Chapter 1
Three Years Later
“Hello, trouble!”
“Hello… problem child?” Ellie returned her younger sister’s unexpected greeting with a cock of her head, as she dropped her keys into the bowl on the hallway table and kicked off her shoes. She heard Zara laughing as she padded down the hall toward the kitchen.
Zara’s house was a tiny red-brick Victorian, wedged into a row on a back street of Northcote.
It was a rental — of course — but she’d hung onto it for six years now, and it was as much Ellie’s second home as if she lived there herself.
It was stifling hot this evening, the bricks holding onto the roaring heat of the day, and Ellie was already sweating from her short walk from the train station.
She pulled off her t-shirt and wandered into the kitchen in her bra and skirt.
“Oh, put it away!” Zara gazed skyward for strength at the sight of her sibling. “We all know you actresses spend thousands of hours at the gym, you don’t need to shove it in the faces of us ordinary people, especially those of us who once pushed out an entire human child.”
“It was so worth it,” piped a voice from the dining table. Ellie met her sister’s eyes and they both burst into laughter. “I mean, imagine life without me,” Arthur persisted, glancing up from where he’d been concentrating on his sketchbook.
“I literally could never,” Ellie said, truthfully.
Thirteen years ago, she’d been in her sister’s hospital room, arms full of a red wrinkly baby and, frankly, terrified by his existence.
But now, looking at the lanky teenage boy with the floppy lesbian haircut and big brown eyes, she couldn’t imagine anything worse than a world without Arthur Graham in it.
Zara rolled her eyes, miming pulling out her hair at the roots, but she couldn’t hide her smile.
“You’re alright, kid,” she said, as if he wasn’t the light of her entire life.
He rolled his eyes right back, but wiggled his shoulders slightly with happiness as he lost himself back in his drawing.
Ellie felt that thing she felt all the damn time in this house, the thing that still made her want to live in these people’s pockets: huge, epic, world-changing love.
“Weren’t you on dinner?” Zara grabbed her attention back, tapping her fingers on the bench.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You said, don’t worry, I’ll bring Thai. Should I take it from your empty hands that you’re failing to feed us?”
“Holy shit.” Ellie slapped a hand to her sweaty forehead. “I completely forgot. My day was nuts—”
“I mean, duh,” Zara agreed. “I’m not really surprised, considering-”
“Rehearsals ran late, then I left my phone in the theatre and had to sprint back for it, since it gets locked up by five-thirty and I nearly died from sweat-loss by the time I made the train-”
“It’s fine, El, it’s too hot to eat anyway.”
“Speak for yourself!” Arthur’s head snapped up, his eyes wide with horror.
“I’ll order us pizza,” Ellie assured him, apologetically.
“Gross.” Zara screwed up her nose. “I can’t think of anything worse than hot cheesy bread in this weather.
I’ll make us a salad. A huge salad,” she added, acknowledging Arthur’s protest before the sound came out.
“Oh my god, with some toast, or something,” she stopped him, again. “I swear to god, growing boys...”
“It’s only going to get worse,” Arthur announced cheerfully. “Wait til I’m fifteen, I’ll be taller than you and so hungry. I’ll eat like, eight Weetbix every morning.”
“Jesus christ,” Zara sighed. “Thank god you’ll be old enough to get a job by then, my young friend.”
Ellie collapsed onto the couch, the combination of her heat-addled scatter-brain and her sister’s money woes making her feel a little bit like a failure.
The living room was faintly cooler than the outside world, the ancient air conditioning unit groaning under the unrelenting heat of Melbourne in February.
The fires in the surrounding countryside had only just died down in the last couple of weeks, finally dowsed by a short bout of heavy rain.
Still, the oppressive heat felt like a weighted blanket over the city.
Her sister had set up portable fans; one ruffled the pages of Arthur’s sketchbook every time it rotated past him, gently lifting his sweaty brown hair off his forehead as it went.
The other sent a small breeze past Ellie, and she picked up her own hair — the exact shade as her sister and her nephew’s — and gathered it into a bun on the top of her head so she could feel the air on her neck.
“Sorry,” she apologised again, calling toward the open-plan kitchen where Zara was dicing bright pink watermelon on a huge wooden chopping board. “I’ll do dinner next time, I promise.”
“I mean, you’re going to get your massive break now, aren’t you? You can probably buy all the dinners from here on out.”
Ellie snorted. Her mid-level success as an actor was an old source of teasing from her younger sister.
Their whole lives Ellie had talked of making it big, of making the kind of Hollywood money that would change all their lives forever.
That had only intensified when Arthur had arrived into the world.
She openly daydreamed of the day Zara would never have to go to work again, because Ellie had signed an epic movie deal.
