Clutch Start Halfway Up The Hill

by lucindarobinsonvevo

Elle and Harlow receive an email from Andrew that sets off the countdown to a bomb in Elle's life. What can she do to stop it, when it looks like they've been ten steps ahead of her the whole time?

/working through my backlog of posted fics…This fic is meant to be part of a series. That i will write. Someday. The plot is very complex, i need to work on it more. Warnings for nude pictures being shared without consent but like not in the way you think, and stalking. I loved writing about technology and internet fandoms and stuff. A friend of mine says it reminds them of a creepypasta and i think that's so funny because i was OBSESSED with creepypasta in like 2014. Enjoy the fic, let me know what you thought!

The email arrived from Andrew with the subject line 'IMPORTANT'. It was enough to make Elle pause right where she was sitting, on Harlow's bed resting up against the headboard with her bare feet crossed at the ankle. On the cheerful yellow spread, Harlow lay next to her, on her stomach, attention focused purely on the episode of Air Crash Investigation playing on the laptop between them. Careful not to disrupt the bed and send Harlow's bowl of chocolate-coated peanuts flying, she opened her phone using her thumb and clicked through to her email application. It sat nestled between an application that sent her updates about The New York News's headlines on the hour, and an application that kept track of her spreadsheets, on her wallpaper. Which was a photograph of Harlow posing with her father on the night of her formal, both beaming with smiles. It's a personal favourite photo of hers.

Elle had three email addresses, her work address - LuRob .au, her personal address - lucindaarobinson1989 and then her crap email that she'd had for about a million years she mostly used to sign up for newsletters and make online orders from sketchy websites - Horsegirlxoxo1989 . She also had a host of various anonymous accounts used for work purposes if she didn't want her real name attached to something which happened more frequently than you might imagine as a journalist. The email from Andrew had come into her work account, meaning something serious was happening because he was under strict instructions to never send personal correspondence to that account lest she miss an important message from a source. After all, he wanted to send her a cat meme or funny picture of Tash.

Closer inspection of the email indicated that it had been forwarded to her from Andrew, who had been sent it originally by Summer Hoyland, a friend of his, daughter of the man who killed Cameron and talented journalist in her own right. Elle had been trying to poach her for the Melbourne branch of the New York News she'd been setting up for months with no progress despite promises of more creative control and better pay because she was loyal to the paper she was working for in Perth. But, Elle thinks she'll get there eventually she just has to be patient.

The email from Summer read -

'Andrew.

I received this link in my inbox today. Please confirm this is your sister then pass it on to her. Tell her to call me when she'd looked at it so we can figure out next steps.

Summer.

Then, a blue hyperlink that read

' killers/aus/robertrobinson'

Her first thought was that Robert isn't even a serial killer, so whatever this website was, it was probably not going to be particularly accurate. It's not that the idea of Rob having groupies is something she's unfamiliar with. Her work email gets dozens of emails a month from various people, fans of his and otherwise interested parties looking for quotes, podcast interviews and a moment of her time to inquire about him. Like her life is for some reason public property. All of those messages travel right into a dedicated folder for her to look at, and then delete when it gets too full. The message from Andrew under the message from Summer reads -

THIS IS REALLY BAD. PLEASE REVIEW AND CALL SUMMER. I HAVEN'T TOLD DAD.

If he intended to get her attention, it worked. So, she clicked the hyperlink and found herself starring at a forum of old, with a black and red banner reading 'Serial Killer Paradise est 1998.' along with a couple of pictures of infamous serial killers that she found to be in poor taste. True crime is not, as Elle has found, always true and she doesn't like the power that these randoms on the internet whose only qualification is having a microphone have on the way that crime reporting happens. She doesn't like that it's made people think journalism is reading a bunch of The Daily Sun articles, and a few unsourced blog posts and calling it a day, she doesn't like that they message victims with an intent to 'solve the mystery' without care or training on how to not re-victimise them and she certainly does not like this idea that they all seem to have that serial killer are very smart. In her experience, most serial killers are no smarter than anyone else but it is in fact the police that are incompetent. But, gripes with the genre aside she looked down at the page, which featured a bunch of links. Adjusting her phone for a better look she read down the page.

'Pics

Inmate information

Theories

Elle Thirst Posts

Fanworks

Social Media Updates - Robinsons

Mail/Phone Archive'

None of them featured any subtitles to explain the contents of the thread, and they were all white text on a grey bubble on a black background. All six were pinned to the top of the forum, with other threads under them, and each of the main six had been updated within the previous twenty-four hours. A cursory look at the website suggested she will need to make an account to get into the threads, that there were about a thousand people on the website at that particular time, her language was set to American English, and the copyright information at the bottoms of the page indicated that the site had indeed been up since 1998. Her first step was pulling up the registration page and making an account called 'robrobenthusiast' with her horsegirl email, clicking a link and being given access to the entire Robert page. She'd wondered if there was any kind of in-person verification needed to join but it didn't seem as though there was. Either way, she did not want to advertise that she was visiting a website like this just on principle.

"What are you doing?" Harlow asked, leaning over. Her breath smells like chocolate.

"Andrew has sent me a link to this forum page about your dad, he wants me to look and then call Summer."

"Why? There's tons of pages about Dad on the internet. And you, and Grandad, is this the first time he's seen one?"

"Maybe. He's not very interested in family history, but apparently, someone sent it to Summer -"

"The one you want working for you whose Dad killed Cameron?"

"Hm, and it rattled her enough to want him to confirm it's me."

"Hmph." She clicked back through to the Robert page and examined her options.

"I guess we should start with…" Her vanity made her click on 'Elle Thirst Posts' which came up in a line down the page. The top bar read 'We get it. She's hot. Stop clogging up the main thread with this.' Upon scrolling down the first image was one of her taken from The Shed's Instagram account. She'd recently attended a class there to make a show of trying to get along with Aaron and David - and since being back in town and trying to set up the paper she had let exercise slip a bit. The image is of her drinking from a pink water bottle while speaking with Aaron. She wasn't dressed provocatively, or she didn't think so. She wore a pink exercise shirt paired with black leggings white socks and pink trainers, with her hair tied up in a ponytail. She didn't stand out or hadn't thought she had. The screenshot is of the original post where the caption reads 'Great night tonight at The Shed! Aaron put on an amazing class, with a great turn out including some family members! If you're looking to join in the next one feel free to check out the times listed on our Facebook account - Link in bio!' The caption from the poster reads -

'Looks like Elle went to the BIL's gym for a class. Wish she would invest in butt scrunch leggings.'

"Gross," Harlow commented, as Elle looked up at her. Harlow was a sweet-looking young woman. She had a face that was built to smile, with slightly round cheeks and blue eyes that were warm, and full of life. She didn't look like Robert and Cameron, in fact she didn't look like anyone from mum's side of the family who all tended to have long, slim faces with highly set eyes and cheekbones she more resembled Dad's side of the family, specifically a young Uncle Scott, or maybe Grandad. From the right angle, she reminds Elle, quite painfully, of Sky Mangel. Personality-wise, she's more like Sky than any Robinson Elle's ever met. Driven by her morals, believing in a greater good, and wanting to do the right thing. You know. That kind of thing.

"Well, I suppose I am technically a public figure." She said, frowning. She didn't like the idea that random images of her from Aaron's Instagram have become images of public interest worth being screen capped. But, what can she do? She scrolled to the next one and found it was a picture from the announcement of The New York News Melbourne Branch. It was her company headshot, where she poses in front of a white wall, smiling at the camera blankly. She got a new one every year when they updated her ID and this one was no different. The caption reads -

'She's really let herself go lately. Sad :('

She couldn't see what had been let go in the image since she looked the same as she had since she was a teenager, except it was taken when she briefly had a short haircut. Speaking generally people commenting on others' bodies annoys her but the idea that women have to be a certain way annoys her even more. She scowled at the comment, then clicked away from the post and onto another one. She certainly had better things to do with her time than be told how terrible she looks. If this was Andrew's idea of a joke then she wasn't finding it very funny.

The third post down was a picture of her at a book event she'd attended for an author friend, she was wearing a one-shoulder dress, red lipstick and had her hair pinned up. She usually wouldn't go for something so flashy by Donna wanted her to use the opportunity to market her dresses to a more 'academic' crowd, though Elle was pretty sure the only people who cared about such an event were the preteen fans of the series in question. The title read 'Old pic - but looks good in red' with a winky face. The comments, naturally, were about the places she might leave red marks with that lipstick. She felt only mild satisfaction about remembering that the lipstick in question was so transfer-proof that it took days to come off.

