Welcome To Wherever You Are (40 page)

The first thing Savannah noticed when she unlocked the door to her room was Jane’s empty bed, stripped of its sheets and pillowcases. Her suitcase was no longer under her bed and the bathroom was cleared of her toiletries.

‘Wow, she’s so organised,’ said Savannah. ‘She must have got the keys early and moved her stuff already.’

‘Didn’t she tell you she was going?’

‘No, we arranged to meet here later and then head up to the new place. She probably left me a message at reception.’

The last two days had been a harsh and steep learning curve for Nicole, and her natural instinct to trust people had eroded and been replaced with suspicion. She was glancing around the room when something in the dustbin caught her eye.

‘Whose are these kids?’ she asked, picking out a photo frame with two smiling faces inside.

‘They’re Jane’s,’ replied Savannah, puzzled.

‘Why’s she thrown them away?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Savannah, I don’t want to worry you, but I don’t have a good feeling about this.’

Neither did Savannah, and she marched over to where her locker stood and moved it to one side to reveal the space behind the wall where she hid her earnings. It was empty.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Nicole.

‘All the money I’ve saved, I keep it here. It’s gone!’

Matty glanced around the walls of the pawnshop while an assistant found the corresponding pink ticket to the one Matty presented him with.

All around him, acoustic and electric guitars sat on plinths. Three separate drum kits were arranged to fill corners, and a variety of brass instruments balanced on shelves. The shop was a graveyard of abandoned ambitions, and he wondered how many dreams had died in that one shop.

‘This the one?’ the shopkeeper asked briskly, and passed Matty a silver chain and crucifix.

The necklace was the last gift Matty’s parents had given to him before they waved their emotional goodbyes at Dublin airport a year earlier. He hadn’t told Declan he’d pawned it the previous week so they could afford to eat, even though it had upset Matty greatly. But thanks to the ten $100 bills someone anonymously shoved under their door, he could now buy it back. Both suspected Tommy had something to do with their cash donation, as he was the only one aware of their situation, but they respected his desire to keep it quiet so they resisted mentioning it.

Matty paid the shopkeeper and gripped the necklace tightly in the palm of his hand, confident its next owner would treasure it as much as he had.

Nicole ran with Savannah from her room to the hostel reception desk where Sadie sat with her feet up, engrossed in her Kindle.

‘Sadie, is Jane still checked in?’ Nicole asked, her bruised ribs aching from moving so quickly.

‘Surname?’ she replied, irritated by the disturbance. Nicole looked towards Savannah.

‘Um, I’m not sure,’ Savannah replied, embarrassed at not knowing the answer to such a simple question.

‘There’s a Jane who checked out 9.45 this morning,’ continued Sadie, scanning the guest register. ‘Jane Doherty. Is that her?’

‘Jane Doherty?’ repeated Nicole, and closed her eyes. ‘Jane Doe.’

‘Tell me this isn’t happening,’ Savannah replied, her voice beginning to crack. ‘That was all the money I had in the world.’

‘Have you got an address for the new place?’

‘The brochure’s in my handbag upstairs.’

‘Good, you go and get it and I’ll find us a taxi.’

Nicole dashed outside and scanned the passing traffic. She didn’t notice the brown station wagon parked on the opposite side of the road or the driver sitting behind the wheel.

*

Nicole and Savannah didn’t say a word to each other as their taxi drove along Wilshire Boulevard in the direction of West Hollywood.

Nicole was accustomed to consoling hospital patients when they’d received bad news, but today she had nothing up her sleeve that might ease Savannah’s concerns. Meanwhile Savannah, spine rigid and fists clenched tightly into balls, remained silent. She was desperate to be wrong about Jane; hoping against all hope that there’d been some mix-up and the woman who was about to help turn her life around was not actually a scam artist.

After a frustratingly long forty-five minute journey in heavy traffic, the cab reached its destination in a leafy West Hollywood suburb. Nicole paid the driver, giving him extra to remain by the kerb until they knew one way or another whether this was a terrible misunderstanding or deliberate deceit.

Savannah’s legs felt heavy and clumsy as she stepped out, steadying herself against the car’s door frame.

‘Deep breaths,’ advised Nicole, taking Savannah’s arm as a brown station wagon drove slowly past them and parked further up the street. ‘If you get stressed, the baby will feel stressed too.’

Slowly, they walked up the crazy paving that separated the lawn and towards the house Savannah had only seen in a brochure. The upstairs curtains were closed and the blinds in the downstairs windows pulled shut.

‘Good luck,’ added Nicole, as they reached the porch.

Savannah rang the doorbell, but was greeted by silence. After a few moments, she pressed the button again, but still there was no response. Finally she knocked, and then again, more loudly. And when she pulled the door handle and discovered it was locked, she couldn’t hold back her tears any longer.

Nicole walked towards the window and peered inside, but it was too dark to make out anything but an empty, furniture-less room. She turned to Savannah and offered her a sympathetic smile, but Savannah had already accepted the inevitable.

With no credit left on his mobile phone, Declan used the pay phone in reception to call home to Ireland and check up on his younger brothers.

Meanwhile Matty made the most of his time alone to take a look at photographs of their travels he’d had printed on his way back from the pawn shop. He temporarily forgot the aches in his chest and smiled at a picture of himself wrapped in warm winter ski wear in Grenoble, France, drinking a yard of ale at a bar, and laughed at a passed-out Declan lying on a Moroccan street. He removed a selfie of the two of them inside Rome’s Coliseum, folded it in half and placed it in his shirt pocket. Then he put the envelope of photographs under Declan’s pillow, along with their Travel America guide with his crucifix placed inside.

