What Rosie Found Next (9 page)

‘You’re the scaredy-cat still lying there on the picnic blanket,’ she giggled, and while he was still trying to get over seeing the vision of her stripping down, she was off.

He leapt up. Two could play at that game. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and chased after her down to the water’s edge. He loved the playful Rosie, the Rosie who’d told him her confusion over his pager, the Rosie in front of him now.

‘Last one to go completely under the water has to cook dinner every night for the next week.’ He caught her only ankle deep and waded in past her, up to his shins.

He reached back and grabbed her hand, pulling her in further just as a kid carrying a boogie board came hurtling into the oncoming waves. She shuddered as her body was splashed with cool water. The bumps covered her thighs until the water level met with her bikini bottoms and crossed her tummy, then she stopped, grinned at him, dropped his hand and dived into an oncoming wave like a mermaid. He saw her head surface seconds later, and she was chuckling away as she trod water well out of her depth.

‘Dinner’s on you!’ she yelled back at him.

They swam around for a while, and if it wasn’t for his fitness, she would’ve been one step ahead of him the whole time. When her back was to him, he dived beneath the surface and knew he’d scared her when he purposely grazed past her legs. He emerged and their two heads bobbed in the ocean as they trod water, both lost in the moment.

This was more than harmless flirting, he knew it was. This was flirting with intent. And it wasn’t one-sided. The signals Rosie was sending his way weren’t telling him to back off, not in the slightest.

Once out of the water, they were both ravenous and feasted on the remainder of the picnic. They sat on the golden sands talking about other places they’d been to in Australia, the countries Owen had seen when he’d travelled for six months, the European travel Rosie yearned for.

‘You should go,’ he told her.

She held the stem of a strawberry and bit into the succulent flesh. ‘One day I will.’

Owen suspected Rosie had been playing it safe ever since she was old enough to make her own decisions, and it was a hard habit to break. He offered her the last meatball, but she shook her head.

When she took off her rash vest and lay back, hat and sunglasses in place, water droplets formed and tumbled off around her waist, breasts and her thighs. ‘Do you need more sunscreen?’ He cleared his throat.

She opened one eye suspiciously.

‘I’m not suggesting I rub it on for you, I just meant you’re wearing next to nothing and it’s the hottest part of the day.’

Satisfied with his explanation, she shut her eyes again and wiggled her shoulders to get comfortable. ‘I’ll only have five minutes lying here. I want my bikini to dry so I can put my dress on again for the trip home.’

Owen lay back too. He figured it was safer than staring at her. His skin tightened as the sun beat down and dried his body and board shorts. When he heard a giggle, he opened one eye. ‘What?’

‘Either you don’t have another tattoo as you implied, or it’s on your arse or somewhere equally as inconspicuous.’

He grinned. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I only have the one.’ When she flipped over to expose her back to the sun and let it dry, he asked, ‘So are you ever going to tell me?’

‘Tell you what?’ The soporific effects of the sea and the sun made her sound sleepy.

‘About your tattoo.’

‘Oh, that.’ She shifted on the sand, her face resting on her forearms, making it impossible to read her expression. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘You’re lying. The cello clearly has a significant meaning in your life given the necklace
and
the tattoo.’

‘Leave it, Owen.’ The sun’s power got too much for her, or maybe it was his line of questioning, and she sat up and pulled her dress on over her bikini. She plonked her straw hat on her head and from behind her sunglasses she said, ‘My dad taught me to play the cello when I was little, and I love music. What more do you want me to say?’

Her face was fixed towards the vast expanse of the ocean laid out before them.

‘Is your dad a cellist?’

Rosie nodded.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place? I thought we were friends.’

‘We are.’ She tidied away, packing the rubbish bag into the esky, throwing in her empty bottle of fizzy drink. She gestured for Owen to stand up so she could shake out the picnic blanket.

‘I’ll do that before we get in the car, Stevens. The sand will go over everyone else otherwise.’

‘Fine.’ She picked up the miles-too-heavy esky and set off across the sand.

They walked back to the house in silence, and Owen shook out the picnic blanket at the side of the road before folding it away to stow in the boot along with the esky.

He climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Would you mind if we stopped by the apartment I own in St Kilda before we go home?’ It was the first thing he’d said to her since she’d stormed off. ‘The tenant said he’d leave the newly signed agreement in the letter box. I’ll sign it and pop it back in for the agency to collect.’

‘Sure, just let me know where to go.’ The engine purred into action and Owen forgot all about the fact he was bubbling around in a pink car.

They drove along Beaconsfield Parade and when they arrived at Fitzroy Street, Owen directed Rosie until they pulled up in a narrow side street with a cream-coloured apartment block to one side.

‘I won’t be a minute.’ He grabbed the pen and the letterbox key he’d brought with him and jumped out of the car and over to the mail boxes standing in a row like obedient soldiers. He scribbled his signature on the papers, slotted them into the post box and climbed back into the car next to Rosie.

