The Labyrinth of Drowning

She had met it before; situations where other women assumed you were chasing after their partners when you had no interest in them at all. It had worked for her; it had helped persuade Sara she was genuine.

Sara laughed. ‘I knew it. He thought you were too standoffish. I told him you were just playing hard to get. You thought you were better than he was. I told him, just wait. She’ll be there for you. Like all the others.’

She. I’m sitting here in person. Why should you think I find him as compelling as you do? But if she said she found him repellent her cover was gone. All the others. How many of them had there been? She kept silent. Sara smiled at her, scornfully.

‘Where did he meet Narelle?’ Grace asked.

‘At my parents’ place. Her and all the other wannabe actresses seeing who they can have sex with to get a part. Didn’t have a hope.’

And you just watched while he chatted up this little self-serving user, Grace thought, seduced her in your own parents’ house, and set her up as a gaoler and a fantasy pastime in a brothel you probably both owned. And you didn’t care. Not much.

‘Joel told me he’d known you since you were fifteen,’ Grace said.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘He was your first boyfriend. That’s all.’

Your first boyfriend and you never shook him off. Some women don’t. Sara was staring at her with hard-eyed condescension.

‘We understand each other. Something you can only see from the outside. You’ll never get anywhere near it.’

Grace thought how at that moment Sara sounded strangely like Narelle.

‘Where’d you meet him?’

‘At a camp I used to have to go to when I was a teenager. He was different. He saw things from the outside, the way I did. He was smarter than anyone else. We got talking and we knew we understood things other people didn’t.’

‘You still think that.’

‘I know it,’ Sara said.

‘Why’d you have to go to camp?’

‘Because my parents didn’t give a shit if I was alive or dead!’

Grace waited till the air cleared.

‘Do you get on better with them now?’ she asked bravely.

‘They’re useful.’ Sara spoke with a sense of superiority. ‘Joel taught me that. Use them. He told me, if they don’t care about you, just use them. From everything they’ve got, take what you want. Drain everything you want out of them. We did just that.’

Again, Grace waited.

‘You’ve never had sex with anyone else,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘What if you did?’

‘No! Why would that happen? You really don’t know Joel. You don’t know what he is.’

Why would I want to know what you know?

‘Do you take him sailing?’

‘He doesn’t like the water.’

‘Does he mind if you go sailing? Or does he think you shouldn’t do things he doesn’t like you doing?’

‘Sailing is just something I do,’ Sara said, angrily.

‘You’re rich.’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’

‘You had money, but Joel taught you other ways to make more money. So you went and did it. Whatever he wants you to do, you go and do it. Except this. Sailing. But now you have to leave that behind as well.’

Sara’s head jerked back in a dangerous way. ‘You don’t know anything about us. I’ve learned from him all my life. The first years we were together, they were amazing. He taught me what you can do if you want to.’ She smiled in the strangest way, barely visible in the light. ‘I’d never had a high like that before. No one else would have shown me those things. You just don’t know. Compared to him, you’re just like Narelle. A nothing. Now you can just shut up.’

Grace felt her gun against her ribcage, glad it was there. Did you hear that, Clive? I’m walking into a meeting with two very dangerous people. You’d better be there.

They turned into Cowan Water. The steep waterside hills of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park closed in on them. Then the lights of the tiny suburb were in view. Situated on the banks of Cowan Creek and surrounded by bush in the heart of the national park, it was an isolated, if beautiful, place. From here, the lights of Sydney were a pale glow in the night sky. Soon the boat slid quietly up to a mooring place. There was a dinghy moored nearby. They got into it and Sara rowed them to the private jetty of a three-storeyed house, the last in the short line of buildings on the water’s edge.

There was a light shining dully over a door not far from the jetty; otherwise the house was in darkness. Before they went inside, Sara turned and looked around at the water, the hills surrounding them, and the sky.

‘What are you doing?’ Grace said. ‘Saying goodbye to Cottage Days? We’re not coming back here then.’

‘Just keep quiet,’ Sara hissed, an edge of tears in her voice. ‘Sound carries.’

She let them both in, switching on the lights to a spacious rumpus room. The decor, from the ’70s, looked old and kitsch. Under other circumstances, the house would have had a comfortable, holiday feel, the kind of place where you could kick your shoes off. There was no sign of Griffin.

‘Is this where you were bringing Narelle?’

‘Check that room over there.’

Grace walked up to a door with a lock on the outside. She looked back over her shoulder but Sara hadn’t moved.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not coming after you.’

It was a small room with one window, too small to get out of and too high to reach. The walls were brick, the door solid wood. Once you were locked in here, there would be no way out until someone opened the door.

‘What was going to happen to her in there?’

‘You were going to shoot her.’

‘I was?’ Grace said.

‘I was going to strip her and then I was going to watch. She was going to cry and beg for mercy and I’d say, too bad, Elliot doesn’t love you any more. But she’s already dead. We don’t have to do that.’

‘Where’s the gun?’

‘It’s the one you’re carrying. You are carrying one, aren’t you?’

‘Why me?’

‘Proving yourself to Joel. Oh, he thinks you’re genuine and I’m beginning to think you are too. But that’s what you were going to do to prove it.’

No, I would have had to arrest you and take you in. The operation would have been aborted. Grace shut the door and once again felt the security of her gun against her ribs.

‘There’s no Narelle. What are we doing here now?’ she asked.

‘Just wait.’

Sara took a mobile out of a drawer, turned it on, sent a quick message, then turned the phone off again and put it in her pocket.

‘All right. We’re moving on. You’re finally going to get what you came for.’ She held up a set of car keys. ‘The garage is two levels up. Let’s go.’

‘This is your parents’ house, isn’t it?’

‘It’s basically mine,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘We’ve had it for years but they never come here. I’m the only one who’s ever used it.’

‘You came here to go sailing. When you were a kid. This is where you learned to sail.’

‘So what?’ Sara replied, a little puzzled. ‘Why do you want to know?’