The Finder Read online

  Grace’s stuff was all over our bedroom floor again. I kicked her skateboard under the desk, then pushed through the wall of old curtains to crawl into my lower bunk. It was dark but I didn’t flip on the light. As my eyes started to adjust, I gently reached out to touch the photo Blu-tacked to the underside of Grace’s bed.

  Hi. I ran my index finger along the hem of my pillowcase and stared up at the photo. Gap of missing front teeth, freckled nose.

  ‘Lin-seeeee.’ A sudden stream of sunlight as the curtains parted and Josey’s head popped through, grinning at me. Josey is two but even for his age he’s tiny. He was premature, as if our mother’s exhausted womb threw in the towel before his nine months were up. His brown curly hair is getting long, but he refuses to get it cut. His eyes are always enormous, curious, watchful.

  Josey’s cuddly and squirmy, a lap-sitter and a hand-holder. The puppy Mum never let us have. If anyone else in the family sticks their head into my space like that without permission, I go off at them. But I can’t get mad at Josey. Sometimes he’s the only one in the place I can stand.

  ‘Hi.’

  He climbed in, letting the curtain drop closed after him. I nearly got a knee in the face as he rearranged himself to lie alongside me. The cramped lower bunk isn’t made for company, but what it lacks in cubic metres, it makes up for in something far more precious in this house: privacy. I don’t care if it looks stupid or antisocial—the day I found the old curtains in the bottom of the linen cupboard I felt like I’d won some sort of prize.

  We were both silent for a while, but it wasn’t awkward. Silences with Josey are like having the peace and quiet of being by yourself, but without the loneliness. My curtains let chinks of light through along the top where I tied them to the bedframe. Once your eyes adjust it’s never completely dark. Mum’s always lecturing that it’s bad for my eyes and I should at least have a light on in there, but I like the feeling of perpetual twilight.

  Josey was gazing up at the photo. He reached out his arm to point.

  ‘Frankie.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He shook his hands, the gesture he’s been doing since he was a baby. Before he could talk he would do it when his cup was empty or he couldn’t find his socks. ‘All gone.’

  ‘Yeah, all gone.’

  He slid his fingers round my wrist. He’s funny like that, always wanting to hold on. Anybody else, it’d just be weird. With Josey, though, it always makes me feel better.

  His fingers tightened, and he pressed his face into my shoulder. ‘Frankie all gone,’ he repeated.

  I was the one who taught him to say that. I was the one who showed him the photo, who taught him her name. Mum and Dad didn’t. They’ve never told any of the kids about Frankie, crazy as it sounds. But I told Josey, because I had to tell somebody.

  Our secret. It still hurt to hear him say it, though.

  3

  The tricky part was getting out of the house. In movies there’s always a convenient tree or a downpipe beside an upstairs window, but there’s nothing like that outside our bedroom. I was going to have to go out through the house once Mum and Dad were done downstairs. Their evening routine was like clockwork so I knew they’d head up to get ready for bed straight after their show finished at nine-thirty. I could sneak downstairs then and let myself out the back door. Grace was going to be a problem, though. Sometimes she tosses and turns for hours before falling asleep. She’s seven, I’m nearly sixteen, and half the time she’s the one keeping me awake.

  I was sitting at my desk, killing time doing homework, when she came for bed. Climbed into the top bunk and shuffled around her stuffed toys until they were just right. Draped herself over the railing to call down to me.

  ‘What’s that?’

  All the kids are curious, in one way or another. It’s almost impossible to go five minutes in our house without somebody asking a question, which seems to be Why? most of the time. It drives me crazy. Mum doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Useless crap that I’ll never need ever again,’ I told her. I was trying to write scene summaries of Othello for English, but I wasn’t getting very far. I hate Shakespeare. ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘Muuuuuuuuuuum!’ she wailed. ‘Lindsay said the c-word.’

  I opened my mouth to point out ‘crap’ wasn’t the c-word, then realised I’d only get myself into trouble.

