Chapter 2 2 - Posy
Posy
Monday, 14 September
I stood and gathered my hair away from my face, twisting it over one shoulder while I crossed the room. The oversized T-shirt clung uncomfortably to my back, and the waistband of my sleep shorts had folded beneath one hip. I tugged it straight before opening the curtains.
Melbourne lay below me in damp shades of blue, silver and charcoal. The streetlights cast soft amber pools across the footpath, catching on parked cars and the narrow tram tracks shining through the middle of the road. Several windows in the office tower opposite were already lit, their rectangular glow revealing desks, pot plants and empty meeting rooms suspended high above the sleeping city. Clouds had gathered over the rooftops, low and heavy enough to turn the final hour before dawn into something that felt closer to midnight.
Rain was coming. I could feel it in the air pressing through the open window, cool against the sweat along my throat and carrying that peculiar electric weight Melbourne gathered before the first drops fell. I lifted one hand to the glass and rested my fingertips against it, watching my reflection hover over the city. My face was pale beneath the loose hair framing it, my eyes dark and swollen from the abrupt waking, and a faint red line crossed one cheek where I had slept against the creased pillowcase.
At eight years old, the police had called me the sole surviving witness. The newspapers had called me the cupboard girl for almost three weeks, until a larger tragedy pushed my parents’ deaths off the front page. The phrase followed me through primary school, then vanished from public memory before I was old enough to understand how cruel it had been. By the time I entered foster care, I had become only Posy Bennett, quiet, polite and occasionally difficult to wake after nightmares.
No one had ever been charged.
There had been suspects, interviews, rumours and one man the police believed had links to a group involved in contract killings, but belief was not evidence, and suspicion meant nothing once it reached a courtroom. Witnesses withdrew statements. Records disappeared. The case became colder with each passing year, boxed and labelled and moved from one shelf to another until it existed more as paperwork than as the night that split my life in two.
I had spent twenty years trying to understand how that could happen. It was the reason I finished school with marks high enough to study law, the reason I worked weekends and evenings through university, the reason I accepted a junior position at Striker Legal despite knowing Ethan’s reputation before I stepped through his office doors. People assumed I wanted to prosecute murderers because of what happened to my parents. That was partly true, but it was not as simple as revenge. Revenge required a target, and I had never been given one.
What I wanted was to understand every weakness in the system that had failed them. I wanted to know how evidence became inadmissible, how a witness could be dismantled under cross-examination, how reasonable doubt could be planted and nurtured until twelve people no longer trusted what they had seen with their own eyes. Ethan Striker was one of the best criminal defence solicitors, not just in Melbourne, but all of Australia. He was ruthless enough to find fractures in cases other lawyers would have considered unbreakable. Working for him meant watching those fractures form. It also meant being treated as though my law degree had somehow dissolved the moment I entered his office.
I exhaled against the window and watched a small patch of mist bloom beneath my breath. My reflection blurred behind it, leaving only the city and the pale suggestion of my face.
The first drops of rain began to strike the glass. They were soft at first, widely spaced and almost delicate, but within seconds they multiplied, tracing crooked paths down the pane and turning the lights below into trembling streaks of gold. I closed the window, pressing the latch into place with the heel of my hand, then stood there a moment longer while the rain deepened over Melbourne.
The dream had taken the rest of the morning from me. But, it had done worse things.
I turned away from the window, gathered my damp hair at the nape of my neck and walked towards the bathroom to begin the day.
The bathroom light came on with a faint electrical hum, bleaching the small room in a harsh white glow that made me squint until my eyes adjusted. I had chosen the pale blue tiles when I moved into the apartment three years earlier because they reminded me of sea glass, although under artificial light they looked closer to grey, their glossy surfaces reflecting the chrome towel rail, the glass shower screen and the narrow cabinet above the sink. A framed print of tiny native wildflowers hung beside the door, one of the few decorative things I had bought deliberately rather than inheriting from a foster home, salvaging from a kerbside collection or accepting because Beth had decided my apartment looked as though no one truly lived in it.
I placed both hands on the edge of the porcelain basin and studied myself in the mirror. The woman staring back at me looked older than twenty-eight in the shadows beneath her eyes and younger everywhere else, especially with her hair tangled around her shoulders and the faded uni shirt hanging loosely from one collarbone. My skin had lost the flushed colour brought on by the nightmare, leaving my face pale except for the pink line creased across my cheek. I rubbed it with two fingers, knowing the mark would fade long before I reached the office, then gathered my hair and secured it on top of my head with the elastic I kept around my wrist.
The shower took a couple of seconds to warm. I held my hand beneath the spray while the water shifted from icy to lukewarm, then hotter, steam beginning to cloud the glass and soften the sharp reflection of the room around me. When I stepped inside, the first heavy rush struck my shoulders hard enough to make me inhale. Heat moved over the back of my neck, down my spine and across the sweat-damp fabric of my shirt before I remembered I was still dressed.
I closed my eyes and let my forehead rest briefly against the cool tile.
It was not the first time I had walked into the shower wearing half my pyjamas after that dream, though it had been several years since the last. Exhaustion made simple steps unreliable. Wake up. Breathe. Stand. Undress. Shower. Some mornings my body skipped ahead while the rest of me remained kneeling on a kitchen floor twenty years ago.