"Let's look at another thread." Harlow offered, leaning over Elle's shoulder to instead click on 'Social Media Updates - Robinsons'. The top of the page read 'a page that automatically updates with all of the Robinson's social media.' Scanning through the page was exactly as it said. A list of all of her family's social media accounts. Posts she'd already seen on her social media. A photo of Jimmy's new haircut, a text post David made complaining about the weather, several likes Dad had put on her Twitter. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least, in her opinion.

Going back, she looked at the list with a little more scrutiny. She opened 'pics'. Inside, was a mega-post with what looked like hundreds of collected images of Robert and Cameron. She recognized the mugshots lined up across the top of the post, which was labelled 'pics megathread - 2020'. The first one was taken within hours of his initial arrest, he still has a long, dorky fringe, and scowls deeply as he faces the camera. According to the wall behind him, he is five ten, and the date is the same as the fake wedding. The following one was taken as he returned from the mental health facility they'd put him in initially. His expression is glazed and stupefied. Drugged for transport, she supposed. The next was his return to prison where he sported a new, short spiky haircut and a scowl that looked identical to the one that he'd had when they were kids. The following four mugshots showed him growing from the final stages of boyhood into a young man, who proceeded to get paler, and more gaunt with each image, and in the most recent he had a much shorter haircut, and a five o'clock shadow, In each image, the scowl was identical to the one prior. If she didn't know that he was being kept in a supermaximum prison with a single hour of outdoor time a day she'd be worried about his complexion and increasingly crackhead high cheekbones.

"Why does he have so many pictures?" Harlow asked, quietly.

"He used to work in the prison library, so he needed them for ID." She explained.

"Why did he stop?" Harlow wondered.

"He was moved to another unit, and his out-of-cell time was limited after he got into a fight." She said, skipping the details. Harlow accepts this and nods her head. "You could ask him."

"He doesn't like to talk about prison. He'd usually rather talk about me, and my life."

"Your life is probably a lot more interesting than his." She sighed. Harlow paused, then grabbed her laptop, which was still playing 'Air Crash Investigation' - Narrated by Jonathan Aris.

"Here, log in on this." Elle did so, dropping her phone onto Harlow's bedside table. She navigated back to the page, and then to the pics thread. On the bigger screen, the images were much clearer. Under Rob's mugshots were what seemed to be pics, stills and court drawings from his trial, followed by a few newspaper clippings, images that had clearly been ripped from Mum's Facebook, a variety of school photos, including his senior picture where he was smiling while holding onto his high school diploma. Elle remembered that and how proud he was to graduate top of his class in chemistry.

At the bottom of the page was a list called 'Robert Holy Grails' which seemed to be a list of particularly desired images of Robert.

'In 2021, Elle posted a snippet of a home video of Cameron playing football on the anniversary of his death. The video was zoomed in to crop Robert out. Full video requested.

2019 surgery pre and post-images.

Reported image of Robert posing with H. Bishop circa 2006 while playing Cameron.

The archive currently has no images of Robert between the ages of 3 and 7. All childhood images are appreciated.

2019 image of Robert posing with daughter, reported through phonecall 2019 35

2010 Robert Documentary Footage - Named 'RobRob'.

All photos from shelf in this image' Which was followed by a snap chat screenshot of Harlow's account from when she and Mackenzie went to New York looking at Elle's family photos, which had all been nestled on a bookshelf. Most of them were actually of her, Donna, Ringo and Kate. There was only one of Cameron, and none of Robert. She didn't know why they would want pictures of those family members. The second photo in the same dot point is Harlow posing with a close-up picture of Kate, with the caption 'I think we look alike!' it was a cute photo, if not for the circumstances Elle would have saved it herself and maybe used it as a lock screen on her personal phone. Her current lock screen was a picture of Amy on Coney Island, drenched in red light and watching Jimmy and Maya on the Cyclone. She thought it was a beautiful photo, Amy thought she looked slightly unwell. The implications here were not good - They were on Harlow's friend's list on Snapchat.

"Are you careful about who you accept friend requests from?" She asked hesitantly. Harlow nodded wordlessly.

"I only really have family following me." She replied, "And some of my friends, but mostly family."

"Robinson and Wallace?"

"And Lewis. Gail also follows me but she never interacts. One of her brother's kids, too." And THAT set off alarm bells in Elle's mind because she has never met any of her uncles on her mother's side. Certainly never met their children. They had never wanted anything to do with Mum and Ian and frankly, it didn't take a genius for Elle to see why. The only family she'd known growing up had been Gloria, which was her grandmother on her mother's adoptive father's side. She used to come down quite often to deliver them with gifts and pictures of Dad who, for whatever reason, stayed friendly with her.

And how did these people know about Harlow? Sure, it's not like she's secretive about her father but she's also not broadcasting it to the world, she's a young lady who works in a hotel – not a public figure or influencer. A weird sensation ran along her spine. Something very bad was happening with this website, more than your usual true crime podcaster saying weird and untrue things, or an off-colour comment on her blue checkmark Twitter.

"One of her brother's kids?" Elle asked, haltingly.

"Yeah, like Christine, or something. Why? Do you have beef with her?" She asked, her Generation Z vocabulary would usually make Elle smile but now she was too filled with dread to consider it.

"No, no. I've never met her. I didn't even know her name was Christine." Maybe Mum had started to build a relationship with her extended family and just hadn't told Elle about it? Always possible, they haven't spoken much the last couple of years after their big fight in New York. A small disagreement about if Leo should be staying with her (Mum thought she shouldn't have to go out of her way for 'Paul's other kids' and Elle thought Mum just didn't like the idea of her having another older brother) spiralled into an argument about Robert, which then ended with Mum confessing she did blame Elle for what happened, despite having told her for years that she didn't. Elle had been so furious she'd essentially thrown her mother out into the street. It wasn't that she couldn't acknowledge the part that she played, she could, it was that she'd been lied to. Then she fielded a call from Dad demanding to know why she'd kicked Mum out, Leo took the phone from her and relayed what happened and that just made Dad so angry that he'd finally been unable to defend Mum after half a lifetime of giving her the benefit of the doubt.

The whole situation was messy and unpleasant and the two had only had a couple of tense phone calls a year since. Mum had apologised. Elle had pretended to accept it. But it's still weird and awkward. For the first time she can remember, Dad hasn't been pushing for her to accept Mum's apology and move on. He doesn't mention Mum at all. All this to say that while Mum could have started a relationship with her brothers, Elle seriously doubts it. All Mum wants is to be alone in their crappy childhood home airing out their old bedrooms and turning over the engine in Rob's piece of crap old car. She loathes to think what might have happened to Harlow if she'd moved to Tasmania to be with her. Images of Harlow dressed like a doll in Rob's old clothes flash past her and her listening to Cold Chisel through the blown-out speakers of Rob's old car while speeding down a dirt road ran behind her eyes.

Thank God she'd stayed with Dad.

"Scroll down?" She asked, and Elle did as requested. The next mega post was images of Harlow, titled 'Daughter megathread.' and had the subtitle - All available images of Harlow Wallace (Robinson?) Looking through the images, most seemed to be taken straight from Harlow's social media, with a few others here and there. Some Lassiter's promotional stuff of her in the New Uniform, some kind of live stream from the Lip sync competition Elle remembers from a couple of years back, nothing that threw up any warning signs as illegally taken, or as stalking behaviour. At the bottom, there was text that read 'Harlow Holy Grails', followed by a list of photographs, and videos. A video of her dancing at formal, the same picture from the previous thread, and any childhood photos.

Scrolling down was a thread called 'Anthropological Elle Pics' with a bottom bar that read 'Pictures of Elle with anthropological value. All thirst posts must go in the correct thread.' This thread was longer than the other two, just because Elle has been out and about more. There's a link to a MEGA drive that claims to have all her appearances on a talk show she occasionally did segments for to boost her profile - Mostly fluff pieces but some actual good work was done. There was another MEGA link that claimed to have all of her war correspondence video segments, which appeared on the New York News website in the 2000s before she got shot and Dad convinced her to retire. Home videos from her Facebook and Instagram accounts, again complied into a MEGA folder, along with a folder for her awards acceptance speeches with a note that speeches five and twenty-seven had mentions of Robert, a MEGA drive of all of her articles with mentions of her childhood and Robert, and then began the pictures. Mostly from her social media, but a few were sourced from locations she was unsure of. All her school pictures in a row, pictures of her formal where her shiny pink lame' dress was the talk of the town, and Robert had been her date. A random video of her drinking a coffee and playing a freemium game on her phone at the coffee shop near her apartment that creeped her out, and finishing up, a photograph of her. Naked. Her heart stopped.

