The Game You Played (20 page)

A sudden cold sweat pricked my skin.

The moths with the damaged wings.

The woman’s wild, fearful eyes.

The pearl-handled knife.

The three things I’d been handed in my dreams—I’d seen them all that day in number 29.

And I’d been dreaming of them over the past few days. I’d dreamed them so intensely. So vividly.

I’d ended up convincing myself that the dreams were random. Meaningless.

I was wrong.

Those images were all connected to number 29.

But why had I dreamed of things connected to number 29 and Tommy in the same dreams?

The answer flashed into my mind.

Whatever had happened to Tommy was linked with that house.

Was it Bernice who took Tommy? Was
she
the abductor?

Panic tightened my chest. Even all these years later, she might still be holding onto her hatred.

At dawn, I had to do the thing I said I’d never do again.

Go back to number 29.

I had to.

I waited out the next hour between four thirty and five thirty.

Then it was time to go. Dressing in dark colours, I pulled a hood over my head.

If Nan heard me leaving, I’d say I was going for a walk. The sun would be rising soon.

Misting rain coated my skin as soon as I left the house. The sky was moonless, dead dark. The street quiet. I stepped quickly down Nan’s path, hoping no one who knew me was about at this early hour. I closed the gate.

I jumped as a figure seemed to appear from nowhere, walking towards me. We both stopped short, each of us startled by each other. A man, hooded like me, stood in the street a short distance away.

I ran a checklist through my head. Was this the man I’d seen that night near my mailbox? He wasn’t wearing the same cap or a jacket—he was wearing a dark, hooded raincoat. From here, I couldn’t tell if he had a beard.

He began walking again. I tried to see him as he passed, but it was between streetlights and he kept his head down. All I saw was that he had facial hair. More than a goatee. A full beard. If he was the same man Kate had seen, his beard might have grown. In one hand, he held a briefcase. In the other, an umbrella. I stared after him. The umbrella had the carved head of a duck on the wooden handle.

Bernice had the same type of umbrella. The
exact
same umbrella.

The night swallowed him, and I couldn’t see him any longer.

I made my way past Mrs Wick’s house to number 29.

The gate was unlatched, swinging on its hinges. I glanced back down the street. The man had come out of number 29. I was sure of it. The street had been empty, and then he’d just materialised in this spot. There was no other house he could have sprung from.

A rash of nerves crawled over my skin as I continued down the path. The front door was locked. It’d always been locked. The key—if it was still in the same place as it used to be—was under the welcome mat. Luke had once painted
un
in front of the word
welcome
on the rubber mat, but it had washed away, probably a long time ago.

Crouching, I lifted a corner of the mat. An object glinted dully. The key was there. When I picked it up, the metal didn’t seem as cold as it should. Did the man just have the key in his hand?

I unlocked the door and pushed it open. The thought of closing it behind me made a shiver pass down my back, but I had no choice. I didn’t want anyone to pass by and notice the door open.

Slipping my mobile phone from my pocket, I switched its light on and shone it around the room.

The walls were still red, just as Luke had painted them. The store dummy still sat on an armchair, the sole occupant of the house. (At least, I hoped he was the sole occupant of the house right now.) Saskia’s stolen signs were still in place.

I sucked in a cold, musty breath of air as I trained the light on the staircase. The missing section of stairs was back in place. Maybe the police had put it back when they were investigating the case of the dead woman all those years ago. Or maybe someone else had put it back. The section would have to have been repaired—because it had broken apart when it’d smashed to the ground.

I stepped closer. Were the stairs sturdy enough to walk on? I couldn’t trust that they were.

My heart squeezed as I went to open the door that led to the small storage area underneath the stairs. I was sixteen again, seeing the face of the dead woman, watching dirt particles settle onto the whites of her eyes.

I shone my phone light inside the space.

The two ladders were in place again.

Surely it would be impossible for one person to have replaced the section of stairs by themselves? If Bernice had done this, had she had help? But who would help her?

