Darkest Place (18 page)

Sunlight sparked red and gold fireworks behind Carly's eyelids. The hush of the foyer, the expanse of the atrium above her head, the sense of space around her made sitting on Elizabeth's bench feel like meditation. Maybe that was why Elizabeth had done it every day. Carly rested her head on the wall at her back, grateful the week had finally ground to its end.

If lack of sleep and stress were an invitation for the man in black to scare the hell out of her, then he'd missed a prime opportunity: anxiety, guilt, a sadness that had seeped through the warehouse like a gas leak, then yesterday the funeral and wake. Nate had come and gone from Carly's apartment, had spoken no words of endearment, never kissed her goodbye, just knocked on her door at all the right moments.

Today, the sun was shining, the sky was gloriously blue and in a couple of hours Dakota would be cutting her hair. She'd have a laugh with her friend, apply some brainpower to her Big Long List, have a few drinks. Be normal and maybe sleep like a normal person tonight.

‘Good afternoon, Carly.'

She opened her eyes. ‘Roland.' He was returning from the markets too, carrying a shopping bag, wearing a tie and sports coat – a man from a different generation, who'd struggled with his emotions yesterday. ‘How are you today?'

‘I'm well, thank you,' he said formally, like he always did.

‘I'm tired,' Carly told him. ‘It was a long, sad day.'

‘Indeed, it was.'

‘But the wake under the atrium was lovely. As were the words you spoke about Elizabeth.'

He sat beside her, said nothing, lips pressed together under his moustache.

Carly patted his hand. ‘I love your suggestion of a plaque for the bench. I think Elizabeth would be chuffed.'

He nodded, small movements, more to himself than Carly. ‘Thank you for that.' He cleared his throat, stood again. ‘Well, I'll leave you to it.'

Carly probably should have caught the lift too, put the cheese she'd bought in the fridge, but it was nice here. The vastness, the gentle silence somehow letting her anxiety take a break.

While she sat, people stopped or just waved as they passed. The personal trainer in a dress instead of leggings. The guy with the scary tatts on his neck, the woman with the angular haircut. Christina, out of breath and still talking as she hurried past. Dietrich. Stuart. Brooke, who propped her crutches against the wall and joined Carly on the bench. Then Dakota.

Surprise drew Carly to her feet. ‘You're early.'

‘Nope,' Dakota called, turning a circle as she made her way across the foyer. ‘This place is awesome.' She set down a shopping bag that clinked as it touched the floor.

‘I sat for a minute and people just …' Carly shrugged and made the introductions. ‘Dakota's about to hack into my hair,' she explained to Brooke.

‘And pour her too many drinks.' Dakota gave her bag a jiggle. ‘I've got Coke and dry for the bourbon and chocolate for later. Or before. Or now, if anyone's up for it. So … are we making it a party?'

Brooke glanced at Carly. ‘Oh no, it's all right. You two have plans.'

Right now, Carly didn't care if the haircut was awful, Dakota was good to be around – maybe for Brooke too. ‘We need someone to help us eat the chocolate,' she told Brooke. ‘And you can be my moral support when Dakota starts with the scissors.'

 

Dakota had quizzed Brooke about her crutches and her job and her alcohol preferences by the time they reached the suspended walkway on the fourth floor. ‘Shit, that's a long way down,' Dakota said, leaning out.

‘Everything's a long way down in this place,' Brooke commented as she clomped past.

‘Would you die if you fell over there?'

‘According to the work safety brochure I just designed, there's a ninety per cent fatality rate for falls from twenty-five metres. And according to my calculations for the photos of the atrium I put up on my website, it's close to sixty metres from the foyer to the glass in the ceiling.' She stepped into Carly's hallway. ‘I am fond of useless information.'

Dakota closed the door, pointed a finger at each wall. ‘Which side is your bleeding neighbour?'

Carly cocked her head at Nate's.

‘The scary guy?' Brooke said.

‘He's scary?' Dakota asked.

‘He's not scary,' Carly said. ‘He cut his eyebrow and I cleaned it up.'