"Elle?" Harlow asked, softly. She didn't reply, just brought the image up full size. In the picture, she was naked and layered with goosebumps. She was standing with her arms at her sides, and the bruise starting on the side of her neck went halfway down to her ribcage, over her breast. From the Plane Crash. She was made to take that picture at the hospital, as part of documenting her injuries, and promised it would never see the light of day after the court case, but there it was. Her naked, teenage body is on the internet, apparently for everyone to see. Harlow gasped when she realised what she was looking at and she instantly minimised the photo.

Harlow had never seen the actual physical toll of what Robert did. Elle has. She lived it, she saw all these pictures in court, on a projector. David's purple, bloated body oozing across the silver autopsy table. Sky's eyes where the whites had turned bloody red. Izzy's hand swollen and peeling from the cold, unable to bend. Her shoulder turned inky from the force by which her collarbone was broken. She had no want to poison Harlow's relationship with Robert and didn't think it was necessary to show her these things.

"Is that from the plane crash?" She asked, quietly. Elle nodded her head, and then sat silently, trying to process this information. She didn't know what to do now. Harlow left the page and they stared at the list of threads for a moment, not sure what to do. Then, Elle's phone started to ring. Harlow answered.

"Elle's phone, Harlow speaking."

"Is she there?" Andrew asked, urgently from the other end. She'd recognize that accent anywhere. She took the phone from Harlow and put it on speaker.

"I'm here."

"Did you see the link?" He demanded, "I've got Summer on the other line."

"Hey." Summer greeted, "Elle, is it you?"

"Are the pictures of me taken after the plane crash real?" She asked, "Yes, they are."

"What - " Andrew began, "No, not that. Worse than that. Have you seen the archive?"

"We didn't get that far." Says Harlow, "What's in the archive that's worse than being the first victim of revenge porn by the True Crime Community?"

"Just go in there and have a listen okay? This is important. Really important." Harlow navigates, she takes them to 'Archive' and then to 'Phonecalls.' The top bar reads ' Phone calls between Robert and Elle provided to us by our source. No phone calls between Harlow and Robert will be provided, because the source believes them to be private. Stop asking.' She hit play on the most recent call, which is an mp3 file.

It begins with a dial tone, and then the voice of the automated prison system begins.

"You are receiving a call from -"

"Robert. Robinson." He says, with a pause between his first and last names. He annunciates them clearly.

"This call will be recorded, if you accept this call, you accept the charges for the duration of fifteen minutes. Please press one to accept, or press nine to decline, and block all further calls to this number." A beeping sound, Elle presumably hitting one. Another beep as the phone connects -

"Hey Elle, it's Rob." He greets, customarily.

"Hey." She says back, "I was wondering if I was ever going to hear from you again."

"It's been a while, one of the phones broke, so we've been having to all use the one phone." He says, back. "It's good to hear your voice."

"I'd say the same thing but I can barely hear you. Bad reception?"

"Bad phone. I think this one is on its way out too." He sounds worried.

"It looks like I'm about to be back in Melbourne permanently." She says, "Since the job went through."

"Oh, that's good." He doesn't sound like it's good, "You worked hard for this."

"Are you okay, Rob? You sound…Upset."

"I'm okay. Harlow didn't come and see me over the weekend, is she okay?"

"Umm, she was last time I checked but super busy. She had a retake exam over the weekend, that's probably why. I'm sure next time she sees you it'll be with an A+ for you to be proud of."

"Proud of?" He answers, sounding more like himself, "What do I have to be proud of? I didn't raise her."

"Don't be like this. When you have a kid, and they do well, you're proud of them. A plus B equals C."

"I'm pretty sure the expression is one plus two equals three."

"Whatever. You know what I mean."

"I am proud of you." He said, after a moment. "For everything you've achieved."

"Thanks, Rob. I'd say I'm proud of you too but -"

"It's probably not ethical to say that about the guy who tried to murder you once."

"Probably not." Silence, "But I am, though. I think you've come a long way, as a father and as a person. Harlow must feel comfortable with you if she feels okay missing a visit. I'm sure she'll go next week with lots of apologies."

"Probably." He sighed, "What if she outgrows me?"

"How so?"

"She already went back to London once. What about if she…Goes one day and then doesn't come back?"

"She wasn't going to come back last time, but she missed you so much she decided to give Erinsbough another shot. Isn't that enough proof?"

"I think she's going to be done with me before too long." Rob said, "I'm trying to enjoy what time I have left with her before she leaves and I hear from her only once a month in letters. I love her, Elle. What am I going to do without you?"

"You only hear from me about once a month in a letter."

"You're already done with me, you only keep up with me because you're too good of a person to just let me fester." Elle laughs on her side of the line,

"Rob, you're my triplet. I'm never going to be done with you." Elle hit the stop button before the recording can continue. She looked at the page on the website, there are threads organized by year, indicating how many calls she made in that year, meaning that there were literally hundreds of phone calls between her and Robert on this website, available for the public to hear. With a rock sitting in her stomach, she navigated back a page to 'Letters' and opened it, inside, she opened the thread labelled '2008', and scrolled through a list to the first one she sent, and opened it. It was a photocopy of her letter, envelope and all. She leaned in close to see the page.

'Rob.

It's been a while. I miss you. Please write back, I could use my brother right about now.

Your sister.

Elle.'

Then, she opened up Rob's response.

'Elle.

I was shocked to get mail from you. I thought we would never speak again after what happened. I believe that I am -' She stopped reading.

"Elle?" Andrew asked, and the way his accent makes her name sound closer to 'well'.

"Yeah, it's all real." She said, in disbelief.

"I got sent this in the mail." She told her, "From an anonymous person, I think it's the person who sourced this breach of privacy. They told me that if I'm looking for revenge on you for what you did to my father then this is the best way to do it."

"Sum-" Andrew starts,

"I don't want revenge on you." Summer said, quickly, "I don't think you did anything that needed revenge. You and my Dad are okay now, and it's not like he was winning father of the year awards, to begin with." She added, dryly. The humour is lost on Elle and Andrew, who are silent. "I'm not going to publish it, no way that's allowed and I'd be open to all kinds of lawsuits from you and your rich father, not to mention it's unethical. But if they sent it to me, and I won't publish it then they can still send it to someone else who will."

"I know."

"What do we do?" Asks Andrew.

"I don't know." Admits Elle, any legal action will draw attention to it, and it's probably already been saved on a hard drive anyway. No one with this kind of dedication would have just one version.

"So we just have to sit on it?"

"I'll reach out to my lawyer," Elle said, like she was walking in a dream, and hung up the phone. "I think I'm going to go lie down." She told Harlow, who nodded, slowly. There is a bomb ticking away now, in her life. It can go off at any second.

XXX

Elle spent the day after she found out about the bomb sitting in her life wandering aimlessly, lost in thought. She didn't have any goal in mind when she wandered through town, taking it all in. She looked up the documentary 'RobRob'. Elle had never googled Robert before, never felt the need. The first link is a bust, it leads to Robert's Wikipedia page.

'Robert Robinson is an Australian Terrorist who murdered at least three people in 2006 -" She doesn't read the rest. Result two leads to some kind of Facebook fan page she skips entirely. Results three, four and five are all links to news stories where the nickname was covered by the media during the trial. Link six leads to a page for some obscure children's show, not related but kind of cool. But the next link leads to some kind of webpage that hosts only 'Cease and Desist.' It's a text post it reads -

'Thank you for all your support for this project, however, the documentary has been cancelled due to legal threats from the parties involved. Thank you.' She maximises the image. It is printed on a Rebecchi Law letterhead. Interesting.

'To Whom it May Concern at Doghouse Films

This letter serves as documentation of harassing activities. From the period of January 1st, 2010 Ms Katya Kinski has been receiving unwanted letters, phone calls and emails from this company as you endeavour to create a film about the actions of Robert Robinson. If this behaviour does not cease, effective immediately, she will have no choice but to proceed with litigation regarding this matter.

Jarrod Rebecchi, attorney at law.'

There is no other documentation on the website, but she at least has a lead on it. She's sure it's not going to stop the bomb from going off, either way, she should speak to him while they're still on speaking terms, so she heads into the courtyard.

