Lost Girl Read online

  LOST GIRL

  J.C. GREY

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  About the Author

  J.C. Grey is the author of the rural romantic suspenses Southern Star and Desert Flame. Born and raised in the UK, J.C. trained as a journalist in London before moving to Sydney. She is known for her high-voltage love stories and atmospheric evocation of uniquely Australian settings.

  Also by J.C. Grey

  Southern Star, 2013

  Desert Flame, 2015 (writing as Janine Grey)

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by J.C. Grey

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Days become weeks, weeks months, and seasons turn as the house waits.

  Spring showers and rich soil see green things sprout, tentatively at first then with enthusiasm, as if they sense the absence of hard, yanking hands. Common jasmine tunnels below ground, thrusting upwards where it will, twisting and twining up the hardy old camellia, suffocating it. A killer dressed in angel’s clothes.

  A high wind one night scatters leaves into the gutter above the high window of a bedroom, blocking it. A small waterfall forms, creating a relentless drip, drip against the wall. A menacing green-black stain begins to spread.

  Hail fractures a slate tile on the roof, and it hurtles to earth. The impact on the old cobblestones creates a thousand splinters. One ricochets like a bullet into a rear window, producing a spider’s web of cracks.

  A shutter comes loose and slams bitterly, soon accompanied by its partner. Wind whistles down the chimneys and the interior doors join the resentful chorus.

  At the end of the drive, rusty fingers creep from the lock in the gate, freezing it shut.

  Twice, people come. One puts up a ‘For Sale’ sign, only for a sudden squall to strike it down later that night. The other takes one look, shakes his head and carries on past. Even animals do not linger long here.

  The house sighs and whispers mournfully to itself as it listens in vain for a heartbeat. Spring ripens into summer, summer turns to autumn. The house is now all but hidden by shadowy vegetation. Yet still it stands. Still it sighs and whispers to itself.

  And still it waits …

  One

  July last year …

  The four other women in the fertility specialist’s waiting room stare at me in envy, despite their bellies ripening while mine remains flat. Some of it may be the loss of their girlish figures but a bigger part of their resentment has to do with me being Sydney’s current It Girl. I know I should hate the way that word objectifies me—an ‘it’, a girlish thing, not even a womanly one—but in a perverse way, I love it too, as it means I am something they are not. So I tolerate their stares.

  The other reason for their covetousness sits by my side, oblivious as always to the attention we are attracting. He is Marc McAllister, my husband, wealthy funds manager—the guy who predicted the global financial crisis, in fact—and all-round good guy. He looks the part: sharp navy suit, crisp white shirt, red abstract tie. His blond hair is cut close to his head around beautifully shaped ears. I love his ears.

  In this setting—as in any—he looks completely at ease, regardless of the fact that the quality and/or commitment of his sperm are being called into question—by me, anyway. As far as the specialist is concerned, ours is a case of no-fault infertility, though she suspects me. I can tell.

  Deep down, I suspect me too. After all, Marc is, well, Marc. As the son, grandson and great-grandson of wealthy, socially connected McAllister movers and shakers, his provenance is known and celebrated whereas my pedigree is less exclusive.

  I realise I haven’t yet introduced myself. Marc calls me Em but my real name is Emerald Reed-McAllister. For the moment, anyway. I’m not going to give away all my secrets this early in our relationship—yours and mine, that is. Even Marc doesn’t know everything although I’m sure he suspects that my background is not exactly gold-plated. It doesn’t seem to put him off. At least, I don’t think so.

  Of course, as an It Girl, I do have some points in my favour, including a face that transforms from odd to extraordinary when filtered through a camera lens, and one of those long, lean bodies that exhales ‘yoga’, even though I’ve never done a downward dog in my life. I also have a talent for choosing and wearing clothes now referred to by the gossip rags as ‘Em-chic’.

  You’re already starting to hate me, aren’t you? Give me some time and you’ll hate me a whole lot more. Most women do.

  Marc denies he married me for any of my physical attributes. Instead—get this!—he announced to all and sundry during his wedding speech that he married me for my wicked mouth. He was a little nervous and stuffed up the delivery so everyone got the wrong end of the stick. Anyway, you could have heard a pin drop, then someone cleared a throat and another tried a nervous titter that was strangled at birth. What else was a girl to do? So I stood up, shrugged nonchalantly and said I thought it was for my money. That was a joke. Everyone knew I didn’t have two cents to rub together while Marc had pots of it. Fortunately, at this point his rugby mates—bless them—started laughing uncontrollably and saved the day.

  Okay, so he’s not really perfect because that sounds sickly and fake and just impossible to live with. Marc is none of these. Right now, he looks up from the Financial Review, takes off his reading glasses, grins and squeezes my hand. My granite heart has a sandstone moment.

  ‘Reckon you’ll be up the duff before the ASX reaches 6000?’ he whispers. If, like me, you can barely count to ten, the ASX is the Australian Stock Exchange, and its ups and downs are Marc’s bread and butter. Mine too now that my wagon is hitched to his star I suppose.

  I squeeze back. ‘As long as you keep your end up.’

