Brittle Shadows (29 page)

“I aim to
please.” He handed her a paper napkin. “Now what were you saying?”

She shook her
head. “It can wait.”

One eyebrow
went up, but he said nothing. He poured the wine and handed her a glass. “Bon
appétit.”

She returned
the toast, wishing it were true. Her appetite had disappeared along with her
faith in people.

“Not to your
liking?” he asked, when she hadn’t touched the food. “No problem. We can order
something else. Italian, Greek, Mexican, Lebanese – you name it.”

“No, it’s
lovely, really,” she said, managing a weak smile. “I’m sorry, I’m just not that
hungry. I should have called you earlier and made it for another night.”

He frowned.
“What’s happened, Jemma?”

“What hasn’t
happened is more like it.” She skolled her wine. Her stomach contracted as the
chilled liquid hit it and for one horrible moment, she thought it was all going
to come back up again.

“That bad?” He
refilled her glass.

She hugged her
knees to her chest, her left hand gripping her right wrist, the fingers of her
right hand wrapped around the wineglass. “I learnt something today I wish I
hadn’t,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth at odds with her
conviction that the truth should always win out. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” He
leaned back on his elbow and sipped his wine.

“Did Tanya ever
mention her father to you?”

“He died a few
years before your mother, didn’t he?”

“She didn’t
talk about a different father?”

He sat upright.
“You’ve lost me. Two fathers?”

“What would you
say if I told you Marcus Bartlett was Tanya’s real father?’

Chris’s eyes
boggled.

“I know,” Jemma
said, “I couldn’t believe it either.”

“And Bartlett
knew Tanya was his daughter?”

She nodded.
“What I don’t know is if she knew he was her father.”

“Whoa.” Chris
scratched his eyebrow. “Some bloody father.”

This time she
didn’t contradict him. “You can imagine what’s been running through my head.”
She gazed into the darkening water. Daylight was fading.

“Didn’t I tell
you that man had no scruples?”

She didn’t
answer.

“Look, you
don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but it might help. We don’t
have to stay here either,” he said, starting to pack up the boxes of food.

“Actually, if
you don’t mind, I would rather stay.”

“I’m not
leaving you out here on your own.”

She unlinked
her arms and twisted her body to face Chris. “Would you stay with me?” She
swallowed, her voice starting to crack. “I could really do with the company.”

He edged closer,
putting his arm around her shoulders. “I’m yours for as long as you want me.”

She relaxed
into the crook of his arm, resting her head against his firm shoulder. She
smelled his masculine muskiness, felt the warmth of his body, his heart beat
strong and steady. She thought of Ash and her meltdown in his arms. This felt
different, somehow. She felt different. Desolate. Numb. Dead.

Darkness fell,
but it wasn’t until a bright-eyed possum arrived to check them out that she realized
how long she and Chris had sat there. She moved and the possum scuttled off.
“I’m so sorry, Chris. I bet this is not at all how you planned tonight to go.”

In the gloom,
she couldn’t see his expression. “That’s what friends are for.” He stretched
his left arm up, rubbing his shoulder. “Although at the moment, I don’t think
you know who your friends are.”

She scratched
her ankles. “Not these damned mosquitoes, that’s for sure.”

He stood and
helped her to her feet. “Sounds like you’ve had enough of the wild outdoors for
one night. How about I get you home?”

She tensed.

“Did I say
something wrong?”

“No, it’s just
that I can’t think of the apartment as home, temporary or otherwise.”

“Slip of the
tongue, sorry.”

She caught his
arm. “Don’t be. I’m the one with all the hang-ups…” Her fingers tightened and
then loosened. “How easy is it to trace calls to a mobile?”

“What calls?
Whose mobile?”

“Hypothetically
speaking.”

“Well,” he
said, “obviously if the caller withheld the number, it’s not going to be that
easy. Not for the civilian whose mobile it is, anyway. If this civilian,
however, say had a friend with access to police resources – hypothetically
speaking, of course – then something might be able to be done.”

“Hmmn,
interesting.” She collected the two empty wine glasses and poked them in the
basket. “Let’s get out of here while I still have some blood left in my body.”

When they
emerged from the park, a few minutes later, Chris asked, “Are you going to be
okay on your own? I could sleep on the floor.”

She shook her
head. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Besides, I think I’m safe inside the
apartment. Unless someone is going to scale up the outside of the building in
full view of all the other apartments and jimmy open the balcony door, no one
can get in.”

“Keep your
phone handy and don’t think twice about calling me.” Chris didn’t leave until
he had escorted her across the street and seen her to the door.

The
hypothetical phone calls started again at midnight…

Jemma hung up from Chris. After
yet another broken night’s sleep, she’d had no choice but to ask for his help
in tracing the nuisance phone calls. With any luck, it wouldn’t be a payphone
or a prepaid mobile.

Sighing, she
tossed the phone on the couch next to her and stared unseeing out the balcony
doors. What was her nocturnal caller hoping to achieve except to deprive them
both of sleep? Unless of course, it wasn’t a human, but a computer programmed
to call her number at set intervals. That, however, assumed a specialist
knowledge.

Her ringing
phone interrupted her musings. She glanced at the caller ID. Marcus. Her jaw
clenched. Perhaps if she ignored him, he would go away. Not likely, though.

She pressed the
talk button. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage for one lifetime?”

Silence then,
“We should talk.”

“I’m listening,”
she said.

“Not over the
phone. In person.”

Her breath
escaped in a strangled laugh. “What do you take me for?”

