Mia and Honey had caught the train from Parramatta to Auburn and jumped down onto the tracks to avoid the ticket collectors. They'd scrambled up to the soggy street above the station platform and looked around. Kebab shops and amusement centres spilled coloured lights onto the wet roads, but the rain, and the dinner hour of 6 p.m., meant there were few people about.
'Um, I think it's this way,' Mia had said, holding onto Honey's cold hand as they made their way through the darkening streets. The shops alternated with houses and unit blocks now, and Mia eventually stopped in front of a block of flats, pushing the hood back from her sweatshirt, revealing her dark eyes. 'Shit,' she muttered, 'I know it's one of these.'
While they stood there shivering, a fat black car glided into the gutter in front of the units. A tall, skinny man with a scarred face and broken nose exited the front passenger's door. He threw them a hungry look, and opened the back door of the expensive car. Mia pulled at Honey's hand.
This was Honey's first sight of Mr Sebastian – a man in a dark suit. He stepped from the rear seat, pushing aside the thin man who was trying to offer him an umbrella. He smiled widely at Honey and Mia, his eyes on them from the moment the door had been cracked.
'What are you children doing out here in the rain?' he had asked them, covering the ground between them alarmingly quickly. 'Are you lost?'
Honey had expected Mia to make a typical smartarsed reply to this stranger, and was taken aback by her head-bowed silence and the white knuckled grip of her hand.
'Ah, I see it's little Mia,' he said when they didn't answer, 'and a friend. Lovely. Lovely,' he beamed, smiling down into Honey's face. 'I'm glad you've come to visit us, Mia,' he said, still looking at Honey. 'Let's get inside.'
The man had placed his big hand in the small of Honey's back, and marched them forwards towards the unit block. Honey noted that she and Mia were suddenly flanked on three sides by the men who'd got out of the car.
Although the apartment block was unprepossessing from the outside, the unit into which they were steered seemed amazing to Honey. The heavy front door opened into a wide room and Honey told Jill she'd later learned that the apartment had been rebuilt from the inside and took up the entire floor. Shiny white floors stretched towards several closed doors at the back of the large room. Huge potted palms filled the corners, and low leather lounges were wrapped around coffee tables and two huge television screens. A small boy in pyjamas was asleep on one of the lounges, sucking his thumb. Another boy, who looked about Honey's age, did not look up when the door opened, intent upon the joystick and video game in front of him. A white cat snaked out of a shining black kitchen and slinked around a corner before Honey could bend to pat her.
Honey and Mia stayed at the apartment for three days, helping themselves to food from the walk-in pantry and huge refrigerator, watching TV, and playing video games with Ethan and Andrew, the two boys sharing the unit. Honey slept curled up on one of the lounges with Mia and the white cat, occasionally waking when men came and went at odd hours.
On their second day at the unit, Mia had left with one of the men. She did not want to talk to Honey when she returned that evening, instead sitting with her knees under her chin, playing video games for hours.
Honey didn't see Mr Sebastian again until the morning of their fourth day. She was sick of being inside and she and Mia had decided to go shoplifting for clothes at Westfield in Parramatta.
She and Mia were trying to figure out how to open the front door of the unit when it was opened suddenly, sending her sprawling backwards. There hadn't even been a sound to indicate the heavy door was about to open. She looked up to see Mr Sebastian smiling down at her, offering her his big hand. The smile didn't reach his eyes.
'Yougirls going somewhere, are you?' he asked, as Honey scrambled to her feet, ignoring his hand. Neither she nor Mia said a word.
'I'm going to need you today, Honey, Mia, so I don't want you going anywhere you could get lost. I'm hosting a dinner party tonight, and I'll be requiring your assistance.'
He walked past them into the kitchen, filling a glass with filtered water from the specially fitted tap on the granite benchtop. He spoke rapidly in another language to the hook-nosed man who'd entered the unit behind him, then turned back to the girls.
'Jamaal has some clothes for you to wear tonight. You can try them on now, please.'
Later that night Honey discovered the price of a warm place to sleep and food whenever she wanted it. Within a month or so she learned that being 'nice' to Mr Sebastian's friends also meant that she was given enough money to buy herself new clothes, jewellery and make-up. For the first month, although disgusted by the groping, fondling old men she was expected to kiss and cuddle, she'd thought that she could tolerate these weekly evenings for the exchange.
One night, however, a flabby white man, older than most of the others, had tried to push his penis into her bottom. She had run from him into the small bathroom that was attached to the bedroom they were in. Crying, she'd locked the door and hoped the man would get tired of waiting and leave.
Within ten minutes, she'd stopped crying and was plucking her eyebrows in the mirror when the door was kicked in. Mr Sebastian slammed the back of his hand across her mouth, splitting her lip and loosening her tooth. Jamaal picked her cowering body up from the floor and held out her arm. The thin man was smiling with stained teeth as he clenched his thumb and forefinger around her tiny bicep to restrict the blood flow. Flicking her arm a few times, Mr Sebastian then slid a thin needle into a vein in the crease inside her elbow. Both men stood back as she vomited into the bathtub, and then, her sobs subsiding, they led her back into the bedroom and left her with the old man on the bed. None of the men spoke or looked at one another.
Honey spent the rest of the night in a dream-like state, and had been seeking that sensation ever since.
13
In the pre-dawn gloom, Mercy groped for her Ventolin, heart thumping, tasting bile. The sweat was drying on her skin, but her pillow was still damp. Another one. Another nightmare.
She felt for a cigarette and put down the asthma inhaler. She saw her hands tremble in the flare of the lighter. As she dragged in smoke she felt her heart slow. Stupid really; she knew nicotine was a stimulant, told her patients that every day, but she felt her nerves settle slightly nevertheless.
There was always so much blood; that was the problem. She'd have to find a way to do it without all the mess. Not for the first time, she pictured a huge gas chamber, herding them all in and letting them go to sleep in there.
She took a final shuddering drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out. She closed her eyes and settled back into the pillows, though she knew sleep would not come again tonight.
14
Until it was right behind her, Jill didn't notice the patrol truck that combed the sand every morning at Maroubra Beach. The unshaven driver motioned to her from his cabin to move over. She must have been running up and down the sands for more than an hour now; she realised that it was almost completely light.
Other features of the morning also began to register – she could hear seagulls fighting and playing, dive-bombing the waves. She saw some sandy adolescent surfers struggling, still half-asleep, into wetsuits, and an elderly Asian man was up near the pavilion, performing tai chi. She suddenly became aware that her thighs were trembling with exhaustion and she dropped onto the wet sand, her chest heaving.
She sat there for a while as her breathing slowed, and looked down at her raw, peeling hands. After she'd left Honey's unit yesterday she'd gone back to her own and embarked on her most obsessive cleaning frenzy in years. She'd ignored her mum's calls through the speaker of her answering machine, and her door buzzer sounding twice. The white-eyed girl from her dreams was haunting her while she was awake now, and even kicking the bag until her lungs were burning didn't distract her from her memories of herself in the basement.