You mean, Emma thought, Miranda’s off with her boyfriend and Christopher’s looking for a big chunk of Queensland sand to bury his head in.

Her father used to play with her sometimes: she had vague memories of soccer on the oval when she could barely walk, let alone kick a ball. And there were the stories too, always the stories before bed. She tried to remember when they stopped and couldn’t; it must have been a long time ago.

‘You staying over?’ Emma asked.

‘Yes. Now you be a lovey and get on with your homework. There’s a new series of “Grey’s Anatomy”, I mustn’t miss the start.’ She rolled down to the TV room on thick stockinged legs which always made Emma think of the maid in Tom and Jerry.

The babysitter being baby sat, how stupid was that. Then again, not much made sense in this strange, dysfunctional family. Emma waited until she heard the music blast from the TV. Poor, dear, lovey Mrs Bamford, just as well you’re so deaf, so trustful.

Emma strode past the TV room where the shadows flickered beneath the closed door. In the kitchen she double clicked the deadbolt and stepped into the paved back courtyard. The garden pond shone like black ink, reflecting the splayed trumpets of day lilies, golliwog heads of agapanthus and spear-shaped irises. She’d chosen and planted the flowers around the pond herself after extensive research on the Internet for the most colourful and longest blossoming. The citrus hues of the day lilies crowded with the yellow daisies and pale native orchids, gradually merging with the blues and purples of iris and agapanthus. The gaps between the stone steps leading to the pond were carpeted with tiny blue-flowered bindweed and English violets.

A jet of water from Peter Pan’s pipe carved an arc of silver through his silhouette. Miranda didn’t know who the statue was supposed to be. She’d had some men dig the pond and put up the fountain chosen at random from the garden shop. ‘What a charming little boy,’ she’d said.

Peter Pan had been Emma’s best friend. When she felt sad or lonely she would come out here and talk to him. She imagined him teaching her how to fly and taking her off to Neverland where she’d help him fight the pirates and help Wendy to look after the lost boys.

The dream had faded as she’d grown up, but the pond was still one of her favourite places, rarely visited by anyone in the household except her and the gardener. She turned on the garden light, then the green pond light, and sat on the stone bench for a moment to watch the goldfish glide, tails swirling through the water like chiffon in a breeze.

A scuffing sound from the other side of the garden wall broke into her thoughts. She looked up from the pond to see two hands clasping the top of the wall as if someone was trying to heave himself up on it. Or herself, Emma automatically corrected. You should never assume anything. She stopped breathing, her eyes strained as she peered through the shadows. The top of a dark head appeared above the wall, then a young face. It was a boy, his face pale as the moon. One of ‘her’ kids, she wondered? Squeaky? If so, how had he managed to find her here?

Emma stood up. ‘Hi,’ she called.

The head disappeared. There was a thump and then the sound of running feet on the other side of the wall.

Emma ran to the wall and stood on the pot of a cumquat tree to see over. ‘Hey stop! It’s okay! Squeaky, Howzat, Cheeky Charlie—is that you?’ The figure didn’t turn back, continued running along the river’s edge until he rounded the bend.

Emma jumped down from the plant pot feeling vaguely disappointed. It was a silly idea; the boy couldn’t have been one of ‘hers’. Sometimes she wondered if it was a mistake, remaining so anonymous, maybe if she had been more open...

She shook her head to rid it of the crazy thought. He was probably nothing to do with her, just someone casing the joint, checking to see if there was anything in the garden worth pinching.

She returned to the pond. The palm tree groaned, an owl hooted. The reticulation from the front garden announced itself with a soft fizz. She had about twenty minutes to go before the sprinklers here would be activated. Kicking off her trainers, she removed her tracky pants and reached for Peter’s hand. He helped her into the pond and warm yoghurty sludge slid between her toes.

Careful not to slip, she felt her way down the statue’s body, holding onto his leg with one hand and lowering the other hand into the water. She groped around feeling for the jut of the underwater plinth and slid the metal box from its hiding spot. The slimy bodies of fish slithered against the bare skin of her legs and the blood-warm water tickled at the sleeve of her T-shirt. She glanced around, shivered. No face at the wall this time but there were still plenty of gaps in the wall for prying eyes.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was still being watched.

11

It was the same kind of cloud, Stevie mused, that floated in the sky when they’d been doing controlled scrub burns on the station. Nothing dramatic and billowing, just low slung and greasy, indicative of a gentle simmering heat from the ground below.

The cloud had started gathering at the team meeting. By the time Monty came home with it hanging above his head, Stevie could smell it, could almost see it. She soon realised this was not the time to tell him about the phone call she’d just received from a hysterical Mrs Kusak. He was angry enough with Tash as it was.

‘It’s totally unprofessional, that’s what it is,’ he grouched as he plonked his keys near the phone. ‘We needed her at that meeting. I make sure my team members keep their phones switched on day and night. You should too if you ever want to get beyond acting officer in charge. You have to set some kind of boundaries, discipline your people.’

Stevie sighed and returned to the pot bubbling on the stove. He’d bust a valve if she told him the rest of it now.

‘I called round at her place on my way home, but she wasn’t there. Her brother said she hadn’t called and he didn’t know when she was coming home. Her phone probably had a flat battery,’ she told him.

‘But you left a message?’

‘Yes Monty, I’ve told you that. Twice. And I told Terry to get her to ring me when she got home.’

Monty tore at his tie and flung it across a kitchen chair and stormed out of the room, his heavy tread making the jarrah floorboards lurch under her feet like the deck of a ship. She heard the banging of drawers, the slamming of the wardrobe door. Within seconds he was back.

‘Where are my clothes?’ he demanded.

‘Where you left them.’

‘In your wardrobe, but they’re not there now. I’ve never seen such a mess, I’m surprised you can ever find anything in it—talk about the bloody black hole of Calcutta.’

Stevie tasted some soup from the wooden spoon. ‘Then they must be at your place. Or in your car.’

‘This is crazy, this whole situation is fucked.’

She slid the saucepan off the hotplate and turned to face him. ‘Then maybe you should go home. We can try for a rerun tomorrow night.’

Monty stared at her for a moment, then his shoulders suddenly dropped. ‘I’m hungry. And that smells good.’

She gave him a nonchalant shrug, kept her smile to herself.

He moved over to the soup pot and took a sample from the spoon. Then another. ‘It is good,’ he said, ‘but it needs more salt.’

‘Then hand me the salt and grab us both a beer while you’re at it.’

Monty’s mood improved as they ate. She told him about the new babysitter, Emma Breightling, and what a hit she’d been with Izzy. He even laughed when she described how the girl looked. ‘Sounds like a female version of Harry Potter,’ he said.

‘Harriet Potter aged thirteen, going on fifty.’

He was as good as he was likely to get, she decided; it was time to broach the topic. ‘Mrs Kusak rang me a couple of hours ago. She wants to make an official complaint about Tash.’ She lowered her voice half hoping he wouldn’t hear her. ‘She was in quite a state, almost hysterical.’