Jill hurried forward and took the bowl. 'Ca.s.sie!' she said. 'You'll drop something.'

'I've got it,' said Ca.s.sie. 'You sound like Mum.'

Great, thought Jill. Good start. 'Yum,' she said, 'this looks gorgeous, Ca.s.s.'

'Rocket, pear, fig and blue cheese salad,' said Ca.s.sie. 'From Belgiovani's. Blonde chicken from Kim Sun's. Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand the Marlborough district, I believe.'

Ca.s.sie took a seat in a white leather dining chair and cracked the seal on the wine. She grabbed a gla.s.s and poured.

Jill walked into Ca.s.sie's gorgeous kitchen she did so love appliances and selected a white platter from a shelf. When she brought it back to the table a gla.s.s of wine waited at her setting.

Ca.s.sie gave her a cat-like smile.

Jill took her seat. Ca.s.sie knew that she didn't drink. At least she thought she didn't. Here we go again, she thought, using booze to break the ice. She took a sip of the wine and smiled back at her sister.

'Mmm,' she said, and laid out the food from the delicatessen.

They ate quietly for a few moments. Chill-out music drifted with fresh air through the apartment.

'So what were you doing there, Jill?' Ca.s.sie finally asked.

What were you doing there, Ca.s.sie? Jill knew the question she so wanted to ask was not the best way to get into this. She wanted this meeting with her sister to go well. For once.

'Ca.s.sie,' she began instead, 'thank you so much for not letting on that you knew me. You saved my a.r.s.e. Seriously.'

'Yeah? I didn't know what you were doing there, but I could tell you didn't feel like a catch-up.'

Jill gave a short laugh and took another sip of wine. 'That's the understatement of the year,' she said. 'I'm undercover at the moment, and I was working.'

'No s.h.i.t!' said Ca.s.sie.

Jill stabbed at a fig-half. 'Thing is, Ca.s.sie, I'm not supposed to tell anyone, even you and Mum and Dad, that I'm working this way. But because you saw me there, I had to explain. If you had blown my cover, I don't know what would have happened.'

'Oh my G.o.d. My sister's a super spy.'

'Yeah, yeah.'

The conversation stalled for a little with the unasked question hanging between them. Why were you there, Ca.s.sie?

'Seeing much of Scotty?' Ca.s.sie asked. A dangerous enough question, given that the last time they'd seen Scotty had been in the hospital after Ca.s.sie's overdose. The Scotty issue was always loaded for Jill anyway. She slid her gla.s.s forward when Ca.s.sie wiggled the bottle at her, an enquiry on her face.

'I thought I'd catch up with him today, while I'm out this way,' Jill answered. 'I hadn't seen him for ages before . . . the other day.'

Ca.s.sie sucked at an olive pit. One song ended. Another began.

'What about you, Ca.s.s? You still seeing Aidan?'

'Aidan. No. Loser. There's a new guy, a lawyer. I don't know, I thought he was great, but . . . Are they all losers, Jill?'

'Did you just ask me that question?'

Ca.s.sie laughed. 'Well, you don't seem to have too many man disasters,' she said.

'You mean, I don't seem to have too many men,' said Jill.

'There's Scotty. He's a big hunk of yum.'

Jill's heart somersaulted. No please, Ca.s.sie, don't turn your radar in that direction. But why not, she asked herself, surprised at the strength of her reaction. Why shouldn't Ca.s.sie date Scotty? Because I'd never stand a chance again, she answered herself. So I want a chance? Jill hit the mute b.u.t.ton on the dialogue in her head and watched as Ca.s.sie scanned the table for a low-kilojoule morsel, her shiny fringe hanging in her green eyes.

'Yeah, well. I'm not too sure what's going on with Scotty,' Jill said. 'I prefer working. It's so much simpler.'

'Oh, definitely,' said Ca.s.sie. 'Simple. It does sound that way, Jill. What is your job again? New South Wales police detective pretending to be a gangster, or a gangster's moll, or a prost.i.tute or something?' Ca.s.sie laughed. 'That was some tracksuit, sis.'

'Mmm, Playboy. I can lend it to you if you like.' Jill felt a little irritated; the volume of her sister's voice was increasing.

'Maybe,' Ca.s.sie laughed again. 'It might be fun to role-play a s.k.a.n.ky drug addict . . .'

Ca.s.sie's fork froze halfway to her lips, as she seemed to realise what she had said. Her cheeks glowed. She dribbled the last of the wine into her gla.s.s, raised the gla.s.s to her mouth and drained it.

