The Soulmate(59)

‘I’ll help,’ Asha says, picking up her bucket and moving to the foot of the rocks. I watch as she starts jamming her chubby little hands into the crevices between the rocks.

‘Keep looking, Daddy,’ Freya says supportively. ‘You’ll find it!’

I don’t share Freya’s confidence. These rocks would take a crane to move, and they are stacked at least six high. Something as small as a USB would likely have slid down a crevice to the bottom, particularly given all the rain we’ve had. It would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. I have to say, I won’t be upset if it doesn’t turn up. Perhaps it’s the fact that I feature on that USB, but I take great comfort in knowing it’s buried under the rocks. That is, I think, the perfect place for it.

But Gabe appears to feel differently.

After nearly an hour, I get up off my towel and go sit beside Gabe on the rocks. ‘It’s not the end of the world if we don’t find it, is it?’ I ask.

It’s not, as far as I can tell. Yet since Gabe’s phone call with Max, and despite his assertions to the contrary, I can’t help but feel that I’m still missing a piece of the puzzle.

‘No,’ Gabe says. ‘It’s not the end of the world. The important thing is that Max thinks we have it.’

‘So why are you even looking?’

‘I’d just like to know that it really is gone. That it won’t show up unexpectedly in a year’s time.’

‘If it does, it’s Max’s problem, not ours.’

Gabe shrugs, but a flicker of something crosses his face. It looks a little like fear.





61


AMANDA

AFTER



It’s a sweet little beach excursion the Gerard family is on. Such a handsome family, out at the beach with their buckets and spades. They look like they wouldn’t have a care in the world.

But I’m starting to realise that it’s a rare family which doesn’t have a few problems. The Gerard family certainly have their fair share of troubles. Mental illness, infidelity, an illegitimate child and, now, criminal behaviour – packaged up as a happy family day at the beach. It’s just so interesting.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that, as Gabe and Pippa sit on the rocks, agonising over their future, they fail to notice that their darling little girl has found herself a shiny silver piece of treasure. One with my name engraved on the side. She decides not to tell her parents what she’s found lest they make her return it. Instead, she pops it into her bucket and sprinkles sand over it, quick as a flash.

She’s her father’s daughter, that one.





62


AMANDA

BEFORE



‘Gabe Gerard shot Arthur?’

Max sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘But why was he even there?’

A look of shame crossed Max’s face. ‘He wanted to be there. He said it was his mistake that got us into this mess and he wanted to ensure that we got out of it.’

‘And you let him?’

Max didn’t respond, but his face said he understood his error.

‘Your judgement of him is skewed, Max,’ I said.

Max looked weary. ‘It’s a little too late for this, Amanda.’

I let out a breath I didn’t realise I was holding. ‘So what happened?’

‘Apparently, he meant to shoot near Arthur, to scare him. He grabbed Baz’s firearm as if it were an episode of Law and Order. I don’t know what came over him.’ Max rested his head in his hands. ‘This whole thing is a nightmare.’

*

Baz dumped Arthur Spriggs’s body in the scrub by the beach. He did a good job; it took the cops nearly a week to find. When they did, Arthur’s underworld connections meant the investigation went off in the wrong direction. The case was mentioned briefly in the papers and that seemed to be that. But Max was haunted by it.

Gabe lost his job, obviously. For a moment I’d worried Max wouldn’t let him go, but thankfully he did what was necessary. Apparently, Gabe didn’t take the news especially well. He begged Max to reconsider, which I thought was rich of him. He got off easy, compared to us. Now, not only did we have a shady organisation investing in the company, its boss had just been murdered! This made extricating ourselves from the investment that much harder.

‘We’ll get out of it,’ Max said. ‘It’s just a little more complicated now. And it will take a little longer.’

‘And Gabe?’

Max threw up his hands. ‘He moves on with his life, I guess.’

‘Hopefully far away from us,’ I said.

For a while, it looked like that was exactly what he did. But our involvement with the Gerard family didn’t end there. Sometimes I wonder if that’s exactly what Max wanted all along.





63


PIPPA

NOW



I‘ve been in the supermarket for nearly an hour. Usually, I find the supermarket soothing. The rows of goods lined up and labelled and in their proper places, adjacent to similar and complementary items. The oranges and apples and bananas arranged in pleasing colour-coded piles. The little baskets for weighing produce. The music playing through the speakers – Smooth FM – which almost always features a Lionel Ritchie song.