Rebecchi Law is located to the left to the hotel, and has a large frosted glass window with the logo (a stylised spelling of Toadie's last name) is fully clear. When she enters, she's given a burst of cool air from the overtaxed air conditioning unit. There is a desk to her left with a slightly older blonde woman in a leopard print dress sits at. When she sees Elle, she gives her a toothy grin and gets to her feet, rushing over to shake her hand, hug her, and then look at her face. In that order. Elle gave her a blank stare but the woman didn't notice.

"You must be Paul's daughter!" she exclaimed, "Oh, I haven't seen you since…Well, Ever! But I saw pictures of you when you were a baby, your father was so happy to get pictures of you and your brothers -" She babbles, most of it bouncing off of Elle's face rather than going into her ears.

"Uh, yeah." She said, "I'm Elle."

"He talks about you all the time." She continues, "He's so proud of your writing, he tries to get everyone to read it." She continues, leading Elle by the arm to sit in front of the reception desk. She feels sick, suddenly, about how Dad is going to react when the bomb inside her life goes off. She's going to get disowned. She's going to have to change her name to the alliterate 'Lucinda Lewis'. God.

"Well, that's every child's dream. To make their parents proud." She said, awkwardly.

"And how is little Andrew?" She asked, cheerfully.

"Andrew's…Andrew's okay. It's hard to tell, sometimes."

"Yes, men can be a bit like that." She agreed, "Can I get you a cup of tea, a biscuit?"

"No, thank you." She couldn't keep anything down anyway, "Um, can I make an appointment to see Toadie, please? I need to speak to him about a cease and desist."

"Oh, of course, you can, he's free -"

"For Elle? I'm free right now." Toadie says, sticking his head around the corner of the room.

"You're meant to be having lunch," says Melanie.

"I can talk and eat. You would know." He says, deviously, turning Elle's already dangerously choppy stomach. "Come on through, Elle." He says, leaving no room for discussion. Elle stands, gives Melanie an awkward smile and then walks into the frosted office Toadie works in.

He looks different, but not terribly so. Same ugly facial hair, but he has a greying buzz cut now, and a stern, round face. She remembers being young with him, and how he grew up so quickly with Carmella and she had stayed perpetually nineteen, unable to grow up while living with Dad. But, he smiles at her and she rethinks her assessment of him as stern. Perhaps it's just a part he's playing. Stern lawyer. She doesn't know, she'd never had the impression he liked her particularly.

She threaded her fingers together on her lap and looked at them before looking back at him.

"I guess you're here about Katya's letter from 2010." He says, after a moment. She nods yes, and thinks about the bomb. No pleasantries, then. Shows how serious he thinks the situation must be. "How did you find out?"

"Why don't you tell me about it first?"

"Okay, it was a documentary being produced by Doghouse Productions which is owned by a long chain of shell companies with no end."

"Why didn't you tell me? Carmella could have given you my number if you didn't have it?"

"2010 was…A complicated year." He replied, "When Katya found out about the documentary, your father was in a coma, and you were incommunicado saving the world and I didn't want it to fall into Andrew's lap."

"So you and Katya just decided to…Deal with it?"

"We didn't think we had a choice." Toadie sighed, "I didn't tell anyone, not even Sonya or Susan. We just wanted them to leave her alone."

"So no one else knows?"

"I have no idea. I do know that they probably didn't have a lawyer on staff if one cease and desist made them stop production." Elle sighed and then closed her eyes for a moment. She had images flash past her of Andrew in prison, facing Robert behind glass and holding the plastic phone in one hand. She didn't want Andrew within a million miles of Robert.

"Thank you, for looking out for Andrew and Rebecca." She says, awkwardly, because Amy has told her she needs to be more open with people.

"I always had a soft spot for him." Toadie says back, "How did you find out about the movie?" Elle took a deep breath and then reached for her black and white handbag. She rooted around until she found her chequebook which she flipped to a blank page.

"How much will it cost to put you on retainer for the length of this conversation?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I want this to be privileged information you can't give to anyone else."

"Now I'm curious." Toadie thought about it, then said - "For you, Elle, Pro Bono."

"Last night, I got an email from Andrew, who got it from Summer linking me to a website. Did you ever encounter Serial Killer Paraside dot archive dor forum?"

"No, I didn't."

"Well, they have a stalker archive of images of Rob, his family and stuff."

"Weird, but I guess it's not unheard of, I mean, they made movies about the Zodiac Killer, and dozens about Dahmer or Richard Ramirez."

"Yeah, weird. Here's the really weird part. They have an archive of letters that I sent to Robert, and that he sent to me, and of our phonecalls posted as MP3 files." Toadie blinked at her and then opened his laptop on his desk.

"What did you say the website was?"

"Serial Killer Paradise dot archive dot -"

"Forum…" He said, clicking a few times, "Okay, it's an old-looking site."

"Click through to archive." He does, "Now you can find my entire life, on public display."

"God…" He said, scrolling, before hitting something. Then -

"You are receiving a call from -"

"Robert. Robinson."

"This call will be recorded, if you accept this call, you accept the charges for the duration of fifteen minutes. Please press one to accept, or press nine to decline, and block all further calls to this number."

"Hey Elle, it's Rob."

"What, still?" She asked, seeming cheerful.

"Unfortunately. You sound like you're in a good mood."

"I am. And nothing you can say could ruin it."

"Why?"

"Because Dad is coming to see me for Christmas! It's going to be ah-mazing. Andrew is flying in from Berlin, Leo is staying with me at the moment, Amy and Jimmy are going to leave Liam at home it'll be the closest thing we've ever had to a real family Christmas."

"And Harlow?"

"Well, she's in Erinsbough, I assumed you'd be spending it with her."

"We have a visit scheduled for Christmas eve." He says, tone characteristically unreadable.

"Your first family Christmas too, huh? Looking forward to it?"

"I don't know why I would be. It's not like we can drink egg nog and sing carols together."

"Well, you can still sing, but I don't know if the guards will appreciate it."

"I never liked singing anyway. Can I expect to be on your Christmas card list this year?"

"Of course, I've already organised a care package for you so you'll have it around Christmas Even so you can enjoy it on Christmas, and fifty bucks in your commissary. Don't spend it all at once."

"Oh, joy, all the Maggi noodles and instant coffee one could ever want. I assume your care package is full of the best cheap soap and cheap crackers money can buy?"

"There's actually a new radio and pair of headphones in there, amongst the goodies. I still think it's scummy that I can only send you gifts someone else picked though."

"You've been saying that for over ten years, Cindy, you might have to get over it."

"Ahh, getting over it. Something this family, especially you, is famous for."

"But, thank you." He said, voice shifting minutely, "I uh, I think my headphones are on the way out."

"I know, you told me last time we spoke." Pause from him, then -

"You remember?"

"Of course I did." Another long pause, like he's thinking.

"I…I appreciate it." He says, finally, "I, uh. Thank you."

"Don't get too sappy on me. I brought Jimmy the same thing." Robert chuckles to himself, and then says -

"Harlow said something worrying the other day." Rob says, changing subjects "She told me she wants to be a prison guard and change the system from the inside."

"She's a kid. Kids never know what they're going to end up as. When I was her age I wanted to be a hotelier, and you wanted, if I remember, to be a nurse."

"I just don't want her to be in this place longer than she needs to be. I've seen the burnout rate on guards. I don't want that for her. What kind of father does that make me, if I've encouraged her to come to this place?"

"I would say…A normal one? She wants good for her father. Kids SHOULD want that."

"Not my kid." Toadie paused the recording before the conversation could continue, which was more of Elle comforting Robert on his parenting, then then a brief discussion about the films on channel eight that week. He looked at her for a long minute.

"Holy dooley." He says, and it's so absurd it almost makes her laugh because who says that?

"You said it."

"There's hundreds of phone calls here."

"We've been speaking when we can since 2009."

"Jesus." Toadie gave her a bewildered look, "Why?" And wasn't that the million-dollar question. Why indeed? She doesn't even know where to begin explaining it to someone who wasn't in her head.

"If one of your brothers was in jail, wouldn't you want to talk to him?" She asked, "Rob is an evil bastard. But he's still my triplet."

"My brothers have never killed anyone's whole family." He pointed out.

"I'm not an idiot." She snapped, "I know what he did. But I love him, and I made a choice to accept that he will always be mentally ill and try to…To make something of it anyway. It's not exactly the Da Vinci Code here."

"I didn't mean to insult you." Toadie placated, "I just don't know if it's the choice I would make. Does Paul know about this?"

