Times of Trouble (18 page)

'Could you maybe give
me her number, so I can just call her?'

'Of course, that's
probably best. My brain isn't what it once was. It will probably
come to me, when I get off the phone. You know how it is. I’ll just
give you her number shall I? Wait a moment, I’ll get it out of my
mobile phone.’

I could hear her
pressing buttons; it took her a painfully long time to find the
number she needed. I wrote it down as she carefully recited each
digit, and then I tried politely to get off the phone.

‘
When you speak to
Kylie, say hello to her for me. She doesn’t ring us enough, tell
her that. It was lovely to speak to you, dear. I hope you are still
playing, you really did play very well…’

‘
Ok, thanks,
bye.’

I hung up, hoping she
didn’t think me too rude. Again, I quickly typed in the phone
number, not pausing long enough for Liam to vent his frustration at
how protracted this all was, or to think again about how much I
hated making calls. At least I was getting somewhere, wasn’t
I?

Kylie’s mobile rang.
I had a sinking feeling after a couple more rings, and sure enough,
the voice mail cut in. Typical. I found the right number, and she
didn’t answer her bloody phone! My body went tense, my hand
squeezing the phone tight, trying to control my reflex to throw it
at the wall. Kylie sounded cheerful on her message. I still had
absolutely no idea who she was. I just hoped she checked her
messages often.

‘
Hi Kylie. This is
Ellen Goddard. You probably don’t remember me, but Tina told me
you’d seen my sister Sophie, and I was just hoping to speak to you
about it. Can you call me back on …’ The voicemail ran out, beeping
in my ear to tell me time was up. Before Liam could get angry, I
explained: ‘It’s ok, she’ll have the missed call. She’ll get my
number from that.’

‘
Just call her back,
give her the number again. She might answer this time’

I did as I was told.
It didn’t hurt to show Kylie how urgently I needed to speak to her.
She didn’t answer again, so I left a message with my number, and
asked her to call as soon as she could. When I got off the phone,
Liam had the car keys in his hand.

‘
Where are you going?
We have no idea where she even works.’

Now he was headed for
the door, I had to jog from the room to catch up.

‘
If we are in the car
ready, when she calls back she can tell us where she works, and we
can go straight there.’

It sort of made
sense, but I couldn’t help but notice Liam was really jumpy. We had
a lead, which was great, but he seemed frightened it would slip
through our fingers. Maybe it was because of all the
disappointments he had so far on the search that he couldn’t bear
the idea of getting close, but not finding her.

‘
What if Kylie
doesn’t call back? We’ll just be driving around in circles, wasting
petrol. We may as well wait and see where we’re heading. It might
not be far, or it could be ages away.’

Liam didn’t even
pause to consider my objection. He was already getting into the
driver’s seat and starting the car. There was even less point him
driving away without me, I was the one with the phone. So I jumped
in, and went along with his slightly crazy plan.

‘
Just keep calling
her,’ he instructed. ‘She’s bound to answer eventually.’

‘
When she sees I have
called, she will call back. When we find out where the medical
centre is, what do we do then? Sophie has been there, but that
doesn’t mean we’ll know exactly where she is now.’ I
said.

Liam looked at me
like I was speaking a different language.

‘
So? There are plenty
of ways to track her down from there. She will have gone to a
medical centre close by where she is staying. We'll go to all the
closest hotels. We’ll stalk the streets if we have to, knocking on
doors! And she might have left an address with the nurse, or even
said where she was staying. Anything is possible.’

‘
I really doubt she’s
left an address with them… but it can’t hurt to go find
out.’

Kylie was a good
lead, a great one, but it didn’t mean we had found Sophie. She
might have gone somewhere a long way from there by now.

‘
The quicker we can
get there the better. It’s probably going to shut before 7:00, so
we can’t waste any more time. Call Kylie again.’

Not having any better
suggestion, I called again, getting the same voice mail message for
the third time. Liam appeared to be heading towards the city. But
there weren’t likely to be many medical centres there.

‘
Why don’t you head
towards the suburbs past Newtown, otherwise we’ll just get stuck in
the traffic in the city.’

