Chapter 4 4 - Posy - His Little Flower

Posy

Monday, 14 September

I used to love this walk. I used to think of it as a kind of decompression, a way to slip into the day before the office could claim me with its fluorescent claws. But lately, there’s been a change in the quality of the air. The birds are not just birds; the footsteps are not just footsteps. If you spend years watching other people’s patterns for a living, you start to sense the little anomalies in your own.

I passed a kitchen shop with copper pots gleaming in the window, and the smell of lemon polish drifted through the open door. My throat tightened. I walked faster, not looking at the display of wooden cutting boards, the ceramic canisters, the ordinary domestic objects that suddenly seemed threatening in their normalcy. I couldn't remember if my mother's kitchen had looked like that. I couldn't remember much at all, really-just the things my mind replayed in the dark, which might not be memories at all anymore but something else, something constructed, something wrong. A child was crying somewhere behind me. I didn't turn around.

Today it’s nothing specific, just the sense of a pulse in the periphery. A presence. Maybe it’s the man in the brown parka, hunched against the wind, shuffling half a block ahead and then stopping to examine a bin with exaggerated care. Or the couple with the matching backpacks, holding hands but staring straight ahead, too disciplined in their synchrony to be spontaneous. Or maybe it’s just the feeling that my own shadow looks wrong, doubled and then trebled by the streetlights refusing to cede their power to the rising sun.

I reach the tram stop, check the real-time departures on my phone, and will myself into stillness. My hands tighten on the satchel strap. There’s a girl in a scarlet beanie and a man in a suit that cost more than my rent. No one meets my eye. I stand under the glass shelter and try to count the exact seconds between the 96’s scheduled arrival and the moment it actually appears.

Trams are the only place in Melbourne where you can be surrounded by people and feel truly, perfectly alone. We board. The beanie girl sits up the back, knees drawn up. The man in the suit stands, scrolling. I take my usual seat, window side, three rows from the door. I used to read on mornings like this, but now I just watch.

At the next stop, more passengers. I catch a flash of movement outside: a man’s face pressed briefly to the glass, pale and urgent. My pulse spikes. But he doesn’t get on. Instead, he stands on the footpath, hands jammed in the pockets of a hoodie, head down as if tracking an invisible path. When we lurch forward again, he’s gone.

I sip my coffee, now wincingly bitter. The tram hisses and rattles. Office workers check their phones and yawn. I see my own reflection in the window: tired, lips pressed tight, eyes bright with a vigilance that feels, in the moment, slightly hysterical.

It’s a ten-minute ride to the city. I know every landmark on the journey: the nondescript apartment towers, the old biscuit factory repurposed into flexi offices, the graffiti on the train underpass that changes weekly. There’s a new tag today, thick and black: “WE SEE U.”

I let myself laugh, quietly. The city has always been full of ghosts.

But when I step off at Bourke Street, my skin tightens. The crowd is thicker now, people jostling for space, and I feel that pulse again, a shudder in the air, a pattern waiting to reveal itself. The walk to Striker Legal is three blocks, past a bakery, a sushi train, and a windowless gym where the treadmills are already full. I quicken my pace, heart racing, and duck into the foyer of my office building with a relief that feels almost shameful.

Inside, the fluorescent lights are already humming. Frank Wilson, the morning security guard, gives me a wave and a little knowing smile, the kind you reserve for someone whose secrets you’ve already guessed. He’s ex-copper, built like a retired rugby prop, but with the temperament of a house cat. He’s got family photos taped all over his desk, and he never asks for ID, just demands your favourite coffee order and a fact about whales before he’ll let you sign in. I like him.

“G’day, Posy,” he rumbles, the sleeve of his uniform already dusted with sugar from the doughnuts he smuggles in for staff. “He’s in early. Just a heads up.”

I grimace, and in that split second, Frank and I share a compact, unspoken history of every shit Monday Ethan Striker has ever made worse.

“Mr Striker?” I keep a straight face. “Wonderful. I’ll just go and bask in his radiance.”

Frank snorts so hard he nearly spits out his bite of doughnut. “You want me to run interference?”

“Nah. I’ll take my chances.” I glance up at the security monitors, habit more than curiosity. Twelve feeds, nothing out of the ordinary: the lifts, the foyer, the fire stairs, the alley with bins stacked like a game of hazardous Jenga. But the hair at the nape of my neck prickles again, persistent as a hangover.

I turn, searching the doors I’ve just entered through. Outside, the street is already filling with suits and students and people who look like they’ve lost the plot of their own morning. Amid them, a figure stands on the opposite curb. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of silhouette you notice even in a city of silhouettes. He’s not moving. Not even a little.

I can’t see his face, just the blank geometry of coat and shoulders and hands in pockets. He’s facing the building. Facing me. I stare back, waiting for the recognition click, but there isn’t one. My eyes flick down and up again. Still there.

Then a bus passes, a battered old Number 58 with its windows fogged from too many bodies, and once it's passed, the man is gone. Frank is watching, so I keep my voice level.

“That was quick,” I say, nodding at the monitors. “Did you see him?”

“Him?” Frank glances at the screen. “Which bloke’s that?”

“The one across the street. Just now. Big. Black coat.”

He shrugs. “No one on the system. Probably a tradie waiting for a mate.”

I want to believe him, but I don’t. I never do.