Mercy (14 page)

‘You know he used to teach at some big-name school before he came here?’ Spencer continues, his face and voice thawing a little as our coffee arrives. Two steaming cups of oily black stuff that he proceeds to spoon three sugars into. When he’s done with the sugar bowl, I do the exact same, struggling not to screw up my face when I take a sip. It’s like industrial-strength floor cleaner, 157

except sweet. Spencer inhales the steam and hugs the cup gratefully with both palms.

‘Oh, yeah?’ I say, stirring again for something to do with my hands. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘You should,’ he replies with surprise. ‘You’re really talented. One of those “genuine talents” he’s always going on about. He’s really connected, or at least that’s what I’ve heard.’

‘So what’s he doing here then?’ I query as I pretend to ingest more coffee, wincing a moment later when I realise how bald that sounds. Tact isn’t one of my strong points. You’ve probably gathered that.

Spencer gives a no-hard-feelings laugh. ‘The official story? He’d had it with the snobby stage mothers that send their daughters to that place. Too much angst, too much admin, too much flirting from cashed-up, middle-aged matrons who should know better. Preferred the simple life — if you believe that.’

I don’t, and curiosity makes me ask, ‘And the unofficial story?’

‘He
had
to leave because some student had fallen in love with him and was making his life hell. She was stalking him or something. A couple of
thousand
dirty text messages, almost that many physical confrontations 158

and a restraining order later, and he’d had enough. She even lay in wait for him in his bedroom once, did you know that? Climbed in a window or something. He had to get the police to remove her from his home. It didn’t stop, so he left the school, left town. Moved as far away from her as he could possibly get. People fall in love with him all the time. And I’m not just talking the girls, either.

Don’t see the attraction personally.’ Spencer shoots me a crooked smile across the rim of his cup.

As interesting as Paul Stenborg is — like an exotic flower in the arid wilderness of Paradise and its surrounds

— I’m here to test Spencer about Lauren. I’m eager to see what he knows, but I have to go carefully or risk spooking him, and this is one guy who’s easily spooked.

‘Hey, you know who I’m billeted with?’ I say gently, striving for casual. I tilt the surface of my coffee this way and that, as if it has the power to tell me the future.

Spencer looks up from the table. ‘No, who?’

‘The Daleys,’ I murmur, darting him a glance from under my eyelashes.

Spencer immediately goes pale and takes a big gulp of his still searing drink. He gasps a little as he wipes at the corner of his mouth, his tearing eyes, with the back of one hand.

159

‘Ryan said to say
hey
.’

It’s a gamble. I don’t know if Ryan knows Spencer from a can of worms, or vice versa.

‘Tell him,
hey
back,’ Spencer replies slowly, his eyes suddenly glued to the dark surface of his coffee. ‘They’re a really great family. So close. One of those storybook families that you wish you had.
Were
,’ he corrects hastily. ‘I haven’t had much to do with them since …

well, you know.’

We sit in silence. Spencer fiddles with his watchband, looking devastated, then picks up his spoon and stirs his coffee again, just before he pushes his glasses back up his nose. The amount of tension he’s radiating would make anyone think he’d disposed of Lauren himself.

Maybe I’m onto something here.

‘They don’t really talk about her much,’ I continue quietly. ‘All I know is that they kept her room exactly the way she left it, and there’s a couple of photos of you and Lauren still stuck to her dresser. She really liked you. Ryan said so.’

That’s a gamble too. But I know I’m on the right track when he glances at me briefly before looking back down at his coffee with a strained expression, then shifts it precisely two centimetres left, one centimetre right. He 160

quickly removes something imaginary from the corner of one eye and I look away for a second, pretending I don’t see the glimmer there.

‘She was really, really nice,’ he murmurs, fiddling with his watchband again. ‘Patient, you know? And kind, even though she was one of those people that doesn’t need to be. I really liked her. We spent a lot of time together doing the last big inter-school concert before she, uh, disappeared. Me being one of the only, uh, semi-functioning tenors from Port Marie, you see.’

He swallows convulsively, fresh pain still evident in his voice. ‘St Joseph’s didn’t send anyone that year, so you probably wouldn’t remember it. But it was a big, big deal around here. You know I was one of the last people to see her alive?’

