The Goodbye Ride (13 page)

Not that it did much good. His arse was off
the bed again and he’d started thinking about all the things he had to do in
the morning if he was going to ride with Liv and Ben to Mannum—buy himself
another motorbike for one. He’d seen an ex-police bike advertised in the
Saturday Classifieds and it sounded good when he’d talked to the owner late
yesterday, before he’d picked up Liv. Not perfect, mind. It wasn’t a 650
Pantah, but the BMW would do.

If he was going to make it happen, he had
to get down to Adelaide in the morning, test-ride the bike and get back up here
by ten. He started pacing out the hours in his head, getting more and more
restless.

Shit.
At this rate, he’d wake her up for sure.

Owen pressed a kiss against the warm skin
of Liv’s shoulder. Then he swung his legs to the carpet.

It didn’t take much groping in the dark to
find his clothes and boots, but his mobile phone was still buried in the bed
somewhere and he didn’t want to disturb her by looking for it. So he left it
behind.

Owen slipped out of Liv’s bedroom and made
his way toward the kitchen. Opening the fridge gave him enough light to match
shirt holes to buttons and get the right boot on the right foot. After that, he
found a switch to trigger the overhead lights.

There were squares of delicate
flower-patterned loose-leaf papers in a special holder near the phone. The pens
were arranged there too, in neat picket-fence rows. 

He picked up a red pen and started to
write:

Good morning, Lovely

Unlike you, beautiful girl, some of us need
our beauty sleep. (p.s. Did you know you snore?)

I have something I have to do early in the
morning and I didn’t want to wake you. I will see you back here at ten o’clock
with the Duke, and I’ll have a surprise.

He thought for a second and signed:

Last night was the best night of my life.

Love Owen.

Tucking the pen back in its place, he
folded the note and left it propped at the base of the camellia vase on the
kitchen bench. There were petals all around it which he could have swept away,
but he thought they looked kind of nice scattered like that. He thought she’d like
it.

Owen let himself out the front door and
locked Liv behind him.

****

She woke with a hard lump digging at her
rib and a niggling sensation she was missing something. Propping herself on her
elbows, Liv looked around. There wasn’t much light, but it didn’t take light to
know she was alone in the room.

Liv switched on the lamp.

Owen’s clothes were gone, too.

She tilted her head to the side, listening
for the splash of a shower, but heard nothing. Nor was there any sound or smell
of a six-foot male cooking breakfast or making a cup of tea in her parents’
kitchen.

She thrust herself upright. The movement
bounced Owen’s mobile phone from the tangle of sheets and sent the trailing
earplugs crashing over the edge of the bed.

He can’t have gone far. Not if he’s left
his phone. There’ll be a note to say he’s gone out to get breakfast.

And on its heels, the single thought:
Don’t
panic.

Swinging her feet to the floor, Liv grabbed
jeans, a skivvy and a cardigan from her wardrobe, underwear and thick socks from
her bedside drawer. She was two paces out the door when she swore and retraced
her steps. Yanking the quilt over the bed, she did her best to smooth out the
creases. Her parents’ would be home late today. Solo residential bliss, over.

In the kitchen, she scanned the flat
surfaces.

She checked the bench—covered with a new
layer of camellia petals. She checked the sink and the top of the microwave.
There was no note under the magnet on the fridge and nothing near the phone.

Her mother’s birds watched her turn ever
smaller circles in the kitchen.

Racing into the front room, Liv snatched
the curtain aside and peered out at the carport.

No Ducati 650 Pantah.

Surely she would have heard it leave? Had
Owen been so keen to sneak away undiscovered, he hadn’t wanted to start the
engine?

That thought writhed in her stomach like
centipedes under a lifted brick. Liv covered her mouth with her hand so she
wouldn’t throw up on her mother’s tiles.

Swallowing the bitter lump in her throat,
she drifted back to the kitchen. Like a rudderless boat, the current bore her
to the pantry door. Liv took the dustpan and brush from its shelf.

Camellia petals made a papery swish as she
tipped them into the kitchen bin. She had just enough time to see the petals
flow either side of two foil packets, burying a pair of sad condoms in an
avalanche of pink and white.

Chapter
10

Owen had pushed the Ducati as far as the
primary school before he started the engine, not wanting to wake Liv or her
neighbours at two in the morning. Aunt Margaret’s dogs hadn’t bothered to bark
as he rode up the drive, single headlight bouncing across the veranda.

Way too wired for sleep, he’d lain in bed
imagining Liv in his arms. Her softness. Her scent. The way she felt beneath
him…

A sharp tattoo on the door woke him. “Hey,
stop-out. You gonna sleep all day? It’s almost eight.”

Eight?

Owen threw back the covers. Last time he’d
looked at the clock it had been five and he’d debated getting up.

After the fastest shower on record, he’d
slung his helmet and jacket over his arm and made a grab for Mark’s toast as he
left the house at a sprint.

Now, two hours later, he was stuck in a
snarl of crawling traffic on the Freeway uptrack and he was so pissed off with
tunnel maintenance and orange-flashing
delay
signs it was an effort not
to swing the ute into the emergency lane and plant his foot.

He checked the rearview mirror. Liv’s
Ducati and the new ex-police BMW 2003 cruiser were roped in the back. Behind
them, the mirror filled with cars and trucks snaking back as far as he could
see.

Owen switched his attention to the front.
The line was moving, albeit like a conga-line of snails.

Five more minutes crept by. Traffic
constricted to one lane near the tunnel and a sign flashed:
Hazard ahead.
Prepare to stop.

Shit.

He couldn’t call Liv. He couldn’t call
anyone. His mobile phone was buried in Olivia’s bed.

