Deep Water Read online

Doherty peers up at the light Dad’s referring to. It’s covered with cobwebs and rusted over. He can’t understand why my father’s lying for Mason Weaver, and I have to admit I’m not sure either.

  Luisa appears at the office door in a loose floral blouse and white jeans, her wide smile a welcome distraction from the testosterone-fuelled tension. She holds up the cordless phone and beckons my father over, flapping her other hand in an excited wave when she spots me.

  As Dad disappears inside, I move to the back of the ute.

  ‘Listen,’ Doherty says, following me. He lifts my suitcase out of the tray before I have a chance to reach for it. ‘You’d best have a word to your dad about that Weaver kid. We already know he was plastered and picking fights up at the Criterion last night.’ He swivels the suitcase around and offers me the handle. ‘Kid’s got a destructive streak, and your old man’s not helping anyone by protecting him. So have a word, all right?’

  ‘Sure thing, Barry.’

  Doherty holds my gaze for a beat or two, then shakes his head at the incorrect name. Call me Ben, he told me once, leaning one arm out of his police vehicle, a smug grin slapped across his face. That was when I knew something was going on between him and my mother, because up until that point he’d never given me the time of day.

  ‘Thanks for stopping by,’ I say, turning and walking towards the office. Can you get in trouble for walking away from a cop while they’re still talking to you? I think of the lie I told Doherty the morning we found out Henry was missing. That would mean real trouble. The kind of trouble I need to keep my dad well away from, for both our sakes.

  I hear the scrape of Doherty’s leather boots on the driveway, the dull clunk of his car door opening. There’s a burst of static garble from his police radio before the door thumps shut. I fiddle with the zipper on my suitcase until he finally drives away, then march over to Room Fifteen and hammer my fist against the door.

  The striped curtains twitch. Mason has been watching everything from the window. The door swings open and he’s framed in the doorway, a foot taller than me, tanned and freckled with blond hair pillow-flattened on one side. His high cheekbones and sullen mouth remind me of the black and white photos of young soldiers Uncle Bernie keeps in scrapbooks; Mason has the same faraway look in his eyes.

  He folds his arms, defiant. His knuckles are purple and swollen. There’s a ring of crusted blood circling one nostril, a puffy tenderness around the bridge of his nose. His grey T-shirt is inside out, blood spatters showing through the fabric around the neckline.

  You lost control again, I want to say. ‘What happened to your hands?’

  Doherty already told me Mason had been fighting. I want to hear him admit it.

  Mason unfolds his arms and shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘Slammed them under a car bonnet at the workshop. No big deal.’

  He steps out of the room and tugs the door shut behind him. Crouching next to the shrivelled plant by the doorstep, he tips the terracotta pot on an angle and places the key underneath.

  ‘Mason,’ I say.

  He straightens and starts walking across the forecourt, diverting around a crumbling pothole in the concrete.

  ‘Mason!’

  He ignores the office window as he passes, keeping his head down and pace steady. It’s only when he disappears at the end of the driveway that I realise his last few words couldn’t be more wrong.

  It is a big deal.

  Mason Weaver just lied to my face.

  And it’s not the first time he’s done it.

  Fourteen weeks before the storm

  Mason curled his hands into fists, keeping his gaze trained on a gouge in the countertop. His mother was slumped in a chair at the other end of the kitchen where the sunlight didn’t quite reach. She stared into her glass cabinet full of Wedgwood plates propped on tiny display stands. She owned dozens of them, all the same colour blue with white, leafy borders like whipped cream from a can. She’d inherited her mother’s collection and had been adding to it every year, each one with a different picture in the middle, some fancy building or member of the royal family. Mason accidentally chipped Princess Diana when he was seven and his mother didn’t speak to him for a week.

  ‘Ivy?’ he said now, irritation creeping into his voice. It hadn’t been his idea to call her by her first name. She’d never liked Mum. She said it made her feel trapped.

  His mother dragged her attention away from the cabinet and narrowed her eyes like a sulky kid being hassled. A strand of straw-coloured hair curled down one side of her face, her complexion as pallid as wax.

