Free Silent Fear by Katherine Howell Page A

Garland’s a neat freak, and is suddenly living with a total grub,’ she said. ‘Think that’d be enough motive? Guy coming into your space and messing up your system?’
    Murray looked into the top drawer of the chest. ‘He colourcodes his underwear.’
    ‘He told us he was fine with Fowler living here, not paying rent and everything.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Can we believe that now?’
    ‘I didn’t believe it then,’ Murray said.
    Neither did Ella.
    *
    At The Rocks ambulance station Holly pulled on the plain blue T-shirt she’d worn in on the train that morning and stuffed her uniform shirt into her backpack, then Joe dropped her at Wynyard where she had to wait just a few minutes on the crowded platform for a train. It made good time out through Central and Redfern and as far as Croydon, and she was thinking only about the pool, nothing else, certainly not Seth, when the thing slowed to a crawl.
    ‘Probably the heat affecting the tracks,’ she heard another passenger say.
    The carriage was full and she was squashed up against the doors on the sunny side with the heat blazing in on them all. The humid air smelled of sweaty bodies and failing deodorant. The aircon vents above her head sighed cool air a couple of times, but the brief taste of how it should be was worse than constant heat. She tilted her head back in the forlorn hope of getting a little breeze on her throat and hoped nobody would collapse. In this crush of people it would be a nightmare trying to lie an unconscious person down, trying to get them some air.
    The train inched along, then jerked to a stop. People groaned. She twisted to the window. She thought they were almost at Burwood but wasn’t sure. The sunlight on the streets and roofs was bright and hot.
    The speakers crackled and a blurred voice began a long and indecipherable announcement. People rolled their eyes at each other. Sweat ran down Holly’s back and the corner of someone’s bag jabbed her in the leg. Her head was being overrun with thoughts of Seth and the past, and all she wanted was to be underwater in the pool.
    The train jerked again. It rolled forward, staying under a walking pace, to enter Burwood station. The doors slid open and air rushed in, still hot but fresher than inside. A couple of people got off but Holly and the rest waited for the doors to close and the train to go on.
    ‘Everyone off, please.’ The train guard came along, motioning them all out. ‘Everyone off.’
    People grumbled and swore.
    ‘Problem with the train,’ the guard said. ‘Everyone off.’
    There was a push to get in the shade under the awning of the station house. Holly squeezed into a gap by a vending machine and pressed her back against the cool bricks of the building. To her left was a bench on which a number of passengers had squashed themselves, and the rest stood crammed together under the roof. A few talked and grumbled and made calls to tell people they’d be late, but mostly they were silent. The sounds of the guard’s voice from further up the platform and the call of a magpie on the roof were loud in the still, hot air.
    A young man came drifting along the platform. Holly could see at a glance that he was on the nod. His head lolled on his neck and his eyes were half-closed. His hands were scabbed and his arms skinny, and the faded Iron Maiden T-shirt he wore looked four sizes too big. He stumbled and almost fell against the stationary train but recovered his footing and stood swaying, then sank to the hot asphalt. Holly watched him, remembering the feeling.
    He sat cross-legged, his head down, his hands loose in his lap; in different circumstances he could’ve been mistaken as meditating. A fly landed on his cheek and walked across it. He made no move to brush it away. Someone in the crowd giggled.
    Holly made herself look away. She took her mobile out of her backpack. The screen showed no new messages. Nothing from Lacey explaining all the secrecy, and nothing