Safe

and

happy

travels

my

dearest

darling

daughter.

I

Can’t

Wait

To

Hear

EVERYTHING.

Love

You

To

Pieces.

Mum

X

X

It was a turbulent flight from Auckland to Melbourne, but knowing her mum would be at the airport made it bearable. Sometimes Jeannie prepared a sign that she’d wave as Eliza appeared through the doors. WELCOME HOME TO THE BEST DAUGHTER IN THE WORLD, the last one had read.

‘Too bad if it’s embarrassing,’ she’d said to a mortified Eliza. ‘It’s true.’

It was after eight p.m. when Eliza stepped into Arrivals, smiling, gazing out at the crowd, searching for the beautiful familiar face. An hour later she was still waiting. Their home phone went unanswered. So did her neighbours’. She finally remembered they were visiting their son in Sydney.

Eliza had no choice but to go to the taxi rank and negotiate a fare – far more than she could usually afford. Thankfully Maxie had slipped two hundred dollars into her bag as she left. Several times on the journey to Heathcote she thought about asking the driver to stop at a public phone box so she could ring Maxie, or Olivia. Each time she talked herself out of it. Everything was all right. Maybe her mum had been called into work. Or was having trouble with the car.

The lights were on in the house as the taxi dropped her off. Her mother’s second-hand Honda was parked in its usual place. Eliza could hear music. Her heart started thumping as she reached for her keys.

She stepped into the kitchen. There was an empty bottle of wine on the table. More empty bottles by the rubbish bin. The music was coming from the bathroom. Cheerful music. A jazz station, an announcer telling his listeners that coming up was a trio of classics. Eliza kept moving, down the hall, towards the bathroom. The door was wide open.

Sarah Vaughan’s smoky voice was playing loudly as Eliza ran forward and frantically tried to pull her mother’s lifeless body out of the half-filled bath.

CHAPTER TWO

Thirteen years later

Eliza’s working week began as it usually did. She woke at six in her tidy rented apartment on the fourteenth floor of a building near Melbourne’s Southbank. It was only a one-bedroom, but all she needed. The living room window looked out across the city, giving her a bird’s-eye view of the ever-changing weather. Blue skies in the morning that often turned into wild storms by the afternoon.

She’d selected a week’s worth of outfits the night before, as always, to make her morning routine more efficient. Corporate suits in neutral colours, low-heeled shoes. At five foot ten, she didn’t need any extra height. She pulled her long black hair into the usual low bun. After a breakfast of cereal and fruit, she left the apartment at exactly 7.15 a.m. It was late March, allegedly autumn, but with thirty-six degrees forecast, it still felt like summer.

It took her twenty-five minutes to walk to her office on the third floor of a building on Exhibition Street. From the air-conditioned café downstairs, she ordered two cups of black coffee, one for her, one for her boss, Gillian, and one tea (white, two sugars) and a croissant (ham and cheese) for Hector, the old homeless man who slept in the alley around the corner. As usual, he interrupted his swearing at the world to shout at her. ‘What’s the weather like up there, Lofty?’