"No, he doesn't and in some of those calls and letters…I say some pretty unkind things about him." A pause, "When he finds out, I'm probably going to get disowned." She told him, "And I'm scared."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm here."

"You don't have your own lawyer?"

"I do. But I don't know she won't tell my dad. I know you won't because you're too ethical." He nods his head, thought about it,

"So you want to make sure this doesn't leak."

"I don't know if I can. If they sent it to Summer, they've probably shopped it around to others as well. It's kind of a waiting game, to see when it comes out."

"These recordings at least, are illegal." Toadie said, "We could report them?"

"I guess. But then Dad would still find out."

"I could try another cease and desist?"

"Will it work?"

"If they don't have a lawyer on staff, which it looks like they don't." Elle sighed, and then placed her head in her hands. Last night, things had seemed so normal, and now everything was falling apart. Including her.

…

Harold's is a lot different now from how it was when Elle was running the joint. For starters - they got rid of the hot bread box she'd loved so much but it had a lot more light. Big windows, white walls, it was, in essence, a very modern, tidy place for coffee. The chairs, however, remained uncomfortable. Carmella, who had always had a somewhat old-fashioned taste in decor, would have hated it. She thought about taking pics and sending them to her but decided against it. She didn't particularly want to draw attention to herself right now.

Every ten minutes or so, her phone would buzz with a call from Andrew. Or, from Andrew's phone, at least. Between calls from Andrew, there were calls from Summer. Upon her failure to pick up either of those people, she'd had calls from Izzy, who she only knew to be Izzy because she was the only one leaving a voicemail instructing her to call Summer back asap. But she remained resolute. She didn't want to speak to anyone right now. Instead, she left the buzzing phone on the table, watching as it bounced around and lit up. The image for Andrew on Elle's phone is a baby deer curled up against a deer used for target practice.

She produced her rose gold Macbook from her black and white handbag, and set it down on the table, opening the screen. The lock screen is an image of Under the Jacaranda, and when she types in her password (The date Cameron died, plus his name), it opens to her tidy desktop, which is the same painting, but a photo of it in a frame at the Museum in Queensland where it's displayed. One of Elle's favourites. Instead of lingering, she checks her three email addresses, beginning with her personal. The inbox is stuffed with increasingly desperate messages from Andrew, notifications of people commenting on her Twitter and Facebook which is mostly banal and bares little thought, and lastly, an email from Build A Bear declaring that there would soon be bears shaped like Axolotols. She didn't remember signing up to that particular mailing list, but she had purchased Build-A-Bear gift cards for Abi and Isla last Christmas and sent them by email. She knew that Leo had used the one she'd sent for Abi because he'd had a voice box put in that played a little recording of Britney's voice.

All up, it's a kind of inconsiderate gift that foists most of the responsibility of the present onto the parents, who now have to find the time to take their kids to a store that is only in a few shopping centres and fob off their requests for extras like shoes and sunglasses. No one has ever accused Elle of being good with kids.

Clicked onto her work email, mostly returns from people accepting and denying jobs she'd offered as part of the new paper, in between emails from Andrew and Summer that are variations on 'answer the fucking phone, Elle.' She ignores them, too.

Then, lastly, opens up the email she'd used to join the website last night. Nothing to report there, except for a single private message, which she clicked through to. It reads 'Is this Elle Robinson or just someone with a similar email?' She clicks through to the page and stares at the message. Of course, they would know what her private email is, why wouldn't they? Then, she navigated to the front page of the website, which was declared to be run by a webmaster going by the name Paradisekiller, and each section per killer had their own set of moderators. The Robert section has two mods, one named FitzBikerCat (a reference, she assumes, to Fritz the Cat) and the other named Ristic (which sounds like a play on Mystic). This time, she opened up 'Theories' which she hadn't bothered entering last night. The top bar reads 'A place to post your Robert Robinson Theories.' The top post reads 'Cameron Switch?' She clicked on it. It read -

"You know, guys, I've been thinking what if Robert really is innocent and Cameron stole his identity and just pretended to be?" Disgusted, she clicked on the next post which is 'Elle Accomplice Maybe?' It reads -

'Do you think that there's any chance Elle was Robert's accomplice? It seems like he did a lot for one guy, and it's pretty well known that her relationship with Paul is pretty toxic these days, lol!' Most of the comments on that post are deriding the writer for asking a question that makes Robert seem stupid. A quick browse asked some questions, mostly trying to figure out Harlow's mother, and older posts wondering if she was Elle's daughter. Some good posts with a lot of effort put in trying to link Rob to other various crimes and murders in 2006 (The one about Tony Corbett caught her attention because she had never even considered that), generally, it was discussion about Robert. She didn't see the appeal but maybe it's just because she'd spent her whole life with the guy. Drawing back, she went back into the pics tab, and scrolled as far as it would take her. The last post is titled 'bounties' it reads - 'Different to a grail, a bounty is an image wanted by a specific member of the forum that they are willing to pay for.' Most of them are random images of Rob that she's sure don't even exist. One catches her eye.

Serelle1989 - Any images of Elle with Serena Bishop, depending on quality up to $1000. For my Serelle fanfiction '. Thank you to Ristic for the last couple of pictures! In her icon, Elle notes a photo manipulation of herself, accepting an award, and Serena. It seems to be her obituary photo. Gross.

Fanfiction? Elle knows what fanfiction is - but why would someone care to write one about her? She hasn't even had a partner since she and Lucas broke up, too focused on her work. At least she had an inkling where to find it. Opening fanworks, she poked through the threads until she found 'It's All Part of the F*cking Story - A Serelle fic' The summary says - 'Celebrated New York Journalist Elle Robinson is thrown for a loop when her old flame, Serena Bishop, returns from the dead. Can Serena and Elle reconcile, despite Elle's lingering feelings for her brother Robert, who is Serena's would-be murderer? Can she find a balance between her family and her love interest? Or, will it all be, as Serena says, part of the f*cking story?' out of sick curiosity, she opened the thread.

'Chapter one.

It was a cold, and wet day in New York. Sleet fell from the sky, leaving a thick, grey sludge on the sidewalks, and on the balconies. Elle Robinson, sister of infamous Robert Robinson was in her home, enjoying an evening watching home movies. She lived alone, in her apartment, but missed the hustle and bustle of family life back in Australia where she was from. She was wearing a pink silk nightgown, and wore her hair long, and out. A knock pierced the air. Pausing her movie, Elle got to her feet, and walked to the door. She didn't bother looking through the peephole before she opened it, and assumed it would simply be her sister Amy, who had moved to New York very recently.

Instead, she swung it open and found a woman there that she thought she would never see again. Serena Bishop, who was meant to be dead."

"Hi, Elle." She said, "Been a long time."

A coffee cup was put down on the table in front of her by Isla's mother, Nicolette Stone. A redhead with a small, square face Nicolette was dainty but had a spine made of solid steel.

"You look like you could use a cup of coffee." She said, the yellow apron looks good on her, Elle thinks.

"Thanks. Didn't get much sleep last night."

"Spend all night browsing serial killer websites?" She asked, indicating to Elle's computer, "I can see your screen in the reflection of the painting." Looking up at the painting, which seemed to depict a series of small red dots, she sighed.

"No, not exactly." She admitted, "I was mostly looking at my ceiling."

"See anything interesting?"

"I think that there's a water stain up there, so, that might be a problem in the future. "

"Huh." Elle took a sip of coffee and closed her eyes for a moment. "So, serial killers, huh?"

"What about them?"

"I mean, you're his sister. Surely there's nothing they can tell you that you don't already know."

"You'd be shocked what you can learn on the internet. I've learned that I'm about to become the first person to be revenge porn'd by the True Crime Community."

"Really? How did they get your nudes?"

"It's not nudes, that would be one thing. It's a leaked photo of my injuries from when I was in a plane crash at nineteen." Her companion's face darkened. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Well, I've spoken to Toadie and he's taking it to the police on my behalf. Hopefully, they'll take it down, since it's technically a police document. That's about all I can do."

"You can't…Send them a legal threat or something?"

"Sure, I could, but I don't want to get in the way of a police investigation."

"I guess that makes sense." Elle let them lapse into silence. Her phone started buzzing on the table next to her. She looked at it and saw it was Andrew. Again. Both she and Nicolette watched it buzz. Elle's phone is set to buzz in sets of three. "Are you going to answer that?"

"No."

"Who is it?"

"My younger brother."

"He's trying pretty hard to get in contact with you."

"Yeah."

"What's this, your third phone call from him?"

