Chapter 1
ONE
Alexia
Present Day
The thing about staying in someone else's house is that everything is... different.
It's a universal truth. The sounds, the smells, the location of things, the textures — all just not quite right. At the ripe old age of twenty-four and ten and a half months, it's a fact of life I've become accustomed to.
As it turns out, though, I'm not remotely prepared for the bathroom acoustics at my brother's place.
This becomes blatantly obvious about six minutes into my shower, as I launch into my rendition of All By Myself.
Two syllables into a performance that would make Ms Dion wipe away an emotional tear, I finally understand why my parents kindly, but firmly and repeatedly, suggested I concentrate on my academic studies.
Doesn't stop me performing for an audience of one, though.
"~All byyyy myselllllffff," I warble into the showerhead.
"~Alone at Big bro's house, squatting because my accommodation fell through.
But it has hot water and a stocked fridge and I am a full-grown adult person who can handle a minor inconvenience with grace and fortitude, and also this body wash smells freaking incredibleeeeeee~—"
I hold the last note, gripping the showerhead mic, pouring my all into my relatable, poetic lyrics.
When I'm all but fainting from lack of oxygen, I rip the showerhead away with a flourish and take a deep bow, ignoring the shampoo lather stinging my eyes.
See, I tell myself, life isn't so bad, right?
The situation in question: squatting at my brother Leon's house after being offered a last-minute research associate role starting at Adelaide University tomorrow.
After getting the call at precisely 4:59pm on Friday, I ran home, shoved everything I could fit into a single bulging suitcase and two tattered grocery bags, and jumped in my car, supremely confident I could turn up at Mum's and she'd welcome her baby girl home with open arms. Three hours into an eighteen-hour drive, I remembered our family home had sold a month ago and Mum was now halfway round the world on a singles cruise, enjoying round-the-clock mimosas with her best friend.
A frantic FaceTime call with Leon, while going 110km/h down the Sturt Highway, calmed me down some.
His house, the one he shares with his best friends slash business partners slash the last people on earth I ever want to see again, would be empty for at least a week while they checked out a business prospect upstate.
I was welcome to stay as long as I needed.
Fifteen hours, three rest-stop naps and way too many chicken-salt-suffocated petrol station hot chips later, I arrived, retrieved the hidden key, punched his birthday into the alarm console (really, Leon? Your birthday?) and passed out fully clothed in his absurdly tidy bedroom.
Now I'm clean and ready to face the sharp left turn my life has taken.
Well, almost.
First: caffeine.
I wrap a towel around my body, twist another round my hair, and step out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam.
Leon's lived here with his three best friends for four years.
When he first told me they were building a house together, I gave him a look that expressed exactly how much confidence I had in him and his three idiot mates not burning it to the ground within six months.
Hard not to, given the chaos they'd caused blowing through our house growing up. But time's proven me wrong.
"Woah," I say, under my breath, looking around the kitchen.
The open eating and cooking area is... perfect.
Which shouldn't surprise me, considering at least one of them does this for a living.
A sliver of cold trickles down my spine at the thought of Marcus, who owns his own construction company and is, if The Advertiser is to be believed, "one of the young upstarts to watch in Adelaide's construction industry.
" I catch my own scowl reflected in a cabinet's glass door and fling it open harder than I should.
It shudders. I wince, hoping said young upstart installed sturdy hinges. It holds, and I reach in for a plain mug, bypassing the one that says I Screw For A Living. No question who that one belongs to.
"Just a girl... looking for a tea baaaaag. Where's a girl meant to get a little jiggle it action?" I sing, spinning around, mug in hand.
Hope arrives in the form of an elaborate hot-drinks station at the end of the bench: a row of coffee-bean dispensers, an industrial grinder, two coffee machines, one that looks capable of taking me back to November 5, 1955, and a mahogany-and-brass tamping station that cost more than my last month's rent. Clearly Zachary's work. Zachary who parlayed his love of the beverage into two Australia’s Bartender of the Year awards and now manages, and fronts, the multiple bars he owns with my brother and the other two. If I kept exploring, I imagine I’ll find an even more impressive liqueur display somewhere in this house.
What there isn't, however, is any green tea. Good thing I travel with a collection.
I'm halfway across the kitchen, back towards Leon's room to retrieve my precious tea satchel, when the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
I freeze. Ears pricking.
