Now
I stop speaking and take a big swig of water.
Then I wait.
‘So?’ Marianne says as I stand up, stretching out my limbs.
‘What?’ I say.
‘What happened next?’
‘What do you think happened next?’ I ask.
‘Don’t be like that.’
‘That’s the end of the story.’
‘Readers hate ambiguous endings,’ Marianne says swiftly, almost automatically. She’s probably said this in a hundred meetings. Maybe it’s become one of those phrases worn soft with use, along with we can’t market that. She stands up, dusting herself down and slipping her shoes back on.
‘I like them. The Lady, or the Tiger? was one of my favourite stories when I was little.’
‘What happened next in real life, then?’ Marianne snaps.
Everything about today was planned – the broken lift (once we learned about Marianne’s claustrophobia), the theft of her beta-blockers (I delivered flowers this morning and managed to knock her handbag off her desk to take them).
I got a look at her diary so I could be sure what time Marianne would be leaving the office.
But exactly how much of the truth to tell Marianne, I’m still not sure.
‘I agreed to keep their secret,’ I say. ‘I didn’t want to send a pregnant woman to jail. I didn’t even want to send Michael to jail. Also, my brother was a shit.’
‘You never went to the police?’
‘No.’
‘What about Lilia?’
‘She agreed not to say anything.’
Marianne is nodding slowly, sorting through the facts. ‘What about Patrick?’
‘What about him?’
‘Did you two ever get together?’
I grin; I can’t help myself. ‘Why? Were you invested?’
‘You’re not going to tell me?’
‘That’s my business.’
Marianne laughs. ‘That’s the thing you keep to yourself, huh. But what about Michael and Elena – weren’t they scared you would talk? How could they let you just walk away?’
‘I’m standing right here in front of you. They didn’t kill me. They’re not bad people.’’
There’s a long pause. Marianne seems to be working herself up to something. ‘I don’t think I believe you,’ she says.
‘Which part?’
‘Any of it. If this was a true story, you could never write it all down in a novel and take the risk that someone would find out what really happened.’
‘I could have changed some of the details.’
‘I would have heard about it if it was a real case.’
‘I showed you that news article about Felix’s death.’ I bring it up on my phone again.
‘Please,’ she scoffs. ‘Photoshop. AI. That proves nothing more than that you have a Midjourney subscription and too much time on your hands.’
She’s not wrong. ‘What are you saying, then?’ I ask.
‘I think this story is entirely a work of fiction. I think you came up with this plan to trap me in here with you and dress it up as a true story in order to sell me a manuscript I’ve already rejected.’ Marianne’s face is pink with satisfaction.
‘Ah,’ I say. I hold up my hands, the way any sensible bank robber does when the cops arrive.
‘Am I wrong on any particular point?’ she demands.
There’s no reason to go on like this any longer.
‘You got me,’ I say. ‘I thought it was the only way you might take an interest in my book.’
‘Knew it.’ Marianne, despite it all, looks pleased with herself.
‘Did it work?’ I ask.
Marianne is wearing the kind of smile Bond villains get on their face when they think they’ve finally nailed that pesky 007 agent down. ‘It was an … unexpected pitch,’ she says. ‘But I’m not not interested. I’d need to read the manuscript, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Also, you need to get me out of this lift immediately.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Who’s Yusef, by the way?’
‘Just a friend.’
‘A lift-tampering friend?’
‘He’s good with electrics. We were never in any danger. He got the phone jammer too. I don’t think I want to know how.’
‘One thing that’s driving me crazy: how did Elena and Michael rig the lift to break down in your story?
’ Marianne asks. For someone desperate to get out of here, she’s tapping the brakes.
‘Neither of them seems like the type – a special needs teacher and an actor who are somehow able to tamper with a lift? You might want to come up with something more convincing in the final edit.’
‘The lift never broke down. Elena just pressed the emergency stop button.’
‘But her friend, uh, Sarah called the lift technician and he said it was an electrical fault,’ Marianne says.
I can’t suppress my smile, because she was paying attention. ‘The number on the control panel was for a burner phone. When Sarah called, she was talking to Michael.’
‘Who was already long gone?’
‘Exactly.’
I reach into my bag and pull out a stack of paper fresh from the printer. There’s a USB stick too, which I press into Marianne’s hand.
‘If the writing is bad, even a decent plot won’t be enough,’ she says.
‘It’s not bad.’
Another long pause.
‘I’ll read it. That’s all I’ll promise.’
‘That’ll do for now. My number’s on the last page.’
I push the intercom button for the last time (unless something goes seriously wrong in the next twenty seconds, which, I’ll tell you right now, it doesn’t). ‘Take us down.’
The lift starts to move and Marianne just about swoons.
Marianne steps out of the lift like an Olympic athlete ascending the podium. (Told you it’d be fine.)
The building manager, Hap (or Harold, if you’ve never belted a backhand towards his face), is standing nearby, texting on his phone. There’s a crowd of people in the foyer of the building, some dressed in high-vis, others in corporate wear.
