The room wasn’t really a secret room – or at least, it wasn’t ever meant to be. It had just been built onto the back of the top floor as a way for the early Bromleys to extend the building when poverty-stricken family from England turned up – Bette had told Cathy this in one of her many Bromley lectures. They hadn’t even given it a door, just left the original window there as the only way to get in and out.

‘It’s just me, Danny,’ she said into the silence when she reached the top of the stairs. She dusted the grit from the handrail off her hands and shone the torch around.

In that original top-floor room the floor tilted away at an angle towards the back. The air was close and stale, the heat of the day still trapped under the roof. The window at the back of the room, the entrance to the secret room, had dense boards fitted into the frame so that it was impossible to look in without opening it. The dust on the sloping floor was undisturbed.

‘Danny?’ Cathy said, and she slid the window up in its sash and shone the torch around the small square space. Empty.

When Cathy returned to the house the light was off in the Dutch Room and the house was dark. She crept through the double doors and picked up the phone.

‘Is Danny with you?’ Cathy whispered to Leonie the minute she picked up.

‘Yes,’ said Leonie. ‘He’s here.’

‘Oh thank god.’

‘He can’t talk though, he’s just having a shower right now because he’s a bit of a mess. Your dad kicked him out of the car up on the highway. Literally kicked him out as it was still moving.’

‘Oh shit! Is he okay?’

‘The car was just going slowly, you know, but fast enough to take some skin off his shoulder. Arch happened to drive past later and saw him sitting there covered in blood and picked him up.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah. And, also –’ Leonie paused.

‘What is it?’

‘So your dad told him that if he stayed friends with me, he’d kill me.’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Yeah. So I’m a bit freaked.’

‘Man, he’s such a jerk!’ Cathy said. But she felt so crazy with relief that Danny was okay that she said, ‘But I wouldn’t worry about it, seriously, Leonie. Dad’s all bluster and talk. Really, he’s gutless.’ She felt more and more sure of herself as she talked. She was totally convinced. ‘He’s totally a prick, doesn’t know his own strength sometimes, but he’d never actually really hurt anyone.’

‘You reckon?’ said Leonie.

‘Oh yes,’ said Cathy. ‘I know he wouldn’t.’

‘Okay,’ said Leonie. ‘Well, I guess I’ll just have to take your word for it.’

29

I didn’t sleep. How could I with that letter from Mum clamouring away on the desk under my notebook?

Early in the morning I heard Hessel step through the kitchen and out across the yard. It wasn’t even first light.