Read Online The Astrologer's Daughter by Rebecca Lim - Free Book Online
Authors: Rebecca Lim
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‘Desperate. They always are.’
I look back down at the list of names, times, dates, places. To anyone but the Crowes,
they would just appear to be a harmless arrangement of letters and numbers, flat
and unrevealing. But if there was anything in them, Mum would have been able to find
it.
I turn to the next page and take in the name: Hugh Athelrede de Crespigny .
Birthdate: 19 October, 1992 .
Birthplace: London, United Kingdom .
‘Well, that figures,’ I say automatically, understanding dawning at once. ‘Dickhead.’
Out of the corner of my eye I see Simon’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You know this one?’
‘He came calling this evening,’ I mutter, ‘while I was on the toilet.’
‘ What? ’
Mum’s written: Wants a simple radix done—emphasis on wealth, health, love. Paid in
total .
Nothing more beyond that. I flick through a few more pages and they’re all blank.
All up, Mum only got a third of the way into the journal.
‘Wait!’ Simon insists as I fan through the rest of the book impatiently until I reach
the queasy-looking endpapers at the back and shut it. ‘I think I saw something.’
He takes the journal out of my hands and thumbs carefully back through the end pages.
Taped all by itself, on a page near the end of the book, is a small business card
that reads:
I lever the card a little off the page and peer down the gap I’ve created, spotting
an address in Little La Trobe Street on the back. It’s about three blocks away from
my place.
‘I’ve never heard of it before,’ Simon mutters, ‘and I thought I knew—’
‘Everything?’ I interject quietly. ‘Keep thinking that, mate.’
Simon sits back, looking slightly wounded, and I almost say to him: What is it about
you that makes me say these things? Instead I close the journal, looking up at the
TV without really seeing it. Outside, in the intersection between Russell and Bourke,
someone gives someone else a serve on their car horn. I hear abuse, a flare of squealing
tires, but I don’t turn.
She said I would love it here, because she did. She lived here before, with my father.
The old man, Boon, had let that one slip. Mum had never told me herself that she
had any history with this city. When I’d been looking at it all with fresh eyes,
like a wide-eyed bumpkin in the big smoke, I’d thought she had been too.
I lay the flat of my hand against the journal’s cover. ‘I have to give this to the
police,’ I hear myself saying faintly. ‘First thing. One of these people may have,
may know…’
It’s the enormity that gets me the most: of her absence. It crowds out everything.
I swallow, and the sea beneath the surface of me trembles.
Simon tugs on my sleeve and I look down at his damaged hand, reminded afresh how
weird it is that he is here, of all people. We’re sharing pineapple-pork pides together
like we’re friends . If we aren’t defending our positions vigorously, poisonously,
we barely talk in class. Just look dagger eyes at each other in a constant struggle
for verbal and written supremacy.
He’s exhausting to be around, pushy. I’m reminded of this as he says, ‘You need to
come back to school, finish the talk.’ His voice is low and urgent. ‘Just finish ,
you’re that close. It won’t take more than an hour, two at most. We’ll get it done—even
if it means we have to stake out a corner of the library and I have to put up with
your ugly mu…’
Simon actually tries to suck the words back in, pulling away from me in horror, and
I find I’ve got that smile again, the one that draws down a little at the corners
that I have trouble holding steady. Abruptly I stand up and jam the journal under
one arm, my wallet under the other. Then turn on my heel with a hiccupping sound.
This time, he doesn’t try to follow me when I walk away.
7
I slept like I was falling into a pit. But something woke me. My alarm clock reads
5.41am and there’ll be no going back to sleep now. I’m on , that’s the way
I look back down at the list of names, times, dates, places. To anyone but the Crowes,
they would just appear to be a harmless arrangement of letters and numbers, flat
and unrevealing. But if there was anything in them, Mum would have been able to find
it.
I turn to the next page and take in the name: Hugh Athelrede de Crespigny .
Birthdate: 19 October, 1992 .
Birthplace: London, United Kingdom .
‘Well, that figures,’ I say automatically, understanding dawning at once. ‘Dickhead.’
Out of the corner of my eye I see Simon’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You know this one?’
‘He came calling this evening,’ I mutter, ‘while I was on the toilet.’
‘ What? ’
Mum’s written: Wants a simple radix done—emphasis on wealth, health, love. Paid in
total .
Nothing more beyond that. I flick through a few more pages and they’re all blank.
All up, Mum only got a third of the way into the journal.
‘Wait!’ Simon insists as I fan through the rest of the book impatiently until I reach
the queasy-looking endpapers at the back and shut it. ‘I think I saw something.’
He takes the journal out of my hands and thumbs carefully back through the end pages.
Taped all by itself, on a page near the end of the book, is a small business card
that reads:
I lever the card a little off the page and peer down the gap I’ve created, spotting
an address in Little La Trobe Street on the back. It’s about three blocks away from
my place.
‘I’ve never heard of it before,’ Simon mutters, ‘and I thought I knew—’
‘Everything?’ I interject quietly. ‘Keep thinking that, mate.’
Simon sits back, looking slightly wounded, and I almost say to him: What is it about
you that makes me say these things? Instead I close the journal, looking up at the
TV without really seeing it. Outside, in the intersection between Russell and Bourke,
someone gives someone else a serve on their car horn. I hear abuse, a flare of squealing
tires, but I don’t turn.
She said I would love it here, because she did. She lived here before, with my father.
The old man, Boon, had let that one slip. Mum had never told me herself that she
had any history with this city. When I’d been looking at it all with fresh eyes,
like a wide-eyed bumpkin in the big smoke, I’d thought she had been too.
I lay the flat of my hand against the journal’s cover. ‘I have to give this to the
police,’ I hear myself saying faintly. ‘First thing. One of these people may have,
may know…’
It’s the enormity that gets me the most: of her absence. It crowds out everything.
I swallow, and the sea beneath the surface of me trembles.
Simon tugs on my sleeve and I look down at his damaged hand, reminded afresh how
weird it is that he is here, of all people. We’re sharing pineapple-pork pides together
like we’re friends . If we aren’t defending our positions vigorously, poisonously,
we barely talk in class. Just look dagger eyes at each other in a constant struggle
for verbal and written supremacy.
He’s exhausting to be around, pushy. I’m reminded of this as he says, ‘You need to
come back to school, finish the talk.’ His voice is low and urgent. ‘Just finish ,
you’re that close. It won’t take more than an hour, two at most. We’ll get it done—even
if it means we have to stake out a corner of the library and I have to put up with
your ugly mu…’
Simon actually tries to suck the words back in, pulling away from me in horror, and
I find I’ve got that smile again, the one that draws down a little at the corners
that I have trouble holding steady. Abruptly I stand up and jam the journal under
one arm, my wallet under the other. Then turn on my heel with a hiccupping sound.
This time, he doesn’t try to follow me when I walk away.
7
I slept like I was falling into a pit. But something woke me. My alarm clock reads
5.41am and there’ll be no going back to sleep now. I’m on , that’s the way
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