‘Marianne,’ Hap says, looking horrified to see her. ‘Were you in there?’
‘Hap.’ Marianne looks briefly like she might snog him, she’s so relieved. ‘You’re here.’
‘There’s a problem with the lift.’ He clicks his tongue. ‘But you know that, clearly. You weren’t stuck in the lift this whole time, were you? I was told it was empty.’
‘Yes, we were in there for – I don’t even know – an hour? I’ve missed my lunch meeting.’
‘We?’
By now, I’m already slipping out the front door, shrugging on a jacket and tucking my hair up under a cap.
Marianne has my real name and my number – she knows where to find me if she wants to make a thing of it (although good luck to her proving I had anything to do with anything).
But I don’t want to stick around to deal with any of it now.
‘There was a girl,’ I hear her say as the door closes behind me.
Yusef will be out by now or at least on his way, but I don’t look around for him as I hit the footpath.
I’m not running – that’s too suspicious – but I’d be right at home in one of those Olympic walking events, except for the fact that I’m fully clothed instead of wearing the tiny bits of Lycra favoured by the pros.
It takes me ten minutes to reach our agreed destination: a café with a slightly tattered awning outside and the best almond croissants in Sydney.
I would have been here in half that time except I took a few deliberate wrong turns just in case.
Massive surprise: nobody was following me, but, hey, I got my step count up.
The barista behind the counter doesn’t look up as I come in.
He’s too busy giving the coffee machine the kind of look I’d personally reserve for people who watch YouTube on public transport without their earphones.
Only two tables are occupied, one by two older ladies with coffees and cake and the other by a young mum with a laptop in front of her and an empty pram beside her. It’s this table I approach.
‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Is this seat taken?’
The woman looks up and her expression cracks into a smile. ‘You made it.’ Aggie – but you can call her Elena if you like – grips her walking stick to stand up, hugging me with her free arm. ‘So?’
‘It’s done,’ I say. ‘I think she went for it. We’ll find out, I guess. Did I beat him here?’
‘Yeah, but he’s out of the building. Stopped off to change his clothes, just in case. You know what he’s like.’
‘Measure twice, cut once.’
‘Exactly.’
We grin at each other across the table.
‘So how did it go?’ Aggie asks.
‘Weren’t you watching the whole time?’ I nod at the laptop and the black-and-white CCTV footage, which she quickly closes down.
‘Sure, but the sound kept going and the little man woke up,’ she says.
‘Where is he, by the way? You look like a weirdo with an empty pram. Put a beachball with a smiley face in there and they’ll come for you with a straightjacket.’
‘He got grizzly so Christobel took him for a walk in the carrier.’
Christobel – Lilia if you’d rather – with a screaming baby?
‘I’d like to see that,’ I say.
‘I thought you two were friends again,’ Aggie says.
‘Doesn’t mean I can’t give her shit.’
‘You’d better get over it before the trip. Three weeks in Europe together is a long time.’
I can’t stop my grin at the thought. Once Christobel and Andy (Andy is Ben in real life, if you’re struggling to keep up – but, come on, it’s not that hard!) fell apart and Christobel was left with a pile of travel credits, the solution was obvious.
The barista slouches up. ‘What can I get you?’
‘Mocha please,’ I say.
‘No almond croissant?’ Aggie asks as he goes back to the counter.
‘Not today. Gotta get in shape for that book tour.’
‘Seriously? What did she say?’
‘I’m joking. Mostly. I’m too nervous to eat. But, I don’t know, I really think she was into it.’
‘Did she ask how much of it was real?’ Aggie asks.
‘She doesn’t believe a word of it,’ I say.
‘That’s good, right?’
‘Absolutely,’ I reassure her.
‘Plus, you changed a lot of the story.’ Aggie’s face is anxious. She always was a worrier.
‘It’s better this way,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe we actually pulled this off.’
My coffee arrives and I take a sip too fast and burn my tongue.
They say to write what you know.
When I came back to Perth to find out what had happened to my brother, I had a lot of spare time on my hands and a story opening up right in front of me.
I wrote the first draft over the July school holidays, soon after Felix’s death was officially ruled an accident.
The second draft, the one where I had blur the facts so readers couldn’t work out the true story behind the fiction, took only a little longer.
The door to the café opens, setting off the jingle of the bell, and I turn.
He walks through the door, as lanky and scruffy as when I saw him at my brother’s funeral and he’d been such a cranky dickhead. When he sees us, his face becomes one big smile in a moment, transforming him into the one I love.
‘Spare me the PDA,’ Aggie begs as I stand up to hug him. ‘That’s my brother.’
‘You played it like a pro,’ he says. ‘I was listening from the control room the whole time. You’re amazing.’
‘You too, Yusef,’ I say, while, behind him, Aggie mimes being sick into the pram.
‘Patrick, please,’ he says and there’s no time for me to say anything smart or mean back before he leans forward and kisses me.