'Dead soldier,' she said, standing up with the bottle. Jill remembered that Ca.s.sie always referred to empty bottles that way. 'Same again?'

'I'm right, thanks, Ca.s.s,' said Jill, tearing off a chunk of bread. She needed something starchy to soak up what she'd already had.

Ca.s.sie returned to the table and cracked open another bottle of wine; poured some for each of them. 'So,' she said, leaning back in the chair with her gla.s.s, 'who were you pretending to be anyway?'

'I can't go into it any more than I have, Ca.s.s, sorry. But I probably should ask how you ended up in that house.'

'What? I'm supposed to tell you all about what I get up to, but it doesn't go both ways?'

'It's a different thing '

'I'm just s.h.i.tting you, Jill. It's no biggie. Adele's kind of got a thing for one of those guys. She met him at a club.'

'Which guy?'

'I don't know. Why? Has one of them taken your fancy? I did notice the big boy seemed pretty interested in you, tracksuit and all . . . What was his name? Casper or something?'

'Kasem.'

'That's the one. Yeah, I can see that he might be worth the hike out to the sticks. Bit of rough trade.'

'Ca.s.sie, please . . .'

'I might have made a move if he hadn't been so interested in you.'

'Ca.s.sie. Would you just stop for a minute!' Jill put her gla.s.s down hard and wine sloshed onto the table. 'Sorry,' she said, reaching for a napkin.

Ca.s.sie leaned back in her chair, a resigned, sullen look upon her face, waiting for the lecture.

'Look,' said Jill, 'I can't tell you what to do, Ca.s.sie, but these are not people you should be f.u.c.king around with.'

'I know what I'm doing, Jill.'

'Oh, of course you do, Ca.s.sie. That's why we got called to St Vincent's in the middle of the night.' Jill could feel her temper rising, wanted to reign it in, but the words spewed forth of their own accord. 'That's why you had a psychotic breakdown, for f.u.c.ksakes. That's why you nearly died, overdosing on G.o.d knows what. What, so you smoke ice now? c.o.ke doesn't touch the sides anymore?'

Ca.s.sie sat quietly, raised her gla.s.s to her eye and peered through the pale lemon-lime coloured liquid, as though studying it for judgement in a wine compet.i.tion.

'You know,' she said finally, 'you're not Ms Perfect yourself.'

'Look, I'm sorry, Ca.s.sie. It's the wine. I'm not used to it, I shouldn't have said that.'

'Oh, you wanted to say it. For once in your life you might as well say what you want to say.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Actually, I don't want to know, thought Jill, but it was too late.

'It means that you never say what you really think. That you avoid any kind of adult conversation, as though you're still some f.u.c.king thirteen-year-old. That you sit in judgement about others, but you live like you have OCD, or you're a f.u.c.king nun.'

Jill stood to leave. Had she scripted in advance the worst possible outcome for this lunch date, she could not have done a better job than what was going on now.

'That's right, run away again,' Ca.s.sie went on. 'Just like you've done ever since you got kidnapped.'

Jill whipped her head around and stared at her sister, stunned.

'That's right, Jill. You were kidnapped. We can say it out loud. Not that anyone talked about it ever again when you got home.'

I can't do this, Jill thought, searching for her bag.

'It wasn't just you who had a hard time after that, Jill.' Ca.s.sie stood too now, her face wet, flushed. 'Nothing was ever the same again. We all disappeared. You went up your own a.r.s.e somewhere, and I became invisible too. n.o.body spoke about anything real anymore. Can't upset Jill.'

Jill found her bag. She felt a m.u.f.fled nothingness, as though she was watching this tableau from inside a gla.s.s bubble; the edges of the world were distorted with the sphere that surrounded her. She wasn't certain that, if she tried to speak, any words would actually make it out of the bubble, but somewhere, faintly, a pressure urged her to try; to give Ca.s.sie the message she'd come here to relay.

'Ca.s.sie,' she began, quietly.

Ca.s.sie leaned forward, her hands on the table, as though to brace herself for what her sister was about to say.

'If you listen to one thing I ever say in my whole life,' Jill continued, in an amiable tone, 'let it be this. If you say anything to any of your drug-f.u.c.ked friends about what you saw the other night, you will get me killed.' Jill met her sister's eyes. 'f.u.c.king dead. It will be on your head.' She walked to the door. 'Thanks for lunch.'

