Chapter 14
Ellie watched the most dangerous woman in Melbourne lick sweet cannoli filling from her fingers as though she didn’t have a care in the world.
Estella had a confident sensuality about her that seemed almost unconscious.
Ellie studied her, trying to figure out where it was coming from, what combination of movement and pacing was producing Estella’s languorous magnetism, but she got derailed as her subject flicked her long eyelashes up to meet her gaze head-on.
Oof, this was stupid. She couldn’t get rattled every time Estella caught her staring.
Staring was the point. This was her one real opportunity to get Estella’s mannerisms down.
She forced herself not to look away, even though she had a nagging suspicion her face was flushing— no, she wouldn’t think of it, that only made her blush worse.
“You’re from Adelaide?” she blurted, to cover exactly how unnerved she was, and Estella cocked her head, her non-sugary hand flicking back a lock of gold.
“That’s your question? Something you could find on the internet?”
“I know where you were born,” Ellie said, feeling defensive of The Dossier she’d left reluctantly at home.
“It just feels like a weird place for one of Melbourne’s criminal elite to come from.
” Estella snorted, looking amused and Ellie jumped back in before she could make fun of her.
“You just feel very of Melbourne, that’s all.
It’s like finding out Flinders Street Station had been assembled in Darwin and sent down by truck. ”
“That’s… a very strange analogy.” Estella picked up the carton of treats and offered one to her.
Ellie grabbed a bignè, quickly taking a bite of pastry and cream to cover her awkwardness.
“Here’s a suggestion. How about you stop seeing me as some kind of fully formed criminal Aphrodite or some kind of entire institution and just ask me questions about being a human? ”
Ellie glared at her around her mouthful and Estella smiled, way too innocently, as Ellie swallowed the sweet treat and tried again.
“Why did your family move to Melbourne?”
“The real question is why they moved to Adelaide in the first the place,” Estella corrected her again. Ellie waited for her to elaborate, but Estella just munched contentedly on her pastry, until finally Ellie huffed and caved.
“Oh my god, fine. Why did your parents move to Adelaide?”
Estella smiled. “Knew you could do it. My parents were both Melburnians. They moved to Adelaide to get away from the Florellis.” She was silent for a moment, letting that point land.
“My dad was the cliche bad boy, and my mother was the pretty bombshell he couldn’t stop chasing.
She married him on the proviso he stayed the hell away from the family business. ”
Ellie wished she had The Dossier, wished she could record this, on her phone maybe, capturing every inflection of Estella’s voice.
Luckily, her memory had been sharpened from years of memorising scripts.
She resolved to commit every word she heard today in a mental file titled simply Estella.
Ruby red, of course. She focused intently on Estella’s face, took in the way her painted lips curved around words, the way she crossed her long tanned legs and leaned back on her hands.
Took note of the fleck of icing sugar at the corner of her lip, the way her tongue darted out to lick it away.
“So they moved to Adelaide and had you. Why did they come back?” Ellie popped the rest of the pastry into her mouth. It was the best bignè she’d ever tasted.
“My mum worked as a primary school teacher,” Estella said, and Ellie tried not to choke on her mouthful.
It wasn’t what she’d expected. Estella flicked her gaze sideways at her, knowingly.
“But my dad, he struggled for work. Took odd jobs. Couldn’t hold anything down.
When my mum had me, they ran into financial trouble.
My dad had big ideas about women staying at home with the kids, but he couldn’t back it up with any action.
Then, his uncle offered him a job. Said it was on the legitimate side of the business, on the level.
Swore it to him. And my mum, well, she was desperate enough to agree. ”
“She had a baby to look after,” Ellie said softly. She was thinking of Zara. Of hard choices, that seldom panned out the way you’d hope.
“Yeah,” said Estella. She gazed into the distance. “I ruined her life.”
“Is that what she told you?” Ellie was aghast. Estella shook her head. She was gazing determinedly at her immaculate red pedicure.
“No. She’d never have said that to me. Not back then anyway. She was a great mum. In the beginning.”
“What happened?” Ellie felt out of her depth.
She remembered the wilds of drama school, of being made to excavate her personal traumas and those of her fellow students.
For content; for motivation; for emotional analysis; for the sadistic pleasure of their teachers, who really knew?
There had to be a better way of asking difficult personal questions, surely, but sometimes the only way through was to be direct.
Estella huffed and drew her knees in, curling them around to sit, grabbing another pastry. She seemed ravenous.
“Surprise, surprise, the job wasn’t all that legitimate and my dad got pulled into the dark side of the business. My mum faced unspeakable repercussions and then she found heroin.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said inadequately. Estella fixed her sharp blue gaze on Ellie’s face, her chin raised.
“What’s your mum like?” she asked.
Ellie felt it like a punch in the gut.
“Why would that matter?” Her mouth was dry despite the sweetness of the pastry. “We’re not getting to know each other. This is about me getting to play you on television.”
“Cute,” said Estella. “That’s not how this is going to work. You get to ask me questions; I get to ask you questions in return. Or have you never had a conversation before?”