"Since I've been sitting here, it's actually the eighth."

"Why?"

"Because he's looking out for me."

"And you're just going to screen his calls?"

"Yep."

"You should talk to someone about this. Maybe Leo?"

"Why Leo?"

"You two seem close. Since you've been back he talks about you all the time. It's driving David in-sane." She says, with an audible space between in and sane. Elle does like the sound of driving David to tear strips off his wallpaper but she doesn't want anyone to know. She's ashamed. Ashamed of being revenge porn'd, sure, but more for not being able to just let Robert go. A normal person would have been able to. He tried to kill her, and she's sending him clear plastic radios and filling his commissary account. She still loves him, damn it all to hell. She still loves him, because he's her brother. No one else will get it.

"I think that this might just be something I have to deal with on my own."

…

Elle didn't go home that night. But she does end up keeping a dinner appointment with Terese. She wanted to meet at Lanzini's, which had been Elle's personal favourite back in the day. She'd bet money that Dad knew that, and had organised it. He wants Elle to like Terese but it's not a matter of like or dislike - It's a matter of principle. But, she's a good daughter and she can't afford to draw attention to herself right now so she freshened up in the bathroom at work, and went out to dinner. Terese Willis is a woman approximately two decades younger than her father. This is to say Elle presumed her to be in her forties. Which is more appropriate than his previous girlfriend, Naiomi who had only been older than her for about a year. She supposed there was something to be said for her father preferring them young. Terese was tan, and short and wore her brown, coloured hair shoulder length. When she smiles, there is a dimple on one side of her face deep enough to plant corn in. Elle only noticed because she smiles a lot. She's trying hard to bond with her, and she could probably even manage that if not for...Well, the fact that she'd had sex with Elle's brother and then left him for Dad.

It wasn't a bad affair, to begin with. She and Terese, drinking sparkling water and discussed business. Terese is thinking about expanding Lassiter's amenities, she wants Elle's opinion. She thinks that she doesn't need it but is trying to be friendly so she goes along with it. The natural path of the conversation leads them through a discussion about the weather, and then through a chat about what Lucas was up to. Married with kids. Whatever - Elle totally doesn't care. Sadly, Dinner was interrupted when Glen showed up and joined them at the table like a giant, middle-aged alcoholic puppy still following Terese around.

"So, Elle." He says, "Paul couldn't make it? Too busy at work?"

"He wasn't invited. It's meant to be a stepmother and stepdaughter bonding dinner." She says, hoping that he'll get the hint and buzz off.

"Oh, okay. So you two are close?"

"We've met once or twice, usually when Terese came with Dad to New York."

"Is that all? I feel like we've known each other for years. Maybe because I'm just used to your Dad showing me videos of you on the news!" Terese says, with a little too much enthusiasm.

"You're on the news?" Glen asks, "What for?"

"Um, well it was conflict journalism for a long time, then Dad convinced me to give that up so now it's mostly finance advice and scam watch." She says, with more than a little pride. Her work is her baby and she's so proud of what she's been able to do.

"Paul convinced you to quit? Your father? That doesn't seem like a very fatherly thing to do, I'd be angry if I was you." He says, "What kind of father sabotages their daughter's career?"

"Well, I did get shot in the chest." She says, "I was wearing a vest, thank God, but I think it scared him pretty badly. I was ready to get out of the game anyway, I just needed a push."

"Shot?!" Terese demanded, "Paul never told me you got shot!"

"Well, I doubt you ever asked." She says, and Terese acquiesced and eats a spoonful of her meal. Elle thinks it's weird she eats pasta with a spoon."And we're talking a few years ago now, I moved back to New York full-time a couple of years ago, after Kate died I sort of went AWOL." She said, "Took a bunch of really long overseas jobs to avoid being alone with my thoughts too much, and I stopped returning Dad's calls."

"Why?" Glen asked,

"Just…Struggled to handle it. Historically, I can be pretty volatile when I'm grieving and I didn't want to expose Donna, Tash and Andrew to that."

"I remember. You didn't come back for the funeral."

"It was for the best. When Dad and I have a shared negative emotion we just sort of feed off each other. I didn't want a repeat of when Cam died."

"Cam?" Glen wondered aloud, "Your father has never mentioned a Cam."

"Cam's my brother, my triplet. He died in an accident in 2006. I don't imagine he would have, Dad's pretty private about it."

"Why?"

"That's kind of an invasive question, don't you think?"

"Sorry." Elle sighed, and instead turned her attention back to Terese. "How have you been finding being back at Lassiter's?"

"Yeah, good." She smiled, "Despite everything, I like my work. It really centres me."

"Now, see that's how I know you're a Robinson." Elle laughed, and Terese rolled her eyes fondly.

"She's not a Robinson." He said, tersely. "She might have married into the family but she's her own person."

"No offence, but I don't foresee a future in comedy for you." She tells Glen, before once again going back to Terese. "I get it. Being stuck alone with yourself for too long takes a toll. When I'm not working I start tearing strips off my house yellow wallpaper style."

"Don't I know it." Terese says, "Speaking of, did you keep your house in New York?"

"Well, Amy's living there at the moment. If this project falls through, I have somewhere to move back to and she gets to enjoy my taste in apartments."

"Are you still living in that loft?"

"No, it was fine for a while, but when they ended up putting the rent higher than I was willing to pay." She sighed, "So I was living in a fifty-seven-floor apartment, great view, really nice set-out, lovely balcony. The only downside is I forgot how noisy upstairs neighbours can be."

"Thankfully, I've never had that issue." Terese says, "We've always lived in houses, I wanted a yard for the kids."

"Oh, yeah my Mum used to say that. I guess it's just a mum thing."

"Where did you grow up, Elle?" Glen interjects.

"Tasmania." She answered, briefly. "Speaking of mums, Auntie Charlene has started inviting Amber to family barbeques, did you hear?"

"I saw it on Facebook," Terese confirms, the mention of the site sending a pit into Elle's stomach. "I'm glad that they are friends, you know?"

"Yeah, it's nice." She confirmed, and was about to speak when Glen buts in -

"So, you didn't grow up with Paul around, then?"

"No, I didn't. Everyone knows that, do you want me to give you a rundown of my life story or what? I'm trying to speak with my stepmother here." This embarrasses him enough that he shuts up and focuses on his appetiser. By the time she leaves, she feels annoyed with Glen and Terese. She doesn't sleep.

Around lunchtime the following day, Harlow tried to come to see her, but since she didn't have a passkey she couldn't get in. She continues to get a barrage of calls from Andrew that she ignores. Andrew has got Amy in on the action, so she ignores her as well. She doesn't know what compels her to ignore her siblings, just that she doesn't want to face it. She's shutting it all out because it's all she can do. Shut it out, and work. She checks her stocks obsessively. Spends three hours nose-deep in a dissertation she'd editing as a favour to Chris. She Stalks facebook looking for Riley Parker but finds nothing. Checks her emails, and finds two new private messages from the forum, asking the same question as the first. Doesn't take lunch. Loses herself in a rabbit hole that might lead her to Riley Parker but doesn't. Accidentally stumbles across Didge's obituary in an archive and fights off a wave of sadness. Calls Donna and they talk about shoes and her latest dress design. For dinner, she ventures down the street from her office to get something to eat but eats at the office. She tries to sleep on her office sofa but mostly ends up turning her thoughts around in her head.

On the third day, Andrew stops calling. Harlow stops visiting. Everything at the office is normal. Her small staff is putting together their first release. She works on Chris's dissertation some more, drafts a letter to Robert explaining the situation, checks her email over a hundred times, fields some calls from potential hires, goes to four meetings over Zoom, chats to Carmella over a sushi lunch via text, checks her stocks, emails her stockbroker three times and then gets an email from Toadie where she okays his cease and desist letter. At four, the WIFI cuts out and it takes an hour for IT to fix it, so she continues to work on Chris's dissertation. At six, she is sick of wearing the same clothes, so she goes home.

Arriving at Lassiter's, she took the lift up to the Penthouse and noticed that it was empty. She went to her room and took a long, hot shower in the private bathroom attached. She was tired from not sleeping for three days. She was scared about what was going to happen in the future. She doesn't know what to do, doesn't even know if there's anything she can do. She wants to go back to work because when she's working, she's not dealing with it. You are your father's daughter, she thought to herself as she rinsed conditioner down the drain. She changed into fresh clothes and spent an hour hiding out in her bedroom, but the penthouse is silent. Dad doesn't live here, he lives with Terese and Glen in what she can only assume is the worst houseshare situation ever on Ramsay St. Leo lives here, because, she assumes, he likes not paying rent and Harlow lives here because she doesn't like Glen enough to want to live with him. It's a nice little set-up they've got going on, and she's sure Leo likes the help that she and Harlow can occasionally give him with Abi.