I checked the kitchen and the laundry next—all the nooks and cupboards. The laundry was external to the house. There used to be an outside toilet room too, but it had fallen down long ago, when I was still a kid. There was nothing else downstairs.

Biting down so hard on my bottom lip that it hurt, I headed back to the stairs.

I collected myself. I was here in this house looking for my own child. But it wasn’t a game of hide-and-seek. If I did find Tommy’s remains here, would I be wishing like hell it hadn’t been me who found him?

I’d lost all credibility with the police. I wouldn’t be able to convince them to come and search. I had no evidence whatsoever—just my dreams and an old memory.

I had to force myself to climb the stairs.

Clutching the railing, I made my way up slowly. I couldn’t stop myself from turning back every few steps, terrified that the stairs would collapse. Terrified that the man might appear behind me. Why had he even come in here? Was he looking for something? Or was he trying to hide something?

The room Luke and I used to make out in when we were sixteen looked exactly the same as it had before. I moved quickly, looking under the bed and in the wardrobe and drawers.

The second bedroom seemed to be the victim of a roof leak. An overpowering smell of mould made me gasp. The dead woman’s belongings were still lying on the floor, covered in black mildew. If any friends or family who’d known the lady had heard about her death, none of them had cared enough to come and collect her things. Holding my breath tight and wishing I’d brought gloves, I checked the room.

The only room left was the third bedroom. It stood at the far end of the hall, its door closed. I could still remember the fetid stench of the mutilated rats and their stiff, open mouths.

The old boards of the hallway were rickety beneath my feet as I made my way along them. I kept picturing the boards giving way and me falling to the bottom floor, like the bag lady had done. Two days ago, I’d wanted to die. But I didn’t want to die here in this house. And there was a chance that I had something to hang onto again now: my dreams hadn’t been random.

I turned the handle of the third bedroom. An almost sweet, pungent odour met me. Marijuana.

There were objects all over the floor. Not dead rats. Just . . . things.

Bric-a-brac mostly.
Books. Framed photographs. A funeral wreath. A vase of dead flowers. A government demolition sign. A kewpie doll. A garden gnome. Men’s jackets and hats. A frilly corset. Umbrellas hanging on hooks on the walls. Golf clubs and tennis racquets. Used shoes—all types and sizes.

Why would anyone want to go to the trouble of bringing all of this up here? The room didn’t give the appearance that a squatter was living here. It didn’t look like anyone was actually living here at all. The things were old but clean and neatly ordered. Like a collection.

I walked among the items, poking through them with one of four walking sticks that I’d found against a wall.

The photographs ranged from old black-and-white pictures to modern, all seemingly random. None of them seemed to be of the same family. I recognised a few people who used to live on the street.

A book sat on the dresser, its cover reflected in the mirror. I recognised the image on the cover. A moose. It was a children’s book, simply called The Moose. When Sass and I and the others first came to this house as ten-year-olds, we’d found this book. It was about an ancient American Indian myth, in which the east wind brought mists and a change in weather. Saskia invented the game, and she made us take it seriously. If there was a change in the weather, one of us could
invoke The Moose
. We had to then write down our names and throw them into a hat. Whoever’s name you pulled out, you had to become that person all day. Luke had struggled with the game the most, having no choice but to act
like a princess
(his words) for a day. There were no other boys in our little group.

It seemed odd that the book was on its own and not piled up with the other books.

I kept looking around the room.

A couple of pot-smoking devices occupied a corner, in the only clear space.

The man must be coming in here to smoke his pot and look at his collection of junk. But why?

I thought of Bernice then. She wore mismatched clothing—clothing that looked like it came from a thrift shop. And she often wore different hats and had different umbrellas on her arm, including the duck-head umbrella.

Did she and the man come up here and smoke pot together? Was he her boyfriend? Maybe I’d been wrong to think she wasn’t seeing anyone. If the two of them
were
a couple, why was Bernice hiding it? Unless it was just a friends-with-benefits arrangement and she was trying to hide the fact from her mother.

A muffled noise made me whip around. The man might become violent if he caught me looking at his strange treasures.

