Authors: NC Marshall
I
stare out at the city below in awe. The tall buildings lining the landscape are
starting to light up as the sun sinks lower. The view from Kings Park at sunset
is one I’m sure I’ll never tire of, no matter how long I stay in Perth. The
vantage point up here offers panoramic views of the surrounding area and the
city’s closer buildings. Sailboats sit peacefully on the river below, which
lazily weaves its way through the many suburbs. The boat sails are bright with
vibrant colours. In the distance, cars zip along the freeway and over the
Narrows Bridge. I can hear their engines as the traffic thickens. To the east,
far off on the horizon, I see the blurred line of the Darling Ranges.
The
orange light from the sun casts a warm glow over the already glorious view, as
Lola sits down next to me on the grass. I glance up to see Lauren and Rebecca
approach us. The two girls will be travelling with Lola tomorrow, and are
joining us in a final night’s celebration. Lola hands me some white wine in a
plastic beaker, poured from a mini bottle she’s pulled from her handbag. She
raises it into the air in a toast.
“Here’s
to my last night in Perth,” she says. I lift my cup to hers and hit it lightly.
“I
can’t believe you’re leaving,” I mutter, not able to hold back how upset I am.
Lola
is heading up North to Queensland tomorrow. It’s the next place on our
checklist of places we would go; the list I was supposed to be following with
her.
“I’m
sorry Lo,” I say, taking a sip of the wine from my cup. It tastes warm and
sickly sweet. “I feel so guilty for staying here, and not coming with you.”
Lola
pushes my arm playfully and I fall back, as a little of my wine falls over the
rim of my cup and lands on the grass near my bare legs. Lauren and Rebecca
catch up to us and sit down.
“Don’t
be stupid,” she says, as the two girls greet us. “I’ve got all the girls with
me, it’s not like I’m going alone.”
This
was true. I was happy that Lola has made so many friends while she’s been here,
I’ve been so attached to Adam lately we haven’t seen that much of each other.
“You
don’t need to worry about her, Jess. Me and Rebecca will keep watch over her,”
says Lauren, her broad Irish accent breaking through. I smile and rub her arm
affectionately.
We
had met Lauren and Rebecca during our last week in Sydney and they had
travelled on to Perth with us. The girls are the same age as Lola and I. They
are from Dublin, and we have become good friends during our time here. We
worked together picking fruit for three months when we first arrived in Western
Australia, which is a government requirement, and will enable us to extend our
visas a further twelve months once our first year is up.
“So
where’s your first stop tomorrow?” I ask. I know what our plans had been, but I
think they have changed now that Lola is travelling with the others.
Lola
crosses her long legs in front of her and leans back to put her weight on her
elbows.
“We’re
flying into Cairns, going to spend a few weeks there before we move on.” I nod
and smile at her. A slight stab of envy hits me as I think back to us planning
our own visit up North, to Cairns. We had so much planned for that part of
Australia. Snorkeling in the tropical waters of the great barrier reef, taking
a trip to the Daintree Rainforest, visiting the small mountaintop village of
Kuranda and then travelling along the coast to stunning Port Douglas. I’m happy
that Lola is still going on to do these things, even though I’m not.
“I’m
going to miss you all,” I say. “Do you think you’ll make it back to Perth?”
Lola
shrugs her shoulders. “Nope,” she replies. “The guys are talking about
Melbourne next.”
“My
cousin lives in Melbourne,” adds Rebecca. “So we are going to head there to
stay with her for a while.” She holds up her hands. “Such a big country, so
little time.”
I
nod, understanding her thoroughly. The time here is passing so quickly, it will
soon be time to go home, something I can’t yet bring myself to think about.
“Are
you ready to make a move? The other guys are meeting us for a few drinks in
Northbridge, they all want to see you before we leave,” says Lauren.
I
stand up, smoothing down my dress over my knees, then release my hair from its
grip at the back of my neck. It falls over my shoulders, and I ruffle it. Lola
pulls her lipstick from her bag and applies a fresh layer of red gloss to her
lips, as Lauren and Rebecca lead the way.
“Okay,”
I say brightly, trying to lift my low mood, “Let’s go.”
I
take one final glance back over my shoulder to the city before we head away
from its mesmerizing view. As I think of Adam, I smile, knowing that this is
exactly where I want to be.