“Why would you care?” Ellie shook her head in confusion. “It’s not like we’re going to be friends.”
“We’re not?” Estella pressed her hand to her chest, like she was wounded.
Ellie rolled her eyes and Estella turned her body all the way around to face her, square on.
“Listen, we’re doing this; I’ve accepted that.
I want you to do this role right because I have a vested interest in not being recorded for all of perpetuity as a psychopathic bimbo.
But if you think I’m going to let you mine me for intimate details of my life and have it all be one way, you’re dreaming.
It’s a power imbalance, and not on the side I’m comfortable with. ”
Ellie’s mouth was agape, nothing but the sound of the birds. Then, a laugh spluttered out. Estella narrowed her eyes, but despite the potential risk to her health and safety, Ellie couldn’t quite stop another snort of laughter escaping.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you’re worried about me having power over you? You literally let me know you could kill me any time.”
“Yeah, but I won’t,” Estella said, like it was obvious.
“I don’t know that!” Ellie pointed out. “You also have an entire network of organised crime backing you! Is that not power enough for you?”
“And you’re playing me on television, making the entire world decide what to think of me. Isn’t that a hell of a lot of power over me?”
They faced off for a long moment, Ellie searching Estella’s face for clues as to what it was she wanted. It made no sense to her why Estella would want to know a single thing about her.
“Is this insurance?” she asked finally. “Like I know your secrets, and you know mine?”
Estella started laughing. “Unless you’ve killed someone, Ellie Graham, I don’t think we’re going to be on par.”
Ellie went still. “So you have,” she said, softly, before she could stop herself. “Killed someone.”
An odd expression crossed Estella’s face, conflict flaring in her blue eyes.
She opened her mouth and closed it again, Ellie’s words hanging in the air between them.
“There’s a limit to what I’ll tell you.” Her voice was so soft that Ellie wasn’t sure if she’d accurately read the threat in her tone. “Pick your questions more wisely.”
“My mum lives in Vietnam,” Ellie said abruptly, her skin burning hot at the near miss.
Anything to stop herself from becoming some kind of compromised party to a murder confession.
Would that have been a criminal offence?
Hearing that someone had killed a person and not going straight to the police?
Ellie had just wanted to be an actor for god’s sake.
“At least, last we heard. She’s kind of a flake. ”
“How so?” Estella finally bit into the eclair she’d been gripping. Ellie was still dizzy at her misstep.
“She’s very dedicated to working with children,” she managed to get out. “But only if there’s kudos involved. Like travel blogs and Instagram reels of orphanages overseas. Not so much the boring kind of work with children, such as parenting the ones you birthed.”
“Oh, exotic children, how delightful,” Estella said, with such relaxed venom that it was as if Ellie was talking to a cheerfully sarcastic friend in a bar. “How wonderful that abandoned babies exist, so your mum can be validated.”
“Got it in one.” Ellie was startled. “It’s like you’ve met her.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Ten years ago.”
“You didn’t even have to think about that,” Estella observed.
“My nephew had just turned three,” Ellie said shortly. “My sister really needed her to step up — be a grandparent, god, even just be a mum — and when she didn’t, Zara told her to go to hell and never come back.”
“Your sister has boundaries.” Estella looked oddly pleased, like she was invested in all this.
“My sister has trauma,” Ellie corrected.
“What kind of trauma?”
“Why did your mum start heroin?” Ellie bit back. She wasn’t letting Estella turn Zara’s pain into some kind of game, and fuck her for trying.
“Touché,” said Estella. She smiled at Ellie, like she was low-key proud of her, then took her last bite of the pastry in her hand, chewed and swallowed. “How strong is your stomach?” she asked suddenly, and Ellie swallowed too.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she quickly backtracked.
“You want to know me, but just the fun parts? You think I got here via private school and ponies?”
“I don’t want to make you talk about things you don’t want to.”
“How delicate of you. But if I don’t tell you the things that made me who I am, I’ll get the bimbo treatment.”
“You won’t—”
“I’ll spare you the details. My mum was abducted by the Florellis to keep my dad in line.
Whatever they did to her, while they had her…
well, I’ve been around those kind of men all my life, so I hardly have to guess.
My dad got back in line, fast; he had no choice.
So they let her go. Unharmed, so they said.
But she was never the same after that. First drinking, then prescription drugs. Then, heroin.”
Estella delivered all of that with her gaze on the still half-full box of pastries. Ellie was never going to eat a bignè or a cannoli ever again.
“How old were you?” Her voice came out just over a whisper.
“Twelve,” Estella said. “Quite the introduction to the sexual politics of the mob.”
“I’m so—”
“If you feel sorry for me, I’ll change my mind about what I said about not having you killed,” Estella said abruptly. Ellie pulled herself up short, but she saw the faint glimmer in Estella’s eyes. Really great sense of humour this woman had.
“Absolutely no take-backs,” Ellie said firmly. Estella laughed.
“So your sister…” she began and reclined back on the picnic blanket with her arm above her head and gazed up at the sky.