‘He got punched in the head,' Dakota corrected, following Carly and talking to Brooke.

‘Talia and I used to call him the Scary Guy because he always looked like he might yell at you if you talked to him.'

‘Maybe someone else thought he was scary the other night,' Dakota suggested.

‘Maybe he yelled at someone,' Brooke said.

Dakota and Brooke were laughing like they'd already had a drink when they spilled into the living room.

‘He's
not
scary.' Carly's voice was a little snappy. Dakota and Brooke pulled up short.

‘Right, right,' Dakota said. ‘He's nice.' She turned to Brooke. ‘Carly thinks he's nice.'

Carly blushed, feeling suddenly awkward, aware that it had been a long time since she'd had friends to entertain.

‘Wow. You live here?' Dakota made a show of looking around. ‘A view, a shiny kitchen and cool stairs to a
loft bedroom
. I want to live here.'

Brooke had walked to the centre of the room, her back to them as she stood. She'd been here before, Carly remembered. With Talia. ‘Brooke?'

Her voice was quieter. ‘I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming here again.'

‘Are you okay?' Carly asked.

She turned. ‘Yeah, I am. It looks different to the last time I was here.'

Did she want to remember or forget? ‘It's had a coat of paint since then.' Open-ended, so Brooke could decide.

‘Same colour, I think. It seems bigger, though. Talia's music stuff took up a lot of space.'

‘Who's Talia?' Dakota asked.

Carly explained the history for Dakota, who decided the information should be followed by bourbon and chocolate. While she searched kitchen cupboards for glasses, Carly joined Brooke at the window, looking back into the room.

‘She used to play here,' Brooke said. ‘Where the light was best.'

‘Did she play for you?'

‘Sometimes. She was shy but she didn't mind an audience.'

Carly remembered Howard's comment about the holes in the plasterwork. ‘The walls must look bare now. I haven't got any pictures to hang.'

‘Talia didn't have many. Some framed concert posters that meant nothing to me and …' Her eyes wandered around the room, a smile starting as a finger came up to point. ‘There was a huge canvas of a treble clef over there. And one of my photos that she'd framed and hung over there.'

Carly frowned. ‘What were all the holes for then?'

‘I don't know. Where were they?'

She pointed at the long wall. ‘Howard said they had to be patched up before the place was painted. He thought it must have looked like an art gallery in here there were so many.'

‘Not a gallery, but …' She hobbled forward a few steps on her crutches, faced Nate's apartment. ‘She used to Blu-Tack sheet music to the wall. Usually just a few pages where she practised so she could read it without having to turn pages. Then,' Brooke lifted a crutch, pointed along
the plaster, another smile starting. ‘That's right, the last few times I was here, the pages stretched all the way to the hallway. I think there were even a couple down by the front door.'

‘Pages of music?' Dakota said, joining them with a bowl of chocolates.

‘Yeah.' Brooke took a wrapper. ‘She said she was learning a complicated piece and it helped to have the music there in front of her all the time.'

‘Weird. Carly?' Dakota held the bowl out.

She took one, the chocolate softening on her tongue as she imaged Talia putting up her pages: balling up the gum, pressing her hands to the walls. Pushing at the plasterwork … like Carly had, shoving and knocking, searching for a way in. ‘Howard said there were some other holes, bigger ones.' She joined the tips of her thumbs and index fingers together, like Howard had to demonstrate how big.

‘Oh, yeah. Here.' A jab at the air with the rubber end of Brooke's crutch, as though that might have caused it. ‘Talia said she'd been trying to find the stud for a hook. It was low down, though, and we joked that she'd done it practising kickboxing. It was a running gag for a while. She covered it up with a page of sheet music as a laugh, you know, because she'd have to get on her knees to read it.'

‘There was another big hole in the loft,' Carly said.

‘Was there?' Brooke laughed. ‘Talia's hands were meant for strings and a bow, not a hammer and nails.' As soon as the words were out, her smile fell. ‘And now she can't use them at all.'

