Free Girl Next Door by Alyssa Brugman Page A

hospital to be with my mum.
    In her room, I pack an overnight bag of Mum's things – her toothbrush, a couple of pairs of pyjamas, a cardigan and the book on the bedside table. I'm proud of myself for doing something useful.
    There's a knock at the door and I run downstairs to answer it. When I see two men on the doorstep I remember Bryce Cole telling me not to open the door. They're not salesmen or Mormons. The meaty one at the front wears thongs, and the other one chews gum.
    'Is Bryce Cole here?'
    I blink. 'Who? Never heard of him. Sorry. Thank you! Goodbye.' I start to close the door and one of the men stops it with the heel of his hand.
    'We'll wait.'
    They push through the door. The meaty-looking man with the thongs flips the light switch a few times experimentally and then heads off down the hallway, opening doors. The man with the gum settles on the lounge. I'm lurking in the archway to the kitchen not sure what to do.
    What am I going to do? Ring the police? There's a lock on the phone, but I assume triple 0 still works. Even if it does, when are the police going to arrive, exactly? I could be a soggy heap of miscellaneous appendages in about ten minutes, if these blokes brought the right equipment.
    It's amazing how calm I am. None of my limbs are moving, and my heart's racing, but it was doing that already. I haven't had time to get scared, or maybe I was already keyed-up before they even arrived, like if you get off a little roller-coaster and straight on a bigger one without going through the zigzaggy line-up area, so there's no time to listen to other people screaming, and see how shaky and rickety the beams are.
    Or it could be because I'm thinking about it too much, as if I'm a reporter in a war zone who's too busy explaining what's happening, thinking about whether her make-up is even, and being pleased about how calm she is in the face of danger to scream and cry for her mum like the people in the background are.
    Or possibly I'm not as calm as I think. This might be what I do when I'm completely freaking out. I have already totally freaked out twice today – more if you count each time when I was driving as a separate incident.
    None of this is actually very useful.
    I lick my lips and try to memorise what the men look like so the police artist can draw them for the wanted poster. The gum-chewing man has a small nose and bags under his eyes. He has long skinny legs and a potbelly. He looks like a frog. He's wearing a polo shirt, and he's lightly tanned. He could be a golfer, or an air-conditioning salesman, or a botanist. His elbows are dry and scaly. He scratches one and it makes a disgusting reptile sound.
    Police are looking for a frog-like Caucasian male with gross, scaly elbows.
    Then it occurs to me that they haven't actually done anything worth telling the police about yet, and if they do, I might not be in a position to give the description any more. Besides, these blokes might even be good mates of Bryce Cole's. School chums. Punting buddies. So I stop memorising.
    The meaty man returns and shakes his head.
    The gum-chewing frogman regards me for a moment. 'I didn't even know Coley had a kid,' he says.
    Coley. See? Mates! They've probably got names like 'Bazza', 'Dazza', 'Wozza' or 'Macca'. I should be offering them a coffee, except there's no electricity to boil the jug.
    'I've come to collect my car,' Frogman tells me. 'The bastard's not here. Again! Maybe I'll borrow something of his. See how he likes it.' He gets to his feet.
    Meatyman says, 'Looks like someone's pretty much cleaned out the rest of the place already.'
    'Figures,' Frogman replies. He points to the microwave. 'I'll have that.'
    'You can't! It's inside the unit. It doesn't . . .'
    Come out, was what I was going to say, but Meatyman looks around, takes the cleaver out of the knife block, and prises off the cabinet front. He hands the broken bit of timber and the cleaver to Frogman, then reaches behind the unit and pulls the