  He grins, the creases around his dark eyes crinkling, and I have to look away to get a grip on my treacherous emotions.

  In the days that follow the appointment with the specialist, who tells us to keep trying and bills us three hundred dollars for the ‘consultation’, Marc does and still I’m not. Nothing we try works, although we certainly enjoy the trying, even when a hint of desperation starts gnawing around the edges of our conjugal bliss.

  On one occasion, I ask the specialist if our problems are because pleasure is somehow a barrier to procreation. Is our enjoyment of sex a signal that we are not treating our mission seriously enough? Marc rolls his eyes and even the doctor struggles to keep a straight face. But, in the end—when even technology fails—all we have left is pleasure.

  When I begin to suspect that he might leave me, I do the only thing I can. I leave him first.

  I go back shortly afterwards for reasons you’ll soon find out. But Marc learns something about me he didn’t know before. I’m a bolter, not a stayer. The trace of a shadow begins to lurk behind his eyes.

  Yesterday, not even a year after that first bolt, I left him again. And now I am here. Which is where, exactly? I wish I knew.

  Present day, in the still of the night

  Wake up!

/>   My eyes snap open as if pulled by strings and I am staring up into the shadows. An elaborate ceiling rose is all twists and turns and curlicues. It is dead quiet outside. Not even the birds are up.

  My ears are attuned to every sound the old house makes, the grumble of water in the pipes and the contraction of the old boards in the cool of early morning. I’m sure I heard something more, something that sounded almost human.

  It is possible I am not alone here. When I stumbled in dog-tired last night after driving aimlessly all day, I didn’t exactly announce myself. Squatters, the homeless—others like me—might also be in residence. When I get up I will search the crumbling house, but at the moment I am inclined to stay put.

  I am warm and relaxed on the ratty red velvet chaise, covered by the picnic blanket from the car. More to the point, I am safe for the moment—both from Marc’s bewildered disbelief and the terrible, eviscerating pain that has torn at my vitals these past five weeks. Eventually, both will catch up with me, but for now the weight has lifted a little. I sleep.

  When I wake again, sunlight has chased away most of the shadows. This is not necessarily welcome. In my current state, shadows are my friends.

  Too warm, I push back the picnic blanket and immediately feel a sting of loss. At first I am unsure of the reason, but then I realise it holds a trace scent of Marc’s cologne. We once made love on it, a lifetime ago. I push the thought away and rise, wobbling a little. Properly awake now, I feel an urgent need to pee. I stagger barefoot across the drawing room out into the hallway that runs down the centre of the ground floor. The first door I open reveals a library, but the second is a powder room. Relief!

  The toilet has an old chain flush but it works. As I pull up my panties and jeans, I wonder briefly who pays the water rates. I wash my hands and, startled, catch a glimpse of a face in the tarnished mirror above the basin. Who is that woman? She could be me if it wasn’t for the limp reddish hair, chalky skin and puffy eyes. The too-wide mouth is identical, though, as are the chisel-cut cheekbones.

  Not wanting to look at her—me—too long, I splash water on my face. There is no towel, so I shake my hands and head, and carry on down the hallway into a vast kitchen, where a double set of French doors leads out to the backyard. One pane of glass is badly cracked.

  Burnished copper pots hang from a ceiling rack, an old pine dresser holds a full set of china and the timber bench, inset with a huge butler’s sink, is thick with dust. A chopping board and knife lie on the bench as though waiting for someone to begin breakfast preparations.

  ‘Hello?’ I call out, remembering the whisper I’d heard earlier. My voice is a strangled croak and I realise I have a raging thirst. The cold tap on the sink grumbles as it turns, sputtering out irregular gushes of water. It is cool, though, and tastes fresh enough. My hands create a dish, from which I lap like a dog until the water runs down my chin into my singlet, dampening my breasts.

  I am hungry too, but first I need to know if I have company. I peer into the large pantry and the adjacent laundry. But they are empty, likewise the gloomy dining room with its heavy drapes and vast, banquet-sized table. From there I circle back around to the library, where I eye the long heavy drapes. They would make the perfect hiding spot for a knife-wielding madman but when I yank on the cord, all they reveal is a window-seat where a threadbare stuffed bear lies at an uncomfortable angle. I straighten him and turn away.

  Shelves run right up to the ceiling either side of the marble fireplace, stacked none-too-neatly with both fiction and reference books. Jane Eyre is sandwiched between a book on military history and Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation. The spines are ragged, the pages dog-eared. All have clearly been read and re-read. This is a real library, not like the one at the concrete Mosman mansion of Marc’s colleague, Toby Meyer—and Toby’s wife Griselda (I kid you not! Marc calls her Grisly, which she is)—which seems to have been purchased in a job lot from one of those publishers that specialises in the collected works of writers no one ever reads. The Meyers certainly never have, judging by the pristine covers. Marc and I used to laugh about it, in the days when we still found life funny.

