69
PIPPA
NOW
Gabe doesn’t say it aloud, but judging by the next few days, our new plan is to never leave our house. We don’t take the girls to preschool. We don’t go to the park or the beach. We don’t even set foot outside. We start employing rudimentary security measures that we haven’t bothered with in the past, like locking windows and security doors. We even figure out how to use the alarm, which is something that has been on our to-do list since we moved in. We don’t discuss our reasons for any of this, because that would involve Gabe admitting he was worried. Instead, we do it by silent agreement.
For me, it isn’t a huge break from my routine. I work, conduct my Zoom meetings, play with the girls. They cope well to begin with. Once, as I walk past their room, I hear them pretending they are at the beach, and Asha acts as if she has discovered treasure. I wish I could escape to an imaginary world so easily.
Gabe is a different story. Staying indoors has never suited him. He needs to be active, to move his body. He’s trying to hide it, but I can see he’s barely reining himself in.
By the fourth day, even the girls have had enough.
‘I want to go to preschool,’ Asha says.
Gabe and I look at each other. Since my encounter in the car park, it has been quiet. No word from Max. No indication that he plans to go to the police or attempt to retrieve the USB. But, then again, we haven’t been anywhere.
‘How about we play outside in the sandpit for a bit?’ Gabe offers by way of a compromise.
The girls, starved of any such fun for days, accept this and burst outside before he can change his mind, excitedly chatting about the treasure they will discover out there.
For a while, I stand at the window and watch them. The sandpit was built by Gabe and Dad shortly after we moved in; they cleverly designed the wooden cover so that it can be folded in half to become a bench seat. Gabe does this now and sits facing the cliff as the girls get busy with their buckets and spades.
Kat’s words echo in my mind. If Gabe didn’t tell the police, it means he has something to hide. I don’t get it. Why is everyone so quick to blame Gabe? They love Gabe.
At least, I’d thought they did. I remembered Kat saying, Why do you think we all moved up here when you did? Why do you think we’re always at your house? How had I missed that? And if I missed that . . . what else am I missing?
There’s one final thing Kat said that I keep thinking about – perhaps more than anything else. How long are you going to live like this?
It’s the question I most desperately want answered. And I’m starting to realise that the only one who can do that is me.
70
AMANDA
BEFORE
‘Just the two of us, the horizon and all these lovely staff,’ Max said, with a laugh, as he touched his champagne glass to mine.
It was Christmas, and once again we were on a yacht in the Whitsundays. It was idyllic. I’d never seen water so clear or sand so white. And I’d never seen Max so relaxed. For a week, he didn’t so much as check his emails. We snorkelled and swam. I took photographs. We sat on the deck and drank wine. We fished. One night, we rowed to shore in a dinghy and our captain cooked freshly caught tuna on a makeshift barbecue. We ate it on the sand while drinking white wine.
‘Do you ever wish that you had been pregnant that time?’ Max asked out of the blue.
I knew the time he meant. I was surprised to hear that Max remembered it too. Or, if not surprised that he remembered it, I was surprised that he’d thought about it, reflected on it, since.
‘For a while I did,’ I admitted. ‘When I saw a baby, or when my friends’ children were little and they were entirely consumed by them.’
Max was listening to me so intently. There was something pained about his expression, and it hit me suddenly that this was something he’d been carrying all these years. Maybe I’d even seen that pained expression in his eyes on those odd occasions we were in the company of a newborn baby.
I saw the apology he was about to offer, so I made sure I got in first. ‘But now I see what a gift it has been, just the two of us, spending our lives together. And I’m grateful for it. Truly.’
I was. Of course, if we’d had children, I’m sure we wouldn’t have regretted it. We probably would be sitting here surrounded by our family, talking about how empty our lives would have been without them. But we would have been wrong. Our lives were not empty. Even with all that remained unsaid between us, as I sat there with Max, it was hard to imagine any alternative reality in which I would be more content, more fulfilled.
And still the sadness remained on Max’s face. ‘You always asked so little of me, Amanda. I should have given you so much more.’
I smiled. ‘You gave me what I asked, remember? Fidelity. That was the deal.’
Max smiled back. His eyes were both sad and happy.
‘Darling,’ he said, ‘it was such an easy thing to give.’
71
PIPPA
NOW
I stay in my office for over an hour while Gabe is outside with the girls in the sandpit. When I finish my work, the house is quiet. After days of us all being cooped up in the house, it is strange. I close my computer and go to the kitchen, wait for the kettle to boil, make a cup of tea. I’m jiggling the teabag in the water when I hear the toilet flush, then Gabe walks into the living room.
‘Bathroom,’ he says by way of explanation, but I’m already opening the glass doors, scanning the yard for the girls.
The sandpit is empty.
The spike of adrenaline is instant. My face becomes hot. My mouth becomes dry. My vision blurs at the edges.
I look beyond the fence towards the bushes and the moonah trees. Towards The Drop . . .
I see the man first – the giant man from the car park. He’s bent over, talking to my little girls. As he stands upright, my stomach lurches. The size of him next to the tiny girls makes my blood run cold. They’re so close to the cliff edge. He could pick one up in each hand and in a heartbeat they’d be gone.
‘Gabe,’ I say in a strangled voice.
And then I run faster than I ever have in my life.
72
AMANDA
BEFORE
It’s funny how bad things sneak up on you when you least expect it. It’s almost as if the universe wants to maximise the utter shock and despair. For a year, Max and I had been happy. Gabe and Pippa had moved away, and the drama with Arthur Spriggs had settled. Max was still working, but he was winding back – handing over more things to the executives and coming home earlier and earlier. We’d started to talk about retirement.
‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ Max said. ‘It’s time for a life change. I think we should move overseas. Maybe to Europe. We can sell the business and start over.’
‘But how can we sell the business without exposing the investment from A.S. Holdings?’
‘I don’t know yet, but I’m going to set up a meeting with the accountants to see what’s possible.’
It was on that day – the day the accountant came to our house – that I found Max’s secret laptop on the floor of the walk-in wardrobe, next to the open safe. I hadn’t seen it in a while; I’d almost forgotten it existed. Max had probably come in to check something and then forgotten to put it away.