An Isolated Incident Read Online Free Page A

the area Ms Michaels disappeared from has turned up nothing, but that the canvassing will continue. ‘It was a very short walk, in daylight, along a quiet residential street. If there was a struggle or commotion of any kind, someone must have seen or heard it.’
    Police are also appealing for motorists who may have noticed stopped vehicles or any suspicious behaviour on the Hume Highway between Gundagai and Holbrook between 6 pm Friday and 6 am Saturday to contact the Strathdee police or Crime Stoppers.

    I didn’t sleep the promised ten hours but I slept almost seven, which was a damn near-miracle given the circumstances. As soon as I was conscious I was thinking about Bella and what they’d done to her. Yeah, they . It was never a question to me. Not after I’d seen her, you know?
    When my mum died it took months before I woke up knowing she was dead. Every morning there’d be this sweet, sleepy moment in which the world was as it always had been before the truth crashed in. It was like that after Nate left me, too. I’d wake up and for a second be sure he was beside me. But that didn’t happen with Bella. I woke and straight away I saw her face as it’d been in the morgue.
    (The first time I ever saw Bella’s face I told Mum it looked like she’d been bashed because her skull was all lopsided and she had scratches on one cheek and there were patches of blue over her weird little bald brows. Mum laughed and said that being born is the roughest thing most of us’ll ever go through.)
    I dragged myself out to the kitchen. Nate was at the table drinking coffee, reading from the screen of his phone. He flicked it off, shoved it into the front pocket of his jeans, came and kissed the top of my head, cradled me like that for a long, lovely moment. Without asking whether I wanted it, he went ahead and made me coffee and it was exactly the right temperature, exactly the right milky sweetness.
    He waited until I’d drunk about half and then covered my hands with his. ‘So, what’s the story? What have the cops said?’
    His hands seemed to muffle the grief and horror a little. I felt like the weight of them on mine would stop that terrible shaking demon from taking me over again.
    â€˜She left work on Friday a bit after five. Said bye to everyone inside and off she went, just like normal. Three hours later a nurse arriving for her shift noticed Bella’s car on the street. She thought it was weird and tried to call her, got no answer. On her break, around eleven, the nurse went to her own car to grab something and saw Bella’s was still there. She tried her again and had such a bad feeling about her not answering that she looked up Bella’s emergency contact, me, and called to see if everything was okay. I was at work and then didn’t bother checking my messages before I crashed out – and – and –’
    â€˜Hey, hey.’ Nate stroked his thumb over my hand. ‘Breathe, babe. Come on, big breaths. Good girl, that’s it.’
    â€˜So I never got the message until the morning. There was another one by then – from her boss – Bel hadn’t show up for work. I went round to her place, but there was no answer. I called the police. They said wait. I waited. I kept calling her all day. Called her friends. At the end of the day I called the police again. They filed a report. Told me she’d probably turn up, red-faced about causing all this trouble when she’d just gone off for a weekend with her fella.’
    â€˜Who’s her fella?’ Nate asked and it was only a split-second but I saw it, the violence. It was good to be reminded. I took my hands out from under his. I did it casually, picked up my coffee cup and took a sip and left my hands wrapped around its hard warmth.
    â€˜She doesn’t have one. They just assumed. Talked about her like she’s some other girl. Some idiot who takes off from work