  Mum came in a minute later, threw me a scrutinising look, and then went through the process of tucking Grace in.

  ‘You all done downstairs?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Okay.’ She leaned in and gave me a kiss goodnight, pausing to say quietly into my ear. ‘Don’t swear around your sister.’

  ‘Crap isn’t a swear word.’

  ‘It is in this house.’

  I couldn’t win, but I already knew that. I don’t think Mum used to care much either way about swearing. Now she’s uptight about it, like everything else. Like even the mildest profanity will open the gates of hell.

  I just nodded, because I knew that was what Mum expected, and bit down on the frustrated noise taking shape behind my lips. Mum slipped out of the room, flipping off the ceiling light as she went, leaving me lit by the desk lamp. I could hear rustles as Grace wriggled around, trying to get comfortable. I bit harder into my lip, wishing she’d fall asleep fast for once. I was anxious about sneaking out, mainly because I’d never done it before and I thought there was a good chance Mum and Dad would catch me on my way out. It wasn’t being out on the streets at night that worried me; I was desperate to get away from the claustrophobic closeness of the house. I like the dark. Maybe if this wasn’t a complete disaster I’d make it a regular thing.

  I didn’t get any homework done but I managed to cover an entire page with circle doodles while I waited for Grace to stop fidgeting. Then, when the opportunity came, it was surprisingly easy. I waited until quarter to ten. I could hear Mum and Dad moving around in their bedroom and ensuite, tooth-brushing sounds, and then I slipped down the stairs, hoping the noise of running water would cover the sound of me letting myself out. I gently eased the back door shut after me and turned the key as slowly as I could, still wincing at the scrape of the deadbolt, sure they could hear it inside the house. I knew Dad would be back downstairs soon, doing his final check of doors and windows, so I didn’t wait around.

  It had cooled down outside, but there was still a lot of warmth left from the day. I sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, enjoying the freedom. Between the moon and the streetlights the road was well lit, and there were still a few people out here and there, walking dogs, dragging out their wheelie bins.

  I hadn’t specifically mapped out my route based on real estate listings but I had made a note of ones that were on my way. I shouldn’t have bothered—they all had For Sale signs staked in the front lawns anyway, a dead giveaway. I didn’t even stop at the first one; there was a car in the driveway and lights on inside. I kept moving.

  I walked fast. I was loving being outside, nobody knowing where I was. In that way I wasn’t in any rush at all. But I felt sure that I was going to find Vogue, and I was keen to prove myself right. That was what made me go faster than normal. I was getting myself psyched.

  It was just past eleven when I came across the house. I’d been working methodically up and down the grid of streets when something about this one house stopped me. There was no sign out the front. It was the things I didn’t see that drew my attention. No car in the driveway, no lights on inside or out. The only house in the whole street with no bin sitting out at the kerb for the garbage truck in the morning.

  The houses around were mostly dark and quiet. Curtains drawn. I was fairly confident nobody would be looking out the window to see me, but it still took a few long minutes before I worked up the courage to go for it. Heart pounding, ignoring it, I crossed the street and slipped down the side of the house, where there was an old wooden gate. I wondered for a second if I could climb it, but that ended up being completely
unnecessary—there was only a simple slide bolt, no padlock.

  The gate opened into a paved courtyard edged with garden beds. The house was two-storey, brick, with overgrown gardens and cobbled paths. The moonlight shone directly on the back door, in through the layers of flyscreen and glass to illuminate a stark, empty space. A kitchen. No fridge, no visible belongings. Bare floorboards and tiles and walls—and just one foreign object. Well, two: a pair of ratty red Chucks just inside the back door. The same ones I’d seen on Vogue Fontainbleau’s dangling feet.

  Gold star for me.

  I worked my way around the perimeter of the house, peering through the windows. Without any curtains or blinds they were stark, impersonal, but they gave me a clear view inside. There was nothing else to see. I got back to the courtyard and stared up at the second-storey windows. If it had been me camping out in an empty house, especially one with no curtains, I’d go for the high ground.