‘Let’s keep the roof down all the way home,’ he suggested. ‘I’m quite enjoying posing in this thing now.’ But when he turned, laughing, towards her, she was staring up at the apartment block looking anything but amused.

‘When did you buy the apartment?’

He opened his mouth to respond, but she was on a roll.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, ‘is it number four?’

‘How did you—’

‘How did I know? Because you’re the arsehole who stole it from under our noses, that’s how.’

She pulled away from the kerb so violently he was surprised he didn’t end up with severe whiplash. Lucky for him he hadn’t muttered a glib ‘all’s fair in love and property dealing’ remark because he suspected he would’ve had a lot more than whiplash to contend with.

They drove in silence all the way back to Magnolia Creek. Every time he tried to open his mouth to talk, to reason with her that she was being bloody ridiculous, she turned the music up, and when he turned it down she used the controls on either side of the steering wheel to override him.

And that was how their fantastic day had ended: silent treatment, then deafening music to drown out his words, followed by one hell of a huff from Rosie as she stomped upstairs and slammed her bedroom door.

Now this really did feel like they were in a relationship.

That night Rosie dreamt about the cottage in Daisy Lane. When she woke she remembered how she’d left things with Owen yesterday. She’d been childish, she knew, but he’d scuppered her plans to move in with Adam, whether it had been intentional or not. And sometimes it was easier to put the blame onto someone else.

When there was a knock on her bedroom door, she curled into the duvet more and pretended to be asleep. When the knock sounded a second time, she called out, ‘I’m asleep … leave me alone.’

The door opened anyway. ‘Charming,’ said the voice.

‘Adam!’ She leapt out of bed and flung her arms around his neck, pulling him into the room.

‘Evel Knievel let me in.’

Rosie heard the bike roar away from the house. She locked her lips onto Adam’s, tugged at his shirt, loosened his belt and welcomed the feeling of closeness, the sanctuary of them as a couple.

Their lovemaking was frantic, urgent, and when they’d finished Adam rolled over and both of them caught their breath.

‘I could get used to this kind of welcome.’ He propped himself up on an elbow and ran a finger along her jaw. ‘What’s up? I’ve known you long enough to know something’s on your mind.’

She didn’t want to tell him about the apartment in St Kilda. It was in the past and she couldn’t rewrite history. Besides, she wanted to enjoy Adam being here until he had to up and go again, and the last thing she needed was to create tension between Adam and Owen.

She turned to face Adam. ‘When are we going to be together, Adam? Properly, I mean.’ The question had been propelled by dreaming about the cottage in Daisy Lane. She had no time to think about whether she really wanted to know the answer.

‘It won’t be like this forever,’ he promised.

Rosie could tell he was too relaxed for the serious conversation she needed to have and so she settled for a reassuring cuddle. Before long his breathing slowed into the familiar pattern that meant he was on the brink of sleep. Restless, she pulled on some cotton shorts and an old T-shirt and headed downstairs, glad of the headspace. Her limbs ached pleasantly from the ocean swim yesterday, the current more challenging than the crystal calm waters of the pool she looked out at now.

She had some gardening chores to do this morning, but before she headed outside she perused the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining one wall of the lounge. She delved into a thick, leather-bound gardening book, flicking through the pictures and imagining what the cottage in Daisy Lane could look like with manicured gardens and roses around the door. She read a section on fungal diseases such as black spot – a pest in late summer and autumn – rust and the importance of removing dead leaves from the ground to minimise the risk. She imagined what it would be like to have her own garden one day and read up on how to best encourage blooms and keep existing plants going long into winter.

Slotting the book back in its place, the travel section fit for any city library was next to catch her eye. She ran her fingers along the spines of travel guides for London, Paris, Rome, Tuscany, Prague. She paused when her finger landed on a guidebook to Florence, Italy. She pulled it out and sat back on the arm of the sofa as her eyes hungrily devoured pages depicting the Ponte Vecchio, the Piazzo del Duomo, the bustling cobbled streets. She could feel the Italian voices falling like soft pillows around her ears, imagine the chatter in the restaurants late into the evening where wine was savoured rather than consumed.

The room darkened as though a blanket had fallen over the entire house, and Rosie looked out to see dense grey clouds hovering in the sky above. Anxious to get at least some of her gardening chores done before the heavens opened, she went to the shed and took out the tools she needed.

Kneeling on the mat, she started with the yellow roses. The majority were still healthy blooms, but a couple were spent, and as per Jane’s guidance, she moved the secateurs down to where there was a section of five leaves on the stem, plus a healthy looking bud, and cut off the rest. She hoped she was doing this right. It was a big responsibility for a novice gardener.

As she moved round to the next rose bush and pulled dead twigs from the ground, throwing them into the bucket beside her, a low rumble made her look up. But it hadn’t been thunder, it was Owen’s motorcycle. She busied herself but knew he had come outside the second he’d seen her tending to the roses.

‘You look like you’re getting the hang of that.’ Owen cast a shadow over her as he walked up behind her.

‘Your mum left clear instructions,’ she answered without looking up.

‘Sometimes I wonder whether she loves those roses more than anything else in the world.’

