Page 4 of The Space Traveller's Lover

DISAPPEARANCE

I wish something could happen that would

make her instantly disappear.

Erin can hardly wait for her shift to finish, carefully checking every single node in the busy network.

The more I check, the quicker the time will pass , she thinks.

Much sooner than she expects, she hears the loud beep signalling the shift’s end.

It is five o’clock in the afternoon, time to hand over her tasks.

She has impatiently waited for a full three minutes, and at last, the next shift assistant has arrived. It’s her former classmate, Stella, Sam’s sister.

Stella walks past Erin without even looking at her, plunging onto the swivelling chair in front of the widescreen monitor.

As Stella takes off her sun hat and shakes her head, her thick black curls pour over her shoulders.

She reclines, finally glancing at Erin, arching her thin dark eyebrows and pouting her lips in scorn.

“Doing double shift today on your birthday, eh? Well, I suppose I’ll have to fix what you didn’t finish.” Stella groans.

Erin lowers her head, briefly closing her eyes in disapproval.

Stella’s attitude could not be more different from that of her brother, Sam.

She is unwelcoming and rude. Her grudge and disdain make for an uneasy atmosphere around her presence.

All the while, Erin wants to keep the peace.

She’s learned to ignore Stella’s animosity since they were at school together, especially after that incident before leaving for university .

The scene flashes through Erin’s mind for a few seconds. She was returning home from school when three girls from her class ran in front of her, blocking her path.

She stopped to avoid bumping into them, but one of the girls charged towards her, pushing her against the wooden fence along the footpath.

The girls mocked Erin, trying to intimidate her.

As Erin tried to run away, Stella cut across her and slapped her angrily on her face.

Erin felt a sharp pain on her cheek as the blow pushed her head briskly to one side.

She tried to lift her hand to soothe her aching bruise, but the other girls grabbed her long braids and started pulling until she fell to the ground.

“Not so smart now, are you, Big Eyes?” Stella yelled. Her brows snapped together, and her mouth folded in a sour smirk.

Stella tried to slap her again, but Erin started to kick her legs in all directions.

First, Stella fell and then the other two.

Erin felt quite relieved and even impressed with her sudden burst of strength, but as she realised that somebody else was there helping her, she felt emboldened.

A boy was pulling the three girls up one by one and leading them away.

She felt so grateful when she recognised Sam. He turned to a stunned and aching Erin, still lying on the pavement, and extended his hand towards her, helping her off the ground.

As she grabbed his hand, she only managed to sit up against the fence, feeling dizzy and confused.

“Thank you, Sam. I’m so happy you came.” Erin smiled at him in gratitude

But her face was soon veiled in sadness as the upsetting scenes rewound and replayed continually inside her mind. “Why would they do this to me?”

“Listen, Erin … they envy you because you’re smart.”

“Envy? What’s envy?”

“Well, let’s say that they would like to have something that you have, but they can’t,” Sam explained.

Erin tried to digest Sam’s words as she stared at him, baffled.

“But that doesn’t mean you need to change anything,” he continued in a comforting tone. “You just need to know that there are those kinds of people about. ”

Erin nodded as she got up and shook the dust off her clothes. She smiled at Sam while arranging her dishevelled braids.

As he accompanied her home that evening, Erin told him she would never forget what a good friend he had been. Sam told her the same, and with a kiss on her bruised cheek, he added: “I’ll be here when you come back from uni.”

Erin has always wanted to tell Stella she’s prepared to forgive her, but Stella has always kept a hostile mood towards her.

“Not much to do for the evening shift,” Erin says as she strolls towards the exit. She doesn’t want Stella to notice that she’s in a hurry.

“I know Sam is taking you somewhere”. Stella says in disdain. “You can start running now.”

“That’s none of your business!” Erin snaps as she hurriedly reaches the top of the stairs, slamming the door behind her.

As she starts running along the steel suspension bridge towards the coast, Erin bounces eagerly in long strides while the strong wind pushes her forward. She breathes in deeply, tasting the salty water droplets suspended in the air, her lungs flooding with the brackish aroma.

Stella keeps looking through the window until the fast-running figure shrinks to a small dot on the other end of the bridge. As she looks through the lookout telescope by the window, she spots her brother Sam running towards Erin.

“Ah, those two are inseparable,” she mutters as she watches them jumping onto Sam’s speedboat and setting off towards the cliffs. Seeing Erin sitting next to her brother, her resentment grows. “I never wanted my brother to be so close to that weird girl,” she grumbles.

