Brittle Shadows (21 page)

Sucking in her
stomach, Jemma stepped up and closed her eyes, not opening them again until
Kerry told her to get off. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.

“It’s not as
bad as you think,” Kerry said with a light, tinkly laugh. She tapped something
on her keyboard. “Your body mass index – BMI for short – is 23.8, so well
within the healthy weight range.”

Jemma pulled a
face as Kerry picked up a pair of menacing looking calipers.

Kerry’s hazel
eyes twinkled. “I promise it won’t hurt a bit.”

That wasn’t
what she was worried about, knowing her body fat percentage was another matter.
The results, Kerry once again assured her, weren’t too grim. “Of course,
there’s always room for improvement.”

Kerry wrapped
the cuff of a blood pressure monitor around the top of Jemma’s left arm. “So
what inspired you to come today?”

Jemma’s pulse
quickened. She mumbled something about her move prompting a reassessment of her
lifestyle, willing her blood pressure to come down.

“Hmmn, it’s a
bit higher than I would like.” Kerry removed the cuff and entered the figures
into the online form displayed on her monitor. “We’ll check it again before you
leave. Could just be the stress of being here.”

By the time
Jemma completed the strength and stamina tests, she felt like she had done a
full workout. Puffing, she dismounted from the exercise bike and wiped her
brow. “No pain, no gain, right?”

Against her
better judgment, Jemma found herself signing up for a week’s trial – not that
she couldn’t do with the exercise. What perturbed her was that she actually
liked the Kerry she had encountered. Maybe even worse, though, was that she was
the sort of person Jemma could easily imagine becoming friends with.

Hot and sweaty after her fitness
appraisal and bonus workout, Jemma called in for a cold drink at the
Lego-inspired café around the corner from the apartment. Stood at the counter,
waiting for her change, she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t phoned Ethan
the previous evening like she meant to. Somewhere between the time spent going
from shop to shop hunting for gym clothes that didn’t consist of belly-baring crop
tops and clingy bottoms, and falling into a semi-comatose stupor on the couch,
her good intentions had become waylaid.

She pocketed
the coin the cashier handed her without looking at it and left the café. Out on
the street, she unscrewed the cap from her bottle of water and took a long
swallow. Curious to why Ethan had been looking for her, she thought about
dropping in at the property manager’s office on her way past. That was before
she glanced down at her baggy T-shirt. It was bad enough that people she didn’t
know were witness to her anything but flattering get-up. A shower and change of
clothes had to be her first priority. She took another swallow.

“Hello again.”

She choked,
spluttering water everywhere.

“Sorry, I
didn’t mean to startle you.” Ethan’s inky-blue eyes looked her up and down, the
corner of his mouth lifting.

“Please, not a
word.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. Along with her gorgeous
attire and red face, she knew frizzy wisps of hair – escapees from her ponytail
– rimmed her face.

He held up his
hands. “I didn’t say a thing,” he said, not trying hard enough to conceal his
mirth.

“What was it
you wanted to see me about?” No point in drawing out her embarrassment any
longer than necessary.

His grin faded,
a pink tinge creeping into his face. “I… um… I just wanted to check that
everything was okay now that the apartment locks have been changed.”

“If you mean
have I had any more phantom visitors, ones that can bypass security without
leaving a trace, then the answer is no. Talking of which, have you spoken to
your ole mate, Gerry, lately?”

“No, should I
have?”

She flicked her
hand. “Sorry, ignore me.” If the security bully hadn’t mentioned the incident
with the keys to Ethan, then she wasn’t about to. “Now if you’ll excuse me,
there’s a cold shower with my name on it waiting.” She went to walk off.

“There was one
other thing.”

She paused
mid-step.

“I was
wondering,” he said, stumbling over his words, “if you’re at a loose end one
night, if you would like to meet somewhere for drinks?”

Her throat
constricted, her ears not quite believing what she was hearing. “But…but…” She
coughed. “You mean just the two of us?”

He lowered his
eyebrows. “You can bring a chaperone if you like.”

“I wasn’t
thinking about me.”

“Sorry, I’m not
following.”

“I was thinking
about your wife or girlfriend or whoever the blonde woman I’ve seen you with
is?”

His eyes
flickered with comprehension. “Oh,” he said, “you mean my sister.”

“Sister? But
I…” Jemma shut her mouth before she could make any more of a fool of herself.

“You didn’t
think…” He laughed. “You did think. That explains a lot. Nic’s had a hard time
of it of late. She’s—”

“Please, it’s
none of my business.”

“But I want to
tell you. It might help explain why I may have come across a bit distracted at
times.” He drew her back into the shade of a shop awning. “The short version is
she’s not long separated from her brute of a husband and is embroiled in an
ugly dispute with him over the custody of their two sons. I’m trying to help
her through it. The long version I’ll tell you over those drinks, assuming you
want to, now you know I don’t have a wife on the side.”

“On one
condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You forget
you’ve ever seen me looking like this.”

“Why? I think
it’s very becoming.” He stepped back out of striking distance.

Sense of humor
and
sex appeal. She chuckled. “Wise move.”

“Are you free
tonight?”

Her mind went
blank for a moment. “Yes, I think so.”

“How about I
call past around seven and we take it from there, then?” he asked, walking backwards
in the direction of the café.

She nodded, her
power of speech deserting her.

With newfound
energy, she made it back to the apartment in no time, pausing only long enough
in the foyer to clear the mailbox. She had misjudged Ethan not once, but twice.
Much to her relief, he was neither gay nor married. But that was about all she
knew about him.

Once inside,
she dumped the mail, her keys and purse on the kitchen counter and headed for
the shower. Fifteen minutes later, she emerged clean and revitalized, ready to
take on the world again.