No, it was just the creak and sway of the house. Still, I shouldn’t stay here long. He was bound to return, sooner or later. I hadn’t seen any evidence that he was sleeping here, but he obviously came here often.

A tiny wooden boat half lying beneath the kewpie doll caught my eye. Tommy had loved boats. I picked it up from the floor.

My breath stilled. I’d seen this boat before. It was exactly the same as the boats from a nightlight belonging to Tommy. The nightlight was large and round, with wooden waves the whole way around, and with red-and-yellow striped boats riding the waves. The waves and the boats would bob up and down as the nightlight slowly turned, making a pattern of waves and boats on the walls, together with dreamy, tinkling music.

Tommy had spotted the nightlight in a city toy store window when he was around eighteen months old. He’d been desperate for it, and I’d bought it for him, ignoring for once the enormous price tag.
Over eight hundred dollars!
The nightlight had been a limited, hand-carved edition.

I stared down at the boat in my palm. I could see where it had broken off from its stem on the nightlight.

My heart pulsed against my ribs.

I needed to call Trent Gilroy.

As I was about to bring up his number on my phone, I stopped myself. It was too early. He wouldn’t be in his office yet. And would he think this was just another desperate ploy from me? All I would have to do was to break off a piece of the nightlight and plant it in this house and then claim I’d found it here.

First, I had to find out if the nightlight was still in Tommy’s bedroom, or whether it’d been stolen.

Wednesday morning

LEAVES THAT HAD BEEN DAMPENED BY the light rain whirled in a plodding dance around my ankles. A wind had crept up while I’d been searching number 29. The dim light of dawn exposed a darkly bruised sky.

Pulling my jacket tightly around my chest, I walked up the street to my house.

Luke would have left for work by now. I was sure that he worked longer hours than any other real estate wheeler and dealer in the city.

When I stepped inside the front door, I realised I’d forgotten all about the alarm. But no high-pitched sound pealed in my ears. Luke must have either turned it off before he left, or he hadn’t been bothering with it at all since I’d left him.

Like an intruder, I stole upstairs. Into my own son’s bedroom.

Tommy’s room was so
lifeless
it made me skip a breath. Coming back here after having been away for a while brought the sadness of his unused room back threefold.

I eyed the room. It was perfectly tidy, with barely any toy or item on display. Luke’s mother had put all of Tommy’s things away, throwing away most of the soft toys. She’d told me once they were just dust mite carriers.

I didn’t know exactly where the nightlight was. I’d barely been able to look at Tommy’s things since he’d been gone—except for the night I’d dragged out his train set in a sleepwalking haze.

I opened his walk-in wardrobe. Tommy used to hide in here and shout
shuprisesh
when I stepped into the room. He’d often substituted a
sh
for a
s
when speaking. In the mornings, sometimes he’d climb up onto my bed, try to pry open my eyes, and whisper
shhh
,
mummy’sh ashweep
. All while doing his best to wake me.

The nightlight wasn’t on any of the shelves in the walk-in wardrobe. And it was far too big to be in any of his drawers.

It wasn’t there.

Surely Luke’s mother wouldn’t have thrown out the nightlight. It was special, and she knew that.

Someone must have stolen it from the room.

My fingers froze on the shelf as I heard the click of the front door downstairs and then heard the sound of keys being tossed into the ceramic dish on the hall table.

What was Luke doing home again?

He was coming upstairs now. He walked into our bedroom, and it sounded like he’d laid himself down on the bed and kicked off his shoes.

Then I heard his voice.

Hey, Kitty.

He was on the phone. Who was Kitty?

Is it too early?

You sure?

Sorry, I just wanted to talk.

I appreciate it. I offload too much on you.

A knot twisted in my chest. He had to be talking to the other woman. Kitty. I instantly hated the name. He sounded so close to her.

I got into work and I just can’t concentrate. I sent myself home.

Yeah.

I don’t know. I just can’t get my head straight. I’m a wreck.

Come over now? But what about your—?

Are you sure about that?

Okay.

Okay, see you soon.