  Unless someone is concealed up the chimney, there is no one in the library, so I return to the drawing room. It is as I left it: the tall shutters closed against the light, rug in a pile at one end of the chaise, a cushion at the other. My bag is next to my sandals on the hardwood floor, mobile perched on top. It pings to announce an incoming message. Perhaps this is what woke me earlier. Without checking, I know it is him, but we have nothing to say to each other so I force myself away and climb the staircase that curves elegantly from the entry foyer to the first floor where it branches into two.

  Upstairs, the rooms are similarly vast with four-metre ceilings that make them seem even larger, as does the absence of furniture. In the master bedroom, my attention goes immediately to the wide bay window and the French doors next to it. The doors open easily onto a small balcony and I step outside and catch my breath, but not from the cold of the stone against my bare feet.

  I am at the rear of the house, which seems to be surrounded by green. The original landscaping is a memory imprinted on the soil rather than fact. I can hear the rush of water somewhere in the distance. Topography, humidity and neglect have conspired to produce a jungle that is fast encroaching on the house. Spindly palms tower over the tangle beneath. I recognise lantana and morning glory among the ground covers. Clivia has multiplied unchecked in a great swathe of orange and dark green, but the camellias, leggy and yellowing, are at the mercy of the all-conquering jasmine.

  From the position of the sun, I am looking north and beyond the trees I can see tin rooftops and the glint of sun on glass, a wisp of smoke. I suspect it is the small town of Lammermoor, which was where I was heading last night when the mist suddenly emerged from nowhere, crawling along the low-lying road in front of the car, herding me here.

  I explore the other bedrooms and a bathroom, all of them empty. It is all but conclusive that I am the only life form in this house, possibly bar the odd mouse or two. In any case I am in need of a shower and getting hungrier by the minute so I decide to abandon the search.

  As I walk back to the stairs, past the master suite, the fine hairs on my arms prickle—a draught maybe, but it is enough to make me step back inside the room. I have not secured the French doors and one of them has blown open. As I shut it tight and turn the lock, the door to the dressing room clicks shut. I have already peeked in there and scanned the empty racks and hanging space, and the en suite bathroom beyond. But now I go inside and see that there is a small door tucked around the corner.

  Curious, I turn the old-fashioned ball handle. It moves easily in my grip but the door does not budge. This can’t be right. I turn it again, putting my full weight against it. But it is as if a heavy mass lies on the other side, and it doesn’t shift one centimetre.

  When I put my ear down to the handle and listen, my arms prickle again, but though I stand, half-crouching until my back aches, I hear nothing but the drum of my pulse.

  Two

  Present day

  Lammermoor is a bustling small town that has retained its old-world charm. Clearly the local chamber of commerce has ideas of grandeur—a banner across the high street claims Lammermoor is Australia’s favourite country retreat—but most people I pass on the street appear to be local. There’s not a selfie-stick in sight.

  The good thing, from my point of view, is there is a delibutchery with a decent cheese selection—my weakness before my appetite vanished. The downside, from the proprietor’s point of view, is the fact that he has likely sunk every cent he owns into a business on the brink of failure. The over-eager welcome and the half-hearted gourmet sausage special is a dead giveaway. I almost think he would have manhandled me into his shop had I lingered one second longer outside. His smile is stretched; his willingness to describe in miniscule detail the characteristic of each cheese is overwrought. Then there is the desperation to make a human co
nnection.

  Where am I from? Am I here for Easter? How am I enjoying Lammermoor?

  I am Sydney, not born but bred, and I know how you get to those with a gourmet fetish and deep pockets. It is not by trying to suck up to your customers. The typical Sydney shopper prefers to be ignored or condescended to. Treat them as equals or, worse, betters, and they will run a mile. One shops to be enhanced by the experience, as a high-profile model once told me, not to do the enhancing.

  I respond vaguely to his questions, take my package of Jarlsberg (excellent with crisp, green apples) and open the door. When I glance back at him, he looks up hopefully. ‘The lamb sausages should be in the window on a bed of rosemary,’ I say. ‘And you need a blackboard easel with a handwritten menu for sausages, mash and sautéed red onions.’ He stares at me so I shrug and leave. As an occasional model, I have been around photographers and stylists enough to know how things should look without thinking, but he is welcome to take or leave the advice.

  The afternoon market is thick with locals and a handful of tourists. I am noticed. Some try to hide their stares by rummaging in shopping bags or stopping to wipe small, snotty noses but I don’t think they recognise me. Not really. But they recognise that I don’t belong in town, despite my jeans and checked shirt and pony tail. I try not to make eye contact, but as I hand over a twenty for my vegetables, the rosy-cheeked vendor says, ‘I liked your last movie.’

  I am bamboozled until I catch on that she has me confused with a well-known arthouse actor, with whom I share nothing but height. I let the confusion clear from my face and smile. ‘Oh, you mean her. I get that sometimes. Sorry.’

  The stall-holder looks embarrassed so I pat her hand. ‘It’s no problem. We can’t all be famous.’

  She laughs, makes a light-hearted reply and pops a pack of raspberries into my bag, on the house.

  Suddenly in her eyes, I am one of them. Ordinary. Chameleon-like, my specialness is gone. I may not be a movie star but I am a fabulous actor when I need to be.