Cassie didn’t say anything. The show came on again. I put my pencil down and tried to watch properly. Cassie watched for a while too, but he didn’t laugh in any of the funny parts, and he got up before the show was even finished. I hadn’t laughed at the funny parts either and I wondered if he noticed, but later on, when I went to change into my pyjamas, there was a Freddo frog tucked under my pillow.
We were all in front of the TV when the cops came round. The sunset was lolly pink above the paddock and shone through the curtains, making hazy gold patterns on the kitchen walls. Mum and Dad were on the couch with a bowl of peanuts, Wally and me on the carpet drinking cordials. Wally had his clay out and was making a giraffe in between sips. Everything was fine. Everything was calm.
They sat with Mum and Dad at the kitchen table. Dad told Wally and me to stay in our room, so I stood against the door and tried to listen.
Wally lay on his bed, closed his eyes. ‘Do you think she’s run away?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I bet she has. What a dummy. I hope she’s gone for good.’
After a while Dad opened our door, told us to come into the kitchen. There were two cops sitting at the table— a man and a lady—cups of tea in front of them. The lady had fuzzy cheeks, and her hair was slicked back in a shiny bun that looked like a doughnut. She smiled at me when I came in, and then asked us all sorts of questions, about when we last saw Tilly and if we knew any of her friends. She asked us if we got along, whether she and Cassie got along.
There was a pause, and one of the cops asked Dad if Cassie was home. Dad stood up told them it was Ian they should be talking to. He told them all about Ian, about what happened with the girl in the toilets, like he’d forgotten Wally and me were sitting there, forgotten it was another one of their big secrets.
‘Butchered our cat,’ Dad said. ‘Ripped it to pieces like the little head case he is.’
I felt like I’d been poked in the chest very hard and my head started to spin with ugly images. I thought of Mango’s little body in the pillowcase all the way in the ground. I imagined her skeleton body, imagined her little head, wherever it was, as a hunk of bone as well. My mouth tasted like sick. It wasn’t a fox. It was Ian.
‘And did you report this?’ the man cop said, writing something in his notebook.
Dad rubbed his nose. ‘Well, no,’ he said, looking at Mum. ‘Didn’t want to disturb the peace. Cassie’d only just moved back home and everyone was still getting settled.’
‘And why did he move out?’
Dad glanced at Mum. ‘He wanted his independence. Thought he’d go it alone for a while. Normal for a teenager, isn’t it?’
The cop wrote something else in his notebook, and then said they’d still like to speak to Cassie, just so they could clear a few things up.
‘Clear what things up?’ Dad asked.
Dad went and got Cassie and then sent us to our rooms again. When the cops were gone I went into the kitchen. They’d left without drinking their teas, the bags mushrooming on the surface, the tea dark as cola.
I felt as though this was what I’d been waiting for. That pinprick in my stomach had been wearing away, and the hole was now wide open. Ian had killed Mango. He’d done awful stuff to her, left her out there in the grass to rot, and now he’d dragged Cassie into something much worse. He called after dinner that night. I can’t remember him ever phoning the house, but I knew it was Ian right away because Cassie bolted towards the kitchen on the first ring, even though he never answered the phone.
‘I’ll get it,’ I said, jumping off the couch as well. I wanted to get there first and pretend it was the wrong number so I could hang up on him.
‘Get,’ Cassie said, elbowing me in the head as I tried to duck past him. When he answered the phone he gave me a look telling me to get lost. I didn’t move, and he picked up a newspaper from the table and threw it at me. It got me on the neck and fluttered to the ground. I went back to the couch, waited a few minutes and then went back into the kitchen. I pretended to be hungry and opened the fridge, hoping he’d forgotten that I’d been trying to listen in. He was leaning with his head against the wall, talking quietly into the receiver.
I closed the fridge door softly and went over to the sink so I could get closer. ‘Hold on a sec,’ Cassie said. He picked up the phone from the table, dangled the receiver over his shoulder and went into the bathroom. The uncurled phone cord strained from under the door and into the power point in the kitchen. I thought about cutting the cord but I couldn’t find any scissors. I stepped on it for a while instead but nothing happened.
On Monday morning Cassie made us breakfast. He scrambled eggs in the microwave, pale as clouds.
‘Why are you making us breakfast?’ Wally asked.
‘Just thought I’d do something nice,’ Cassie said.
‘You’ve never make us breakfast before.’
Cassie put some eggs and toast and a cup of tea onto a tray and took it to Mum in bed. He called out for her softly and tapped on the door with the side of the tray, and then pushed it open with his bum.
After breakfast Wally put on his uniform and sat on the couch. He turned the TV to a breakfast news show but Cassie called over from the sink for him to change the channel.
‘You’re not even watching it,’ Wally said. ‘You’re not even in the room.’
‘Put on a cartoon or something,’ said Cassie.
‘No way,’ Wally said, even though that’s exactly what Wally would have done if Cassie hadn’t told him to do it first.
‘I don’t want to listen to this shit,’ Cassie said.
‘So don’t listen, you moron.’
‘Watch your mouth.’ Cassie walked over to Wally, prised the remote from his hands and turned the TV off. He held the remote over his head so Wally couldn’t reach it.
Wally bounded off the couch, grabbing at Cassie’s arms until Cassie stuck the remote down his pants. Wally reached for the waistband of Cassie’s boxers and tried to pull it out, but then Cassie called Wally a perve and pinned him down on the couch, jabbing him around the ribs so that Wally started gasping and giggling like a maniac.
‘Stop!’ Wally screeched. ‘I’m going to pee. I’m going to pee all over you.’
It worked. Wally forgot all about watching the news, but Cassie went back to the sink with the remote down his pants anyway.
We had dinner early, right when we got home from school. Dad pulled out frozen fish fingers from the packet and put them under the grill. He stabbed crosses into the spuds and put them in the microwave.
‘Why isn’t Mum making our dinner?’ Wally asked.
‘She’s crook,’ Dad said.
‘Is she having a cry?’
‘No,’ Dad said. ‘She’s crook.’
Dad pinched the fish fingers from under the grill and divided them among our plates.
‘I hate fish fingers,’ said Wally.
‘Well, so do I,’ Dad said, sitting down, ‘but that’s what we’re having.’
I squirted tomato sauce onto my plate. The undersides of the fish fingers were soggy and felt like mush in my mouth.
Wally picked up a fish finger and poked it in my face. ‘Don’t,’ I said, batting his hand away from me.
‘Stop squabbling,’ Dad said, turning up the TV volume with the remote.
‘He’s poking his fish finger at me.’
‘Eat your food,’ Dad said. He reached over and grabbed the fish finger Wally was holding and put it back on his plate so that it was touching the potato he’d mashed up with his fork. ‘This isn’t a bloody zoo.’