Welcome To Wherever You Are (10 page)

‘Help me,’ he began quietly, his voice gradually returning. ‘Help me, please help me.’

‘There’s an ambulance and a fire engine on its way, son,’ came a voice, and Tommy saw that a small crowd had gathered. He felt like a terrified circus animal surrounded by baying crowds and swore he could see a mobile phone’s camera flash.

Tommy gradually felt more and more numb until he curled himself up into a tight ball, where he remained for the longest hour of his life, alone with his brothers for the very last time.

TODAY

Tommy continued fixating on the memory card in his hand; the final footage he’d taken of his brothers.

But he was afraid that by watching it, it would bring back more of the day than the fragments he remembered and had run so many miles to escape. He was scared to see Lee and Daniel’s faces again; to be reminded of that awful sound of pounding metal against metal; metal against tarmac; shattering glass and the helpless feeling of being trapped inside that tomb.

Tommy knew that if he could gather the courage to insert the memory card and press play, then maybe, just maybe, he could come to terms with what happened that day. But the risk that it would make him feel even lousier than he did already was one he wasn’t ready to take.

He recalled the WPC who came to the family house and handed back his camcorder explained it had stopped filming seconds after the impact and offered investigators about as much as the broken traffic cameras mounted above the junction. They had their suspicions as to the identity of the driver of the stolen car that collided with them, but it was hard to prove.

‘I need to do something,’ he told himself, urgently craving a purpose. He climbed out of his bed, changed into his shorts and pulled a cash and carry discount card from his toilet bag.

As he approached the reception desk and heard Ron’s voice coming loudly from his office, Tommy realised the longest conversation they’d shared was the first night he appeared on Ron’s doorstep. His memories were still a little fuzzy, but he recalled hearing a loud crack and then felt something shove him forward before his head smashed against the sidewalk. Later, Ron had told him he’d been shot, but Tommy felt strangely accepting of the news. He wondered how many more times he’d need to stare death in the face before it took him once and for all.

Ron had offered him a bed and work at the hostel in the hope Tommy wouldn’t report the incident to the police and bring unnecessary attention to a hostel that walked a fine legal line when it came to occupancy numbers, building code regulations, under-age drinking, pot smoking and a whole host of other dubious activities. Tommy agreed, and the only question he’d asked was about the identity of the woman’s voice he’d heard as he came to. He couldn’t remember anything else about the girl, like her accent or what she’d said. Ron acknowledged someone had helped to pull him inside, but said it was a passing stranger. But Tommy got the impression Ron wasn’t being honest with him.

‘If I had it, I’d give it to you!’ Tommy heard Ron yell from inside his office, before slamming the phone down.

The longer Tommy spent under that roof, the more suspicious he became about what else Ron wasn’t telling him.

Nicole’s truck turned left at the traffic lights off Ventura Boulevard before pulling into the car park of a collection of medium-sized retail outlets.

‘Thanks for helping me out,’ began Tommy as they grabbed a shopping cart and walked through the siding doors and into the cash and carry. ‘Where did you tell Eric you were going?’

‘I said we were going to get the tyre checked out as it looked a little flat after we hit the kerb when we arrived.’

Tommy smiled and appreciated that she’d lied for him. ‘I don’t think he likes me very much, does he?’

‘He’s just a little over-protective at times. I don’t have the greatest record with men and he doesn’t want to see me get hurt.’

‘And he thinks I’ll hurt you?’

‘You’re presuming I’d allow you close enough for that to happen! But no, he thinks any man could hurt me.’

‘Apart from him, right? I think he likes you as more than just a friend.’

Nicole dismissed the idea immediately, like she had when Mrs Baker had suggested the same thing. ‘Really, he doesn’t.’

However Nicole had secretly begun to wonder if there might be an element of truth in it. Because during their great American adventure, she’d come to notice that Eric had found a way of getting in between her and any fellow traveller who paid her even the slightest bit of attention. Gradually she realised it wasn’t inconceivable that their closeness had grown into something more, at least on Eric’s part. And that worried her.

When she and Eric had returned to the hostel from the beach with still no idea of where they should travel to next, Nicole bumped into Tommy in the corridor while Eric was showering. He’d asked her to drive him to get hostel food supplies, but as Nicole didn’t have a licence, she offered to accompany him if he drove her pick-up truck. Nicole knew from the previous night’s warning that Eric wouldn’t have approved of them spending time together helping Tommy without him. But he wouldn’t want to have tagged along either and while she hated dishonesty, he’d backed her into a corner.

              There was something about Tommy that she was drawn to, even after such a short time. He possessed an innocence and naivety that she appreciated, and the older she became, the less often she found such qualities in men her own age.

On their way to buy supplies, she’d asked Tommy to continue the story he’d begun the night before, and as he quietly recalled the car accident that killed his brothers, she instinctively placed her hand upon his as he drove.

His honesty made her want to reciprocate and explain why she was in America, but she felt by revealing that, she would be going against Eric’s will.

Matty and Declan aborted an attempt to chat up two girls they fancied working behind the frozen yoghurt counter.

As visually appealing as they were, the girls were really just a means to an end – they had food at their fingertips and the boys were broke and hungry. But when it became clear the girls couldn’t understand their accents, they admitted defeat and continued their walk along the boulevard. They’d already filled themselves up on other hostellers’ boxes of cereal in the kitchen, but their hungry bellies were rumbling again.

‘How much cash have we got left?’ asked Matty.

Declan opened his wallet and pulled out some low-denomination bills and scraps of paper.

‘We have the grand total of $11, plus €5, 90c off a Big Mac meal and a free bag of potato chips if we spend more than $10 at Subway.’