  Jesus Christ, he hated how she did this. The way she agreed to things when she was drunk and then ripped them all away when she was hungover. She’d been doing it since he was a little kid, back when it was just the two of them, when she’d hug him too tight and whisper into his ear, desperate and fumy, ‘We don’t need anyone else. You’re never going to leave me.’

  Back then it was all wheedling and begging and promises as empty as the whisky bottles she stashed in the back of kitchen cupboards. And Mason would agree to everything because he was a little kid whose hope hadn’t yet been crushed by years of her not delivering. She’d hidden it better in public when he was younger, and things only really fell apart behind closed doors. But his mother’s drinking went through phases, and Mason never knew what the tipping point would be for another downward spiral.

  This last year had been one of the worst he could remember. She wasn’t even trying to cut back anymore. He didn’t know whether she’d started hitting the bottle again because she’d lost her job, or if the drinking was the reason she’d been sacked. Her moods were darker, her outbursts more frequent. She was trying less and less to hide her behaviour around town, and the tuts and whispers were growing louder.

  ‘You can wipe that look off your face,’ she said now. ‘You hear me, Mason? You’re not getting a job. You need to be here.’

  ‘We talked about it a couple of days ago.’ He kept his tone measured, knowing better than to raise his voice. Nothing shut his mother down faster than ‘goddamn disrespect’. ‘Mr Macleod says seventeen’s the perfect age for an apprenticesh—’

  ‘O-ohhh.’ She stubbed her cigarette out on the corner of her breakfast plate, ignoring the glass ashtray Mason had emptied and placed by her elbow. ‘And I suppose Stu Macleod’s offering to clean and mend things around here too, is he?’

  You could get off your pickled backside and do it yourself, he thought. ‘I can do both. Nothing has to change.’

  ‘Bull.’ She scrabbled for another cigarette with crimson fingernails, upturning gossip magazines and hardware catalogues in her search for a disposable lighter. Mason found them all over the house like discarded shards of rainbow, their bright colours impossibly cheerful in this wood-panelled prison. ‘You think you’re some kind of big man? Got something to prove?’

  ‘It’s just a job. Saturdays and two afternoons after school. And we’ll have a car. It’ll really help out.’

  He said this part carefully – this was what had sold it to her on Thursday – but he couldn’t remind her of that now or she’d likely flip something over and slam out of the house. She didn’t like being told about things she’d said or done and didn’t have the brain cells to remember. And it wasn’t worth the paranoia afterwards, her watching him like a hawk, as though he might rob her or ditch her or murder her in her sleep. Like he might burn this termite-ridden shithole to the ground.

  It’s not like he hadn’t thought about it.

  ‘Why’s he giving you a car anyway?’ his mother said, abandoning her hunt for a lighter. She hauled herself out of the chair and shuffled towards the gas cooktop, bathrobe sagging across her bony frame. ‘What’s he want in return, huh?’ She gave him the once over, her smirk as cruel as a pinch.

  Mason bristled. Stu Macleod was a good guy who’d made the mistake of spending the night with Ivy one drunken time five years ago. Now she’d tell anyone who’d listen that he was a cre
epy perve because he had the sense to get away before she poisoned him too. She was like a sickness, his mother, one that took hold slyly and wore you down, one that starved you of anything good. It’d taken four years before Wayne, Mason’s stepfather, had managed to cut her disease out of him, once she’d drained his bank account and his liquor cabinet and his will to keep trying. Wayne had moved to Sydney almost a decade ago and never looked back. Mason didn’t really blame him.

  Though he hated him for it all the same, the selfish prick.

  ‘Mr Macleod wants me to work in return for the car,’ Mason said. ‘That’s the deal. Come and work for him to pay it off.’

  ‘So you’ll work three days a week for no money? What’s the point of that, genius?’

  The car, genius, Mason thought. My freedom from this dump. Having something of my own that you can’t destroy.

  ‘Just until it’s paid for,’ he said calmly. ‘Then he’ll pay me per shift.’