I watch with interest as he swallows again, wipes a non-existent speck off one lens of his glasses, and shoves them back on so hard that the nose pads push into the corners of his eyes, making them water some more.

‘I can tell she was nice,’ I say carefully. ‘She had a lot of friends, you can see from all the photos. There are dozens. I didn’t know you could have so many friends.

I certainly don’t.’

Ain’t that the truth
, says that little voice wryly.

161

Spencer’s voice, when he finds it, is windy, bereft.

‘We just
got
each other, you know? She listened all the times I needed to vent — and they were plenty. I mean, he treats me like
shit
in front of everyone — it’s practically a school tradition these days, you know, the public baiting of Spencer Grady, because if the teachers do it, it must be all right — and I listened when she needed to get something off her chest.’

‘Oh, really?’ I say casually, casting Carmen’s eyes downward so that he won’t see the sudden hot gleam in them. ‘About what? Was she upset about something before she, uh, vanished?’

‘More like someone,’ Spencer replies with a faraway look on his face.

I want to leap into the gap he’s created so badly I have to bite my tongue to stop any words forming. But somehow I bide my time, taking another small sip of my unpalatable drink, dumping more sugar into it, stirring vigorously. As suddenly full of nervous tics as Spencer is himself.

Come on, come on.

I’m almost afraid he’s not going to say any more when he blurts out suddenly, ‘Mr Masson was trying to convince her to turn professional. Forcing her, more 162

like. It wasn’t something she really wanted to do. She wasn’t sure if that was the direction she wanted to go in. He was putting real pressure on her to leave Paradise High and go for an opera scholarship with a prestigious performing arts school; next stop, the Met Opera House or something like that. The extra coaching sessions he’d arranged for her before the inter-school concert were really wearing her down — before school, after school, lunchtimes, during spares. And it confused things with her, uh, boyfriend, Richard, she said. She felt like she was being pulled in too many directions at once, and she wasn’t even sure if she loved singing enough to make the kind of commitment Mr Masson wanted from her. He kept saying he’d make her a
star
.’

Though Carmen’s outward expression is unreadable,
I’m
electrified by what I’m hearing. Mr Masson? That tired-looking, short-sighted little man with the wild hair and stubby fingers who cares way too much about adhering strictly to the tempo? Is Ryan aware of any of this?

‘The concert that year was Mr Masson’s pet project,’

Spencer adds helpfully as he drains the last of his coffee, licking his lips as they meet the sugar hit at the bottom of the cup. ‘It really mattered to him — he personally 163

chose every piece. Lauren was like his — what’s that word? — protégé.’ The boy paints imaginary quote marks in the air.

‘He had her doing everything from operatic arias to Andrew Lloyd Webber and kept telling everyone that she had what it took to go all the way to the opera houses of North America, Milan, Austria. The music A-league. It was like he was obsessed.’

I push my coffee cup to the side discreetly, and Spencer, being sensitive to giving insult to anyone, immediately does the same.

‘We should do this again,’ he says hopefully. ‘It’s been really nice.’

I realise that
really nice
is his default position; it’s how he wishes the world, and everything in it, to be.

And something close to tenderness wells up again in my borrowed heart. As much as I do
tender
, anyway.

‘Yeah, it has,’ I agree neutrally as I steel myself and touch his bare wrist where it rests across from me on the table.

Just a brief hold, a moment of light pressure, but it’s enough to bring out a cold sweat on Carmen’s forehead as I flame into contact with him, feel that building pressure behind the eyes, search quickly for impressions 164

of Lauren in his mind. The burning sensation in my left hand snakes rapidly up my forearm like a living thing.

Mercifully, it burns out as soon as I let go. Everything confirmed. Brenda was right: Spencer had been sweet on Lauren, and crushed like a leaf twice over when she’d turned him down, then promptly disappeared.

Unlike Richard Coates, Spencer has barely registered my brief touch.

‘I was going to walk home …’ I trail off, hoping he won’t insist on keeping me company, even though it’s getting dark out. Or, worse still, insist on that lift I lied about. ‘Are you okay getting back to Port Marie?’