The undertone of his remark failed to convey the flippancy Rosie suspected he’d intended. She thought about Jane’s email again, how she was keeping something from Owen.

Rosie sat back on her ankles. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. It was wrong of me to blame you for us losing the apartment. You bought it fair and square.’

They both turned at the familiar sound of the ice maker in the fridge-freezer whirring into action because a glass had been pushed beneath it.

‘Apology accepted, Stevens.’ He looked up at the dark clouds congregating above their heads. ‘I doubt you’ll need to water the grass.’

She smiled at him before he disappeared inside. Adam waved to her from the kitchen, glass of water in hand, before he disappeared back upstairs.

Refocusing on the roses, Rosie picked up dead leaves from the ground around the base of the plants. She dropped them into the bucket beside her and, using a small trowel, dug out a couple of weeds that had poked their way through the soil. When one stubborn weed remained, she dug deeper to prise it out, but it wouldn’t move. She thrust the trowel in again but this time she hit something hard. She jiggled the trowel to work what she assumed must be a rock out of the soil, but it was bigger than she’d anticipated.

She wiped the back of her arm across her brow as the first few spots of rain were unleashed from the clouds above, and this time used her gloved hands to scrape back the earth and see if she could prise out whatever was buried with her hands. But when she peered more closely to see the size of the thing, the deep grey colour definitely wasn’t a rock. She hooked her fingers around the outside of what appeared to be a metal box and let a giggle escape as she tried to pull out whatever it was. It was like finding buried treasure, like the magical fairy party when she’d turned six and a fairy lady had visited their garden and hidden treasures all around: silver beads in the heads of plants, glitter sprinkled round the bottom of a gum tree, a silver-coloured pencil found in the cubby house, a beautiful gold trinket box buried beneath a pile of leaves.

But this tarnished grey box didn’t look much like treasure. There was no lock on it, and with a bit of wiggling the lid came off easily enough. All that was inside was a see-through bag containing papers of sorts. She opened the bag to find a photograph of a girl Rosie estimated to be in her late teens, possibly early twenties, and another photograph of the same girl in a faded newspaper article with the headline ‘Young Woman Killed in Tragic Sailing Accident’. Rosie read the article, taking in phrases such as ‘no suspicious circumstances’, ‘alone’, ‘survived by her parents and sisters Jane and Sarah’.

Rosie’s chest tightened when she realised Jane had lost a sister before now, before the funeral she’d travelled to the UK for. But why hide all this beneath a rose bush in the back garden?

Rosie looked up to check neither Owen nor Adam had come out onto the deck and that she wasn’t being watched from Owen’s window upstairs. Then she rummaged through the bag again and this time pulled out two magazine articles, one in full colour and the other much older, faded. The coloured article was scrunched as though it had been balled up for rubbish and then flattened out again.

Crouching down, she skimmed over the first article, a story of a school truant and dropout turned businessman, Gregory Falmer, who was the man behind the set-up of a lucrative, thriving holiday home development in Victoria. Rosie’s heart sagged when she read about Gregory Falmer’s wife, Jane, and son, Owen. The words described a family man as well as a successful businessman, and the photograph told a story of happiness. The story of Owen’s life before his dad had died.

When Rosie moved to the second article, the feelings of sadness gave way to curiosity. This article talked about another businessman – this time Declan Roberts, who had two young sons with his partner Claire. But it only took seconds for Rosie to make the connection. The man in the second photograph was older than the man in the first, his hair was silvery grey and thinner and he had a pronounced paunch. But they were the same man, no doubt about it.

She looked at the dates of both of the articles. The first was written many years ago, but the second was dated recently, less than six months ago. Her eyes darted up to the house and the upstairs window as she eagerly digested what was before her now. These had to be the personal items Jane had mentioned, the items she didn’t want Owen to see.

Rosie pulled out the remaining contents of the bag. A bundle of papers unrolled to reveal a bank statement with highlighted payments to a C. Gilbertson alongside a description of ‘roofing repairs’, all twenty thousand dollars each … five of them in total. Her next find was the most disturbing of all: a photograph of the same man – Gregory Falmer, Declan Roberts or whatever he called himself – in his younger years, semi-clothed, in an office, all over a girl who looked young enough to be his daughter.

There was one more thing lurking at the bottom of the plastic bag and, hiding as much as she could to the side of one rose bush, careful not to let the thorns poke her in the eye, she pulled out a letter addressed to Jane. She hesitated. This was more personal than anything else, but she had to read it.

The letter was written by Natasha, the sister who’d died, and the words begged for forgiveness, pleaded with Jane to believe in her.

A voice from the kitchen startled Rosie as the rain started falling more heavily. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Adam shouted. ‘It’s raining, come inside!’

She pushed the items back in the bag and hid them in the box before shoving it back into the hole in the ground. She frantically covered the box with soil and then ran towards the house, her clothes clinging to her as the rain unleashed its full force.

That was the thing about secrets. Those who didn’t know wanted to know, and those who knew sometimes wished they didn’t.