Kitty was obviously a woman who was there for him at any time of night or day. Mopping up his problems and anxieties in her no doubt warm bosom.

Who or what had he been referring to when he’d said
but
what about your
? She must have interrupted him, because he hadn’t finished that sentence. Did she have a husband at home and Luke had been worried he’d be there? And had she reassured him that her husband wasn’t there?

A sense of ridiculousness swept through me. I was in my own home, hiding in my own son’s room, trying to decipher my own husband’s phone conversation. How did everything change so fast?

There was a short interval before he bounded back down the stairs. The front door slammed shut.

It was time for me to leave. I waited five minutes first in case he came back for something—Luke was often forgetting something.

I casually strolled from the house and down the street again. No one was going to find it strange that I’d been in my own home at the same time as Luke, even if they did know I’d left Luke. They would just assume we’d been talking. I was quite sure that the street gossip machine was already in action.

I felt for the wooden boat in my jacket pocket. It was real. I hadn’t conjured it up in a dream like I’d conjured up the injured moth. But I needed something more before I went to Trent. Some solid evidence. After the debacle with the letters, I had to make sure not to mess this up.

I spotted Bernice walking up ahead of me, heading towards the docks.

She was connected to this somehow. She and the stranger.

I made the decision to follow her.

Bernice headed to the end of the street and then turned right. Into the Southern Sails Café. I was disappointed she wasn’t headed somewhere else.

Committed now to tracking her, I made my way to the same point, stepping into the café through a different entrance. But I doubted I’d find out anything in here. Maybe she’d go somewhere else afterwards. But Bernice barely left our neighbourhood. If she bothered to go to another place, it would have to be important to her.

I had to try to ensure she didn’t see me. I kept my hood down low over my forehead. I didn’t want anyone else to recognise me either. My face had been all over the news lately. Plus, I wasn’t supposed to even be here. Detective Gilroy had warned me not to come back here.

I caught a brief glimpse of Bernice at the café counter. Quickly, I turned my face and stepped away behind the three-quarter wall that divided part of the café. I could hide here for a while. Moving up to the noticeboard, my gaze swept over it.

There were no more letters about Tommy.

I needed to walk to the other end of the wall so that I had a better view of everything that was happening in the café. I didn’t want Bernice to leave without me knowing, and I couldn’t very well just stand there and watch her directly. I also wanted to know if the man I’d seen earlier was in here somewhere and if Bernice was meeting up with him.

I browsed the paintings on the divider wall as I moved along. The Southern Sails Café allowed local artists to hang their work on the wall in return for a possible commission. Some of the work was good. Some of it was not. Some were just not my taste at all. The painting in front of my nose was an ugly hack’n’slash of dark lines:
Here’s my anger and frustration at the world on canvas. For the small price of $345, you can take it home, hang it on your wall, and enjoy.

If I were to paint my inner self on a canvas, I doubted I’d be able to confine it. Sometimes I wanted to coat the whole world in ugly colours.

I’d earned the right to glance about the café now. I’d shown an appropriate amount of interest in the paintings. I hadn’t just marched over and started eye-stalking people.

There were mostly businesspeople dotting the café. In suits and winter dresses and muted colours.

Bernice was sitting on her own, with her back to me. She had a different umbrella with her today—a gaudily patterned one with a white plastic handle. The man wasn’t with her. If he was here, I couldn’t spot him.

People were starting to glance my way. I couldn’t just stand here peering around the café any longer without drawing attention. I decided to go and grab a coffee. Bernice wouldn’t be able to see me from where she was now.

Digging in my hands into my jeans pockets, I found a five-dollar bill and three dollars in coins. It was enough.

I ordered a mochaccino and then went to sit in a position where I could see both exits from the café, next to a tall pot plant that helped conceal me.

I’d barely taken a sip when two people walked towards each of the exits at the same time. Bernice and a man in a grey business suit. I stood, waiting for the businessman to pass by me so that I could leave and follow Bernice. I sipped my coffee again, trying not to look like I was watching anyone.

