TEN

‘IT’S FINE,’ HE says now down the phone. Cain is at the lake house cleaning up after our first guests, Dan and Cherry. ‘Nothing broken or stolen, dishes cleaned, sheets stripped.’

It feels like a miracle. My fears of the house disappearing in an inferno and taking every memory of my grandparents were unfounded. Sometimes things aren’t nearly as bad as we expect them to be.

‘Cherry left us a lovely note,’ Cain adds, ‘and the recycling was all out too.’

‘Make sure you leave them a positive review,’ I say, eyeing Scotty beside me as he takes a bite out of his burger. He gives a small nod of acknowledgement. We’ve been talking about my anxieties about the guests and the house all day, in between calls.

‘Seems too easy now, doesn’t it?’ Cain says. ‘I’ll quickly set it up again and hit the road.’

I hang up and take up my chicken wrap. When we’ve finished I turn to Scotty.

‘Can we quickly duck to the post office?’

‘Which one?’ he asks.

‘Mount Eden?’

He screws up the wrapper of his burger, puts it in the paper bag on the floor and starts the ambulance. Too easy. So why do I feel this unease? I think about the way we’re using the lake house, hardly what my grandparents had in mind when they left it to me. We’ve scrubbed any trace of them from the house.

‘Here we are,’ Scotty says.

The Mount Eden post shop, like everything these days, has diversified their offer. It’s easier to find books, toys, As-seen-on-TV merchandise than it is envelopes and stamps. I wait in the queue, inching forward. When I get to the front the man simply raises his eyebrows.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘I’d like to open a PO Box.’

‘What size?’

‘Sorry?’

‘What size? We only have letter size left. Is this for packages or letters?’

‘Letter size is fine.’

‘Right,’ he says. ‘It’s two hundred and forty-five for the year and you’ll need to fill out this form.’ He bends, searches the shelves beneath the register, extracts a sheet of paper. ‘And I’ll need a copy of some ID.’

‘ID?’ I say. ‘But PO Boxes are anonymous, right?’

‘To the public, yes.’