Liam pretended not to
hear me. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tight that his
elbows were bent, and he sat forward in his seat. I had to admit
that three months of enquiries like we made today would drive me a
bit nuts. And to think, when I met him, I worried he wasn’t
interested in solving the case. This was, I knew now more than
ever, a complete misjudgement on my part. He wanted to find Sophie
as much as I did. I’m sure part of his motivation to find her came
from his desire to prove himself as a private investigator, but
there was more to it than that. The way he looked at Sophie’s
photo, his expression definitely had an emotional edge to it. And
add to that the phone call I overheard him having with his mum. As
hard as it was to believe, it was as if he had somehow managed to
form an attachment to her, even though he had never met her. Was
Sophie so attractive that men could fall in love with her photo? It
wouldn’t surprise me. Trust Sophie to have a guy like Liam give up
his life to search for her, when she didn’t even know he existed!
It was obvious I didn’t have that affect on him. He looked straight
through me, just like every man I ever met.

As I predicted, the
city was in gridlock, and soon we were stuck in it. The lack of
movement seemed to make Liam even more tense. He kept glancing at
the phone on my lap, willing it to ring. It was obvious he wanted
me to call again, and I had just picked it up to redial, when
suddenly it started to vibrate, and I got such a shock I almost
dropped it.

‘
Hello?’

‘
Hi, is that Ellen?
This is Kylie.’ Thank god.

Liam could obviously
hear Kylie speaking, as he veered off the road, and pulled up at
the curb, ready to decide which direction to drive in.

‘
Hi Kylie, thanks so
much for ringing me back. Sorry I called so many times. It’s just
it’s a bit of an emergency.’

‘
Yeah, I got that. So
you’re looking for Sophie? How strange that I saw her on Saturday!
When I got the message from Tina, I wrote straight
back.’

‘
Thanks so much. You
have no idea what a huge help you’ve been. Can you tell me anything
else that might help us to find out exactly where she
is?’

I could hear Kylie
breathing into the phone. I was pleased she was giving it some
thought, but Liam’s eyes were boring into me, waiting for
directions.

‘
Well, the medical
centre is in Dee Why. Do you know where that is? It’s on the main
street, Pittwater Road.’

I had absolutely no
idea, but Liam had also heard, and was pulling away from the curb.
The car behind us beeped loudly as it avoided running into us, but
Liam didn’t even hesitate, and we were back in the
traffic.

‘
How far away from
the city is that?’ I asked.

‘
About half an hour,
maybe 40 minutes if there is a lot of traffic. Are you going there
now? I’m not working today.’

I still wasn’t sure
exactly what we were doing, but I wasn’t going to tell Kylie
this.

‘
What time does it
shut? We might visit now, if it’s still going to be
open.’

‘
It shuts in an hour
so you should make it. I wasn’t working on the desk when Sophie
came in, but I saw her in the waiting room.’

‘
Are you sure it was
her? It’s been a while since we were at school...’

‘
I’m absolutely
positive. I’m really good with faces, and I think she recognised me
too. She was acting a bit strangely, though. Did Tina mention she
had a baby?’

‘
Yeah, she did. What
do you mean by strange?’

‘
Well, when I saw her
I went over to say hello. It’s not often I see people I know in
Sydney, but I knew it was her. And she sort of just pretended not
to hear me.’

Was it my job to
apologise on her behalf? I didn’t think so, but Kylie was
intimating it was.

‘
She’s going through
a hard time. That’s one of the reasons we’re desperate to find
her.’

A ‘hard time’ had
been how mum had described my situation to Liam. But how hard had
it been compared to Sophie’s?

‘
Yeah, she did look a
bit stressed, and really tired, too. I guess a baby can do that to
you. Her baby was sick; I heard her say that to the nurse at the
desk. And it was crying most of the time she was in the waiting
room. I would have sat with her, but she was avoiding eye contact
with me. I thought it was a bit strange really.’ Kylie definitely
wanted to say ‘rude’ in the place of strange, but she didn’t have
the heart.

‘
Did she give an
address where she was living?’ I asked, desperate to see how useful
this lead really was.

