‘I have. They’ve too many kids and not enough staff.’

‘And call Natasha Hayward, I want her in on the meeting too.’

Stevie looked at her watch. ‘Will do. She’s visiting Mrs Kusak now, but she should be back on time. Okay, I’ve really got to go. See you.’

Monty stood in the shade of the entrance for a moment and watched Stevie run through the glare of parked cars. Tyres squealed as she left the car park and darted into the traffic.

Tash didn’t turn up for the team meeting, nor did she answer her phone. Stevie dropped by her place on her way home, but only Terry was home, and he hadn’t seen Tash all evening. Stevie then had to spend precious moments assuring Terry that if his sister had been involved in a car accident they would have heard by now. She asked him to get Tash to give her a call as soon as she got home.

The meeting at Central had gone longer than expected and the deviation to Tash’s place meant Stevie was later home than she’d planned. She was hoping this hadn’t caused Emma any problems—Izzy tended to play up when she was late to bed. Stevie let herself quietly into the house, interested to see how the babysitting session was going.

Emma sat on the couch with Izzy on her knee, slurping on an icy pole, rapt in a blanket of attention. Stevie tiptoed closer, wanting to hear but not wanting to break the spell.

Izzy interrupted the girl’s narration by thrusting the icy pole under her nose and offering her a lick.

‘No thanks, I have germ issues,’ Emma smiled. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

Izzy nodded and snuggled closer.

‘It was a magic, fairy-tale kind of a place,’ Emma continued, ‘part castle and part luxury villa, and it was built over a lake where a billion water lilies grew. It had towers and battlements and an inner courtyard with a pond and a statue of Peter Pan for a fountain. A high wall surrounded the courtyard, and the only way you could get into it was through one of those little doors like they have in the walls of prisons...’

‘Daddy says they’re for little prisoners,’ Izzy interrupted, her whisper whistling through her missing front teeth.

‘Then he must be right, Izzy. And because of all these barriers and the very small door with the very big lock, Katy Enigma knew that in this place she would always be safe from her enemies. If by some bad luck one of them was to get into the castle, she could escape by the secret passageway hidden behind the bookcase in her bedroom, or the other one that led from one of the kitchen cabinets and ran under the lake. If they came upon her outside in the courtyard, she could climb the one thousand steps to the highest tower, the one with the dome on top of it, and throw herself off to make her escape by running across the water lilies...’

‘And the baddies would try to follow and then be drownded,’ Izzy interrupted.

‘Drowned,’ Emma corrected. ‘That’s right, because they don’t have magic powers like Katy Enigma.’

‘Or her jet-propelled backpack,’ Izzy said.

Much as she was enjoying the story, Stevie could play the voyeur no longer. She cleared her throat.

Emma looked up and smiled, flashing Stevie a mouthful of coloured braces. ‘Oh, hello Mrs Hooper.’

Izzy jumped from her babysitter’s knee. ‘Mummy’s not Mrs Hooper! She’s not Mrs anything—silly!’

Emma reddened. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ but made a quick recovery. ‘We laid the table and made a salad. Izzy said she doesn’t like fish, so I gave her baked beans on toast, I hope that’s okay. I wasn’t sure how you wanted the soup cooked, so I’ve left that for you to do. Izzy’s had her bath and done her reading.’

Stevie was almost speechless. Mrs Carlyle hadn’t been wrong when she’d said this girl was a model of efficiency.

‘Thank you, Emma, you’ve done a terrific job.’ She smiled as she looked around the lounge room, at the cushions set straight upon the sofa, the hearth rug smoothed and the toys in the toy box—the place seemed to be tidier now than when she’d left it. She rummaged in her bag and handed Emma a twenty-dollar note. ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’

‘Thanks, but I’m okay. It’s only a short walk.’

‘I don’t think your parents would want you walking home so late—it’s nearly dark.’

‘They don’t care,’ the girl shrugged. ‘But do whatever you want, it’s cool.’

Stevie would have liked the opportunity to talk some more with Emma, but the short drive was monopolised by Izzy eager to hear the rest of the story. Apparently the waterlily lake was the home of a friendly dragon with eyes like ginormous stuffed olives and a tongue which, when unfurled, could stretch the length of their school oval.

Number 64 Riviera Place dwarfed its neighbours, taking up almost every available metre of the sloping riverside block. Stevie’s headlights lit up a white, double storied, flat roofed building, easily visible through an inadequate row of pencil pines. Look at me, look at me, the house seemed to cry, but upon closer inspection, there was little to see other than the even stripes of the front lawn and the dead eyes of huge reflective glass windows. Like looking at black ice, Stevie thought.

‘What do you think of it?’ Emma asked her.

‘Your house? It looks great.’

‘Liar,’ Emma said with a grin. ‘But it looks better than it did before. When it was grey it looked like Hitler’s bunker. I got them to paint it.’

Stevie smiled, but said nothing. Talking to someone about their house was like talking to someone about their children. They were allowed to be critical, but more fool you if you agreed.

Emma jumped from the car and ruffled Izzy’s head through the open back window. ‘I’ll tell you some more of the story when I come over next, but first we have to finish reading your schoolbook.’ She turned to Stevie. ‘You wouldn’t want her watching too much TV would you?’

Stevie shook her head vigorously, the model parent to a stern schoolteacher. Shit—how old was this girl again?

‘Same time tomorrow, Emma?’ she queried.

‘Sweet.’

The return to teenage vernacular was reassuring. The front porch light came on and Stevie saw a plump figure bathed in light. She unclipped her seat belt and made to leave the car. ‘If that’s your mother, I’d better come and introduce myself.’

Emma gave a slight start. ‘Um, no, that’s not Mum, that’s our housekeeper. Mum won’t be home yet.’

Stevie relaxed back into the car seat. ‘I’d like to meet her sometime.’

‘Sure, I’ll arrange it.’ Emma turned on her heel and ran towards the house, disappearing into the light before Stevie could get a firmer commitment.

Izzy was asleep in her car seat by the time they got home. ‘Emma, where have you been and whose car was that?’

‘Oh, hi, Mrs Bamford, great to see you too.’

The housekeeper shook her head and clucked her tongue. ‘Your mother never said anything about you going out after school. I’ve been worried.’

Emma kissed Mrs Bamford on her cheek and squeezed her floppy arm. ‘Mrs Carlyle wanted me to do some extra babysitting this week. I did tell Miranda, but you know what she’s like, she must have forgotten to pass on the message. The lady who dropped me off was one of Mrs Carlyle’s friends who called in for a visit when I was there. She lives nearby and offered to drive me home.’

‘I’ll go and heat up your tea in the microwave.’ Mrs Bamford headed toward the kitchen, her slippered feet yawing inwards as she negotiated the shiny sea of marble.

Emma stopped at the stairs, gripped the wrought iron balustrade with one hand and swung outwards, making her body star shaped. ‘I ate at Mrs Carlyle’s,’ she called out. ‘When are my parents getting back?’ The balustrade groaned.

‘Stop doing that dear, it’s becoming quite loose,’ the housekeeper chastised.

Emma continued to swing; Mrs Bamford would expect nothing less.

Mrs Bamford said, ‘Your mother’s at one of her cocktail parties and your Dad’s gone to his conference in Queensland.’