When he’s finished, Max tosses the remnants of the laptop into the water and watches them sink to the bottom. Now the computer is gone, Max is already looking more relaxed. He doesn’t know that the evidence still exists – at least, he doesn’t know for sure. But I suspect he has an inkling, so that final hiding place will be the next thing he looks for.
My USB.
52
PIPPA
NOW
It’s mid-afternoon when Gabe arrives home with the girls in tow, and I’m sitting on the couch with my laptop, catching up on some emails.
Mum left half an hour earlier, having made enough soup to feed us for a week. After my phone call with Gabe, our conversation had moved on to regular topics – the girls’ birthdays, Kat and Mei’s baby, Dad’s high cholesterol – but something about it felt forced. I was glad when she finally went home.
Mei has called twice since then, and I let both calls go through to voicemail.
‘Mummy!’ the girls cry, and I put my laptop aside as they scramble onto my lap. Asha’s knee gets me in the belly, and it is surprisingly painful, but I ignore it and hug them both and listen to their stories about preschool. Then they tell me that Daddy has promised they can watch a movie if they’re very good.
‘We are very good,’ Freya says earnestly.
I do my best to smile. I feel Gabe’s gaze on me. Like everyone’s lately, it seems. I don’t look at him. I can’t.
Gabe sets up a couple of beanbags in front of the TV and the girls drop into them like stones. Then he microwaves some popcorn and gives them each their own individual bowls. Once The Little Mermaid is playing, he sits beside me.
‘What is it?’ he asks. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I saw Max.’
I hadn’t been able to tell him over the phone, with Mum here. But he had obviously heard the panic in my voice because he doesn’t seem surprised. ‘Where?’
‘At The Pantry. He was ordering a coffee.’
Gabe closed his eyes, swore softly. ‘Did he see you?’
‘No. I snuck out of there like a thief in the night.’ The tears fill my eyes unexpectedly and I quickly wipe them away. ‘Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
Gabe slides off the couch and kneels on the floor, between my legs. He makes it so it’s impossible for me to look anywhere but into his eyes. ‘It’s going to be all right, Pip. I promise you.’
In this cosy pod of security with our girls and the smell of popcorn in the air, it would be so easy to believe him. But I don’t. This is the one thing we’ve come up against that actually isn’t going to be okay.
‘Listen to me,’ he says, and I do, because more than anything I want someone else to take control. I want to be a bystander. I want to be like my two little girls, staring slack-jawed at the screen, my biggest worry that my popcorn will soon run out. ‘I know how difficult this has been. But you didn’t do anything wrong. You don’t need to lie or hide from anyone. You don’t need to worry about what the police will do.’ His face is pulsing with intensity. His cheeks are pink, and his eyes are desperate for me to hear what he is saying. ‘I was the one who lied to them, Pip. This is not your burden to carry.’
But I don’t believe him. I did do something wrong. And it is my burden to carry. Still, there’s something about hearing him say the words aloud, knowing that he is willing to carry this weight for me. For now, it’s enough.
It’s not lost on me that, despite everything, Gabe is the only one who can make it better.
The girls watch another movie after The Little Mermaid and I lie on the couch with a novel I don’t read while Gabe massages my feet. We keep the curtains drawn and, mercifully, no member of my family drops in to pay us a visit.
We order pizza for dinner and open a bottle of wine. The girls are lovely, delightful caricatures of themselves, which makes me think that Gabe must have bribed them to ‘be extra kind to Mummy’。 I’m fine with it. If my soul was ill, this is my salve. Gabe is my salve.
He puts the girls to bed single-handedly. The stories are spectacular. There are costumes, singing and dancing, and a performance with several speaking roles. The girls laugh so hard I am sure someone is going to vomit, and equally sure that they are unlikely to settle before midnight. But I’m wrong on both counts.
When Gabe emerges from their room at 8 pm, I mute the television. I open my mouth to congratulate him, but he presses a finger to my lips. ‘Don’t talk.’
And so I don’t. I remain silent as he kneels between my legs and removes my underwear. This is exactly what I need. To disappear into a world of me and Gabe, a world where nothing exists except us.
I throw my head back and bury my fingers in his hair and give in to it.
53
AMANDA
BEFORE
‘How on earth did Gabe Gerard get involved with Arthur Spriggs?’
It was like a nightmare. A recurring one. Part of me was shocked to learn that Arthur Spriggs still existed. After he disappeared from our lives the last time, it felt like he was a character in a movie – like Freddy Krueger or Hannibal Lecter – someone who had been terrifying right up until the point he ceased to exist.
Max shrugged wearily. ‘Same way I did the first time.’
Apparently, it wasn’t a huge surprise that they’d crossed paths. Crooks, politicians and oligarchs all attended the same glamorous parties frequented by people working in investor relations. The only thing you needed to earn a place on the guest list, apparently, was power.
According to Max, Gabe was a lamb to the slaughter. After all, Arthur Spriggs wasn’t an idiot. He would have seen the young executive, eager to prove himself, and known exactly how to play him. Gabe forced the deal through, despite the red flags raised during the compliance process, and Max himself had signed off on it.
‘It’s my fault ultimately,’ Max conceded. ‘I approved it.’
‘Can you reject his investment?’
‘It’s too late. The deal is done.’
‘So . . . what happens now? What are you going to do?’
Max wouldn’t meet my eyes, which made me worry. ‘Same as last time,’ he said. ‘We have to be creative.’
There were several more meetings at the house between Max, Baz and Gabe after that. I didn’t eavesdrop on them again. I remembered how they’d involved Arthur Spriggs’s two-year-old daughter previously; I had no interest in knowing what they were planning this time.
Still, it was impossible not to notice the increase in security around that time. Baz brought on an assistant, a young guy who was almost as big and scary-looking as Baz himself, and who was either stationed outside the house or accompanied me wherever I went. For the first time in years, I had to start wearing my panic button again. And Max was always on edge, almost jumpy.
It was a Saturday night, around 9 pm, when it happened. Max had been tense all evening, constantly checking his phone. When it finally rang, he leaped up and ran to his home office. I’d known this was coming. I’d been on tenterhooks for weeks, waiting for this whole episode to be over, while fantasising that it would just go away on its own. No such luck.
I couldn’t help it; I had to know. I hurried down the hall and slipped into my study to listen at the wall.