Page 98 of So Steady

“Yes.”

“Coincidence.”

Edgar had smiled. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Want a coffee?”

Noah had followed Edgar back to his place, climbing the back stairs with one hand hard on the rail. His head was throbbing, his mouth tasted like bile. The house was a neat little box full of wood firelight and polished copper windchimes. And colours. Periwinkle curtains, forest green rugs, fuchsia cushions, and sorbet yellow lampshades. He turned on the spot, staring at the colours like he’d never seen them before, because that’s how it felt.

“My daughters,” Edgar said, holding up a silver framed photo.

Noah had struggled to get his drunk eyes to focus on the picture. Eventually his vision cleared, and he saw three black-haired girls in school uniforms.

“What’re their names?”

“Samantha, Tabitha, and Nicole.”

“Nicole’za good name,” he said, because it was. There was a girl in a book called that, or maybe it was a movie?

Edgar pointed at the girl on the far right. “Samantha’s in Las Vegas at a convention. Tabby’s doing…something in Johannesburg, and Nicole’s in Adelaide. She works in finance.”

Noah stared at pretty Nicole. Her bright blue eyes made him feel woozy. “Can I sit down?”

“Of course. I’ll get you a coffee and we can have a chat.”

“No,” he tried to say, but the tenderness in Edgar’s voice slipped between his ribs like a knife. He didn’t remember the next few hours of conversation, but they must have talked, and he must have said a lot because when he woke on the couch the next morning, Ed knew his name, his heritage and his whole family history.

“Sorry,” Noah said.

“Nothing to be sorry for, mate.”

Over a breakfast of bacon and blistering black coffee, Edgar offered him a job in his studio. “Part time at first, trial basis and everything, but if you’re as good as you look, we’ll put you on full time.”

“You don’t want that,” Noah told him. “I don’t want that. I need to head back to Sydney.”

Edgar put down his ceramic mug. “You don’t need to head anywhere. We both know what you’ll do if you go back to Sydney. Choose something else.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve got the rest of existence to be dead,” Edgar said calmly. “Wake the fuck up and be alive.”

Something about that got him, like a bullet from a sniper’s gun. He’d cried, sharp and sudden, like a little kid. It was humiliating, but it tore down the last of his resistance. He accepted Edgar’s hankie and took the job.

He thought it’d be a disaster, but it wasn’t. With the machine in his hand, easing ink under skin, he felt like he’d come home. He met Sam and they got along. When she looked at him, she didn’t see a criminal, just a guy with tattoos who didn’t like talking. That was Edgar’s magic, his protection. He’d built something in Melbourne these last five years and now it was crumbling around him.

“Fuck,” he muttered, patting his pockets for cigarettes that weren’t there. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

When he reached his street, he could see his front door was wide open. Paula and Shredder. Question was, were they still there? The answer was no. What was there was a complete annihilation. The inside of his house made the mess Nicole’s ex had left look like a couple of chocolate wrappers. The dining table was broken. The couches turned over and the cushions slashed. The legs of every chair he owned were splintered and every glass, jar, cup and plate had been smashed. But none of that mattered, what mattered were that his paintings, every last one, had been stacked into the fireplace and set on fire.

Chapter 18

Nicole woke with a dry mouth and a bad feeling. She blinked, trying to get her thoughts in order. Her dreams had been strange; Noah in black robes urging her onto her knees to confess her sins. Weird sex stuff had ensued. She held up her wrist to check the time and at the sight of her bare wrist, it all came flooding back—Noah, the van, their round trip from Adelaide, coming home so tired, she could barely walk. She sat bolt upright, listening hard. She could hear people talking. Sam and a guy. Noah? She pulled her pink Adidas shorts over her still damp underwear and headed for the kitchen. She was near the doorway when her heart dropped. The man talking wasn’t Noah, it was Gil. “You need to go to the cops. I’ll call them if you want. He can’t get away with this.”

Nicole stepped into the morning sunshine. “Who can’t get away with what?”

Sam and Gil exchanged glances.

“Does she know?” Gil asked.

“Know what?” Nicole said. “What’s going on? Where’s Tabby? Where’s Noah?”

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