All at once, Matty felt light-headed and sensed his pulse racing, so he sat on his mattress, closed his eyes, put his head in his hands and composed himself. Although they had stayed at more desirable places, it was the only hostel that Matty felt truly comfortable in and he was sure that when the time came to leave Declan alone, he would get the support he needed from the people around him.

Matty reflected on his time in Los Angeles and was confident he and Declan had gone out of their way to endear themselves to their fellow hostellers. They’d never lied about their intentions in their pursuit of the opposite sex, and as both had been up front about what they were looking for, their consciences were clear. The only thing troubling Matty about his forthcoming journey into the great unknown was the death of the postmaster and the role he and Declan had unwittingly played in it. He hoped that with just one transgression to his name – albeit a large one – he’d be allowed through the pearly gates.

‘You ready for some scran before the party?’ began Declan, bursting into the room, ‘’cos if I don’t eat soon, Sir Bob’s gonna organise a feckin’ benefit concert for me.’

‘Only if you’re buying,’ Matty replied, trying his best to put a brave face on the chest pains that refused to go away.

‘How could I have been so dumb?’ sobbed Savannah, ‘I thought Jane was my friend.’

‘Sweetheart, I’m so sorry,’ replied Nicole, trying to console her. She knew too well how easy it was to be duped by someone you’d placed your trust in.

‘It’s not your fault, honestly. Sometimes we put our faith in people and they end up hurting us more than we can ever believe. We’ll find a way of sorting this out, I promise you.’

‘How? She has all my money. If I can’t trust Jane, I have no one.’

Nicole pulled a packet of paper tissues from her pocket and handed one to Savannah as they began to make their way back towards the waiting taxi.

‘Oh, you’re here already!’ a voice behind them suddenly chirped. Both Savannah and Nicole turned their heads quickly to find the front door open and Jane standing there, a bin bag in one hand and an empty cardboard box in the other.

‘What’s wrong? Is it the baby?’ Jane suddenly asked, noticing Savannah’s tears.

‘You’re here! But we knocked on the door . . .’ cried Savannah.

‘Sorry, I was out back scrubbing the bins. The last tenants left the place looking like a pigsty.’

‘I thought you’d left me.’

‘Don’t be silly! Why would I do that? I wanted to make the place shipshape before you and the furniture arrived. Oh, and I brought that money you hide so badly behind your locker just in case you forgot it.’

‘But your kids’ pictures were in the trash?’

‘They’ve been in my luggage so long they’ve become dog-eared, so I got some reprints done and bought a nicer fram
e
. Have I done something wrong?’

‘Sorry, Jane, we were worried – you disappeared so quickly,’ replied Nicole. ‘And Savannah’s money had gone.’

‘Oh honey, I’m sorry, I just got ahead of myself without thinking. I’m your friend – I’m not going anywhere, alright?’

‘Okay.’

‘Now get your bum inside and I’ll put a brew on. Will you join us, Nicole?’

‘Thanks, but I’m going to head back and help with tonight’s party. Do you want me to pack your things up for you, Savannah?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘Not at all. Come by and pick them up when you’re ready.’

Nicole smiled as Jane put her arm around Savannah and the two headed into their new home and new life. And it restored a tiny, tiny piece of her faith in people that she thought she’d lost.

As her taxi pulled away, the brown station wagon parked further up the street remained.

Nicole borrowed a key from an uninterested Sadie and let herself into Savannah and Jane’s room.

Her ribs still ached so she moved slowly as she folded up T-shirts and towels and packed them into Savannah’s suitcase. She wondered how she’d fill in the rest of the day until the party began in Santa Monica. With Tommy flying below the radar and Eric awaiting a court hearing, she had never felt so lonely in a building full of people.

Recent events had exhausted Nicole physically and emotionally, and she had no energy or desire to keep travelling alone, but she also had little reason to return to England. But she did have two holdalls hidden in the hostel containing more money than she knew what to do with. How she would use it to her advantage she had yet to decide.

Nicole scooped up half a dozen bottles of shampoo, conditioners, fake tan and body glitter, then tested out Savannah’s perfumes by spraying them on her wrists. She gave both sides of her neck a spritz with a large bottle of Beyonce’s Heat Wild Orchid, but as she went to place it inside a bag, she tripped over the bathroom mat.

There was nothing she could do to prevent the heavy mauve-coloured bottle from leaving her hands, flying through the air and colliding with the full-length wall mirror, shattering it into pieces across the bathroom floor. And she screamed when she saw the face of a terrified man in a room behind where the mirror had been.

‘Ron!’

The photographs in the brochure Jane had shown Savannah didn’t do their new home justice.

Savannah entered under the tiled pitched porch roof and into a light and airy reception room. Through the kitchen window ahead, she saw into the colourful planted garden where a sprinkler threw water into an arc above the lawn. Inside and to the left, behind glass doors, was a dining room with an eight-seat table and wicker chairs still packed in cardboard and bubble wrap, and to the right was an empty lounge.

‘The beds are already here, but the rest of the furniture won’t arrive till tomorrow afternoon,’ advised Jane.

But Savannah didn’t care; she was already in love with her new house.

‘You don’t know where to look first, do you?’ smiled Jane. ‘I was the same.’

‘It’s beautiful, thank you so much for finding it,’ Savannah replied, and embraced her friend.

Jane led Savannah into the kitchen
,
an
d
poured hot water from the kettle to make two mugs of herbal tea. ‘Go and have a look around while I pop to the loo.’

Savannah picked up her mug and wandered from room to room, wondering if Jane had been economical with the truth about the rental price. But even if she couldn’t afford to pay her way at the moment, she vowed to eventually.

‘We’re home,’ she whispered to her stomach and smiled. ‘We’re home.’