Page 37 of Darling Girls

‘You can do this,’ Alicia told her. ‘Norah and I are here.’

‘Okay.’ Jessica exhaled. ‘All right.’

The turn was so late and so sharp that the dogs slid across the back seat, hitting the opposite door before landing in a pile in the footwell.

‘Sorry,’ Jessica said to Norah, with an anxious glance in the mirror as if bracing for her wrath. Alicia braced for it too. But to her surprise, Norah leaned forward, putting her hand on Jessica’s arm where Alicia’s had been a moment earlier.

‘You did it,’ she said with uncharacteristic earnestness. ‘I’m proud of you.’

Port Agatha was a small farming community two hours from Melbourne, comprising rural properties and a small township. According to the last census, it had a population of three thousand two hundred and eighty-five. On the drive into town, they passed the Country Fire Authority building, a pair of tennis courts, a barbecue area and a decrepit playground. Finally, they reached the local police station.

‘I remember this place,’ Norah said.

The police station hadn’t changed since the last time they were in Port Agatha, but the buildings around it had. Back then, the squat, 1970s flat-roofed single-storey building had had a concrete car park on one side and a paddock on the other. Now, it was nestled between a coffee shop and one of those general stores that existed in every country town – the kind that sold everything from lawn chairs to hardware supplies to romance novels. Farther along the street were a hairdresser, a fish-and-chip shop, a newsagent and a second-hand bookstore. Directly across from the police station was a beautiful, but weathered, old pub.

When they pulled up in the gravel car park, there was a pause as they each gazed out to the street. Even the dogs seemed suddenly pensive. No one was willing to make the first move out of the car, until Alicia broke the silence with an audible sigh.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

As they made their way towards the station, Norah wrangling the dogs, Alicia’s phone beeped with a voice message from Meera. Receiving a message from Meera here in Port Agatha felt jarring, like a bizarre clashing of worlds – a wedding and a funeral, a birth and a death. Her thumb hovered over the message for a second before she returned the phone to her pocket. Even though it was undoubtedly about work, Meera’s messages needed to be savoured. Cherished. Not listened to on the fly while approaching her worst nightmare.

Three detectives – two men and a woman – greeted them in the foyer of the police station, which smelled of curry and cigarettes.

‘We really appreciate you coming in today,’ the female detective said. ‘I’m Ashleigh Patel, I spoke to you on the phone. This is Detective Hando and this is Detective Tucker.’

They greeted each other with nods of the head. Hando was forty-odd, with sandy hair and stubble. Tucker looked to be in his fifties, with a grey moustache. Detective Patel was the youngest and the most impressive, in heels and a severe-looking ponytail, which told Alicia this team wasn’t local to Port Agatha.

‘I like your moustache,’ Norah said to Tucker.

Norah had always had a weird moustache fetish, ever since they were kids. She told them she’d read somewhere that men with moustaches were more trustworthy – but once, after a couple of drinks, she’d admitted that she merely found them sexy. Alicia hoped she wouldn’t ask if she could touch it.

‘Thank you,’ Tucker said, after a brief, puzzled pause. ‘My wife hates it.’ His gaze went faraway for a moment, as if he were thinking about his wife.

‘Anyway,’ Patel continued, ‘we’re from the homicide squad in Melbourne, but we’ve set up an office here for this investigation.’

‘Homicide?’ Jessica said. ‘So you think the person was . . . murdered?’

‘It’s possible,’ Patel said. ‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’

There was a short silence as they all digested this. Jessica got it together first.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re hoping this won’t take long. We all have responsibilities in Melbourne that we need to get back to.’

‘We understand,’ Patel said. ‘And I can assure you, we’ll get through our questions as quickly as possible.’ Thong jumped up on Patel’s black suit. ‘Ooof. Hello.’

‘Are these your dogs?’ Hando asked, kneeling beside Converse and scratching his chin. ‘They’re gorgeous. Unfortunately, we can’t have dogs in the interview rooms.’

‘They’re service dogs,’ Norah said, without missing a beat. ‘So they have to stay with us.’

Patel looked at the mutts dubiously. ‘Theseare service dogs?’

‘Yes,’ Norah said serenely.

One of the things that Alicia had always admired about Norah was the fact that she was a committed liar. Not to be confused with agoodliar; Norah’s gift was the ability to come up with a lie on the spur of the moment and remain committed to it against all logic and reason.

‘For . . .?’

The pause was negligible. ‘Irritable bowel syndrome.’