  It was probably safer that way anyway. It occurred to Mason that Mr Macleod was a pretty smart guy. He probably knew Ivy would sniff around for any cash Mason brought home; this was the only way he’d ever be able to save for anything. He barely had a chance to buy groceries and pay the power bill before his mother sank their welfare payments into the pokies. And he had no idea whether Wayne had ever sent child support for Henry.

  Ivy was already tuning him out, fiddling with the knobs on the cooktop. A gas burner caught alight with a quiet whump. Blue flames flickered dangerously close to her face as she hunched over, cigarette pinched between her cracked lips. How easy it would be to clamp a hand around her bird neck and slam her face into the hotplate.

  Mason’s palm itched and he turned away.

  ‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he said, putting distance between them.

  He’d missed his window, he could see that now. He should have caught her half an hour ago before the headache kicked in, before her half-eaten breakfast threatened to shoot back up. That crystal hour after sleep and a shower before meanness resettled in her bones. He could have reminded her about the job and been out the door before she had a chance to stomp all over it. Just once he wished she’d let him have something without making him grovel like a dog.

  ‘I have to go,’ he told her.

  ‘I’m out today. Be back here at lunchtime to feed your brother.’

  Mason paused in the doorway. ‘He’s thirteen. He can make his own lunch.’

  ‘Be here.’

  White-hot fury shot up Mason’s sternum. It ricocheted inside his ribcage, his chest burning, ears wailing, as he struggled to keep it contained.

  ‘Why?’ he snapped. ‘Why can’t you do it? Why does it always have to be me?’

  Ivy slid back into her chair and took a drag of her cigarette, eyes narrowing. ‘You know why.’ She exhaled in his direction. ‘You owe me.’

  Yeah, and it was a debt like a gaping sinkhole. Didn’t matter how much Mason tried to fill it, the walls kept collapsing.

  But it was enough to make Mason drop it. That argument went nowhere and he had no intention of getting into it now. Tom was waiting for him in town with an old smartphone his grandpa no longer wanted. They said Mason could have it, and he’d already figured out he could afford a prepaid SIM if he skimmed a little money from the groceries.

  With a phone and a car, Mason would have options. And when Stu Macleod’s job started paying, he’d also have cash. He could start making plans. He could find a way out.

  Except …

  Henry. What the hell would he do about Henry?

  Mason put that question in the too-hard basket and moved quickly to the front door.

  ‘Wait a sec,’ his mother said. ‘What about this?’ She gestured at the laundry off the kitchen, where a pile of dirty clothing had accumulated in the doorway.

  ‘I’ll do it later,’ he said.

  ‘It’s going to rain later. Needs to be washed and hung out this morning.’

  He turned back to the door, muttering under his breath, ‘You do it then.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Mason pressed his lips together and willed himself to stay silent. She was hungover; he knew better than to poke the bear.

  ‘What did you just say to me?’

  Mason ignored her, reaching for the doorhandle. He’d barely gripped it when a small gust of air whooshed past his ear.

  Crack!

  The wall exploded half a metre from his head. He flinched and ducked as tiny fragments ricocheted off his skin, raining down into his hoodie and onto the floorboards. For a split second he thought a wall light had shattered. Then he realised he was shaking shards of the glass ashtray out of his hair.

  He jerked around to gape at his mother. She was on her feet now, bent over the kitchen table, the cigarette still smouldering between her fingers. A long wisp of smoke bloomed in the air between them like a poisonous flower.

  Mason swallowed, disbelief robbing him of words.

  That could have hit me!

  The hard look in her eyes responded, I know.

  He fumbled for the door again, a sudden tremble making him clumsy. Ivy had smashed plenty of things around the house before, but she’d never thrown anything at him or Henry. Even at her worst, the most they’d copped was a verbal spray or a rough shake of the shoulder. She was definitely getting worse.

  Mason struggled with the fiddly lock, trying to ignore the crunch of glass beneath his shoes. When the knob finally turned, he drew a long breath to steady himself before yanking the door open.