Owen stamped his foot at the brake and
swore. He’d almost driven up the rear of a Corolla hatchback, doing all of—
hell
—walking
pace.

God, he wished he had his phone.

****

When Liv heard the front door open, her
traitorous heart kicked.

“Hello!”

The voice wasn’t Owen’s. It made her bolt
from the couch to the kitchen bench to scrape toast crumbs into her palm.

“We’re home, ’livia.”

“In here, Dad.” She wiped a sponge over the
bench and wondered whether she had time to clean fingerprints from the front of
the microwave. She couldn’t remember which cupboard held the Windex. Was it
under the sink with the kitchen cleaners or in the bathroom with the bleach?

She leapt for the roll of paper towel—tore
a piece—wet it, and scrubbed at the microwave’s glass.

“Hi, Liv,” came her mother’s soft,
tremulous voice.

Liv heard the scuff of shoes on the tiles
and the bump of luggage against the wall. Then her parents exited the hallway
where it poured into the lounge.

“Did you have a good time?” She squished
the wad of paper towel in her fist.

“Crows lost,” her father grunted. “Other
than that we had a great weekend. How ’bout you?”

“Yeah, fine. Ben’s coming soon. We’re going
for a ride.”

Jack Murphy’s gaze slipped away.

“It’s so nice to be home. I’m
so
looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.” Alison Murphy put her handbag on
the kitchen bench. Then she noticed the camellias. “You got out that old vase,
Liv? Did you dust it before you used it? I hope the flowers weren’t full of
ants. Camellias can be, you know. They can get scale. Ants suck on the scale.”

“No, Mum. I didn’t dust it. I don’t dust.
There are no ants.” Liv flicked her finger at a petal. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll
throw them out when I get back. Or you can ditch them if you like.”

“They’ve passed their best, Liv,” her
mother said, her tone one of mild reproach. Then she turned a slow half circle
and stopped short, staring wide-eyed at the lounge-room wall. “Would you look at
the dust on those frames!”

She darted around the bench, making a
bee-line for the kitchen cupboard and emerged brandishing the mystery Windex.

“Leave it, Ali,” Liv’s father warned.

His wife hurried to the paintings. She
squirted the Robin and the Wren and wiped the glass. The scent of cleaner hung
heavy in the air.

Liv’s father dropped the luggage to the
alabaster tiles with a
whump.
“I said leave it, Alison.”

Her mother stopped rubbing. When she turned
to her husband, her face was white as the ceiling, the skin papery, like it was
stretched too tight.

“I’m doing it again, aren’t I, Jack, love?
Sorry.” She stowed the cleaning product back beneath the sink.  “I think I’ll
have a shower, help myself relax after the drive.”

Jack Murphy let out a sigh as his wife left
the kitchen.

“You’re home early, Dad,” Liv said,
crossing to the pantry where she tossed the paper towel in the bin. A
surreptitious check proved the condoms were completely covered in petals, and
now paper.

“Ali started stressing yesterday about the
hotel room because the cleaners only change the towels. They don’t clean the
room unless you specify it and I didn’t specify it or she would have spent more
time making sure they’d got every last speck of dirt than enjoying herself. She
started talking about coming home yesterday. I thought it was best not to push
her, so we hit the road. We stayed in Keith last night.”

“You did the right thing,” Liv said,
shutting the pantry door. “Coming home earlier, I mean. There’s no sense
pushing it, especially on her first trip away.”

Her father’s shoulders lifted and he gave
her a tired smile. “So you’re going riding with Ben?”

“Yes,” Liv said carefully. Ben had always
been a sensitive topic
.
“We’ve been talking about taking a ride up to
Mannum on the Queen’s Birthday Monday for a while—since I saw the Pantah
outside the Langs’. Remember I told you I was going to buy the bike? We planned
the ride as a goodbye to Luke.”

“That bloody bike.” He stabbed his toe
underneath one of the overnight bags, making it skid on its plastic wheels.
“It’s not out front. Where is it?”

Disappointment knifed her insides. “Mr Lang
got a better offer.”
And I got duped, Dad.

“Maybe that’s for the best, Liv.”

The purr of a motorbike engine on Church
Street saved her from answering, even though she knew it wasn’t Owen—there was
no way the Honda had that magnificent throbbing roar of the Duke.

“That’s Ben, Dad. I need to get my jacket.
I’ll catch you later. I’m glad you both had a good time in Melbourne.”

“Hey, Liv?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe you could tell Ben hello. Say that I
asked after him.”

Surprise cut through the fog in her head.
She looked her father square in the eyes. “It will mean heaps more to him if
you tell him yourself.”

His eyes did a quick tour of the ceiling.
“Me?”

“He’s right outside.” She could see him
wavering and decided it was time for a none-to-subtle-shove. “Jack Murphy, you
face fires for a living almost every day. A fire is much more terrifying than
bloody Ben Trencher.”

“I bet he tells me to piss off.” Her dad
pulled his foot out from beneath the luggage.

“He’s a lover not a fighter.”

Her father grimaced.

“Sheesh, Dad. Relax. You’re way too old for
him.”

“Yeah. Lucky that,” Jack Murphy said with a
wry smile, muttering as he passed her on his way to the door: “Don’t know where
you got such a smart mouth, kid.”

The sound of the Honda’s bike engine
petered out.

Walking back through the house to her
bedroom, Liv could hear the splash of the shower. Alison Murphy was singing an
Adele song, the theme from
Skyfall,
and not making too bad a job of it.

Liv picked Owen’s mobile phone off the
carpet. For the third time that morning, she straightened her quilt. Then she
grabbed her leather jacket and the carry pouch she wore for riding to store her
money and phone, and ambled back to the kitchen. About then she realised she
was stalling—playing for time—hoping against hope that Owen might show.