Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,74

what he told you – told Missy – he was only using his Facebook account to search for his father,’ Raf says, as though he knows that’s what I need to hear right now. ‘He was keeping it quiet.’

‘Yeah,’ Rina says. ‘He did mention Chloe would take over and boss him around.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Excuse me? I believe bossy was your word, not his.’

‘Am I wrong?’ she says, her mouth pulling down at the corners. ‘You’re always telling everyone what to do. Like when you got up in Mason’s face on New Year’s Eve. He’s been miserable ever since, completely shutting me out.’

There it is. I knew she was still carrying this around.

I sit forwards. ‘So I’m to blame for Mason keeping secrets from you? Sounds like he was doing it long before New Year’s Eve.’

‘It’s true,’ Raf says to Rina, almost apologetically. ‘And I say this as his mate: in the last year he’s become more and more closed off. I think he’s drinking a lot more than we realise, and there might be more happening at home he hasn’t told us about.’

‘Maybe …’ Rina flicks her hair over her shoulder and delicately scratches the side of her nose.

‘Wait a minute.’ I narrow my eyes. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

‘No,’ she says, glancing past my shoulder at the next table. She reaches up and brushes a strand of hair away from her cheek, then scratches her nose again.

‘You never were any good at Impostor,’ I say.

Raf looks from my face to Rina’s. ‘You’re right. She always does the face- and hair-touching.’

‘That game we played as kids?’ Rina folds her arms, then quickly unfolds them again. ‘That doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Umm—’ Raf takes a theatrical sip of Coke, ‘—you’ll have to forgive us if we don’t believe the person we just caught catfishing.’

Rina rolls her eyes and I sense her yielding. Only Raf can manage to drop truth bombs in a way that seems amusing rather than cutting.

‘Okay,’ she says, reluctantly sitting up. ‘There is something.’ She peers around the café, then lowers her voice. ‘I saw Mason’s car. Driving around that night.’

I tilt my head. ‘What night?’

‘The night Henry went missing. I couldn’t sleep because of the thunder, so I sat up at my window watching the storm. I love the lightning, you know? I was trying to get some good photos.’

‘I can give you some tips on that,’ Raf offers. I slide him a look: Not now, dude. ‘Right. Sorry. You were saying?’

‘Around midnight, maybe a bit after, I opened the window to let the breeze in. I heard a car coming – the sound of tyres on the wet road.’

‘Coming from which direction?’ I ask. I haven’t been in Rina’s bedroom for years, although I can picture how it overlooks Railway Parade.

‘Umm … the library end.’

‘South,’ Raf and I say together.

‘Yeah, sure. The car drove right past my place and kept going up past the pizzeria, as if Mason was heading home. I thought it was weird because it was so late, and who’d want to be out driving in that storm?’

‘Are you sure it was Mason’s car?’ I ask.

‘It was still raining a bit so I couldn’t see perfectly. But yeah, I’m pretty sure it was.’

‘So weird,’ I say. ‘Mason said he was home all night and Ivy backed that up.’ It explains the look they exchanged on their verandah that morning. Now I know why Mason’s ears were flaming red.

‘I couldn’t get to sleep after that because I was suss Mason was out with another girl,’ Rina continues. ‘I wrote him a bunch of texts and didn’t send any of them. I was really worked up. When I finally decided to try to sleep, I heard tyres outside again. It was the same car, this time going the other way.’

‘What time was this?’ I say, typing this snippet into the Notes app on my phone.

‘I guess it must have been over an hour later. More like an hour and a half.’

‘So about one-thirty? One forty-five?’ Raf asks.

Rina nods. ‘Something like that. I watched the car drive a couple of blocks and turn in at the train station. I thought maybe it was doing a U-turn but it didn’t reappear for ages. Not for like ten or fifteen minutes.’

‘Why? There are no trains at that time of night.’ I scroll to the NSW transport app on my phone and search the local timetable. ‘The next service to Campbelltown isn’t until three-thirty on weekday mornings.’

My head is