‘
Not sure. She would
have had to fill in a form to see a doctor, so she might have put
her address on that. If you get there tonight, the girl at the desk
will be Charlene. I’ll call her now, and tell her to expect you.
I’ll explain you’re looking for Sophie because you’re worried about
her.’

‘
Ok. Thanks so much
Kylie. I can’t tell you how relieved we are to finally have some
idea where she might be.’

‘
No worries, glad to
help. She has changed a lot since I last saw her, but I’m sure it
was her.’

I was about to hang
up, but had one last question. ‘How has she changed? Do you mean
her looks?’

‘
Yeah. I mean she
used to have that gorgeous long dark hair. We were all so jealous!
But now it’s really short, like a crop cut, and it’s white blonde!
She still looks stunning, but if I wasn’t so good with faces I
wouldn’t have picked it was her. Anyway, good luck finding her,
I’ll definitely let you know if she comes in again.’

‘
Thanks again Kylie.’
Well, that was extremely interesting.

‘
Did you hear that?
She’s cut her hair and dyed it blonde. Good idea to disguise
herself. It might be one of the reasons they haven’t found her
yet,’ I suggested, proud of Sophie for managing to evade her
pursuers.

‘
How do you know they
haven’t found her? They might know exactly where she is, and just
be waiting to...’

Before Liam could
finish his sentence, he looked at me, and realised his statement
was not going to be useful.

‘
So where is Dee Why?
Kylie said it is half an hour away, and the medical centre shuts in
an hour. It sounds like it would be in the middle of
nowhere...’

‘
It’s on the northern
beaches. It won’t take long, once I get onto the
bridge’.

So Sophie was staying
further out from Sydney than we guessed. Our search would have been
useless, if Kylie hadn’t sent us in the right direction. Liam had
never mentioned that Sophie might have been living somewhere other
than close to the centre of Sydney. But it made sense to me now.
She was a sitting duck in the city. Just as we never considered an
outer suburb, the people after her wouldn’t have either. And
anyway, there were so many places to choose from.

‘
Let’s just hope she
put her address on the form. If Charlie is sick, she would have
done whatever she could to get a doctor to see him, and maybe you
need to give an address before you can get an
appointment.’

‘
She could have made
it up,’ Liam added, though he looked desperately like he hoped that
wasn’t the case.

He was driving too
fast, accelerating at the cars in front, and then swerving around
them as if they were in his way. I held onto my seat to avoid
swaying with the car as we made our way in spurts over the bridge.
Out my window, I watched the harbour fly past. The water looked
cool and calm, with boats bobbing in the bays, and ferries chugging
towards Circular Quay. I hadn’t felt calm since before I found out
about the mortgage. I realised now that mum had probably been
frantic with worry for months, knowing something was scaring
Sophie.

And Sophie probably
couldn’t remember what it felt like to be calm, either. How could
she send that email to mum, and then not make contact again? Why
involve us, and then make it near impossible to find her? I knew I
still resented her for leaving, and not trying to stay in contact.
Was it possible she was too ashamed of what she was doing for a
living to talk to us? Maybe it wasn’t anything to do with her
forgetting us, or not caring about what we were doing.

A niggling anxiety
that I had been trying to suppress resurfaced as I thought about
Sophie’s absence from my life. Why hadn’t I tried to contact Sophie
before now? In the last seven years, I could have made some sort of
effort to find her, even just joining Facebook or Googling her
name. But I never tried. And I knew why. At first I was too busy
trying to prove I could succeed. Then when I failed, I felt ashamed
and didn’t want Sophie to know what a failure I was. I’d always
convinced myself that as soon as I made it as a pianist, I would
find her, and tell her how amazing my life was. But since that
hadn’t happened, I hadn’t any motivation to speak to her. Was that
selfish of me? Or just plain pathetic? I’d always thought Sophie
was living a marvellous life, and that was why she didn’t have time
for her family. But maybe she wasn’t contacting me for the same
reason I wasn’t contacting her. Maybe she was just as embarrassed
about her life as I was about mine. I suddenly wanted more than
anything to tell her I still loved her, that I still needed her in
my life. And that it didn’t matter what trouble she was
in.