in the grass’ game but it doesn’t really work with one person and, anyway, I know I’m cheating because I always throw it into the grass where I know my foot can reach. The lawn is muddy because of the rain and the knife goes in fast and squishy. Then the policemen arrive, only one’s a lady and she doesn’t have a police uniform on but she does have a badge and she shows it to Mum.
They bring all the cold air from outside into the kitchen and they sit at the table. The lady policeman has her knees tight together under her skirt but the policeman sits at the corner of the table with one knee on each side of the table leg. The lady policeman takes out a yellow notebook with a spiral at the top and puts it on the table but she doesn’t open it yet. No one says anything except for the tap that drips into the sink: plonk, plonk, plonk. Then Dad scrapes his chair back and says to Mum she should do it and get it over with. She looks at him with her lips tight and I think she’s going to cry but she doesn’t. The policeman has a bit of bogey sticking out his nose but it doesn’t make me want to laugh.
The police car is parked in the driveway with its front just touching the towbar of Dad’s car, which Mum says is the love of his life. Mum’s car was a piece of shit. I try saying it like her — piece of shit — and then I say shit again three times just to hear what it sounds like coming out of my mouth. The intercom in the police car is talking as if it doesn’t know the people aren’t in there. I see myself in the police car window. I look scared. I wonder if Mum’s new car will be a piece of shit too. There’ll be plenty of room for me in the back now without Falcon’s booster seat.
The sky is weird. It hurts my eyes. In some places it’s blue, like the sky should be, but where it meets the land there are clouds all hunched up. They look like the mushroom clouds atom bombs make. They’re eating the sky right up and God knows what will happen then. I want to find a big tree to lie under but the grass will be too wet. My stomach hurts.
Dad comes out of the house and waves his hand at me like I’m very far away, but I’m standing right in front of him. Dad must be feeling the weirdness, too. Whiskey winds herself around Dad’s leg. Her back is arched right up and her tail is like a toetoe, only it’s golden and black. She’s rubbing against Dad but she’s looking at me.
Dad says, ‘Come inside. The police want to have a word.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I say.
‘Just tell them what you remember, love,’ he says.
He holds the door open for me with his arm stretched out and I go in underneath it like I’m playing Oranges and Lemons, but I’m not.
Dad sits me on his knee like when I was little but my feet touch the floor now. My bony arse must hurt him but he doesn’t say anything. Mum doesn’t look at me. She has a tissue bunched up in her fist and her sleeves are fat with the ones she’s already used. The notebook with the spiral is open on the table. The lady policeman has written enough to cover the whole page. There’s an empty space at the bottom. I guess that’s for writing down what I say.
‘Sunny?’ she says, making my name a question. ‘Can you tell me what happened in the car yesterday?’
I don’t know if I can so I don’t say anything. Mum takes her glass to the sink and fills it from the tap. She fills it right to the top so that some spills over the edge and all over her hand but she doesn’t drink any.
The policeman coughs. When Dad and the lady policeman look at him he smiles at me and says, ‘How old are you, Sunny?’
‘Seven,’ I say. Then I say, ‘Just,’ because he’s a policeman and I want to tell the whole truth. ‘I’m two years older than Falcon and it was his birthday yesterday.’
Dad makes a harrumphing noise and his leg jigs up and down making me wobble but he’s not