Just make sure you stay away from Mr Sharpe, he said to me.

Why?

You don’t wanna hang around gloomy people.

Why’s he gloomy?

Cos things didn’t work out the way he wanted, so he’s still … shitty.

But he’s funny.

When he’s drunk.

He’s a communist.

No, he’s a misery guts.

I just play with Curtis.

That’s okay.

Are you a communist?

No, but I have the book. And he found it, and showed me, seven years before Ernie.

The toilet, as I remembered it. A ballerina for the paper, a scum ring, although it still flushed okay. The kitchen, stripped clean, and back to the laundry. The screen door, and me knocking, and Mrs Rosie answering, Vicky clinging to her leg. Is Mr Rosie home?

No, Clem.

Oh … Although I knew he was. I’d seen him walking up and down the drive in his pyjamas.

I was gonna get a book.

Can you come back tomorrow?

That you, Clem? The voice from the bedroom.

Go on, then, Mrs Rosie said, as Vicky stuck her tongue out at me.

I went into their bedroom and Mr Rosie was in bed, still in his pyjamas at two in the afternoon. He said: You finished those already? And I returned my pile.

Come on then. He took me into his study and filled my arms and said, How you feeling?

Strange question, cos there was no reason not to feel okay. I noticed he hadn’t shaved for a week, although it was term time, and his eyes were red, like he’d been crying. I’ll get started on these now.

Good-o.

I went back outside. Walked around the yard. The empty shed, with its cracked slab and oil stains, the beams that held up the roof. The louvres, cracked, diffusing the early autumn light. There’d been a Torana, and Pop had serviced it. The car Tina and Vicky had finally climbed into, before driving off. As we watched from the lounge, and wondered.

I went outside and studied the branches again. That was Pop’s explanation—although how he’d known? A few months after Vicky and Tina had left, me, lying in bed, listening through the walls. Pop saying, Hung himself.

Mum: Rubbish.

Went off his medication. She found him hanging from the lemon tree.

But I checked, and there was only one lemon tree, and the branches all poked up, although there were a few that’d been chopped off.

‘That you, Clem?’

It was Mrs Champness, peering through a hole in the fence.

‘Just having a look,’ I said.

‘It’s a disgrace, isn’t it?’ she half-sang. ‘There could be snakes in that grass.’

‘Do we get snakes around here?’

‘Yes, we do. Les found a brownie in the aviary. It was after the birds.’