It
doesn’t take long for Mitch to arrive. Kate opens the front door to her
ex-husband and welcomes him fondly. Through the gap in the door, I watch the
sweet embrace between them and am once again amazed by the fact that their
marriage didn’t work out.
“Hi
Nat,” Mitch says as he enters the kitchen. He glances around quickly. A sad
look passes his face and I instantly feel guilty for bringing him back to his
old home. It probably holds a lot of memories for him. The divorce is still
new, and seemingly, still very raw.
I’m
sitting at the kitchen table. I smile back at him as he approaches. Kate’s
laptop is already open and powered up in front of me, ready to go. I feel a bit
sickened by the fact that I may soon be reading messages from my sister’s
past—messages I have no right to see. I feel that even though she’s no longer
here, I’m invading her privacy to an extreme extent. But it’s something I have
to do. Kate has put the idea in my head now. I have to make sense of this
somehow, even if it is just to put my mind at ease.
Mitch
takes a seat next to me and slides the laptop across the table, turning it
towards himself. He angles the screen and adjusts the brightness, making it
easier for him to see.
“How
do you know how to do this sort of thing?” I ask curiously. I knew that Mitch
was good with computers, he works with them and has done for a long time, but
the fact he could hack into personal e-mail accounts was news to me.
Mitch
looks at me, grinning, and touches his nose to insinuate that I'm nosey.
“Let’s
just say working in IT for fifteen years teaches you some tricks. Besides, it’s
pretty easy when you know how,” he says, tapping on the computer keyboard to
log onto the e-mail service that Jess used to use, at a ridiculously quick
speed.
“Do
you know her e-mail address?” he asks, not looking up from the screen.
I
recite the details without hesitation; she had used the same personal address
for everything, she’d had the same one since college. I used to send her
pictures regularly and e-mails when she was in Australia. With the time
difference and call costs it had been so much easier to stay in contact that
way.
“Thanks
for doing this for Nat, Mitch,” Kate interrupts, sliding onto the seat in
between us. She flicks her long hair behind her shoulders, which catches
Mitch’s attention. His gaze lingers on her face for a few moments before he
turns his attention back to the task at hand.
“It’s
just that Jess had loads of photos saved on there that Nat would love copies
of. She knew her password once because Jess gave it to her, but she’s forgotten
it... it’s been so long.”
The
lie sounds convincing enough to me, but I doubt that Mitch believes it. He’d
been married to Kate too long and knows her far too well to be unable to call
her bluff. Nevertheless, he seems to accept what she tells him as the truth,
and carries on tapping on the keyboard.
“I’m
taking it you’ve tried the commonly used passwords she could have used. Names,
dates, favourite places...?” he asks.
I
nod quickly. “Yeah, I’ve tried all of them. I’m not sure if she might have
changed it just before she died.”
In
reality, I hadn’t even bothered attempting to guess any passwords before Mitch
had arrived. Jess always used passwords no one would ever be capable of
guessing. She’d had a real phobia about people hacking into her accounts, so
made sure she changed her passwords regularly. She never used anything that
would ever be related to her, or easy to guess. Looking back now though, maybe
she had more of a reason than deterring cyber criminals. Maybe she didn’t want
anyone
to access her accounts. She would hate me for this.
A
few moments later, Mitch turns the screen back to me. My eyes widen and my
pulse quickens. My hands suddenly feel clammy against the wooden table, and I realise
I’m nervous. I pull my hands away from the table and leave imprints from my
sweaty palms. Jess’s e-mail account sits open in front of me, still in complete
working order, as if she’s never even left.
“Well,
I’ll leave you to it, ladies. If anyone asks, I wasn’t here,” says Mitch, as he
stands from his seat, turns on one foot and heads towards the hallway, Kate
following behind him. I thank him as he passes me, fully understanding the
trouble this could get him into if his employers ever found out he was using
his skills outside of the office walls. I really am grateful.
I
hear Kate saying goodbye and thanking him again too, as the front door opens
and then quickly clicks closed. Kate rushes back into the kitchen parking
herself next to me, and we start to read through communication from my sister’s
final months.
