not for Karen’s murder as I had assumed. Salena said the cops had told her more serious charges were pending. Presumably, that would be the murder charge, but the whole thing seemed odd and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I still hadn’t got it sorted when Sunny slammed the car door shut and threw her bag over her shoulder onto the back seat.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said bleakly, staring straight ahead.
I started the engine. ‘Are you okay staying at your grandmother’s?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be? I had nothing against her,’ she said, making no attempt to disguise her bitterness.
We were halfway along Jervois Road before she spoke again. ‘My friend Jasmine was there when the cops arrested him. It’s all over Facebook. All my friends know.’ She stared out the window at the rain-soaked streets. ‘I’m never going back to school. They can’t make me. I’d rather kill myself.’
I was trying to find a way to phrase the question. In the end I just asked it straight out.
‘What exactly did the police find, Sunny?’
She turned her bleak face to me. ‘Me. Disgusting photos of me. Naked and … and everything.’ She turned away again. ‘He took photos of me.’ The lights from the street strobed.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘Totally,’ she agreed.
Chapter 22
WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2012
Sunny curled up on the sofa with a soft blanket wrapped around her. Like a malingering seven-year-old she picked fastidiously through a container of steamed rice and vegetables. It had been a challenge to find anything of the fast food variety that she was prepared to eat and from the way she expertly weeded out any of the coloured items, it looked like this attempt had failed too. She responded to my critical look with a shrug.
‘I only like food that’s white,’ she explained.
She seemed to want to talk about what had happened, replaying events over again and again with little variation. Details were being etched into her memory and with each retelling they would sink deeper. Trauma does that.
‘Jasmine and me were in the kitchen. Neo was eating Coco Pops and Salena was lecturing him about having fruit as well, then Jasmine said there’s a cop down by the swings so Salena went to look out the patio doors. Then there was like, this knock on the front door.’ She mimed a fist knocking, visualising it, even though she couldn’t possibly have seen it. ‘And I went down the hall, and I could see them, see the police uniform, through the stained glass on the sides of the door. The glass made them look, like, all wavery. And I opened the door and there were these two cops asking for Dad. And then Dad came down the stairs …’ She turned her head, seeing the invisible stairs, seeing Justin, ‘and when Dad saw the cops, he froze. His hand was on the stair whatsit — the railing — and he kept saying “What’s happened, what’s happened?” And then he kind of just sunk down on the stairs, with his hand still holding on, like his legs wouldn’t hold him up any more.’ She choked a loud hiccup, her face flushed with the effort to hold back the tears. ‘I think that was because of Falcon. The cops coming to the door like that reminded him of when they came to tell him Falcon was dead.’ She looked down at her hands before adding, ‘And to tell him I was okay, I guess.’
Sunny was silent as I poured a glass of water and handed it to her. She took the glass but studied the liquid suspiciously.
‘It’s just water,’ I reassured her.
‘From the tap?’ she said, screwing up her face with disgust.
I nearly responded ‘It won’t kill you,’ but stopped myself in time. There were so many things that were inappropriate to say to this girl.
She put the glass on the floor and picked up the story exactly where she had left off.
‘And this cop, he was quite old, he walked right into the house and said he had a warrant for Justin Bachelor’s arrest and a warrant to search the house, and Dad went, like, nuts! And poor Neo was there holding his bowl of Coco Pops with his eyes all big and scared, and Dad was, like, yelling at Salena, “Call my lawyer! Call my lawyer!” And she was standing there holding this warrant, just staring at it and staring at it and then she looked at Dad like … like he was