The Insider

She shook her head. ‘Don’t ask me any more, I haven’t worked it all out yet. The point is, you know how I get about my father.’

Dillon rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah. Prickly.’

She smiled and shrugged. ‘Yeah, well.’

‘Have you mentioned any of this to the police?’

Harry flashed on an image of the silent detective who’d come to her apartment that evening. She shook her head. ‘I can’t. They might start investigating him again.’

‘Well, he’s already in prison. What else can they do to him?’

Harry put her sandwich down. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry any more. ‘He’s getting out.’

‘I thought he got eight years.’

‘Remission.’ Harry’s throat seemed to be closing up. ‘He could be out any time.’

Dillon seemed to work it out. ‘So if he gets investigated for any of this, his remission will be on hold?’

‘Or thrown out altogether.’

There was a pause. She could feel Dillon’s eyes on her.

‘Look, you need to talk to your father,’ he said. ‘I’ve been telling you that for months.’

She shook her head and stared at her glass. She cupped it in one hand and swirled the golden liquid around in it. ‘When I was a kid, I thought he was wonderful. He made all these marvellous promises, and the ones he kept were magical.’ She traced a nail through the grooves in the diamond-cut crystal. ‘Almost worth the disappointment of the ones that he forgot.’

‘Sounds like you and he had quite a bond.’

She smiled. ‘My sister Amaranta had a hand in that. When I was five, she told me our parents had found me on the street as a baby. She said they were going to keep me for a while, but that later, they planned to sell me on to the neighbours.’

Dillon laughed. ‘Typical big sister stunt.’

‘Trouble was, I believed her. For months I felt like an outsider in my own home. My mother was distant with me anyway, for reasons of her own, so that didn’t help. I finally blurted it all out to my father, and he cleared things up for me. I suppose from then on, I saw him as some kind of ally.’

Dillon sipped his brandy. ‘And that all changed when he was arrested?’

She shook her head. ‘I’d already had enough long before that. Living with constant let-downs gets to you after a while. When he got sent to jail, that was kind of the end.’ She shrugged and smiled. ‘We don’t get to choose our parents, do we?’

‘I suppose not. Although you could say my parents chose me.’

Harry raised her eyebrows.

‘I was adopted,’ he explained. ‘My adoptive parents couldn’t have children so they took me in when I was a baby. But by the time I was two, my mother was miraculously pregnant.’

‘Don’t tell me, you got overlooked in favour of the natural child and it gave you a mass of complexes.’

Dillon paused. ‘For a while, maybe. I certainly know what it’s like to feel you’re an outsider in your own home.’ He shrugged. ‘But then they tried to make amends and ended up over-compensating. I got all the attention, and it was my brother who got the complexes. He went right off the rails in the end. Drugs, prison – the works.’

She sucked down her brandy, not sure what to say. ‘So we both have families with murky pasts?’

‘Looks like it.’

Harry waved her arm around the room. ‘Well, it hasn’t done you any harm. Look at this house. It’s amazing.’ Her ears started to buzz and she wondered was she getting a bit drunk.

‘It’s not bad.’ Dillon looked pleased with himself.

Harry scanned the room. ‘Mind you, you seem to do most of your living in here.’

His smile slipped a little. ‘Not when I have guests, which is most of the time. And when I don’t, I can shut the world away. High walls, electronic gates – if there’s one thing money can buy you, it’s privacy.’

‘Or isolation,’ Harry said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Dillon frowned, and stood up.

‘Come on, you look exhausted. You should get some rest.’

He grasped her hand and helped her to her feet. She stood facing him for a moment, only inches away from him, their body heat mingling. Then he turned away and strolled over to the French doors on the other side of the room, beckoning for her to follow. ‘But first I want to show you something.’

14 (#u3b73707e-90e5-5479-9343-230970466da0)

The first thing Harry noticed when she stepped outside the door was a pungent scent that reminded her of Christmas trees. It hung in the air like eucalyptus, and instantly cleared her head.

She peered into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Then she saw it. Inky black, looming up from the centre of the lawn, was a gigantic wall of hedge maybe twelve feet high and wider than a football pitch.

‘My God,’ Harry said. ‘Is that a maze?’

As she spoke, the moon broke through the clouds and she could see that the dense evergreen had been planted in the shape of an enormous enclosed rectangle, extending as far back as it did across. There must have been over an acre of hedge out there.

‘Awesome, isn’t it?’ Dillon said. ‘The previous owners planted it about twenty years ago. I just had to have it. Come on, let me take you in.’

He strode across the lawn, his trainers making whispering noises against the dry grass. Harry followed, stopping in front of a red triangular flag that marked the entrance to the maze. She felt her brain dissolve into pulp, the way it always did when confronted with a navigational challenge.

‘I feel like I need to throw a six to start,’ she said.

Dillon laughed. ‘Come on, before the moonlight goes. I want to show you what I built in the centre.’

She followed him in. The spicy pine fragrance was more intense inside the maze. All around her were curved, towering hedges. The rough clay path was only a few feet wide, so they were forced to walk in single file.

Dillon took a sharp left, and Harry trotted to keep up. The path followed a tight arc, and suddenly Dillon disappeared. The moonlight waned, and Harry’s skin prickled. She quickened her pace.

‘What do you do if someone gets lost in here?’ she called out.

‘We talk them in from the viewing deck.’ He sounded close by, only a few feet ahead. ‘It overlooks the whole thing. But if you do get lost, just follow the left-hand rule.’

‘The what?’ She clung to the main path, refusing to be tempted by left or right turns.

‘Put your left hand on the hedge, follow the wall and keep walking. You’ll get out eventually.’

By now, the moonlight had completely vanished, turning the hedges into black walls. Harry stretched her hands out in front of her, feeling her way around the blind bends.