Stella tries hard to concentrate on her shift’s tasks. Hours go by, but she keeps thinking about her brother and Erin. I wish something could happen that would make her instantly disappear. And anything will do—a lightning strike, a shark attack, a sudden fireball.

The phone rings insistently for a few seconds before Stella comes out of her damning stupor.

She perks up as she hears the worried voice of her father, Bill Sheppard, the maintenance manager at the tuna farm and a veteran member of the ARA’s rescue brigades .

“Is Sam with you there? He should be picking you up,” her father asks her as if expecting a positive answer.

Stella checks the time, and it’s already ten o’clock. Sam is never late.

“No, Dad, he isn’t.” She checks the car park once again through the glass window.

“Did you see him today?”

“Yes, he met Erin after she finished the shift. They went in the direction of Diablo’s cave, on Sam’s boat.”

“I’ve been calling him … but there’s no response.”

“What about Erin’s parents?”

“Yes, I contacted them, but they’ve not heard from Erin either,” Sheppard replies gloomily.

“Well, you shouldn’t worry yet. They’ll turn up soon! They must be somewhere close by … fooling around,” Stella says in a fake encouraging tone.

Surely, they’re up to no good , she thinks. But an uneasy thought lingers on, at the back of her mind.

“I’ll come and get you home!” Sheppard says, this time sounding more annoyed than worried. “Wait for me!”

“Yeah, I bet he’s home when we get there,” Stella replies, trying to sound hopeful.

But later that night, the Sheppards keep waiting anxiously by their phones, with no news from Sam or Erin.

Right after midnight, Mr Lobart arrives.

“No news yet. For now, they are intent on hiding,” Lobart announces as he looks at Sam’s parents and sister with a disgruntled expression.

“It is so unusual for Sam.” Martha Sheppard sits next to her daughter and hugs her. Mother and daughter are so much alike—the same curly black hair, long thin eyebrows, thin nose, and the same brown eyes covered in tears.

“Everything’s going to be okay.” Stella comforts her worried mother.

“We need to go now and check all the obvious and less obvious places—even if we have to go inside Diablo’s cave,” Bill Sheppard states while putting his working boots on.

“I wonder why Erin was in such a hurry today,” Stella says while looking probingly at her father. “She was in a hurry to meet Sam, and he waited for her by the coast … far from the control tower,” she adds, purposely stressing her words .

“Hmmm.” Lobart starts pacing around, looking down while gathering his thoughts.

“Hmmm, what?” Stella prompts him.

“Earlier today, I told Erin to stop seeing Sam—that Pat and I … well.” He briefly gazes at Sam’s parents one by one. “I was going to fire Sam from the farm if they continued seeing each other.”

Everyone looks back at Lobart as if they have suddenly found their guilty suspect.

“Ah!” Martha exhales in astonishment and lurches back onto her sofa’s backrest. Her husband comforts her, patting her shoulder before bitterly gazing at Lobart.

“So, they’re hiding,” Stella suggests. “Or they’re eloping, or—”

“There’s no point in guessing now,” Lobart counters. “When we find them … we’ll see.”

Bill Sheppard folds his arms over his chest, frowning deeply at Lobart as if trying to channel all his irritation in a single glance. A burly man with a thick moustache and incisive gaze, Bill maintains a composure that unveils an uneasy self-restraint.

“Albert, it’s about time you stop your paranoia about me trying to take over your job with the help of Sam and Erin—”

“Ah! That’s what it is.” Martha stands up, incredulously staring at Lobart. “Please tell me, Albert, that it’s all been a misunderstanding—”

“Yeah, a misunderstanding,” Lobart snaps. “But I tend to be right most of the time—”

“Let’s call it a truce, Albert”—Bill briskly opens the front door—“for the sake of Sam and Erin.”

“All right, let’s go then,” Lobart grudgingly agrees.

But their desperate search that night yields no further news.

The next day, they set up search parties all across the island, their helicopters scouring everywhere inland and all around the coast, but they fail to find any clues of the pair’s whereabouts.

Even when the islanders extend their range inside the intricate cave systems, they find nothing after three days.

To make matters worse, the moment they start preparations to go deeper into Diablo’s cave, beyond the second lake and on to the waterfall, an approaching storm compels them to abandon everything .