When I get back to the main bedroom Patrick is taping up the last of the clothes boxes.
We each pick up a box to carry downstairs. ‘Heidi, I know you’re still pissed off with me for abandoning our Hardy Boys adventure—’
‘What is it with your family and the Hardy Boys?’ I interrupt.
‘But you can still talk to me. If you want,’ Patrick continues.
I hate this feeling that I can’t trust Patrick, so I give him one more chance.
‘That day at the café when Lilia and I ran into you and Elena,’ I say. ‘What were you guys talking about?’
Patrick screws up his face. ‘I can’t remember.’
I look sadly at him as we carry our boxes into the lift and hit the button to go down. (Would it be too much if the lift got stuck right now? It doesn’t happen, I’m just wondering.)
‘What were you and Lilia really doing at the café?’ he asks.
There’s another moment, like the one in the car, where I want to tell him everything and demand an explanation that doesn’t implicate him – or Elena – in Felix’s death.
Then the lift door opens.
‘I can’t remember,’ I say, carrying my box out to the living room.
The toilet in the downstairs bathroom flushes and Michael walks out as Patrick and I dump our boxes by the front door.
‘How’s it going up there?’ he asks.
As Michael walks from the bathroom to the bookshelf, where he’s boxing up books, I’m aware of a puzzle piece somewhere clicking into place. There’s something my subconscious wants me to know. Something to do with the toilet? But I’m too stupid to see it.
‘We’re done with the clothes. Do you want help with the books?’ Patrick asks Michael.
‘Elena wants someone to start on the kitchen,’ Michael says. ‘She and Sam are out in the shed. What kind of prick owns a leaf blower, am I right?’
‘Heidi?’ Patrick touches me on the shoulder and the puzzle pieces disappear.
We go to the kitchen and use newspaper to pack dishes, bowls and glasses.
I’m half-reading an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip when my silenced phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out. Lilia again. Of course. I swear, but quietly.
‘What is it?’ Patrick asks, stuffing a twist of paper into a wine glass.
‘Just—’ I flash him my phone screen so he can see the name and the string of missed calls.
‘Lilia’s really gone full stalker, huh?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Do you want my advice?’ he asks.
‘Has anyone ever wanted your advice?’ I ask.
‘Fine.’
‘I was being a bitch. Tell me.’
‘Now I don’t want to,’ he says.
‘Patrick.’
‘I want you to wake at two a.m. wondering what life-changing bit of advice I might have—’
‘Patrick.’
‘This is my advice, which I’m already slightly regretting. The thing is, Lilia did something super shitty to you.’
‘Correct.’
‘But if you think you can forgive her, you should try. When you’re a kid, you think best friends come along every day, but they don’t.’ This coming from the guy who called Lilia a dipshit in the car.
‘You’re only a year older than me,’ I say. ‘You don’t get to use the word kid on me.’
‘Maybe I was comparing you to a baby goat.’
‘What is it with you and goats?’ I ask. Patrick looks confused and I realise, too late, that the horror movie goat reference was part of a conversation he doesn’t know I’ve heard. I keep talking before he has time to wonder what I’m on about. ‘Friends are one thing, but ex-boyfriends …’
‘They really are like buses,’ he says.
‘Because it hurts when they run you down?’
‘I was thinking more like they’re unreliable and smell bad.’
Michael and I deposit our boxes – his filled with books, mine with crockery – by the front door at the same time. He’s wearing Patrick’s jacket again and I remember something I meant to ask him days ago.
‘Do you have the note and the thread we found outside? I meant to give them a proper look.’
‘Ah.’ Michael looks embarrassed. ‘I forgot to take them out of the jacket pocket and Patrick put it through the wash. I must have left the pocket open a little because they were both gone when I took the clothes out.’
‘Oh.’ I don’t know what else to say. Michael has lost our only two clues and, honestly, he doesn’t seem to feel as bad about it as he should. He hasn’t even apologised.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘They were probably nothing.’ I try not to look like I want to tear open the box at my feet and break every plate over his head.
‘Sorry,’ he says again, so my poker face probably sucks.
‘It’s fine,’ I lie. Hey, if everyone else is going to do it, why not me?