‘I’ll get Dad to pick me up,’ he says, a dull note creeping back into his voice. ‘Don’t sweat it. Maybe I’ll see you around?’

I stamp down hard on my evil inner voice even as I force Carmen to reply cheerfully, ‘First thing tomorrow morning, yeah? Maybe they’ll even let us sit together again. What are the chances? It’s been way fun.’

An answering grin lights Spencer’s usually solemn features.

I leave the café waving inanely, still no good at doing normal. As I watch him wave enthusiastically back from behind the window, I
know
I’ve changed in some way I 165

can’t quite yet define. Because in the past, I would have eaten guys like Spencer alive with no regard for hurt feelings, and laughed as I spat out their bones.

Night has begun to mantle the streets of Paradise. I hurry away from the Decades Café, keeping as much as possible to the bright arcs mapped out by the streetlights, although there is barely anyone about. The wind is blowing so hard now that no one’s likely to make eye contact with me anyway, without getting a face full of desiccated leaf debris.

When I reach the outskirts of the Daleys’ property, I pull out Carmen’s tacky pink mobile phone and speed dial Ryan’s number. Maybe I only imagine that her fingers are shaking a little.

‘Help,’ I say softly when he picks up. ‘I’m outside the house and hoping you’re in there or I’m in big trouble.’

‘Stay right where you are,’ he says in his deep, familiar voice that always sets off that strange longing in me for some kind of normalcy, safe harbour, however fleeting. ‘I’ll come get you.’

The wind shifts, carrying the scent of me to Stewart Daley’s dogs. Their sudden, unbridled rage seems almost welcoming, as Ryan ushers me quickly into the warmth 166

of his parents’ house, every downstairs lamp lit as if to welcome me back from a long journey. The Prodigal Whatever-I-Am.

‘Mum’s upstairs, and Dad’s been held up at work,’

Ryan explains as he shuts the front door against the howling world outside.

He looks so good to me that I have to struggle to keep my tone light. ‘Enough time to catch you up on what I learnt today?’

I head down the hall, shrugging out of Carmen’s utilitarian grey marle hoodie as I go, knowing he’ll follow. I hug the knowledge to myself, before logic kicks in. I mean, the guy’ll follow anyone to the ends of the earth if it means he might learn something new about his sister’s whereabouts. And Carmen’s no beauty, and I can be a little … difficult. I admit it. So who am I kidding?

‘For you, sweetheart?’ Ryan grins at me crookedly

— I know because I dart him a quick look from under Carmen’s surprisingly long lashes — ‘There’s always time.’

Maybe I’m just imagining Carmen’s heart skipping a beat.

You hearing this?
I tell her, wanting some kind of affirmation that I’m not overreacting to something that 167

isn’t there. Of course, there’s no reply. There never is.

As we come up on the landing, I glance down the hallway and see Mrs Daley’s wraith-like shadow moving against the brilliant white lamplight in her bedroom.

Wordlessly, Ryan and I enter Lauren’s room together.

He turns on every light he can find, as if to ward off evil spirits, before shutting the door. I place Carmen’s hoodie down on the bed, walk over to Lauren’s desk and dump Carmen’s satchel on top of it.

‘The night she was taken was like this,’ Ryan says almost ruefully, propping himself up against Lauren’s dresser. ‘Almost blowing a gale by 10 pm; fifty knots —

at least — out on the water. No one would have heard a thing. When it gets like this now, Mum insists on lighting up the entire place. Dad and I do it automatically these days. We used to try to talk her out of it, but she’s almost got us believing it, too.’

Understanding dawns on me. ‘It’s so that Lauren will be able to find her way home in the dark,’ I say softly.

‘Something like that.’ Ryan shrugs. ‘Like that makes any kind of sense. Hit any dead ends today? I sure did.’

I listen impatiently as he tells me about his fruitless search of the Port Marie Evangelical Church, before I lay out eagerly what I learnt from Spencer. When nothing in 168

Ryan’s face changes, I know he knows it all already, and I’m hit by a wave of disappointment so hard I have to sit down on the edge of Lauren’s bed.