‘Feck.’

As Matty replaced the money in his wallet, a newspaper cutting fell to the floor. Declan picked it up.

‘What are you doing keeping this? You need to throw it away,’ snapped Declan.

‘Call it a reminder.’

‘Call it fifteen years behind bars if anyone reads it and recognises us.’

Tommy parked Nicole’s truck in the multi-storey opposite the hostel.

He’d already dropped her and the industrial-sized bags of food in the alley behind the building, away from Eric’s beady eye. And as she helped him carry them up the stairs and into the kitchen, she rehearsed a story about why she had been away for so long, blaming rush-hour traffic.

‘Thanks again,’ said Tommy, unpacking the shopping and placing it onto shelves in cupboards with missing doors and handles.

‘You’re welcome.’

‘So I’ll see you later, then, I guess?’

‘I guess.’

The two stood face to face like nervous teenagers at a school dance and unsure of what to do next. So Tommy took a silent breath, slowly tilted his head and moved his mouth towards Nicole’s. But just as she closed her eyes, they were interrupted by a resounding bang from the corridor. They hurried towards the source of the commotion and found a trembling Peyk with an electrical wire in his hand next to a smoking plug socket.

‘Come with me,’ said Nicole, rolling her eyes, grabbing Peyk’s arm and steering him into the kitchen. ‘I should get paid for being your care worker.’

Although concerned for his friend, Tommy cursed his appalling timing.

Ruth removed an orange dress from her suitcase and laid it neatly across her dormitory floor.

With a travel iron in her hand, she began to press out the creases, but with little effect. Frustrated, she pressed harder until the door behind her opened and knocked her off balance.

‘Oh crap, sorry,’ apologised Nicole, and held out her hand to lift Ruth back up.

‘No worries,’ replied Ruth.

‘Ooh, Zak Stanley, you are gorgeous,’ continued Nicole as she picked up a magazine cutting stuck to the hem of the dress.

‘You think so?’

‘Of course! Did you see him in that film
Baby Baby
?’

‘About fifteen times!’

‘That bit when he says “I know this is the first time we’ve met . . . ”’

‘“ . . . but I don’t ever want to lose sight of you again!”’ interrupted Ruth. ‘It makes me cry every time.’

‘I know what you mean. And about five minutes before he’s run over by that car in
Forever Us
, I always turn the DVD off so that in my head, that’s where the film ends and him and Anne Hathaway live happily ever after.’

One minute spent talking to Nicole was the longest conversation Ruth had had with anyone during her six days in America. She opened her mouth to continue, but closed it again when she recalled her mother’s reaction to why she was going to LA. Ruth didn’t want to hear the same words from somebody else, but Nicole seemed nice, she thought. Maybe she could trust her?

‘Are you busy?’ Ruth asked with a whisper, even though there was nobody else in the room.

‘Not really, what’s up?’

‘Can you keep a secret?’

I’m becoming an expert in them
, thought Nicole. ‘Sure.’

Ruth rifled around in her suitcase and found an envelope with a piece of white A4 paper inside, and handed it to Nicole. Nicole unfolded it and began to read. Halfway through she gasped, her eyes opened wide and she glared at Ruth.

‘Oh. My. God. Is this for real?’

THREE WEEKS EARLIER – VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

Bare breasted, rake-thin women with long, blonde hair extensions tumbling down their backs posed in sexy positions on the posters behind Ruth.

Once she’d avoid going into her brother’s bedroom, as it felt like a dozen pairs of beautiful strangers’ eyes were laughing at her sturdy frame. But since Zak Stanley came into her life, everything was different. There was only one opinion that mattered, and it belonged to Zak. He could see beyond a plastic façade; he’d told that interviewer on the DVD he was looking for an ordinary girl, and Ruth was nothing if not ordinary, as her mother and brother made a frequent point of reminding her.

She’d waited for Kevin to leave the house for the second of his twice-daily gym pilgrimages before she switched on his computer. Her mother was fiercely protective of her own laptop after Ruth had spilled a milkshake over the keyboard and Denise was hit with a $400 Apple Store repair bill. But as long as Ruth deleted the browsing history after each session, Kevin had never been any the wiser.

Ruth sifted through her emails. She hadn’t been online for almost a week, and four new messages were waiting in her – three more than she usually received. One was from Facebook informing her she had a new friend request. Out of curiosity, she clicked on it and realised it was from someone writing in a foreign language she didn’t understand, but she accepted it anyway, taking the total number into double figures. The other emails were newsletters from online forums she’d joined like ‘Zak Stanley Web Ring’; ‘Circle of Zak’ and ‘Zak’s World’. She scanned them, dragged some pictures on to Kevin’s desktop and then added them to her Tumblr and Pinterest collections.

Satisfied with her latest harvest, she was about to log off when she noticed a message hidden in the junk folder. She clicked on it to read the subject heading: ‘
Official Zak Stanley Fan Club – You Are A Winner
.’

Curious, she clicked on a link, and an audio file began to play as a computerised voice spoke: ‘
Congratulations, Ruth Donovan, you have been chosen by the Official Zak Stanley Fan Club as this month’s winner of our Meet Zak competition. On June 4, you will accompany Zak for a private lunch for two in Los Angeles. Please reply to this email to confirm your attendance and we will furnish you with an address and further details
.’

Then a flashing image of Zak’s smiling face appeared on the screen. Ruth replayed the message five times until the news sank in – she’d won the online competition she’d entered a month earlier.

‘Mum!’ she screamed, ‘Mum! Mum!’

‘What?’ her mother snapped from another room.