No immediately obvious reason for it. I've spent six years in inner-city Sydney falling asleep to traffic and the thump of whichever underground club's taken up residence in my building's basement — silence isn't something I'm used to anymore.
I take another step towards the bedroom when I hear it again.
No figment this time: a dull thump against wood. The front door.
Then voices. Angry, frustrated voices.
I catch a few words. "...locked... key... shit... faster... before... sees..."
Shit. Intruders trying to get in and out before anyone catches them.
Today? Today's the day someone decides to break into Leon's house?
Another thump on the door and every part of me goes rigid.
Come on, Alexia, where are all those street smarts you keep telling everyone you picked up in Sydney?
My brain cycles through options at roughly the speed of a sloth wading through tar.
Hide? Where, behind the fridge? I might be a tidy five foot almost one, but my front and back... bits... make up in width what I lack in height.
Run? Towards Leon's room, which is towards the front door, towards the intruders. No thanks.
Call for help? Phone's charging in Leon's room.
Bad as those options are, they're still better than the one I seem to be hurtling towards: greeting intruders in a towel, gripping a tea-less mug. Should've grabbed the Screw For A Living one, that looked like it could dent a skull.
Metallic scratching. A cry of triumph. The door banging open.
Fuckity fuck shit fuck! Should've spent less time weighing up murder mugs and more time fleeing!
The front door slams shut, trapping me inside with them.
Fuckity fuck shit fuck times two.
My heart thunders as footsteps head towards the back of the house, where I am. Whatever they're after, it isn't in the living room or the two bedrooms along the hallway.
I grab the nearest thing that might pass for a weapon, a banana off the fruit bowl. I raise the mug over my shoulder like a shot put, banana in my other hand like a... fine, like a gun. Let's not quibble over my self-defence instincts right now.
I swallow, adrenaline spiking.
"Hurry up, we have to be quick," a male voice says. "I only came because you promised you'd just be grabbing something."
I go still.
I know that voice. But — no. It can't be.
"Why don't you stop rushing me and try his phone again," another voice says. Lower. Gravelly.
An entire bucket of ice tips over my head.
I know that voice too. Only too well.
"I've been trying, he must be on the plane already," the first voice adds.
Rhys.
One of Leon's best friends, and top on my list of people I'd volunteer for an all expenses paid, one-way flight to Neptune.
Suddenly I wish I were facing actual intruders.
Zachary sighs, best friend number two. "Fine. I just wanted to see if she'd made it here. But I don't see her."
A huff. Rhys's trademark. "Look, Leon's got her number. If she doesn't show today, we'll reach out in the morning."
I’m too shocked realising they’re talking about me that I don’t move before they step into the kitchen and stop dead at what greets them.
Me. In a towel. Hair in a second towel on top of my head. A mug in one hand, a banana pointed at them in the other.
Nobody moves.
I haven't seen either of them in six years. They're somehow both exactly as I remember, and not, at once.
Nobody says anything.
So I do.
"Um. Hi."
Still nothing.
So my mouth keeps going.
"So, I'm Alexia," I say, which they obviously know, and then, because that wasn't idiotic enough, "Leon's sister.
His youngest sister, well, his only sister.
I mean, you know me, you've known me since we were kids.
" Zachary blinks; I take it as encouragement.
"Anyway, I've got a job starting here tomorrow, so Leon — he's my older brother, as established — Leon said the house would be empty, said you were all going away" — Zachary opens his mouth, I keep going — "not that I'd have assumed I could stay, but my accommodation fell through, which is a whole thing, because who could've known our house would finally sell after six months on the market, no bites, only for a young couple to decide they absolutely wanted it, one month to the day before I needed somewhere to crash, coming back to Adelaide after six years away.
Quite the welcome home, right? Anyway, I had a shower, obviously, you can see that, that's not, I don't make a habit of prancing around, I mean I wasn't prancing, I was moving like a perfectly normal person, but yeah" — I gesture at myself, at the towel situation — "not important.
Point is, Leon said I could stay while I got sorted.
So. That's the situation. Long story short. Anyway, anyone want tea?"
They just stare.
That's when I feel the towel... shift.
Before I can grab it, the knot gives and everything moves southward.
"Shi—"