The man’s eyes seemed strangely distracted. His face was slightly hidden by his facial hair—something in between a three-day-growth and a light beard.

A thought flashed in my mind. Was it him? The man I’d seen earlier out in the street? He was the right height and had the right amount of facial hair. He could have stashed the raincoat in his briefcase. Maybe even the umbrella, if it folded up small—or he could have thrown it away. Was the briefcase the same as the type the other man had been carrying? I couldn’t remember. My attention had been on his face and the umbrella.

Then another thought: Were he and Bernice leaving at the same time, to meet up at a different location? Was there some kind of weird thing going on between them where they didn’t want to be seen together?

When I turned to watch Bernice, she’d already left.

I swung back around.

The man lifted his satchel briefcase over a chair that was jutting out in his path. Something small and furry hung from the satchel. The arm of a blue teddy bear.

A prickle imbedded itself in the back of my neck.

He had a toddler’s toy with him.

My cup of coffee slipped through my fingers, clattering to the floor.

Fragments of white ceramic swam in a pond of dark liquid.

The man glanced back over his shoulder, staring at me for a moment and then continuing on his way.

A café staff member rushed from behind the counter with a small bucket and a fistful of paper towels.

An elderly man half-rose from his chair, touching my arm. “Do you need some help?”

“I—no. I’m okay,” I spluttered.

“You might get a nasty burn out of that. You only just bought it.” He indicated towards my leg, sounding like a grandfather admonishing a grandchild.

Looking down, I saw the large, wet stain of coffee on my thigh, soaking through my jeans. Immediately, I felt the sting.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “But thank you.”

Café patrons gawked, waiting and watching to see what the crazy lady would do next.
Dropped boiling coffee on herself and barely noticed! What type of crazy is she?

“I’m really sorry,” I told the woman who’d come to clean up the mess. “I must be butterfingers today.”

Her mouth stretched thinly, almost to the point of grimacing. “Don’t worry about it.” Her expression changed as she eyed me closely. “Excuse me, but aren’t you—?”

“I have to go.” Rudely, I backed away and left the shop. The woman had recognised me, and I didn’t want to have to tell her that yes, I was Tommy’s mother and yes, I’d been receiving strange letters, and yes, one of those letters had been right here at the café.

I couldn’t see the man.

Breaking into a run, I crossed the street to the docks. Grey ghost boats sailed out on the harbour. The salty air that blew into my face still carried a light rain. A smattering of people walked up ahead towards the business district, holding umbrellas over their heads and obscuring my view.

I ran.

Rain pattered down harder now. I reached the cover of the office buildings and their awnings before my clothing became drenched.

I almost walked straight past the man from the café. He’d stopped at a combined tobacconist/magazine stand to buy a packet of cigarettes.

I stopped too, pretending to browse the newspapers. On page one of a newspaper, there was a small headline that said:
Can you crack the code of the Tommy Basko letters? Page Five.

I jerked my gaze away, to the cookery magazines.

The notes about Tommy had become a type of entertainment. Just like the crosswords Nan liked to solve. Amateur armchair detectives, treating Tommy’s case like an episode of
Miss Marple
or
CSI
.

But none of them knew yet that I’d written them. If people knew, it would destroy their amateur detective fun.

The man walked a short distance away, stopped again, and lit up a cigarette.

He turned in my direction. I busied myself, peering into the nearest shop window. The man continued on, disappearing around a corner. I was going to lose sight of him. I hurried to the corner and headed into the much busier, wider street ahead.

I twisted my head to search both sides of the streets.

“Looking for me?” A deep voice to the left of me.

Just a couple of feet away, the man with the suitcase was leaning against a wall. Still smoking his cigarette.

I turned to face him directly. “What? No, I’m not—”

“You were following me. All the way from the coffee shop. Straight after you did
that
to yourself.” He pointed at my coffee-soaked leg.

“I was heading off to buy some new jeans.” That sounded weak.

“Well, I’d say you passed a few clothing stores already.”

It was obvious that I’d been doing exactly as he’d said I had—following him. There was no point in pretending.