Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,29

towel off her head. Damp hair falls around her shoulders, dark and stringy.

I unfold the note quickly, smoothing it out against my thigh. It’s a flyer from our motel before it had the name change, printed in a large, bold font. Patches of the paper are rippled, as though it was wet at some point and then dried out slightly buckled.

MOTEL GUESTS PLEASE NOTE:

Scheduled maintenance of washing machines on 12–13 January. Motel laundry will be closed to guests during this time.

Signed,

Management.

‘It’s from the motel laundry,’ I say, frowning at Sabeen. ‘So what? My dad put these up months ago.’

‘Turn it over.’

I do as instructed. There’s an upside-down message scrawled in red pen. I flip the page around.

Hey Chloe,

Where are you? I came back but you’re not here. Things are bad at home.

I really need your help with something. Can we talk tomorrow?

From Henry

I suck in a sharp breath. ‘Where’d you get this?’

‘I found it when I was cleaning for your dad a couple of weeks back.’ Sabeen fiddles with a strand of hair, wrapping it tightly around her finger. ‘He asked me to vacuum your bedroom to get ready for your visit, and this got caught in the vacuum head behind the curtains. I was about to throw it in the bin when I thought I’d better check it wasn’t important.’

I scan the note again. ‘Where did it come from?’

Sabeen leans forwards with her elbows on her knees. ‘I assume through your window?’

‘That window’s jammed,’ I say. ‘It only opens about ten centimetres.’

‘Well, that’s enough to shove a folded note through.’

I murmur in agreement, unable to take my eyes off the paper.

‘Maybe Henry was trying to toss it onto your bed,’ Sabeen suggests. ‘Remember that time he did it with the rubber spider?’

My mouth forms an echo of a smile. ‘Yeah. Raf put him up to it.’ I frown at the note again. It’s creased in a checkerboard pattern as though it was folded quite small, perhaps to give it some weight. ‘You could be right. Maybe it landed on the floor instead. Or I accidentally flicked it off my bed when I got in to go to sleep.’

‘So when do you reckon Henry put it there?’ Sabeen asks. ‘You were here for a month over summer.’

‘It’s not dated, so I don’t …’

I flip it back to the printed side and re-read the motel notice. Dad stuck three or four of these to the wall in the motel laundry about a week before the maintenance guy was due to service the machines. Were they up before the night of the storm? They must have been. The maintenance was scheduled for the twelfth and thirteenth of January. The storm was on the tenth. Henry came to the motel a few times during that week, so it could have been any of those days. If he looked or called for me through that gap in my window, there’s only one night he would have found my bedroom empty.

‘I thought it could be important,’ Sabeen says. ‘I was going to take it to Sergeant Doherty—’

I jerk upright. ‘No.’

Her mouth drops open. ‘See, that’s how Raf reacted too! He wouldn’t give me a reason and said we shouldn’t tell you about it either. But this right here—’ she taps her finger against the back of the paper, ‘—where Henry says “Things are bad at home”. That’s something Sergeant Doherty should know about, don’t you think?’

I sigh, kneading my forehead with my fingers.

On the one hand, the note might help Doherty pinpoint Henry’s movements, if there was some way of proving the note was indeed dropped through my window on the night he disappeared. There’s nothing to indicate what time of day it was written or even the exact date. There’s also no indication in the note that Henry was planning to run away.

On the other hand, if I show this note to Doherty I have to explain my theory about the timing, how Henry could have returned to the motel on the night of the storm when I wasn’t there. This, in turn, will lead to Doherty asking questions about where I was and why I lied to him about it back in January. And while I’d be prepared to own up and take whatever punishment I’m owed for lying to the police, it isn’t just me I’d be opening up to consequences. Raf lied to Doherty as well, to keep my secret about breaking curfew. There’s no way I’ll drag him down with