The Other Louise

"I've spent thirty years building compartments in my mind. The skill isn't in the construction—it's in knowing which ones you're forbidden to open, and when."

The door closed and Interview Room Three settled into silence.

I was alone again. The fluorescent lights hummed their indifferent song overhead, and the clock on the wall — I hadn't noticed it before, but of course there was a clock, there was always a clock in rooms like this — marked the seconds with mechanical precision. Each tick a small accusation. Each moment another unit of time in which Kain and Jamie remained missing.

I checked my phone. Nothing. The screen's blankness had become its own kind of message, a silence that spoke louder than any notification.

Charlie had said he'd return shortly. Sarah had gone to fetch Karl. The machinery was in motion now, gears turning, procedures being followed. I should have felt relieved. Instead, I felt suspended — caught between the telling and the doing, unable to influence what happened next.

The plastic chair had not become more comfortable in the intervening minutes. I shifted, trying to find a position that didn't feel like punishment, and gave up. Perhaps discomfort was the point. Perhaps someone had calculated that witnesses who couldn't settle would talk faster, confess more readily, simply to escape the room's oppressive functionality.

I closed my eyes and let my mind drift to Kain. To the last time I'd seen him — walking out the door with that easy confidence he'd inherited from his father, promising to check on Jamie and report back. It'll be fine, Mum. Probably just Uncle Jamie being dramatic. He'd kissed my cheek. He'd taken his keys from the hook by the door. He'd driven away in his ute, and I'd watched until the vehicle disappeared around the bend in the drive, and I'd told myself he was right. It would be fine. It was always fine.

Except when it wasn't.

The door opened without warning, and I straightened instinctively, expecting Sarah or Karl. But it was Charlie, slipping into the room with an urgency that didn't match his earlier measured calm. He closed the door behind him quickly — not quite a slam, but close — and crossed to the table in three rapid strides.

"We don't have long," he said, his voice low and tight. "Jenkins is on his way. Lahey's bringing him now."

I frowned. "What's happened?"

He didn't sit. Instead, he stood across from me, one hand reaching into his jacket pocket. When he withdrew it, he was holding a small slip of paper — torn from something larger, I noticed, the edge ragged. Whatever was written on it had been scribbled hastily, the handwriting barely legible.

"I just received word," he said. "Through channels I can't discuss. This doesn't leave this room, Louise. And it has nothing to do with whatever's happened to Kain or Jamie. You need to keep those things separate in your mind. Completely separate. Can you do that?"

Compartmentalisation. The architecture of my existence. I'd spent nearly three decades sorting my life into boxes that didn't touch — the wife box, the mother box, the professional box, the grief box, the fear box. Adding another was hardly a strain.

"Yes," I said simply.

He slid the paper across the table toward me. A name. Just a name, scrawled in Charlie's hurried hand. Five letters that meant nothing to me and presumably everything.

"Memorise it," he said. "Then give it back."

I looked at the name. Committed it to memory with the same precision I applied to account numbers and authorisation codes. Then I refolded the paper and slid it back across the table.

"What does this person have to do with Thomas?"

"I can't tell you that." Charlie's voice was flat, final. "I shouldn't even be telling you this much. But after what happened with Charles — after everything—" He stopped, jaw tightening. "You deserved to know there's a thread. If anything happens. If things escalate. That name might be useful."

If things escalate. The phrase sat in my stomach like something cold and indigestible.

"Is Thomas in danger?"

"I don't know."

"Is Thomas dangerous?"

The question surprised us both. I hadn't known I was going to ask it until the words were already in the air, hanging between us like smoke.

Charlie's expression flickered — something complicated moving behind his eyes. "I don't know that either," he said finally. "And that's the truth."

I nodded slowly. It was, I realised, the most honest answer he could have given. The not-knowing was its own kind of information. If he'd been certain of Thomas's innocence, he would have said so. If he'd been certain of his guilt, he wouldn't be sitting here giving me warnings and names.

The uncertainty was the message.

"When this investigation proceeds," Charlie said, his voice dropping even lower, "into Kain and Jamie — I need you to understand something. If this becomes relevant, I'll be the one to raise it. Not you. You don't mention Thomas. You don't mention anything we've discussed. You focus entirely on your son and your brother. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"If you bring this up yourself, it complicates things. For you, for Thomas, for the investigation. It creates connections that may not exist. It muddies the water."

"I understand."

"And if anyone asks about your husband's whereabouts—"

"He's in Melbourne," I said, my voice perfectly level. "Board meeting. He'll be back tomorrow evening. I didn't want to worry him until I had more information."

Charlie held my gaze for a long moment, and I saw something in his expression that might have been approval. Or pity. Or simply the weary recognition of one survivor acknowledging another.

"Good," he said. He glanced toward the door — checking, I realised, that we were still alone. Still unobserved.

"Charlie," I said quickly, "whatever this is — whatever they think Thomas has done or might do — does it have anything to do with Charles? With what happened in 2008?"

His face closed like a door. "I can't answer that."

Which was, of course, an answer in itself.

I leaned forward, dropping my voice to barely more than a breath. "They've been watching him for years."

It wasn't a question. I'd known — sensed, suspected, refused to fully acknowledge — for longer than I wanted to admit. The way certain phone calls made Thomas leave the room. The car that appeared on our lane too frequently to be coincidence. The tension that had crept into him after Charles disappeared and never quite released.

"Who?" Charlie asked, though his voice came out louder than intended — that baritone of his wasn't built for subtlety, and even pitched low it seemed to resonate against the walls.

I opened my mouth to answer — to tell him about the patterns I'd noticed, the suspicions I'd never voiced — but footsteps sounded in the corridor. Close. Too close.

Charlie's hand moved instantly, crumpling the paper into his fist. His posture shifted, the Sergeant reassembling himself over the man like armour being donned.

The knock came at the door.

"Oh, Sergeant," Sarah's voice called, pushing the door open with a casualness that didn't quite ring true.

I watched Charlie's reaction — too swift, too defensive. His fist tightened around the paper. I kept my own face perfectly blank, offering nothing. "Did you find Jenkins?"

"Yes," Sarah replied to his question. "He's on his way now."

Charlie stood immediately, his chair scraping against the floor with unnecessary force. He didn't look at me as he passed — didn't acknowledge our conversation, didn't offer reassurance or farewell. That was deliberate, I knew. That was protection. Any warmth between us now would only invite questions.

He walked out, and Sarah followed, and the door closed behind them, and I was alone again.

I sat very still, letting the silence resettle around me like water after a stone's been thrown. The name Charlie had shown me was locked away now, filed in the compartment marked things I cannot think about yet. Thomas. The watchers. The thread that connected 2008 to now in ways I couldn't see and Charlie wouldn't explain.

None of that mattered right now. None of that could matter.

Kain was missing. Jamie was missing. That was the only truth this room was permitted to hold.

I folded my hands in my lap and waited for Karl to arrive, and when he walked through that door, I would be exactly what the moment required: a mother searching for her son, a sister searching for her brother, a woman with nothing to hide.

The other Louise — the one who'd just memorised a name and understood that her husband might be something other than what she'd believed — that Louise would wait. She was patient. She had been waiting for ten years already.

A little longer wouldn't break her.