Forbidden Fruit Read Online Free PDF Page B

uncommon determination, if I was any judge. I put down the picture and made the coffee. Daniel was having his hot. I moved to the fridge for my jug of coffee and milk. In this weather iced was the only way to go. My freezer was stuffed with ice-trays.
    ‘Daddy is the hereditary head of a big furniture company,’ Daniel told me, sipping at his dark arabica. ‘Been in the family since the Gold Rush. They live in Caulfield. Very devout. All of the other children are good girls and boys.’
    ‘How many children?’
    ‘Seven. Brigid is the second youngest. Six months ago she was withdrawn from school. The family stated that she had glandular fever. Her lessons have been delivered and marked by the school. She seems to be a bright girl, she’s good at maths and science. But no one’s seen her outside her house since May.’
    ‘Not glandular fever, you think?’ I added some ice cream to my iced coffee. Bliss.
    ‘Eventually the father confessed to me that she had been pregnant. Naturally an abortion was not to be thought of, so they kept her home.’
    ‘They locked her up,’ I said as indignantly as a mouthful of Charmaine’s finest would allow. ‘But she got out?’
    ‘With help, it is feared. She was living in an upper-floor suite, the door of which was always locked, so that she couldn’t get into the rest of the house, and of course she had no phone. But somehow she got out of a window, climbed down two storeys by way of a drainpipe and a rope, and got clean away. No one heard or saw a thing.’
    ‘Good for her,’ I said.
    ‘She also took her rabbit with her.’
    ‘Her rabbit.’
    ‘Called Bunny. It’s a big long-eared pedigreed rabbit.’
    ‘And you need to find her,’ I said to him.
    ‘Well, yes, Corinna, because on the street a pregnant sixteen-year-old convent girl carrying a long-eared Dutch bunny has the survival quotient of an ice sculpture in a blast furnace.’
    ‘True. But I bet she didn’t do that jailbreak alone. Who is her accomplice and father of the said child?’
    ‘Here he is,’ said Daniel, and laid out another picture. It was a school group. Daniel put a finger on the tallest and most snaggletoothed of what looked like the Youth Prisons Serious Offenders Outing. He had a scrubby complexion, much pimpled. He had pierced eyebrows and ears, and one could guess about the rest of him. Which would also be tattooed. Muddy brown eyes and dirty mousy hair—what there was of it, as he sported a convict haircut. He was not smiling.
    ‘Oops,’ I commented.
    ‘This is Manny Lake. Also sixteen years old. Apprentice landscape gardener. Worked for a firm which—’
    ‘Did the O’Ryan garden in Caulfield?’
    ‘Yes. Old tradition, I suppose: fall in love with the gardener’s boy.’
    ‘Generally they are prettier than this one, but yes, that is a tradition. Do you think they’re together?’
    ‘I hope so. Manny knows his way around. But Manny’s mum doesn’t think he will have dared to go near Brigid again after Mr O’Ryan’s private detective scared the life out of him.’
    ‘Not you, I take it.’
    ‘No,’ said Daniel absently. He was looking at the two faces. ‘Brigid hasn’t contacted any of her sisters, or any other relatives. I can’t get a lot of information about her school friends. I’ve got a few phone numbers from the little sister. She might have takenrefuge, but surely their parents wouldn’t approve of a pregnant school friend sleeping in the spare room?’
    ‘They might have hidden her,’ I told him. ‘Most of those parents aren’t home a lot. It could be managed, at least for a while. How long has she been missing?’
    ‘Ten days. Manny too. He told his boss he needed to travel, but asked him to keep his job open as long as he could. The landscape gardener told me that Manny was a good worker—“Not like most of these slack little bastards”—and he’d be pleased to have him back. The boss, by the way, thinks Manny is in jail. Occupational hazard