  Chloe Baxter was standing on the doorstep, her hand poised to knock.

  She was wearing one of the flowery dresses that Raf seemed to like so much, her hair braided in a cutesy farm-girl way that completely contradicted her pig-headed personality. She glanced at the floor, at the mess Mason would be cleaning up later. He stepped onto the verandah and pulled the door closed behind him, cutting off her view into the house.

  In her right hand Chloe held a bucket containing hooks and lures. Her bike was propped against the front steps, a small fishing net poking out of the wire basket on the front.

  ‘He’s not home,’ Mason mumbled. He hated how his voice sounded. Rattled. Weak.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I said Henry’s not in the house.’

  Chloe frowned slightly at his abrupt tone. Even though they’d grown up together, they weren’t particularly close anymore, not since she’d moved back to Sydney a few years ago and now only visited during school holidays. But Mason knew it was more than that. The closer Chloe had grown to Henry, the more she’d drifted from Mason. He wondered what his brother had been saying about him to prompt Chloe’s little digs here and there – she seemed to think Mason ought to lift his game when it came to Henry, as if she had any idea what it was like to live in their house.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Mason snapped. ‘I’m not my brother’s keeper.’ As he said the words it hit him: that’s exactly who he was. It was a suffocating thought, a snare trap clutching him tighter the more he struggled to escape. He gritted his teeth as that nagging doubt returned.

  What would happen to Henry if Mason left him here alone with their mother?

  ‘Did Henry—’

  ‘Look, Chloe,’ Mason said bitterly, needing this conversation to be over, needing to be far away from this house. ‘Go and look for him. I’m sure if anyone can find Henry, it’s you.’

  Now

  When we were kids, a couple of years after my family moved to The Shallows and bought the motel, our little circle of friends invented a game. Impostor, we called it: perfecting the art of lying. We’d all write silly made-up words on scraps of paper and toss them into a hat, then we’d each pick one out and have less than a minute to come up with a joke or short story with the word slipped in there somewhere. The trick was trying to disguise it while everyone else had to guess which word was the sneaky infiltrator.
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br />   I suppose we were impostors too, creating our fake stories, casually deceiving each other in order to win. The victor was whoever could tell a bare-faced lie to their friends most successfully and get away with it. I was actually pretty good at that game. I picked up on the subtlest betrayals: a tiny vocal inflection here, the flicker of an eyebrow there. I knew my friends’ mannerisms so well it was easy to spot the exact moment a lie made them stumble.

  The one person I couldn’t crack was Mason. He was inscrutable, as though he was as well practised at lying as he was at telling the truth.

  There were no eyes darting left and right like Sabeen, no subtle nostril flare like Raf. No rapid blinking like Tom, or touching his face and hair constantly like Rina. The closest I’ve ever come to catching Mason in a lie was three months ago on the morning we found out Henry was missing. It wasn’t obvious at the time, not with everything else going on, but I definitely sensed something was off.

  We were all gathered on the Weavers’ verandah, craving news and awaiting instructions while Sergeant Doherty questioned Mason and his mother inside. Doherty then questioned each of us, one by one, before returning to the police station to coordinate a proper search. When Mason and Ivy joined us on the verandah, we peppered them with the same questions Doherty probably had: When was the last time they saw Henry? What time did they go to bed? Did they hear Henry moving around the house after turning in for the night?

  According to his mother and brother, Henry had been in his room when Mason headed to bed at ten o’clock, leaving Ivy dozing on the couch in front of the TV. Their recollection of the evening’s timeline was identical and airtight, but I sensed a weird shift in the energy between them, the weight of things unsaid.

  Maybe it was my confusion about why Henry left, or perhaps guilt over things I’d said, that distracted me from something so obvious I’m surprised it’s taken me until now to connect the dots.

  For all his quick talking and easy answers, there’s one thing not even Mason Weaver can control.

  Biology.

  As he stood in the doorway of Room Fifteen just now and lied about his injured knuckles, his ears flushed as red as the bloodstains on his T-shirt.