‘You seriously live here?’ he said again.
Georgia laughed. ‘It’s really not that big a deal,’ she said.
Luke stared at the Goth girl who’d come to their aid on the train. She just did not match that house. Long black hair in pigtails, black biker jacket, tartan mini skirt with black tights, and those frightening boots riding up over her knees. The platform soles on the boots gave her a good couple of inches on Luke and she towered over Zac, who’d been very quiet since they’d left the train at Kings Cross station.
Walking the twenty minutes from the station, from city craziness here to perfect Elizabeth Bay, he’d found himself wondering more than once how she’d managed to put on her black lipstick over the two thick rings piercing her bottom lip. As he studied her while she supposedly rummaged through her backpack for the keys, he realised that the stud in her nose was actually a tiny silver dragon, its tail curled about itself as it slept.
But he wasn’t holding his breath for the keys. Because behind her, spotlit by lamps embedded in an emerald, carpet-like lawn, rose a three-storey sandstone mansion. Two storeys high, the wrought-iron front gate was entwined and twisted with spirals, curlicues and vines. He wondered what a set of keys would even look like for a gate like that.
Surrounding the home was a park-like garden, impossibly lush in the middle of winter. Hundreds of fairylights climbed palm trees, danced and twinkled in bushes, sparkled through hedges.
Luke closed his eyes against the overwhelming brightness of it all. He was exhausted. He just wanted to sleep, and try as he might, he could not convince himself that it would be inside this house. The quiet clanking of boats in the dark harbour behind the house sedated him further. Even to just drop onto that carpet of grass and sleep until the frozen dawn would be enough for him.
‘Oh, here they are,’ said Georgia. Incredibly, she dangled a set of two keys from her fingers. A filigreed silver cat kept them company on the key ring.
Zac gave a soft growl.
Luke ignored him. ‘So you actually live here?’ he said.
‘I think you’re faulty,’ she said. ‘There’s a scratch on your disc somewhere. You keep saying the same thing.’
She turned away and inserted one of the keys into the lock. It creaked. She pushed it inward, holding it open with a hip.
‘Coming?’ she said.
Luke smiled. He was very rarely surprised any more.
The gate opened into a courtyard. A broad sandstone pathway led to the actual entry to the home: a shiny, red-lacquered door, twice as tall as he was. The sandstone path was flanked by stainless steel spears, each topped with a blue-orange flame. A snarl of black smoke curled skyward from the very tip of each as they walked by.
Behind the fire was water. Jade-green ponds filled with luminous darting fish whorled and bubbled on each side of the path. From the corner of his eye, Luke thought he saw an enormous golden tail the width of his thigh. He shook his head. I really need to get to bed, he thought.
Georgia stood at the red door. Luke watched her, wondering what lay beyond it. She put her key in the lock and turned the big brass door handle.
‘I am so starving,’ she said. ‘Anyone else hungry?’
Zac hadn’t said a word since the station.
Luke could quite understand that; he was also having trouble putting a sentence together.
He sat propped on a barstool at a big black marble serving bar in the most amazing kitchen he’d ever seen. But that hardly did it justice, he considered. Because before this, the most amazing kitchen he’d ever seen was one in which the dishes had been washed. He’d never even lived in a house with a dishwasher.
But this…
Well, this kitchen looked like it belonged in a restaurant and had that photo-clipped-straight-out-of-a-magazine look. Georgia, this freaky chick from the train, was making them bacon and eggs. If everything hadn’t smelled so good, he’d have been sure he was dreaming.
‘Do you really live here?’ he said.
She sighed. ‘You are becoming boring,’ she said. ‘I really live here.’
‘Who with?’ he said. ‘Where are your parents?’
‘Well, I think my mother may be with her lover,’ said Georgia, spooning mounds of buttery scrambled eggs onto a large green platter. ‘But please don’t ask me who that is at the present time, as their names change with tedious rapidity. I’m pretty sure that she just refers to each of them as “darling” because she has difficulty remembering them all. And my father – well, my father is in a place I’m sure you’re both very familiar with.’
She used tongs to drop sizzling bacon rashers onto the plate of eggs.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Luke.
Georgia slid a tray of thickly sliced toast out of the enormous oven.
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she said, using a knife to scrape wads of butter over the toast. ‘He’s in gaol, just like you were.’
Luke stared. Zac said nothing.
‘What do you want to drink?’ she said.
‘What makes you think we were locked up?’ Luke said.
‘Well, mostly your shoes.’ She carried the platter over to the oversized dining table. ‘I had a boyfriend who was locked up in Dwight. I used to visit most weekends. He wore those shoes. What are we drinking?’
‘Lots of people wear these shoes,’ said Luke.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But you were in Windsor and so were the transit cops who were looking for you. Also – um, I don’t mean to be rude, but have you seen the state of your face? You look more like someone stomped on it than that you spent the past couple of days reading poetry at your private school. I knew straight away you’d run away from Dwight.’
She walked back towards the fridge. ‘I’ve got juice, Coke, coffee, milk or wine,’ she said. ‘And pretty much everything else, actually.’
‘What were you doing in Windsor?’ said Luke. ‘When you live in a place like this?’
‘I have friends there,’ she said. ‘Drink?’
‘Coke,’ Luke said.
‘Zac?’ she said.
‘Water,’ said Zac. ‘And I don’t eat eggs.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Georgia. ‘You haven’t tried mine, though. Maybe I can change your mind. Still, there’s heaps of bacon here.’
‘I’m a vegan,’ said Zac.
Georgia threw back her head and laughed. ‘Well, of course you are!’ she said. ‘How gorgeous. A vegetarian escapee from a juvenile detention centre.’
‘I’m vegan, not vegetarian,’ said Zac.
‘And we didn’t say we escaped,’ said Luke.
Georgia sighed and pulled two cans of Coke and a bottle of water from the massive stainless steel fridge.
‘You know, champagne would have been great with these eggs,’ she said.
Pantelimon, Bucharest, Romania
As they approached the exit doors of the Ghost Train, Samantha felt like crying. Tamas would have to let her go.
‘Sam, what’s the matter?’ said Tamas. ‘Are you mad at me? You look sad all of a sudden.’
A flash of fake fire, the ride’s last hurrah, lit up his face as she met his eyes, the flame reflected in their inky blackness.
‘You’re going to let me go when those doors open.’
He laughed. ‘You’re crazy,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry. Boyfriends tend to hold their girlfriends more than once.’
Boyfriend! Her heart leapt. But the red doors loomed ahead like a waiting mouth and the feeling of doom redoubled. She couldn’t help it – for some reason, cheesy and lame as it was, she felt compelled to say it.