Carly wanted to ask more, like when had Talia gouged the hole? Why had she been looking for a stud so low on
the wall? Had she been worried about security? But Brooke's lips had thinned to a tight line and she was turning away, asking Dakota if she'd poured the drinks. And what right did Carly have to ask Brooke to dig around in her sad thoughts.

 

‘I'm not sure about bourbon and scissors,' Carly said.

Dakota lifted a wedge of hair and snipped. ‘No laws against drinking and cutting.' She'd produced the Big Long List and invited Brooke to join the cull. Ten more jobs were crossed off, and a few drinks had stretched to all evening.

Brooke and Dakota exchanged phone numbers before Brooke left, a little wobbly on her crutches. ‘Text me when you get home,' Carly called from the front door. ‘So we know you haven't fallen down any more stairs.'

It was after eleven when Carly found a pillow and blanket for Dakota and left her bedding down on the sofa. In the ensuite, she dropped a sleeping pill onto her palm, thinking about it, like she'd done every night since she'd bought them. She went through the for-and-against for tonight: she wanted to sleep while Dakota was here but bourbon and sedatives weren't a good mix. Then the usual arguments: she wasn't sure knocking herself out would prevent a visit from the man in black, or that she wouldn't kill herself falling down the stairs if she was doped up, and that she might be safer if she could wake up. And she tossed the tablet into the sink.

 

Carly's eyes snapped open on black, alarm firing in her chest. She turned her head, searched the darkness. A muted
thunk and her feet were on the floor and she was moving with stealth across the room, the timber cold on her soles, the glow of the nightlight trailing up the stairs.

At the railing, peering into the drop on the other side, the space seemed to rush at her with scary images: a figure looming over her, blood pooling around a head, holes in a wall.

A sound like a sigh.

‘Dakota?' she called quietly.

The answer came as a quick, quiet thud. It made Carly's scalp tingle, her mind skitter across scenarios: someone getting in, getting out, finding Dakota, hurting her.

‘Dakota?' Firm, clear this time.

‘Shit.'

A breath. ‘You okay?'

‘Getting a glass of water.' Another bump.

‘Turn a light on.'

‘Didn't want to wake you.'

‘Too late.'

Stainless steel flared under the bulbs, Dakota's face appeared below scrunched against the brightness. ‘Is it morning?'

‘It's the creepy dark hours.'

‘Oh. Go back to bed.'

‘Going.'

From under the doona, heart beating hard, Carly listened to Dakota moving about, watched the wash of light from below, then the gloom that followed. Thinking about other nights and the black-on-black shadows that had paralysed her. She wanted to be this Carly, the one who moved without hesitation. For the first time in years, she wanted to be the Carly she used to be.

Carly was buried in an assignment when a knock at the door made her lift her head for the first time in an hour. She kept the security chain hooked up as she opened the door.

‘Got a second?' Nate asked.

‘We might need more than that.' She smiled as she unlatched the locks. Then she saw the bag at his feet.

‘I'll be gone overnight,' he said.

‘Okay.'

‘I'm staying with my sister.'

‘Right.'

‘In Maitland.'

She leaned on the jamb, wondered what this piecemeal conversation was about. There'd been no discussion of relationship status, no suggestion from either of them that empathy and sex had made them a couple. It had been both reassuring and disconcerting. Carly had a track record of wanting too much, too early. Part of her wanted to push this time too, flapping wings in her chest urging her to hold onto him, to make it something she could hide in like she had at other times. Another part of her was
intrigued by their suspended state, the sense that whatever was going on between them hadn't happened yet. Now he was telling her his plans and making it her business.

‘Okay,' she said slowly.

‘Just letting you know,' he said. ‘In case.'

In case she woke up screaming during the night. Not the same as
In case you wondered where I was
. ‘Thanks.'

He smiled.

‘You should do that more often,' she said.

‘Stay with my sister?'

‘Smile like that.'

‘I can't do everything.'

‘Can you kiss me before you go?'

