Chapter One

Sandra woke up in a bed that wasn’t hers. She knew it wasn’t hers because it smelt clean, it felt clean and there was plenty of natural light shining on its super-white cleanliness that blinded her into that awful, awful awakefullness. It made her head hurt more that it was planning to, which was considerably. She breathed in, and that cause her pain, pretty much everywhere. She tried to place where she was, to remember how had ended up with such an awful hangover, but it was all quite blank. There had been a disaster at work, a declaration of a bender, a bar – wait, several bars possible, maybe a sort of a gestalt bar really and then there was here.

So far, the only knowledge Sandra had of ‘here’ was suffocated by the sunshine. She shut her eyes, blinked several times, tried to wipe away the sleep from the corner of her eyes but it only hurt them further, blinked away tears, was blinded by the white again which then became out-of-focus glare, gave up and stuck her head under a pillow. It smelt good under here. Clean. So very nice and crisp and clean, like it had just been taken of the clothes line in the middle of summer, freshly made with hospital corners pulled impossibly tight and then crawled inside whilst the oppressive heat stayed outside.

She knew nobody that clean, except her mother.  

This was probably not her mother’s house. If she had gone on a bender last night then it would have been extremely difficult to travel the 300 kilometres without a car/cash/credit card/general desire to get to her house. And as the faint, low rumble of the city vaguely made its way through the throbbing in her ears, she was fairly confident that she was, in fact, in an apartment.

Sandra emerged from the pillow, suitably perplexed.

Blink.

Blur.

Blink.

Less blur.

Blink.

Moisture.

Blink blink blink.

Moisture giving way. Slowly pulling focus into crisp, crisp VHS vision.

Quite a nice apartment too, it seemed.

The first blur to crispify was a large piece of modern art on a distant wall. Big white canvas, sliced with red lines, some shapes, some yellow thing and swirls, lots of swirls. Misinterprative crap. Nice one, Sandra. Hungover, lost, naked in a strange bed, still inventive pretentious words. Score me.

Holy crap I’m naked.

This hadn’t occurred to her until now. She was momentarily distracted by the art, the industrial brickwork on the distant, distant wall, the huge open plan, factory ceiling, polished floorboards, on the left a kitchen to make a celebrity chef – any celebrity chef – cry, on the right a dining suite to match, between that and here were some leather couches and an IMAX-sized TV, a few oddly placed Japanese screens and the futon where she now lay. Nude.

From behind sunlight cascaded through massive factory windows, thankfully frosted and casting whatever brief illumination possible on the scattering of office-like indoor plants. It was no longer blinding, but oddly comforting. It was suddenly the only thing that made sense. She’d had some mad benders before, but never to the point of forgetting what happened.  Panic rapidly charged up her throat and vomited sweat out of every pore. She froze and listened. There was no sound other than the city rumble and her heart beating. And the head throbbing. Increased blood activity had not helped that.

 She looked around for her clothes – and saw them neatly folded on the table beside the bed.  There was no way she would have done that. Someone else was definitely here. Any hope of some odd quirk of fate that landed her there was extinguished – she had clearly got drunk, met someone, come back to their apartment and, being naked, they’d probably had sex. Now, whilst it wouldn’t be the first brief encounter she’d come to regret, it would certainly be the first she didn’t remember.

The big question was – to run away, or to find out who this person is? What if they looked like Clive Owen? That’d be reason to stay. Ewan MacGregor? Early Mickey Rourke? Oh god, what if it was late Mickey Rourke? No, I’d never have gone home with a late Mickey Rourke. Mind you, there was that time with that guy who looked like that guy from that thing who had that thing that...

She paused, and dragged herself back to reality. She slipped out of bed and started to dress, and noticed a few things; first of all, the neatly folded clothes hardly suggested a night of passion. Secondly, the bed was exceptionally neat. Her side was now a little crumpled, but the other side was very crisp. So unless this mysterious person had gotten up after she’d passed out, folded the clothes, neatened the bed and then buggered off it was highly unlikely there’d been any hanky panky. This whole apartment was, in fact, disturbingly neat. It didn’t even look lived in. Mind you, given any space under her control resembled the outside of an opp shop at 6am, she was hardly one to judge. In her experience, ‘lived in’ generally meant ‘exploded in’.

Dressed, and concluding a slightly less sordid evening, she felt a little better. What she needed now was aspirin. And coffee. Preferably in that order. And with a kitchen like that, there had to be both. She took a step, and stumbled onto a coffee table, knocking various photography and architecture books onto the floor. They looked large and expensive, as did the table she was now sprawled upon. Who was this person? Did they sleep on the couch? They hardly seemed like a coucher if the apartment was anything to go by. But who was she to make wild assumptions, given her particular circumstances?

Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee. Priorities. Whoever they were, they’d left her alone without a note so therefore the kitchen was fair game. She made her way around the solid stone island bench and stared at the wall of bright red shiny cupboard doors. If this were my house, where would I keep the coffee? First cupboard – top left of the massive stove. Nope. Nothing actually, the cupboard was completely empty. The next one she tried had glasses so shiny and clean it almost blinded her. After dirtying one with her fingerprints and some water, she moved on to other cupboards. Whoever this person was, they didn’t cook much. The stove was immaculate and the cupboards almost bare. No bones, nothing. More importantly, no coffee. Two boxes of cereal, some tinned food, a few dried goods. None of this was going to work. Especially since she couldn’t find a kettle.

Not noticing the mess she’d made leaving emptied cupboards on the bench, she looked around the open plan, the windows with the inviting sun calling her and decided it was time to leave. Wherever she was, there was bound to be a cafe and a pharmacy nearby. Drugs, coffee and bacon took priority over a fictional Clive Owen. Besides, it was only Tuesday. She needed to go to work.

Shit.

Work.

What the hell time is it?

This was when she discovered the first major problem of the day. Her phone was missing. She checked her pockets thoroughly, went back to the futon, checked underneath it, the pillows, the floor surrounding. She went to check her bag when she discovered the second problem. No bag. No phone, no bag, no purse. This was going to make the morning difficult.

Looking around she could see no phone in the apartment anywhere. Not that there was really anyone to call – her housemates were away, he best friend has the audacity to actually turn her phone off when at work / sleeping / at the movies / watching True Blood. And despite a lack of bush tucker training, it was fairly apparent by the way the sun was hitting the windows that it was after nine o’clock in the morning. So being late for work was no longer an issue. It was a case of how late. Or if at work at all. She resolved that if she found a phone, she would call in sick. If she didn’t, she would turn up late.

Either way, time to go.

As a last resort she raided the drawer on the other side of the bedside table and, to her sheer joy, found a pile of coins and a $10 note. She grabbed the change, stuffed  it into her pockets, found a pen and a post-it and sat to write a note.

“Dear.. uh”.

Not an auspicious start. How do you leave a note for someone you don’t know, in a place you don’t know, in reference to events you don’t remember?

“Hey, had a great time, call me!”

Too dismissive. Try:

“Sorry, had to go, be in touch!”

What is it with the exclamation mark? Every draft she made ended with an exclamation mark. It was like every short sentence had to be an exciting statement.

“Hey you, take care! C U soon!”

“Had to go, will call, be in touch!”

Should she sign off with her name? Would he know her name? Why was she assuming it was a he? Maybe it was a she, and she’d gone out to get them breakfast, and the being naked thing was just sheer coincidence? Or not?

She had to stop thinking about what she didn’t know. It was getting too complicated. She decided to write the truth.

“Sorry, needed breakfast & had to go to work”.

That will do. A bit cold. She decided to conclude with “Byeeeeeee” and, as an after-thought, drew a smiley face too. She hated it when people did that, but it seemed appropriate. If they had her phone number, they’d call her. And since she’d lost her phone, it didn’t matter anyway.

She stuck the note on the bed head, left the pen and post it on the bed and walked down the apartment. The door was on the left of the modern art, and as she turned the handle and was about to exit she had a momentary thought – pee. Need to pee. God, need to pee. And given she had no idea where she was, peeing here and now was probably a good idea.

Changing her mind, she shut the door again, turned around to the door opposite which, given it was the only other door in the entire room, she assumed was the bathroom. The light was on. And then she noticed the sound of a tap running. She hadn’t heard it before, and wondered why, because now it was abundantly clear to her. Someone must be here. Shit, she had their money in her pocket.

“Hello?”

She walked gingerly towards the door. It was slightly ajar, and she could see the white tiles. The sound of running water was stronger, and she realised that the tap was on quite hard.

“Hello?”

They probably couldn’t hear her. After all, there was a tap running loudly, echoing in a bathroom. Clive, Ewan, Portia, whoever they were, probably didn’t even know she was awake. She wasn’t just going to leave, so there was only one other choice.

She walked to the door and, every so casually, pushed it open as if she lived there.

The bathroom was quite large, with the sink and gushing tap just on the other side of the door, and a drawn shower curtain to the right. Without thinking she reached and turned the tap off. The sudden silence echoed. No one in here, clearly. Though there still seemed to be the distant sound of dripping? Water gurgling down a drain, just ever so slightly. She turned to the shower, and drew the curtain back.

The third major problem of the day was the naked man lying face down in the bath.

She stopped, turned away, lifted up the lid to the toilet, and sat down to pee.

She couldn’t really see what she was looking at now. She could still hear the blood going down the drain. She could still see crisp red in the white, white bath. The way the body lay face down but somehow in an horrendously unnatural position,  a position the human body was never meant to be it.

She finished, stood up, flushed, adjusted her clothes, and looked back at the bath again.

There was no phone in the apartment. This was a problem.