Elle doesn't care for Glen either if you were wondering. She found his personality to be unengaging and his constant disparaging comments about her father tiring. She can see it's getting to dad as well, wearing him down. He loves Terese more than his mental health, and Terese feels guilty about leading Glen on so, she's pretty sure, Dad is now one bad day away from a mental breakdown. Both she and Harlow have, together and separately, tried to talk to him about it. He insisted he was fine, but she can see he isn't. She's at a loss for what else she can do other than be there to pick up the pieces. It isn't doing her opinion of Terese (which, to be fair, had been quite low) any favours. The one time she'd been alone with Glen he made a sad attempt at turning her against her father by listing off some of his worse qualities, she'd politely asked him how he thought he was going to turn her against her father when her mother and triplet brother had been unable to. He hadn't spoken to her since she made her affiliation clear. She was hashtag team Paul. Leo seems unable to pick a side. He has a lot more patience for Glen than she does and has appealed to her on several occasions to give him a chance.

A chance at what? To continue to imply he thinks she's too stupid and brainwashed to realize who her father is? Whatever.

Speaking of Leo, he must be the only family member who hasn't tried to contact her in the last few days. See - Usually, when she's having a problem it's Leo that she reaches out to. He's her best sounding board for ideas, and when an investigation hits a dead end he's the one who helps her find other paths. Obviously, she'd been ignoring everyone, but he shouldn't be ignoring her, damn it! Elle sat on her bed and stared furiously at her bare feet. What was his damage? Had Andrew blabbed? She'd said some unkind things about most of their family members – But she never had a bad word to say about him. In part, because he was her favourite sibling (Cam not included) but also because she's big enough to admit that Robert had a special distaste for him and so Elle liked to rile him up by talking a big game about how good of a brother Leo was. And her exaggerations weren't even that exaggerated. Leo was a good brother. So the silence from him now is jarring. Maybe, she catastrophizes, she's made one too many comments about Glen or swapped out Abi's outfit for something cuter too many times. Maybe he's finally realised how high-maintenance Elle Robinson Incorporated is? With a long tired exhale, she put her face in her hands. Three days of no sleep is getting to her.

She left her room, and drifted through the penthouse like an untethered ghost, into the lift, and up to the roof where she knew Leo would be. Navigating the dark hallway she made her way to the pool, which was lit by the underwater lights shining off the tiles and the odd scone at foot level. Locating a chair, she sat and watched Leo in the water.

He was swimming laps, he'd come out of the water, take a breath, and then go back under. The round muscle of his back rippled with the movement, and she counted seconds as he would emerge, the surface tension of the water splitting open, and releasing him. She wished that the tension holding her down could release her so easily. She'd asked more than once why he liked it up here, why swim at night and he'd laughed, splashed her, and said that he had to maintain his physique somehow. She thought that there was more to it than that but had never asked. As you might expect, Elle did not particularly enjoy swimming. Almost drowning will do that to you.

It was almost hypnotic, to watch him go back and forth. With her chin resting on her palm, which rested on her knee, she let her eyes half close. Her mind drifted to Cam, she could almost hear him calling for her over that great divide between living and dead. She imagined him sitting by her, leaning back on his palms and watching Leo swim too. She envisions him in swim shorts and a rash shirt, with his wet fringe in his eyes.

"Man, he's good." Cam would say, "I was never any good at swimming, remember when Mr Lawson made me put a rubber band around my knees when we did frog kick?"

"Yeah, I remember." She'd say, "Leo enjoys it more than we ever did."

"Hm. I was always more of a football man, myself."

"You're telling me." She would say, "I went to every single game you ever played, even if that meant getting up at six! On a Sunday!"

"Don't act like you didn't enjoy it! I seem to recall someone liked being my own personal cheerleader."

"Only because it was you. I wouldn't have bothered for anyone else." Cam would shake his head, smiling in that little way that he did.

"So, you're going to talk to him, right?"

"Leo? Why would I do that? I want him to like me."

"He already likes you, and if he likes you as much as you like him then he won't care about Robert. Well, he'll probably care but he won't like, kick you to the curb."

"Maybe." She acquiesced, "But what if he does? I can't lose him, Cam."

"If you don't tell him, then you'll probably lose him anyway."

"So I'm in a lose-lose situation."

"Porky, you haven't done anything wrong. You've just been talking to your brother. Your triplet brother. If Leo loves you then he won't care. And if he turns you getting revenge porn'd on you then he wasn't worth your time, to begin with."

"I don't think Dad'll see it that way."

"Dad's crazier than coconuts. Who cares what he thinks?" Cam asked, with the ghost of a laugh in his voice.

"Me. I care because I love him and I never meant to hurt him. I was just…So angry back then. You know? You never met them but he loved Kate, Sophie and Harry so much and he wanted so badly to be a good uncle to them. What about me? I'm his daughter, I was his only daughter back then and he left me to die!"

"Are you sure Uncle Glen doesn't have a point?"

"Don't call him 'Uncle Glen' you have to earn that title and as far as I'm concerned, he hasn't done a damn thing to make me respect him enough to give him a title."

"Don't change the subject."

"I know he never meant to hurt me, either." She said, "He's just…He just isn't that good at interpersonal relationships because he can't control them."

"Hm. Sounds like someone I know. Name starts with an E -"

"Shut up!"

"He loves you, Elle. You're the whole world to him, you always were. Remember when we were little? It was always you asked for when he would call."

"I'm not a little kid anymore."

"Well, there's the crux of it. You were an angry kid when you wrote those letters to Robert bagging him out. You're an adult now and you can see him with adult eyes. I'm sure when Dad was twenty-two he also said some unkind things about Grandad."

"Yeah, maybe."

"Porky, he loves you. You have to believe that he loves you enough to overcome being hurt by you, just like you can overcome being hurt by him otherwise why would you even bother coming back?"

"I came back because this was a great opportunity for my career."

"Uhh huh."

"Shut up."

"Hey, you're the one with the overactive imagination, not me." Cam defended, "You want me to shut up you imagine me shutting up."

"I can't imagine you shutting up because you've never shut up a day in your life." This makes him laugh, and then spread his legs out further to better counterbalance the way he was leaning on his arms.

"Why don't you just try talking to Leo? If anyone can get Dad on your side, it's him."

"I hate talking."

"I know but -"

"Hey, Cind." Elle opened her eyes fully and then looked up at Leo, who was drying his hair with a towel, having left the pool. He sat next to her, leaning back on his arms, his impossibly long legs stretched out in front of him.

"Hi."

"So, you going to tell me why Andrew's been calling me every hour on the hour the last two days asking if I've seen you, and telling me not to tell Dad he's looking for you?"

"Did you tell him where I was?"

"Please, I'm not a dobber" - Historically, this is untrue. Leo's only alive because he is, in fact, a dobber - "But even if I was, I didn't know where you were and if you were trying not to be contacted then…." He trails off.

"Would you still love me if I did something bad?" She asked, turning her head to look at him. Leo is handsome, dimpled and tall. The whole package.

"Yes." He answered, unthinkingly.

"What if it was really bad and everyone else stopped loving me?"

"There's nothing you can do that will make me stop loving you." He assured her, "I might stop liking you for a while, but love? That's forever. Why, what've you done?" There's no way out of it, now.

"I've been…I've been in contact with Robert pretty much consistently since 2008." She said, the second part all in a rush. Leo looked surprised, blinked almost loudly, then replied -

"Robert as in Robert…Robinson? Our Robert?" My Robert. She thinks, possessively.

"Yeah." She says, aloud. He squinted at her, and then shrugged his shoulders.

"I still love you."

"What if all my letters and phone calls to Robert were...Sitting in an archive on a serial killer fansite, along with a naked picture of me and someone sent a link of it to Andrew's friend Summer to write an expose on me?"

"Pardon?"

"All my letters and phone calls to Robert are in an archive. Publicly."

"Why?"

"I don't know I didn't do it!"

"Hang on. There's a website that keeps copies of your letters…And phone calls? How?"

"Well, when you send a letter to someone in jail, they don't get the letter you wrote, they get a photocopy of it. I guess that when they were copying my letters, someone made another copy and posted it online."

"And the phone calls?"