“I’m serious,
Jemma. This is serious. Name the place. Somewhere public if you don’t trust me.
Please.”

She hesitated.
Could what he have to tell her hold the key to her sister’s death? He was
Tanya’s father after all. “Bourke Street Mall in one hour.” She didn’t wait for
his response.

Fifty minutes
later, she entered the mall at the Swanston Street end. A precursor to the day
ahead, the sun’s heat was already almost too hot for comfort. Abuzz with
caffeine or adrenaline or both, she strode down one side of the shopping
precinct and up the other, doing her utmost not to mow down any of the Saturday
morning dawdlers.

About to repeat
the circuit, she spotted Marcus emerging from an arcade. Contrary to how she
felt, he looked cool and relaxed in designer jeans and a grey-and-white shirt,
the cuffs folded back. He acknowledged her with a wave that looked more like a
salute. She stayed where she was, waiting for him to come to her.

Up close, the
tightness around his eyes showed the strain. He ran a hand through his damp
silver hair and motioned her toward a row of steel benches with the other.
About to refuse, she had second thoughts. Now that she had stopped, her leg
muscles quivered, as if on the verge of imploding.

She dropped
down onto the closest seat, the metal cold against the back of her legs, her
shoulder bag clutched to her chest like a shield. Marcus perched at the
opposite end, his elbows splayed, his hands planted on his strong thighs.

His chest rose
and fell. “I understand that you feel betrayed,” he said, staring at the
pavement beyond his feet, “but your mother did what she thought was best for
you, for Tanya, for her family…”

A tram trundled
past, drowning his next words.

He glanced
sideways at her. “It was her choice,” he continued, “and though I didn’t agree
with it, I had to abide by it.”

“Even after Mum
died?”

He nodded. “In
hindsight, probably not the wisest decision. Although at that stage, I think
your Aunt Gail had more your interests at heart than anything. You had already
lost both parents. She argued that finding out that your father wasn’t your
sister’s father would have only done more harm than good, created a wedge
between you.”

“Yet, you gave
Tanya a job, a job which meant you worked closely together. And in all that
time, she didn’t have a clue? That’s what I don’t understand. Tell me, did Ash
know Tanya was his half-sister?”

Marcus shook
his head. “No.”

“And your
conscience didn’t have anything to say about a potentially incestuous
relationship developing between your son and daughter?”

“Why do you
think I did my damnedest to keep them apart?”

“Why not just
tell them the truth? What’s the worst that could’ve happened?”

He twiddled
with his wedding band. “I wanted to, but like I said, I promised Karen – your
mother.”

Jemma felt
sick. Despite Marcus’s efforts had Tanya and Ash consummated their
relationship? Could the child she had carried been fathered by Ash?

Marcus read her
mind. “I don’t know who Tanya was seeing, but I can assure you it wasn’t Ash.
He was thousands of kilometers away on the other side of the world.”

“How can you be
so sure of that?” She fought to keep her voice in check. “You didn’t know he
was back in Australia until I told you. Surely you owed it to both of them, to
yourself, to tell them the truth about their parentage before it was too late?”

“As I said:
hindsight.” He rubbed his hands down his jeans. “If I could turn back time, I
would.”

“Wouldn’t we all.
But Marcus, she might not have known you were her father, but you knew she was
your daughter. What father in his right mind would screw his daughter’s
fiancé?”

He didn’t say
anything for a few moments, then, “You’re right. It’s totally inexcusable.”

“On that at
least we agree. But that doesn’t explain what was so important that you had to
see me. Or was it just so you could offload all the blame onto someone who’s no
longer here to defend herself? In which case…” She started to rise.

“It’s not.” He
stretched out his arm. “Sit. Please.”

She lowered
herself back onto the bench.

“For your own
sake,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I think you should leave
Melbourne. The sooner the better.”

“Are you
evicting me from the apartment?”

He gave his head
a weary shake. “No, it’s not like that. You know your aunt wants you home.
And you would be out of harm’s way in Perth.”

“While it’s
obvious you and Gail are in cahoots, what makes you think I wouldn’t be safe
staying here?”

He grunted.
“Just as stubborn as your mother always was. Okay, here it is plain and simple.
If like me you’re convinced – and it’s a big if – Sean and your sister didn’t
take their own lives, then someone else did. I don’t know who, how or why, but
one thing’s for certain, if they were murdered, there’s nothing to stop their
killer striking again. Call me selfish, but I would rather not have to explain
to Gail why I wasn’t able to save either of her nieces.”

“Are you sure
there’s not more to it? Something that you’re not telling me?”

Marcus hung his
head. In guilt? In frustration? In what?

Before she
could voice her thoughts, her phone rang. She scrambled in the depths of her
bag in a bid to silence it. When she saw it was Chris calling, she answered it.

He opened with,
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Start with the
good.”

“I’ve traced
those calls.”

Her heart
lurched. “And the bad news?”

“The bad news
is it’s a residential number registered to one Marcus Edward Bartlett of
Toorak.”

“Are you sure?”
she asked, hunching her shoulder and angling her body to block Marcus’s view of
her face.

“Of the
address, yes. That Bartlett senior is behind it, no.”

Jemma waited until the two
pert-breasted young girls, each swinging a Myer’s shopping bag, pranced past.
She needed Marcus’s full attention.

“You can stop
with the late night calls now, Marcus.”

One eyebrow
arched. “Excuse me?”

“Marcus Edward
Bartlett, Toorak,” she said. “There’s no point in denying it.”