industrial-strength rangehood, the passing traffic, a nearby building site, all fade away.
I study what’s written on Ryan’s page, which isn’t a whole lot: his birthday, his mobile number, what he thought of some movie he saw last night. I see that he has two hundred and seventy-one friends, and I mirror Ranald’s actions, moving my finger along the touch-sensitive rectangle at the base of the keyboard to be taken to page after page of profile photos and names. Good-looking teens, moody teens, a smattering of adults who favour group family shots in matching sweaters, people signified by cartoons, obscurely posed objects or a humanoid- shaped blob.
I see that Brenda Sorensen is there, Ryan’s ex- girlfriend. Richard Coates, Lauren Daley’s boyfriend at the time she was snatched right out of her bedroom. It doesn’t surprise me that Lauren herself isn’t there, after what she’s been through. I wonder how she’s doing; if you ever really come back sane from something like that.
I click the Back button until I’m staring at Ryan’s photo again, and find myself hunched over a little, shivering, arms crossed over my belly as if I’m in pain. My left hand no longer hurts, but the feeling inside me is as if acid is running through my veins now, not blood.
Still, I hesitate. I’m not a member of Ryan’s tribe, could be any old psycho out there in the world who’s chanced across his picture, but isn’t that almost the point?
I move my finger along that sliver of touch- sensitive steel again and the small arrow drifts erratically towards the send message option. I click on it, finally, and a small window opens, Ryan’s image in the top left- hand corner.
I’m no typist, but I’m a fast study. I scan the keyboard before me and tap into the window:
Ryan, it’s Mercy. Don’t look at the photo for clues because you won’t see anything more than sunlight. There’s no connection between her or Carmen. No rationale for why she was chosen, and not by me. Never by me. I’m still the random by-product of some process I don’t quite understand.
But I remember Lauren, I remember the pine tree you wasted, Mulvaney’s, the drive out to Little Falls, to Port Marie, in your car. All of it. Don’t ask me how, but I do.
I’ll find you. You know I’m nothing, if not stubborn. Just tell me where you are, and quickly.
I add:
I need go off-road for a while.
Then I click send and the words and the window instantly vanish, leaving only Ryan’s profile page, that heart-stopping photograph in which he is looking away from me.
Chapter 9
I sit there for a few minutes flicking between his window and my window. There’s no change to either.
I add Ryan as a friend. Still nothing happens.
Ranald wanders back over, clearing his throat politely just in case I hadn’t seen him coming. ‘All done?’ he asks hesitantly, lifting the chewed fingernails of one hand to his lips, then remembering and dropping them again. ‘I do actually kind of need to get back to work now. Without me, P/2/P would fall apart. I personally wrote most of their applications — they’d be nothing without me. Even though I get treated like the company punching bag most days. I keep threatening to leave, to take them all down with me, but no one ever takes me seriously.’ He gives a small, self-deprecating laugh.
‘Of course. I’m sorry,’ I say and get up, disappointed that I can’t linger over the machine, obscurely disheartened by the fact that Ryan hasn’t replied straightaway.
I mean, what had I been expecting? I don’t even know where he is. He could be asleep. He could be out of town.
Or with Brenda Sorensen, points out that little voice inside.
Now that Lauren’s back safely in the fold, Ryan’s free to get on with his life. I know Brenda wanted him back pretty badly, and what Brenda wants, Brenda usually gets. Ryan may take one look at the message sent to him by a total stranger from Melbourne, Australia, and hit delete. There’s no guarantee he’ll even read it.
Despite all that, I’m hoping he’ll see the message, understand it and act on the feelings he had for me. He has to, or Luc and I might never ‘reconnect’ again. There’s a lot riding on this.
And truth be told, I’m kind of sick of having to be self-sufficient and resourceful, you know? It’d be nice to have someone in my corner for a change; to be appreciated — loved, even — for myself, no matter what face I might be wearing. I’m the first one to tell you that self-pity is for idiots, but I wasn’t made to bear these burdens alone. I was part of something bigger than me, once. I was made for a purpose and, in some way, I know that I’ve failed.
I want to come in from the cold. I don’t want to be an exile any more. And if there are consequences, then so be it.
I catch myself drawing one finger down the side of Ryan’s face on the screen and hastily close the window.
‘Sorry,’ I say again, hoping Ranald didn’t catch my moment of weakness. ‘And thank you. You’ve been very generous with your equipment, and your time.’
Ranald stares down at me for a moment, and his eyes seem very dark. ‘You take care out there,’ he says quietly, tapping one ragged fingernail on the screen, which has now turned black. ‘It’s called a “web” for good reason. Newbies like you can get eaten alive.’
‘Thanks for the tip,’ I reply.
As I move out of my seat, I push the screen down towards the keyboard, thinking to shut the machine.
‘Wait!’ Ranald exclaims. ‘Let me shut it down properly first.’
I’d thought it had already turned itself off, but as I watch, a thin ribbon of white appears in the inky background of the screen, so faint that at first I think it’s just a trick of the light. It streams towards me in a hypnotic, side-winding fashion, like a cobra preparing to strike. As it expands and grows brighter, I see that it isn’t a snake at all, but a quote in stark white text on that field of black.
It reads: Abyssus abyssum invocat.
Literally: Hell invokes hell. I frown. In common speech, I suppose you could say it means something like one bad thing begets another.
‘It’s my screen saver,’ Ranald says quickly, eyes bright. ‘Do you speak Latin?’
Why do I get the sense that it’s almost like he wants me to?
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘None at all.’
He doesn’t need to know that Latin is like mea lingua to me, my mother tongue. I speak it and read it almost as if it is the language in which I think, in which I dream. Where this facility comes from is anyone’s guess.
‘Not many people do,’ he replies with a small smile, sending his laptop to sleep and shutting it with a snap. ‘Which is a loss to the world, as is the death of anything beautiful.’
I give him a small wave and head back towards the counter, my eyes colliding with Sulaiman’s as he stares out through the serving hatch, an unreadable expression on his face.
As soon as I leave here today, I’m going to that internet place in Chinatown to see whether Ryan’s responded to my message. I don’t know if I can wait that long, or what I’ll do if he does reply. How do I get from here to where he is? Lela’s got no money, and I can hardly materialise there again, like I did once before. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how much I might wish it to.
First step hardly even describes the journey I may have to make to get back to Luc.
And what happens to Lela’s dying mother if Lela suddenly vanishes off the face of the earth? Because that’s what I intend to do. I can’t just abandon Karen Neill to save myself, can I?
But theremesno point obsessing about any of this until I know if Ryan cares enough about me, Mercy, to reply. It all comes down to him. What he does next determines the course of everything for me.
A customer blocks my way as I head back to the counter. It’s the corporate gnome from yesterday morning who called Justine a hooker — probably back to settle a score with me. Well, join the queue, bozo, I think.
Aloud, I say, ‘Can I help you?’
I know it’s a warm day outside but that can’t possibly explain why the gnome’s sweating as if he’s in the grip of a terrible fever. His skin is slick and shiny with moisture, his thinning hair, moustache and beard are dark with