He glanced along the corridor first. It made her expect something brief and obligatory but it was long and slow, his mouth covering hers as though he'd been waiting for an invitation.

‘Call me if you need to.'

‘I'll be fine. I'm a big girl.'

She went back to the assignment but couldn't concentrate, his parting words stuck in her mind. Did Nate think she couldn't cope on her own now? Or was he hoping she'd let him in the next time she woke sobbing and crawling through the apartment at three in the morning?

It hadn't happened in almost two weeks. It hadn't happened since she'd been sleeping with Nate. Hilarious if sex was enough to make her subconscious behave. She hadn't told him what it was about, she figured there was no need when he wasn't asking. Perhaps no need at all if his body had sorted the problem out.

She hitched the hem of her trackpants and ran fingers along her shins – the bruises were almost gone. She pushed back her sleeve, placed her fingertips where the four ovals
had been. Yes, they were grab marks and she'd put them there herself. Freaked out to the point where everything else was a blur. Sleep paralysis and anxiety.

Hours later, she stood in the ensuite in her pyjamas, the foil sheet of sleeping pills in her hand, and suspended the nightly debate. The buzz of the weekend with Dakota and Brooke had lasted right through Monday, the talking and laughing like a new form of energy. Tonight, she'd finished her assignment, eaten a healthy meal, drunk herbal tea and taken deep meditative breaths. Not as enjoyable as Nate in her bed, but slumber was creeping at the edges of her awareness and she felt … good. A whole lot better than she might have expected three days after Elizabeth's funeral.

She was a big girl, she told herself. Her subconscious had just needed to remember how to do it. She tossed the blister pack back on the sink.

 

He is weight and heat and bone-sharp pressure. Straddled on top of her.

Inside, she recoils. Outside, her body is pinned in place. Fear beats through her like a vibration.

Voices are clamouring in her head. Words and warnings and cries of alarm but she shushes them. She must concentrate. She must see. She must …

His breath on her face is unhurried, faintly sweet. Hers is bucking in her chest. Does he feel it? Perhaps he likes it. Perhaps it's why he's here. To feel her bucking beneath him.

He lowers himself to her. Hips to hips, ribs on ribs. Her breasts feel naked, exposed, tender.

His voice comes on a flutter of air across her cheeks. ‘You're good tonight, Carly.'

It is praise. He is pleased with her. She wants to scratch his eyes, ball her fists and slam them in his fucking mouth.

‘You don't let me down. You're my best, Carly.'

Vomit burns her throat.

The light, gentle touch to her face jolts through her like an electric shock. She snaps her face away. A sharp, instinctive thrust. It hurts her neck, makes her gasp in pain and surprise. It breaks the long, stretched-out moment under his spell.

She thrust her head the other way. The hand on her cheek finds her throat, pushes hard under her jaw. Not choking her, holding her down. Noise comes from her mouth, a gagging, retching that doesn't sound like her. Doesn't sound anything like the screaming, cussing, seething inside her. She is thrashing under his hand, shoulders jerking like she's fitting. The fingers at her throat dig under her jaw. Is he feeling for a pulse? Maybe she is fitting. Maybe this is what it feels like: great shudders of angry, explosive energy.

A guttural grunt. It comes from him. He's pushing her into the mattress. A fist on her chest, shoving at her sternum. Something hard in her gut makes the air huff from her lungs. A knee, his knee.

Her hands flap at her sides. Useless, strange things, as though she has borrowed someone else's and can't control them. They make contact, nails dragging across cloth. Then it's gone, her forearms held down. He is strong, she is limp. It's restraint, not a fight. But she can't stop struggling. Not now that she finally can.

It's too weak to hurt him. It's pathetic. He holds both her wrists in one hand. Pins them to her chest. His other fingers are wound into her hair, twisting, wrenching until she thinks her scalp will lift off.

‘Be still.' It's a harsh whisper.

She has no choice. In her silence, she can hear him panting from exertion.

‘Breathe, Carly.'

She grits her teeth, closes her eyes, inhales.