"They're all recorded in case they're useful to the police, so I guess that's how."

"What's the name of this site?"

"Serial Killer Paradise Forum."

"And the…The naked picture?"

"It's a leak from the police case for the plane crash."

"You were just a kid when -"

"I was nineteen, so it's not…You know."

"Someone leaked police photos of you onto this website? A photo of you, aged nineteen, naked?"

"It was a photo of my broken collarbone and my bruised arm. I think, technically."

"But you were naked when they took the picture?"

"I was pretty beat up, you know, it was a plane crash. I was in the ocean being tossed around for like twelve hours afterwards." She can practically see the gears turning in Leo's head while he makes sense of the situation.

"How did you find this site?"

"Someone sent it to Andrew's friend, Summer."

"The one you wanted for the paper?"

"Yeah. And she was disgusted so she sent them to him, and he sent them to me."

"And that's what he wants to talk to you about."

"I've kind of been dodging his calls."

"And why Harlow's been looking for you."

"I've kind of been dodging her visits."

"What's your plan?" He asked, sitting up straight and looking at her.

"I don't have one."

"You don't have one?"

"It doesn't matter what step I take, Dad's going to find out and disown me."

"I don't think he'll disown you over this."

"When he reads what I had to say about him, he will."

"Elle…"

"Leo I said that I thought Robert might have been right to want him dead." Silence falls over the pool area, and Leo stares at her with a wide-eyed look of horror. She put her face in her hands. "He's going to hate me. I can't take it if he hates me."

"We'll deal with this," Leo says, and moves closer to her, putting a chlorine-smelling arm around her shoulders. "I promise. We'll deal with this."

She finally sleeps that night, in bed next to Leo.

…

The following morning, they go for breakfast at Harold's with the intent of cluing Nicolette in on the situation. Elle doesn't know her well, but Leo is sure that her position as a gossip monger and the general defensiveness of her family will be helpful to them.

"She's not an investigative journalist like you, Cinda, but she is smart, and right now we need all the help we can get."

"Not Harlow." She clarifies because she doesn't want the kid involved in this kind of trouble.

"Not Harlow." He agreed, "I've got Andrew keyed up on the line, and he'll keep Summer in the loop."

"Okay, when we're there I'll go get Toadie." She said as they walked through the Lassiters forecourt. It feels like all eyes are on her, but she can't tell if it's just because she's paranoid or…If they really are. As they entered Harolds, she realized; they were. A creeping sensation washed over her as Nicolette abandoned the person she was serving to greet them at the door.

"Elle -" She begins

"Who published it?"

"The West Waratah Star." She said, and Elle nodded her head.

"I should have known." Her inaction has now cost her everything.

"I tried to hide the ones that came in for the store but -"

"People found out anyway." Says Leo, and then shows Elle his phone where he has pulled the front page up. On it, is the photograph, with an 'exclusive' bar tastefully covering her nipples. Left of her naked body is a series of photos from the website styled as polaroids. A picture of her and Robert at formal, a photo of her at an awards show, with Andrew as her date, a picture of her at the Lassiters fun run posing with Dad and beaming. The headline reads 'Secret Life Of Robinson Siblings' and the byline - 'In a world first report, we can share with you the letters and phone calls exchanged between terrorist Robert Robinson, one of Australia's most infamous criminals and his sister, renounced journalist Lucinda Robinson! Secret daughters, commissary payments as he lives the highlife on his sister's money and does Lucinda think that her father, businessman Paul Robinson should have been killed? Heather Pryor reports.'

"That bitch." Elle says, recognizing the name right away.

"What are you looking at?!" Demands Nicolette to the patrons, "Sorry Elle we should move -" Leo's phone started to ring. His black screen ominously reads 'Dad' in white, block letters. He looked at her, she nodded, and he slid the icon to green and held it to the side of his head while Nicolette led her to the back of the store. She feels as though there is a vice, gripping the top of her head in fear. Leo paces back and forward through the kitchen with the phone to his head.

"Yes, she's fine. She's with me. No, Dad - No. She's - Dad - Yes I'm at -" It gives little away.

Nicolette offers her a coffee, but she doesn't think she can eat or drink right now, and just lends forward, catching her head between her knees.

Then her phone begins to ring and ring, and ring. Mostly numbers from her colleagues, which she ignores. Instead of lingering, she sneaks out the back door.

…

She doesn't go to Ramsay street. She doesn't even go to Lassiters. Instead, she does what any child does when they want to be comforted. She went to her Dad. He was where he often went to ruminate, out on the lake, standing and looking into the murky water. She walked out on the bridge and stood silently next to him.

He was frowning tightly and had his hands clasped behind his back. She didn't know what to say, so she thought she would begin with the obvious.

"Daddy?"

"Don't. Don't play these games with me, Lucinda." He said, sternly and she's knocked for six because no one. No one calls her Lucinda. "What the Hell is that?"

"The newspaper?"

"No. the bloody- Yes. the newspaper."

"I - I haven't read it but the information comes from an ah, archive of all my letters and phone calls to Robert."

"Your archive?"

"No, someone else's. They were leaked, but I do have my own copies of all of Rob's letters." He nods his head and continues to not look at her. "Dad -" She tries again, reaching out her hand to put it on his arm but he rebuffs her.

"And it is true? You've been sending him money and - and gifts? Since 2008?"

"Yes, it's true." She says. "I put money in his commissary when it was low, and I sent him the occasional birthday or Christmas gift. He was rotting in there, Dad!"

"That's what he was meant to do in jail!" He exclaims back, matching her energy. "Rot. For what he did to us, to this family!"

"He's still my brother!" She exclaimed back, "If it was Uncle Scott, in there wouldn't you want him to at the bare minimum be able to - to keep his cognitive functions?"

"Do not bring my brother into this." He said, dangerously.

"Okay, what about David? Did you do everything you could for David after he killed someone? I didn't even do that much for Rob, just - Just enough to make him a little bit more comfortable!"

"You shouldn't have done anything, don't you get it? He doesn't love you, he wanted you, he wanted us dead."

"I know that! But he's still my brother. I still love him!"

"And is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"Did you really write that maybe he was right and I should have been killed?" She falters and then loses all her bravado in shame.

"Yeah." Dad deflates as well, finally looking at her. He's got a face like broken glass, and Elle feels like her heart is being rubbed in it. She never ever meant for him to read that, she never even meant it when she wrote it, and Rob shut it down real fast in the following letter.

"Why?"

"Because I was mad at you."

"What could I have ever done to deserve my own daughter saying that about me?"

"Everything! You - You left me to die at the hands of a kidnapper because you - You brought the newspaper and set me up! Because you didn't want me!" She finished, "You didn't want us. We were born and you just…Gave up. And there was Kate, and Sophie and Harry and you were trying so hard to make them like you. Giving them money and trying to be there for them, what about when I was a teenager? What about when I needed you? I just couldn't stop thinking, why didn't you fight for me? Why wasn't I good enough for you to fight for? Was it because I was a girl? Was it that I loved you too much, was I too far away? Why did you never visit? Why…Why did you never fight? You fought for Andrew. I saw the court filing, on your desk. You took Christina to court for Andrew but not me? I was just…Mad at you"

"For God's sake, I thought we were past that! Are you going to hold this against me for the rest of our lives?"

"No! I am over it!" She said, "I don't feel like that anymore, it was over ten years ago, I was twenty-two and I'd been through more trauma than anyone ever should have to go through, and you were an easy target, okay? I don't feel like that, I don't want you dead, and I'm over it now."

"I don't believe you."

"Dad -"

"Don't call me that."

"You - You let Rob call you that. He told me, he called you Dad."

"At least Robert is honest about his intentions, not living under my roof and writing letters about how much he wants me dead to the man who tried to kill me." She tries to think of something to say, to change his mind, to diffuse the situation. This was her dad, who was she if she wasn't Paul's daughter her entire life is based around being Paul's daughter, around being a Robinson, she came back here because he wouldn't come to her and it's still not enough.

"Well. It was my roof if you remember." She says because it's all she can think to say, "You gave twenty-two to me, so I was writing under my roof." He just shook his head, and didn't say anything for a long moment.

"Just leave me alone, Lucinda."

"Daddy I -"

"No. No, you're not going to call me that. Not this time. Just go." Elle opened her mouth to speak but then doesn't.

"I love you." She says, meekly. He says nothing, but his face has gone cold. She feels completely hopeless. She walked back to the hotel, through the carpark, and slid into her red Pontiac rental. She needed to get the hell out of dodge.