Nine Perfect Strangers

Napoleon turned away from the wall and looked at Ben. ‘Mate, I don’t think it matters what you say. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.’ He clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I think we need to take Masha seriously, but not the game itself.’

‘You’ve got yourself a dud defence lawyer here,’ confessed Ben. ‘I got lucky. Lars is defending me and he’s appeared in court.’

When Lars had his ‘meeting’ with Ben, he only asked two or three quick questions before he said, ‘How about this?’ And then he launched into an eloquent speech, like something on television, all about how Ben was a morally upstanding young man on the very cusp of adulthood, about to become a father, deeply committed to his marriage, with so much to give to his wife, his family, his community and so on and so forth. It all just flowed out, without a single ‘um’ or ‘ah’.

‘Think that will do the trick?’ he asked at the end.

‘Sure,’ marvelled Ben.

And then Lars had gone off to the bathroom to fix his hair in preparation for his ‘appearance’.

‘I get so terrified of public speaking, I can’t even breathe,’ Ben told Napoleon.

‘Do you know the only difference between fear and excitement is the exhalation?’ asked Napoleon. ‘When you’re afraid you hold the air in the top part of the lungs. You need to exhale. Like this. Ahhhhh.’ He put his hand to his chest and demonstrated with a long, slow breath out. ‘Like that sound people make after a firework explodes. Ahhhhh.’

Ben did it with him. ‘Ahhhhh.’

‘That’s it,’ said Napoleon. ‘Tell you what

– I’ll go first. I’m defending Tony, so I’ll bore Masha to death speaking about his football career. I plan to do a run-down of every game he played. That’ll show her.’ He stopped at the beam near the inscribed brick in the wall. ‘You saw this?’

‘The convict graffiti?’ Delilah had shown it to them on their first tour of the house. Ben and Jessica hadn’t really been that interested.

Napoleon grinned. ‘Fascinating, eh? I read up on the history of this place before we came. These brothers eventually got their tickets of leave and ended up becoming very respectable, highly sought-after stonemasons. Far more successful than they would have been back home in England. They’ve got thousands of descendants in this area. When they were sentenced to be transported to Australia I bet they were devastated. They probably felt like it was the end of the world. But it turned out to be the making of them. The lowest point of your life can lead to the highest. I just find that so . . .’ For a moment he looked profoundly sad. ‘Interesting.’

Ben didn’t know why he suddenly felt in danger of crying. It must be hunger. It occurred to him that when he got home he owed his dad a visit. Just because his dad had given up on Lucy didn’t mean Ben should give up on him.

Ben put his fingers to the inscription. He thought about how everyone said it was such fantastic luck that he and Jessica won the lottery, but sometimes it didn’t feel that way.

He looked over at Jessica. Was he really going to be a dad himself? How could he advise a kid on how to live his life when he hadn’t yet worked it out himself?

‘Remember the exhale, mate,’ said Napoleon. ‘Just breathe out the fear.’

chapter sixty-seven

Heather

‘I’m quite a good friend,’ said Frances to Heather. ‘You could mention that.’ She chewed a fingernail. ‘I remember birthdays.’

‘I’m hopeless at birthdays,’ said Heather. In reality she was hopeless at friends, and after Zach died she could see no point to them at all. Friends were an indulgence.

Frances winced. ‘I did totally forget a good friend’s birthday this year, but that was because I was caught up in this internet scam and I was so distracted that day, and then it got to midnight, and I thought, Oh my God, Monica! but it was too late to text, so –’

‘What about your family?’ Heather interrupted, before she heard this Monica’s life story. She found Frances to be quite flaky. ‘Do you have family?’

Heather looked over Frances’s shoulder at her own family. Zoe was sitting with Jessica, their heads bowed close, as if they were two friends sharing secrets. Napoleon and Ben walked as they talked, Ben listening intently and nodding respectfully like he was one of Napoleon’s best students. She didn’t know what was going on with Napoleon right now. It was like an imposter was doing an excellent job performing the role of Napoleon. He was saying and doing all the right things and nearly getting away with it, but there was something just not quite right.

‘Yes,’ said Frances. ‘I have family.’ She looked uncertain. ‘I guess I’m not that close to my immediate family. My father died and my mother remarried and moved overseas. The south of France. I have a sister, but she has a lot on her plate. Their day-to-day lives wouldn’t be impacted that much if I was gone.’

‘Of course their lives would be impacted,’ said Heather.

‘Well . . .’ Frances gave the blank screen a nervous look. ‘I’m not saying they’d dance on my grave.’

Heather looked at her, surprised. The woman looked genuinely frightened. ‘You do know you’re not really on death row, don’t you? This is just a stupid power game for that maniac.’

‘Shhh,’ hissed Frances. ‘She could be listening.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Heather recklessly. ‘I’m not scared of her.’