“It wasn’t me. It was my mum. She didn’t do it to be mean.” He points at Lettie’s house. “She’s got a problem. She needs help. People can help her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want help.”

“It doesn’t matter if she wants it; she needs it. You can smell her house from the street. I could smell it from your house.” He sniffs. “Reckon I can smell it from here.” His nose wrinkles. “It’s like there’s something dead in there.”

Something inside me goes very still. Not scared still, still like he needs to be scared still. I turn and face him, the closed gate between us. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know much about anything at all.” He blinks at me. “You act all clever and smart and talk about other people like you know their lives, but all you really know how to do is repeat what you hear your mum say and pretend like the thoughts are yours.” He steps back from the gate. I glare into his cow-brown eyes. “I doubt you have any thoughts of your own, do you, Oscar? Just like you don’t have any friends. So piss off back to your own house, friendless, and leave us alone.”

I don’t look at his face with his cheeks pink like I slapped him and his eyes wide like he’s going to cry. I don’t look at him at all. I walk up the path, get my key out and open the front door, stalk through and slam it behind us.

I FILL ALL the oil vaporizers inside. I’ve been gone all day and they’ve dried up. I wait till he’s gone before I go back out the front to water the sad hanging pots and stick a mosquito coil or two on the front porch.

Lettie’s back on her chair. Splints hustles over to the side fence in the hope of an ear scratch.

“All right, Rae?”

“Yep.” I keep watering.

“Want a hot drink?”

I keep doing what I’m doing, lean down and pull out some weed-looking plants. Fill up the watering can again. If Splinter wasn’t so obviously tired from his beach run we’d be out walking. I’d rather be out walking. The thought of sitting on a porch makes my feet itch.

“Nah. Thanks.”

“Sure. Okay.” She gets out of her seat and leans over the fence to give Splinter a scratch. “I saw you having a go at that nosy kid as I drove off.”

“So?”

“So, you don’t have to look out for me, okay?”