Problem was, Melbourne wasn’t exactly Hollywood, and big breaks were few and far between.
“Not sure this show will be that massive, Zazzy,” she said with a sigh. “This is more of a kudos kind of job… gritty theatre for the reviewers. Make me look good before the next big round of auditions. Show my serious side: Eloise Silver — not just a soap star.”
“I’m not talking about fucking Samuel Beckett, you ning-nong. I meant Estella Grant. That’s going to be epic, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Ellie curled her legs up on the couch and turned her whole body to face her sister. “Estella was an awesome role, but that series is wrapped. It sure as hell got me noticed, but I wouldn’t call it epic.”
“Mate.” Zara dropped her knife. Her big brown eyes went even larger than her son’s. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you literally not even watch the news?”
“Huh?” Ellie had no clue what Zara was on about. “No, I’ve been living and breathing rehearsals, you know that.”
“No one told you?”
“No one told me what?”
“Oh my god. The Grants went nuclear this week. Multiple murders, in-fighting, gang shake-ups, cross-country drama. There’s no fucking way this won’t be another series.”
“Oh shit.” Ellie swallowed, hard. It was a strange feeling impersonating a real, living, breathing woman, who also happened to be one of the most connected and dangerous criminals in the city.
Ellie had played the part with gusto — the sexed up femme fatale turned spurned woman — but hearing that her alter-ego Estella was out there, committing more crimes, gave her a familiar flash of serious discomfort.
“Mate, this is massive.” Her sister wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and dropped it on the bench.
She came out of the kitchen, hands akimbo, her eyes bright.
“Mike Grant is dead. Looks like Estella is in charge now. She’s the king pin, the head honcho…
the queen pin? Season seven of Universe Below is going to kill it.
And you— ” Zara pointed a goofy finger gun right at Ellie’s head, “—will be the starring role.”
“This is fucking weird,” Ellie said, two hours later, an almost empty still-sweating bottle of Stone every news channel had breathless updates.
The Grants were big business in Melbourne.
The most surreal moment had been when the ticker-tape on Channel Ten had gleefully referenced the idea of another season of Universe Below, as though this further round of brutality was mere entertainment.
Her own face had appeared in the background — blonde wig, blue contacts and all — a scene from the season six promo, as though she and Estella Grant were really and truly the same person.
That, Ellie thought, trying to unclench her shoulders from her ears, was not an enjoyable thought.
“You hate this.” Zara frowned, reflecting her own expression back to her.
Zara was younger by two and a half years, but between Ellie’s overly careful I’m on TV skincare routine and the tumultuous events of Zara’s life, people often thought it was the other way around.
“I honestly thought you’d be excited as hell about a role like this. ”
Ellie took a breath. A tiny shiver at the back of her neck confused her.
The role did excite her. From a pure acting-challenge point of view, Estella was a dream come true.
She made for spectacular television. “It’s just…
creepy,” Ellie admitted. “She’s dangerous.
Like, seriously dangerous—” she gestured to the blank TV screen, that had reported five murders and three attempted murders from that Wednesday alone.
“And playing her means tapping into someone who’s that…
awful.” She struggled to articulate her complicated feelings about Estella Grant.
You couldn’t play someone for eight hour-long episodes of television without getting somewhat close to them, psychologically.
It was an odd feeling: deeply satisfying, but definitely… dark.
“You could say no?” Zara said tentatively. Ellie smiled at her little sister. She knew that Zara too — while working her arse off as a nurse — also daydreamed about Ellie making it big, though she’d never ever say it out loud.
“I probably couldn’t,” Ellie corrected. “My contract had a clause in it for future reprisals of the role. Besides,” she sucked in a deep breath, “it would be a lead role in a massive series.” She and Zara exchanged glances, and she could see the excitement growing in her sister’s eyes.
She knew, deep down, that it was a reflection of her own. “I mean. They might not even make it?”
The thought was unlikely. The series was produced by the legendary Jimmy Jenkins, a ferocious bulldog of a man.
It had been epically successful, both in Australia and in overseas markets.
Melbourne was a city that loved seeing itself reflected back on its screens and there wasn’t a person in town who couldn’t tell you the Grant family tree, or that of the Florellis — their main nemeses and competition for control of the streets.
It was all down to Jenkins and his ruthlessness that the series was both unflinchingly real — no false names to spare the guilty, or the innocent — and flagrantly fictional for maximised sex and violence.
The lawyers had had a field day, but the show came out with new seasons nonetheless.
No, there was no way in hell they’d let this development pass them by, the very minute the dust had settled.
Right on cue, her mobile rang. She looked across at Zara, disbelief in her eyes. It must be a coincidence, surely.
“It’s my fucking agent.”