  The upper level was set back a little bit, fringed by roof. It took me about three attempts but I managed to hoist myself up and onto the brick sill of a high window. I balanced precariously for a second, clinging to a drainpipe, not sure what to do next, and feeling more than a little bit ridiculous. The roof overhang extended out nearly a metre, and I knew the edge of it would be guttering, which could snap if I launched myself out and grabbed on to it. Even I knew that didn’t sound like a particularly good idea, so I gave up and dropped down to the ground, landing as stealthily as I could on the cobblestones.

  It wasn’t very stealthy. I’m too tall and uncoordinated to do stealthy.

  I stood back, surveying the house, wondering if I should just give up. There was no way of getting up there from outside. No conveniently located tree branches, no ladders left propped against the side of the house. Nada.

  But I can be stupidly stubborn when I get an idea into my head, and I knew those shoes were Vogue’s. She was in there, I was sure, but I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

  I stared at the back door, thinking about where you’d hide a key. There was no doormat. I turned over a few random rocks and nudged aside a loose-looking cobble, but no luck. If there was a spare key, Vogue had used it to let herself into the house. She probably had it on her. Frustrated, I admitted to myself that there was nothing I could do. With one last look at the darkened upstairs windows, I backed out of the small courtyard and slipped through the overgrown front yard to the street.

  It was just before midnight when I got home. I held my breath again as I turned my key in the front door lock and stepped in but there was no sign that anybody heard me. I relocked the door after me, double-checked it, and snuck upstairs. It was still hot and stuffy. I could hear fans running in bedrooms and crickets through open windows.

  Grace was sound asleep, snoring. Great. Only a tiny part of me was a little bit disappointed, like maybe I’d hoped they’d notice I was gone.

  I pulled off my shoes and climbed onto my bunk. None of the fugitive moonlight made it around the edges of my curtain: it was completely, disorientingly black. I pushed back the covers by feel and climbed in, staring upward as if waiting for Frankie’s face to materialise out of the blackness. It didn’t.

  The breeze from the open window didn’t penetrate the wall of curtains, and it was hot in my little cave. I tossed and turned for what felt like forever. I’m not even sure when I did finally sleep but when my alarm went off in the morning it was far too soon. At some point in between I’d come to a decision: I would go back to the house in the morning and confront Vogue. Technically she wasn’t any of my business but I was the only one who knew where she was. That made her my business. Didn’t it?

  Saturday morning is sport. The boys and Grace play cricket but in different teams and, usually, at different ovals. Sometimes the younger kids go along; sometimes Mum leaves them at home with me to babysit. I don’t usually mind, because I don’t usually have anything else to do. This particular Saturday I did, and I couldn’t go look for Vogue with two kids in tow.

  ‘I have an assignment I have to do,’ I lied when Mum was detailing the schedule. ‘Can’t you take them with you?’ ‘Grace’s game is at midday. We won’t be home until two. Josey needs to go down for his nap before then.’

  My plan had been to wait outside the house and catch Vogue when she left for the day. Josey hadn’t featured in that plan.

  ‘Can’t you send him with Dad?’

  ‘He’s coaching today. He can’t do that with Josey running around.’

  She’d already made up her mind, so there was no point arguing. She always has an airtight case for every decision and she believes in it one hundred per cent. She doesn’t hesitate about anything. It drives me crazy.

  She took off with Grace and Evie, then there was lots of arguing as Dad got Micah and Elijah packed into his car. They were running late. Josey and I were left together. I looked at him, sitting on the couch with glazed eyes fixed on the TV, a dry Weet-Bix half-eaten in his hand. He was wearing nothing but a nappy.

  I wandered out the back door. Another cloudless blue sky. It wasn’t even nine yet but within seconds I could feel the sweat start to sheen on my bare skin. I ducked back inside quickly and looked at Josey. The walk home from Vogue’s house had taken me about fifteen minutes, but I figured it would take me longer in the heat. If I had to take Josey with me, that would easily double the time again. I strongly doubted Vogue would be up early, but it seemed like a lot of effort to go to if there was a chance I’d already missed her. So—no time to waste.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ I asked Josey. ‘Wanna go for a walk?’