Or at least a
spot of housework. The dust bunnies were breeding, a reminder of her neglect.
She pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and set to cleaning. When she had
finished, the apartment looked and smelt fresh, unlike her. She needed another
shower, but it could wait until nearer the time she was due to meet Ethan.

She made
herself a belated but healthy lunch of a salad-filled wholegrain roll and fresh
orange juice and carried it to the table, along with the unopened mail. Chewing
on a mouthful of roll, she rifled through the mail, sorting it into addressed
and junk piles as she went. The addressed mail amounted to only two items, a
window-faced DL envelope addressed to Tanya and a printed white envelope
addressed to her. She turned over the one sent to her. No return address.
Frowning, she ripped it open and withdrew the contents, a single sheet of
paper.

The message,
typed in Arial and aligned to the top of the page, read:

Dear Jemma

You don’t know me, but I couldn’t
stand by and do nothing. You are not safe here. These people that you think you
can trust aren’t what they seem. You need to be careful, very careful. Don’t
end up like your sister. Go home before it’s too late.

Yours

Someone Who Cares

She reread it.
What did it all mean? She studied the postmark on the envelope. Though it was
faint and hard to decipher, she could just make out the word Melbourne, not
that that helped. She turned back to the letter. Someone who cared? Someone who
she didn’t know, but who knew her? Someone who not only knew her first and last
names and the address of where she was staying, but someone who knew her
movements.

A thought
struck her. She jumped up and collected the note fragments she had found under
the washing machine from the kitchen counter. “E who cares,” she read aloud.
Was the author of that, the same as the letter sent to her? She laid the scraps
of paper on the table and studied them.

HOW WELL DO

YOU KNOW YO

AT?

E WHO CARES.

She took a swig
of orange juice, her gaze fixed on the typed text. ‘How well do’ what? ‘How
well do you know’ sounded right, but the torn edge suggested the words after
‘do’ ran across the page and not down. Had the writer tried to warn Tanya? She
had obviously not taken whatever it was seriously, tearing the note into
pieces.

Jemma stared at
the wall, her hands on her head, elbows splayed. Her inclination to take what
she had to Chris was offset by the fact that she knew he would insist on making
it official. She couldn’t do that yet. She needed more. Enough to prove she
wasn’t crying wolf. Ash then? No, he would tell her to forget it, pretend it
didn’t exist. If anyone was in denial, it was him. Fen was also out of the
question, not while she was so highly strung, anyway. For all Jemma knew, one
or more of them was behind the letter. A shallow attempt to keep her from
delving further into the shadows? If the envelope had been unstamped, she might
have suspected the security guard, Gerry, had had a hand in it. He still could
have, of course. For what purpose, though, who knew. Sighing, she dropped her
hands from her head. Whatever and whoever, she didn’t scare that easily.

She went
through the motions of eating the rest of her lunch, chewing and swallowing but
not really tasting it. The way she felt, she wouldn’t be good company for
herself, let alone Ethan. She needed to do something to perk herself up before
then. A bath would sooth both body and soul.

Leaving the
mail where it sat, she collected up her empty plate and glass, depositing them
in the sink en route to the bathroom. She ran a bath, tipping a cap of bath
foam under the hot running water, and another for good measure. She stripped
off, leaving her clothes in a heap on the tiled floor near the door. Testing
the temperature first with a toe, she climbed into the tub and eased her body
through the bubbles into the warm, perfumed water. She sighed in pleasure. The
sweet scent of Jasmine filled the air.

She lay in the
bath in the half-dark, the only light in the room that spilling through the
doorway from the hall, trying to clear her mind, but her thoughts kept drifting
back to the anonymous note and its significance. Its author wanted Jemma to
believe she couldn’t trust anyone around her, but what about the nameless
person who sent it? Weren’t his or her motives more questionable? But then
again, was this person privy to information she didn’t have? Could he or she
know the identity of Tanya’s mystery man, the father of her unborn child? She
sat bolt upright, suds slipping from her shoulders and breasts into the water.
What if the writer was that man? Groaning, she slid back down into the water.
She had always had an overactive imagination.

At quarter to
seven, just as she was adding the finishing touches to her makeup, her phone rang.
She put the lip wand back together and went to answer the call, except in her
housecleaning frenzy she had misplaced her mobile phone. By the time she
located it next to the microwave, it had stopped ringing. One missed call.
Ethan. Before she could return his call, her phone beeped and ‘1 message
received’ flashed up on the display. She retrieved the message, her frown
deepening as she listened to Ethan’s cultured voice.

“Jemma, it’s
Ethan. Sorry to do this to you at such late notice, but something’s come up. I
won’t be able to make it for drinks tonight. I’ll give you a call tomorrow and
hopefully we can reschedule. And once again, sorry.”

She looked at
the lip wand in her hand and then down at her black-and-white striped Country
Road top and black slimline trousers. All dressed up with no place to go. She
knew it had been too good to be true. In slow motion, she pressed the End key
and set the mobile back down next to the microwave. She didn’t know what to
think. Was it her? Did she expect too much of men? As if ‘something’s come up’
was any kind of explanation. If it had to do with his sister and her custody
battles, why didn’t he just say? At least then, she would have understood.

Telling herself
that an early night wouldn’t hurt her, she went to get changed into something
that wasn’t dry-clean-only. She shed the top first and hung it back in the
wardrobe. The trousers she tried to do the same with, except when she hooked
the hanger back on the rail, they slid straight off. Dressed in nothing but her
bra and knickers, she knelt down on the carpet, ending up on all fours as she
reached in to retrieve the wayward trousers.