23.

Sunday 7 April, 4 pm.

On the bus travelling home from her shopping trip, Seren considered the implications of not having obtained the laptop.

Every day for the past three hundred days, she had imagined this precise moment, this step in the plan, but in her imagination, she had been carrying four items: the camera, the shirt, the bra, the laptop.

She considered whether she could do without a computer. That would require capturing evidence of such irrefutable power that it would achieve her goal with just thirty minutes of data recorded she hadn't been able to afford a device with more storage capacity.

She'd been through the plan hundreds of times: she knew that she was most likely to capture numerous small indiscretions that she could use, c.u.mulatively, to prosecute her case to Christian, to prove to him that he could not win this time, that he had to do as she asked. The likelihood that she'd be in the right place at the right time to get the one perfect scene was minuscule.

She'd have to try to take the shirt back.

Or, what if . . . Seren wondered whether she might be able to secure credit and pay a laptop off. It seemed every b.l.o.o.d.y schoolkid could get a computer. Loads of shops offered interest-free options. She suddenly kicked out at the seat in front of her. It wouldn't work. Obtaining finance required an employment history of a longer duration than three days. Should that not be available, some kind of guarantor was required. Seren could not see a way that she could get a loan.

Abruptly, the realisation that such a small misstep so early in the piece could derail the whole scheme shook her resolve.

If she could make such a stupid, ditzy move on the first day of the plan, how the h.e.l.l was she going to follow this thing through to the end? The improbability of pulling it off weighed down on her and she leaned her head forward, resting her forehead on the back of the seat, staring down into her shopping bags.

Maybe it's time you just b.l.o.o.d.y grow up, Seren, she said to herself. You are out of gaol. You have your son, somewhere to live, and a job. She peeked at the handful of people on the bus around her. All of them appeared to be travelling home from some kind of work. On a Sunday.

See, you don't even have to work weekends and you're b.i.t.c.hing, she berated herself. Life is not about restaurants, and units with harbour views, and thousand-dollar shoes. The handful of happy people who have those lives have been blessed by destiny; they as good as don't even occupy the same world you do. You think you're so special, Seren? You think you're better than all the people living in these houses by the bus route? Get a grip. You were a single mother at fifteen. You're an orphan, a parolee. You live in a s.h.i.thole and you work in a slaughterhouse.

You are Seren Templeton. You are responsible for another person. A child. Your child, Marco.

Seren let the tears drop down into the grime on the floor of the bus.

It's his turn now, she told herself. You had your chance. Maybe if you don't f.u.c.k up his life, he can have a better shot at this c.r.a.p.

A couple of stops pa.s.sed before she lifted her face from the back of the bus seat in front of her.

Her shopping bags now just a burden rather than a magician's kit to get her out of this life, Seren leaned against the wall and stabbed repeatedly at the up b.u.t.ton for the lift in her unit block.

Frigging thing took forever to get down to the ground, and once you were in there it was worse. She could have jogged the stairs faster she had done it before but she didn't have the heart today. She craned her neck up through the open lightwell to stare at her floor, six levels above.

Finally, she heard the pulleys of the lift complaining, straining to reach the ground. She stood back from the doors.

Along with the regular p.i.s.s stench, beer fumes buffeted outward when the doors opened. Tready.

Not. Today.

'I saw you from up our floor,' he said. 'Where you been all day? It's a Sunday.'

Seren considered waiting down here, but she knew that this idiot would follow her regardless. She got into the lift. Tready stumbled a little and shoulder-charged the wall, trying to keep himself from falling. His piggy eyes squinted in concentration as he tried to remain upright.

'Whoa.' He steadied himself, and then with carrot-coloured fingertips put his cigarette back between his lips. The lift hadn't even moved yet. 'What'cha got there? Been shopping?' he said. As soon as the doors closed, he reached out and grabbed for her bags.

'Hey!' Seren held on.

Tready ripped the glossy cardboard of the bag from the boutique. The bag holding her white shirt. Before she could pull it away from him, he turned his back to her and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the shirt. She heard him shredding the tissue that had wrapped it so carefully.

Seren saw the collar of her new white shirt in Tready's meaty hands and the world became silent. She stared into his sweating face as his mouth opened and closed, apparently saying something, then baring his teeth as he laughed. She watched him reach into one of the other bags now slack in her hands and draw out its contents. Her heart-attack bra.

Still no sound.