*
I’ve
been on the laptop for almost half an hour now, and I’m still no closer to
finding out anything about Jess’s mystery man. I had decided to look through
Jess’s sent items box first, but it’s been wiped clean and sits empty. Any
e-mails that she sent before she passed away have all gone, a lot might have
been wiped clean due to the time that has passed. Her trash folder is also
empty. I find a couple of e-mails in her saved drafts, along with a few that
have been flagged, but these are from when she was still working for the
magazine. They are ideas that she had sent to her office address for
forthcoming columns, and messages sent back from Greg.
Surprisingly,
her inbox doesn’t have a lot of unread mail. I’d assumed that because the
account hasn’t been deactivated and obviously hasn’t been accessed for a while,
that she would have a backlog of junk mail. But then I remember how Jess was,
and appreciate that she probably rarely gave her personal e-mail address to
anyone, other than those necessary.
I
scroll through the unread messages highlighted in a bold font. There are a few
from high street stores, which she must have used in the past to shop online,
some from her bank and old credit card company telling her about the offers she
could claim, then some more offering her promotional money off coupons. No
general e-mails, no love letters or secret meeting arrangements, nothing.
The
last place I check is her history. I have scrolled right through to the
earliest date, but again, nothing is striking me as unusual or out of the
ordinary. I smile faintly as I see some messages sent by me only a few weeks
before she died. There are a few jokes sent from Lola, along with a couple of
notes from Mum. I click open a message from Ryan which has pictures attached. I
open them to find photos of Josh and Liam. They look so young, it’s amazing how
quickly the boys have grown in the year since the pictures had been taken. I
close them and navigate through the remainder of messages, but I’m fast losing
hope. There’s nothing else.
Was
this really all there was? Or had Jess been purposely trying to hide something?
Maybe she was scared Matt would somehow gain access to her account, so she
covered her tracks. Maybe she had used her mobile phone to contact this man,
but there was no way of knowing. Her phone had been thrown free during the fall
and had been found by the police. It had been shattered into pieces, laying at
the bottom of a salt water rock pool which had rendered the phone totally
unusable and its data unsalvageable. Maybe I just had to admit that for once in
her life, Steph had got it wrong, and the relationship between Jess and this
man
had
been purely platonic?
“Do
you want another cup of tea?” shouts Kate from the opposite side of the
kitchen, where she’s busy washing dishes and cleaning down the kitchen work
surfaces. I can smell the strong smell of bleach coming from her direction.
She’s probably not wanting to interfere too much with what I am doing. I can
fully understand why.
“Yes,
please,” I shout back, rubbing my temples that are now beginning to ache from
looking at the computer screen for so long. I start to tap my way through the
e-mails Jess had most recently opened, and hand Kate my mug from the last cup
of tea she had made me, for a re-fill.
Still
nothing. I’m just about to give up and shut down the program when an e-mail
catches my eye, which had been sent out a few weeks before Jess died. I must
have missed it when I first looked. It’s been sent by a travel agency based in
the city. I assume it’s just a promotion, or some sort of deal, as I know Jess
had booked holidays through them in the past. But then I see that there is a
booking reference number attached to the title. I open it, and it blinks onto
the screen.
The
e-mail is for Jess, and thanks her for her custom. It has an attachment on the
bottom, which I swiftly double click to open. It’s a booking confirmation for
two one-way flights to Perth International Airport, Western Australia. The
e-mail states that it was departing on 11
th
January from Heathrow. I
don’t understand—that was the day after Jess died, but her name is down as one
of the passenger’s travelling. Confusion sets in further as I read the
remainder of the e-mail, which says that the airline tickets had arrived at the
travel agency and would be posted out to the address given at the time of
booking. Where had the tickets gone to? She surely wouldn’t have had them
delivered to her house.
The
room starts spinning as I stare at the screen in front of me. I narrow my eyes
to adjust my focus, almost wishing that I hadn’t started poking into my
sister’s past. I inhale and hold my breath, realising Steph had most likely
been right about Jess having an affair. And it looks like she was prepared to
leave the country, her family, and everything she knew to be with this man. I
stare hard at the second passenger’s name as if trying to erase it permanently,
as if it didn’t exist: Mr Adam Walker. I wrack my brains trying to place the name,
but I know that I’ve never heard it before now. Jess had never mentioned it,
and it doesn’t even sound familiar. I don’t know who this man is. But one thing
is for sure. I’m going to find out.