  He turned his head towards me slowly, like he was caught in a tractor beam from the TV, and his eyes took a second to focus. Then he pointed down at his nappy. ‘Poo,’ he announced.

  Frigging awesome.

  4

  Josey didn’t want to get changed, didn’t want to get dressed and definitely didn’t want to get into the stroller. As I pushed him up the driveway hill he was leaning so far forward in the stroller he was practically doubled over, trying to catch at the wheels, letting out a continuous whine at the futile effort. I blew out a long, frustrated breath, wondering why I was bothering but not letting myself stop. If I stopped, I knew that’d be it.

  It took nearly an hour to get to the house. As I walked I was—between dishing out Tiny Teddies and picking up Josey’s tossed water bottle every five metres—thinking over my options. The plan I came up with wasn’t a very good one but it would have to do.

  It had been pretty easy to sneak through the back gate last night in the dark. This time I was pushing a massive stroller with a cranky two-year-old in it, in broad daylight. I walked down the other side of the street first, checking out the amount of traffic and how many people were out in their front yards. Just one: an old lady sweeping her path about fifty metres away. Really going for it, considering it was another hot morning.

  It wasn’t that hard being invisible. I mean, I look older than my age. When I’m out with just Josey people often assume I’m his mum, and not in a teenage-mum dirty-looks kind of way. I think it’s mostly because I’m tall. Still, my heart was hammering in my chest again as I approached the house. I blew out a breath, went straight up to the front door and put the brakes on the stroller. The door was dark wood with orange stained glass, like my grandparents’ house. Josey’s whingeing had turned to yelling. He was pulling at the stroller straps, trying to get free, and howling.

  ‘Hang on, hang on,’ I said, channelling Mum and speaking as loudly and clearly as I could. I felt like a stage actor, enunciating. I swung my bag around on my shoulder and pretended to dig through. ‘Just let me find my keys.’ I produced them finally and made a show of trying a key in the lock. ‘It’s a bit stuck,’ I said, loudly again.

  I threw a look over my shoulder to check I hadn’t attracted any of the neighbours’ attention. Then, leaving Josey yelling in his stroller, I sprinted around the side of the house to the side gate. It was shielded from the front door
by a few tall, straggly conifers and I was counting on Vogue using that as her escape.

  Et voilà. She was slipping out the back door as I opened the gate, shoes in her hand, unzipped gym bag slung over her shoulder. She was clearly in a panic and when she saw me she came to a skidding halt with a look of horror on her face.

  My mum can be scary when she wants to be: narrowed eyes and a cold, measured voice. I try it on the kids when I want something, and sometimes it even works.

  I jiggled the keys in my hand. ‘What,’ I demanded, in the sternest tone I could manage, ‘are you doing here?’ Counting on the fact that Vogue was eleven and there was a good chance I looked like an adult to her even without the Mum impersonation.

  That didn’t go so well. The panic on her face faded and she squared her chin. ‘You don’t live here.’

  ‘Of course I don’t live here,’ I snapped. I could still hear Josey howling from the front door. I hoped he wouldn’t manage to tip the whole stroller over. ‘I just bought the place.’

  ‘This place is a dump,’ Vogue pointed out, scrutinising me. She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Why would you buy it?’

  I guess I’d been expecting some scepticism from her, but not this barefaced disbelief.

  ‘That’s none of your business, is it?’ When in doubt, stonewall—and make it cranky.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Vogue muttered, shaking her head, a phrase that would earn me a smack from my mother even now. Swearing is bad; blasphemy worse. ‘Fine. Sorry, I wandered in here by accident, and I’m leaving right now.’ She went to push past me, and I grabbed her wrist. Didn’t really think about that being a weird thing to do to a stranger. It was more of a reaction, like when I’m breaking up a fight between one of the kids.