Our House(30)

‘AC/DC?’

‘Judas Priest.’ He was pleased with the victory. ‘What did Fee Fi Fo Fum say, then? About the ban?’

He’d met her several times: family parties, dinners with his wife Rebecca, birthday drinks in the Two Brewers. Once, when Fi was a bit stressed, she’d found us smoking and hissed at me like I was some juvenile offender. I’d seen the look of shame on Neil’s face before it rearranged itself into laughter.

‘I haven’t told her yet,’ I said.

He whistled. ‘Well, good luck with that. I’m guessing it’s going to affect your new henhouse arrangements, is it?’

‘Not henhouse. Bird’s nest.’

‘Sorry, bird’s nest. Clipped your wings a bit, I would have thought.’ He cackled, never more amused than by himself. ‘They’ll grow back. You know she’s been in touch with Rebecca? Rallying the sisterhood. She sent her the link to that podcast and now they tweet together when they listen. What’s it called again?’

‘The Victim?’

‘That’s the one.’

The Victim was a cheap, sensationalist bit of entertainment with which Fi and her crowd had developed an obsession. Every episode, a new victim – invariably female – gave her unvarnished account of some terrible injustice, safe in the knowledge that there was to be no opposing argument, no investigative reporting, nothing that might contradict her version of events. Instead, listeners were invited to draw their own conclusions. ‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ Fi said by way of explanation (she liked to listen to it while ironing the boys’ school uniforms).

‘Goes on for hours,’ Neil said. ‘Just one woman slagging off some man. It’s never woman-on-woman, is it? And what if it’s not true, just someone venting? Doesn’t that make it slander?’

‘Hmm, yeah,’ I said, no longer really listening. Why was there no further news about my victims? How long could people remain unconscious before their chances of recovery faded? Was it less disastrous for me for the mother and child to die, removing any risk of their identifying me, or to recover and reduce the severity of the criminal charges brought against me if I was identified? (Assuming the driver of the Toyota hadn’t made a report – and if he hadn’t already then surely he must have decided not to at all.)

Scrub that, I know how it sounds. I wanted them to live, of course I wanted them to live. If I thought my life was somehow worth more than theirs, I wouldn’t be writing this now; I’d be somewhere far-flung, beyond extradition.

Lost in some savage place where only the damned take their pleasures.


‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:09:04

To my surprise, when I returned from the community meeting at Merle’s on the Wednesday evening, Bram was standing in the front garden under the dripping magnolia. There was a large rain puddle on the paving stones and he seemed oblivious to the fact that one of his feet had sunk into it.

‘Why are you out here in the dark? Keeping a lookout for burglars? I don’t think we’re in any danger with a police officer still on the premises two doors down.’ I noticed he was smoking, which answered my question for me.

‘Meeting go okay?’ he said.

‘Yes, really good. They gave us these special pens with forensic fluid to mark all our valuables, so if they’re stolen and get recovered, they can be returned to us. I’ll get the boys to do it, they’ll enjoy that. And we’re going to get new signs that say “Criminals Beware: this is a policed neighbourhood”, or something like that.’

‘Sounds useful.’ His tone was mechanical.

‘I didn’t know you were smoking again.’

He didn’t answer, which was fair enough; I had no jurisdiction over him now and in any case he’d stepped outside. The boys were upstairs in bed, their lungs safe.

‘Thanks for staying late. Are you coming in?’

‘No, I’ll just finish this and then go.’ He startled at the sound of Merle and some of the other neighbours coming from the house to say their farewells to the police officer at the gate.

‘You look a bit uneasy,’ I said. ‘Guilty conscience?’ As our eyes locked, I kept my expression free of challenge. ‘Your teenage brush with the law, I mean. What else?’

His face flickered with some emotion I couldn’t track. ‘Oh. Right.’

It was sly to bring this up, a schoolboy conviction for cannabis possession almost thirty years ago. He’d been unlucky to have just had his eighteenth birthday and qualified for adult prosecution.

He looked away, ground out the cigarette and kicked it into the deepest part of the puddle as if expunging all evidence of it. Of course, I interpreted that as symbolic of a desire to expunge far greater transgressions than a sneaky smoke.

‘I’ll head off then,’ he said. He really did look wretched.

Don’t waver, I told myself. Remember the playhouse. He didn’t stop to think how wretched that would be for you, did he?

I noticed he took a left at our gate, not the right that would have taken him in the footsteps of the police officer and the most direct route to the Parade and the park, but I didn’t dwell on why.





17


‘Fi’s Story’ > 01:11:33

Were the women of Trinity Avenue control freaks? Is that a serious question? Because we pulled together as a community to prevent crime?