With a melodramatic sigh, Lauren paced across the street, towards her car.

Gary looked back at Markus’s house. He was standing at the front window, his arms folded. Gary met his eye, wishing there was something he could do.

There was; he could give the hard drive back.

Instead, he turned and walked down the street.

47

CASEY

Casey had no idea how she’d driven home without killing somebody. Maybe she had; maybe she’d forgotten. She vaguely recalled the stand-off outside the school, when that smug-faced woman had tried to assault her and Casey had been forced to defend herself.

Sitting outside hers and Scott’s marital home – a term that meant nothing to her – she’d cracked open her treasure box and indulged shamelessly. She’d snorted several lines of that pure beautiful cocaine; she’d popped an E. She’d smoked another medley blunt. She was floating, hardly aware of what she was doing, except that something had to happen.

Scott had locked himself in the en suite, darting for it when she’d walked into the bedroom and found him with Natalie’s notebook in his hands.

Casey pounded on the door again. She was hitting it hard, but there was no pain. She was neither happy nor sad nor angry, but she was interested: curious to see where this would lead.

She felt like the end was coming. The end of this experiment anyway, this failure. She’d learned her lesson; next time, she wouldn’t wait a year. She’d find a way to get right into the fun stuff. And she was still capable of fun, of enjoying herself. She refused to believe otherwise.

She hit the door again.

Scott whined, “Casey, please. Just stop it.”

“I’ll huff and puff and blow this house down.” She giggled, because she thought it was the appropriate thing to do, a way to really freak him out. Nothing was particularly funny. “Come on, little piggy. Don’t make me say it. I’m so tired of saying it.”

I am a rainbow fractured in space floating colours disparate never to meet.

“Do it. Send the email.”

Casey laughed. I am all the light in the fire the hottest point will be the brightest. “You. Don’t. Mean. That.”

With each word, she pommelled the door.

“Did you write this?” Of course the baby was crying, a sob making his words crackle, static coming from some far-off place.

“Your wife wrote it. You abused her.”

“None of this is true.”

“Liar, liar, liar.” Casey kicked the door with her designer heel, kicked it again. The reverberation went up her leg and her knee twinged, but there was no pain. “Lying cunt. Lying fucking freak. You’re pathetic, Scott. A loser. Always have been, always will be. You raped your wife.”

“Did you write it?”

“Enough. Come out now. Or I press the big red button. I nuke your whole weasel life. Hurry. The fuck. Up.”

She reached into her jacket pocket and took out her phone. The screen was blurry. She was glad she didn’t have to type in the passcode; that joke was still without a punchline.