31/vii/81 Curtis won’t admit it, but I think Gary’s been at it again. I stopped to get him on the way to school, and Anne ducked into her bedroom.

I jumped down the steps, three at a time, and ran towards the house. All the way around, then I stopped under his parents’ window, and listened.

‘You gonna iron this?’

‘Do it yerself.’

I crept around the side of the house, opened the gate and dragged it on the concrete. Closed it, stood under Curtis’s window and knocked. The music quietened, the window opened and he looked out. I said, ‘Should we have yer smokes?’

‘They’re having a session.’

‘Come on … I’ll wait in the Rosies’ yard.’ I jumped the fence and ran across the road to number 26. Down the drive, into the backyard. I sat on the step and waited for Curtis. Knee-high weeds, skeletal trees, the back door open, as it had been since the Rosies moved out in 1978. We’d often go through the place: the rooms full of flattened boxes, old magazines and rat droppings; leaves that had blown in the open doors and windows; a few of Vicky’s dolls. Mum reckoned everyone knew what had happened in the backyard, and who’d want to live in such a gruesome place?

I took out the first smoke and smelt it, considered it. There was no point waiting. A puff: the shed with the collapsed roof. Another: what must’ve been a veggie patch, although we’d pissed in it a hundred times since they’d gone.

Curtis appeared and sat beside me. ‘What y’ doing?’

‘Felt like one.’

‘They’re not yours.’

I offered him a go; he accepted, which was his way of forgiving me. ‘I’m gonna get my fuckin’ nuts crushed when John gets back.’

‘You said he wouldn’t miss them.’

‘I lied.’

It didn’t bother me. ‘I don’t think he’ll be in a position to say much.’

He took the next smoke, lit it and started. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘McNally’s.’

‘Do you know what goes on there?’

‘I could guess.’

The light was dropping, the sky streaking with illicit haze. Curtis said, ‘Where do you reckon?’

I stood, and motioned for him to follow. My bet was the old lemon tree. ‘He wouldn’ta needed much height. Just enough to keep his feet off the ground. That’s a common misconception—that you need a long drop. But people do it in wardrobes.’ I stood beneath a big bough. ‘See, and he was a clever man, so he’d know his knots.’

‘Why would he know his knots?’

I wasn’t about to discuss it. ‘I reckon he would’ve put it here.’ I ran my hand over the branch, feeling for the groove, a mark, any sign.

‘There’s nothing there.’