Truly Madly Guilty

'How do you know?' said Oliver.

'I just know,' said Erika. 'He's of that generation.' Erika's grandmother had always left a key under a pot of geraniums by the front door whereas Erika's mother would never have risked the horror of someone coming into her home without her permission. Her front door was double-deadlocked at all times. To protect the oh-so-precious contents of her home.

'Right,' said Oliver. 'Good idea. I'll try that.'

He hung up abruptly and Erika put down the phone and found herself unwillingly and annoyingly distracted by the thought of her elderly neighbour. When was the last time she'd seen him? He would have been complaining to her about something. He didn't like anyone parking on the street outside his house, and he was always full of complaints about Vid and Tiffany: the noise (they liked to entertain; he'd called the police more than once), the dog (Harry said it dug up his garden; he'd put in an official complaint to the council), the general look of the place (looks like the bloody Taj Mahal). He seemed to genuinely hate Tiffany and Vid, and even Dakota, but he tolerated Erika, and seemed to quite like Oliver.

She stood up and walked over to her office window. Some people, like her managing partner, couldn't stand too close t

o the windows in this building - the way the windows were set gave you the sensation of standing at the edge of a cliff - but Erika enjoyed the drop in her stomach as she looked out at the streets snarled with rainy-day traffic below.

Harry. The last time she remembered seeing him was the morning of the barbeque. It was when she rushed out to buy more crackers. She'd been worried about those sesame seeds. As she'd driven off down the street she'd looked in her rear-vision mirror and caught sight of Harry yelling at Vid and Tiffany's dog. He'd kicked out his foot, aggressively, but Erika was sure he hadn't actually made contact with the little dog. He'd just done it for effect. Vid had come out onto his front veranda, presumably to call for the dog. That's all she'd seen.

Erika didn't have a problem with Harry's grumpiness. Grumpiness was less time-consuming and tiring than cheeriness. Harry never wanted to stand around chatting for long. She wondered if something had happened to him, if he was sick perhaps, or if he was fine and poor, responsible Oliver was going to get his head snapped off for interfering.

A flash of lightning lit up the city skyline like a firework and Erika imagined how she would look to someone on the street below, if they happened to glance up at the rainy sky right at that moment and see her dark, solitary figure illuminated against the window.

The image carried a memory ... perhaps it did, maybe it did ... of hands pressed against glass, a face without features except for the idea of a mouth, a gaping mouth, but then the memory split and fractured into a thousand tiny pieces. Was it possible she'd done something irreparable and catastrophic to her brain chemistry that day?

She turned away from the window and hurried back to her desk to open a spreadsheet, any spreadsheet, as long as it made sense, it added up, and as the soothing figures filled her computer screen, she picked up her phone and rang her psychologist's number and said to the secretary, lightly, as if it didn't really matter, 'I don't suppose you have any cancellations for tomorrow?' But then she changed her mind and begged, 'Please?'

chapter eleven

Oliver put down the phone from Erika and blew his nose hard. He picked up his umbrella. It was not the best for his health to be traipsing about in the pouring rain checking on elderly neighbours but there was no way he could delay it a moment longer.

He had a terrible feeling about this. The last time he could remember seeing Harry was the day before the barbeque, before there was any plan of a barbeque, before Erika's curve ball, when it was still just afternoon tea with Clementine and Sam and the girls, as per the plan.

That Saturday afternoon Harry had ambled over for a chat and given Oliver some tips about the correct way to hold the whipper-snipper. Some people didn't like being given unsolicited advice but Oliver was always happy to learn from other people's experiences. Harry had complained about Vid and Tiffany's dog. Its barking kept him up at night, apparently. Oliver had found that hard to believe. Barney was such a little dog. Harry had said he was calling the police, or it might have been the local council, but frankly Oliver hadn't taken that much notice. Harry was always making official complaints through whatever official channels he could find. Making complaints was like a hobby for him. Everyone needed an interest when they retired.

That was two months ago now and Oliver couldn't remember seeing Harry since then.

He opened his front door and jumped back when he saw Tiffany there, her umbrella tipped back on her shoulders as she stood on the shelter of their front veranda, her hand up as if she'd been just about to knock.

'Sorry,' she said. 'I know you're sick, but it's just that I've been thinking about Harry. I really think we should try to break in. Or call the police. Vid can't remember seeing him for weeks either.'

'Neither can Erika,' said Oliver. 'I was just about to go over.' He was suddenly frantic. It was as if every minute counted now. 'Let's go.' The wind picked up. 'My God, this rain.'

They held their umbrellas up like riot shields and ducked behind them as they hurried over the lawns and back onto the front veranda of Harry's house.

Tiffany dropped her umbrella in a soggy heap and began banging on the door with a closed fist. 'Harry!' she called over the noise of the rain. There was a panicky note in her voice. 'Harry! It's just us! Just the neighbours!'

Oliver lifted up a heavy sandstone pot. No key underneath. There was a set of crappy old green plastic pots with very dead plants and dry crumbling soil. Surely Harry wouldn't keep a key under one of them? But he lifted the first pot and there it was. A small gold key. Harry, old mate, thought Oliver. That's not great security.

'Tiffany.' Oliver held up the key to show her.

'Ah,' said Tiffany. She stood back as Oliver went to the front door and put the key in the lock.

'He might have gone away,' she said tremulously. 'To see family.' But they both knew he hadn't gone away.

'Harry!' called out Oliver as he opened the door.

'Oh God, no, no, no,' said Tiffany immediately. The smell took a fraction longer to get past Oliver's blocked nostrils and then it was like he'd walked smack-bang into a wall of it. A wall of smell. Sweet, rotten smell. It was like someone had sprinkled cheap perfume over meat that had gone off. His stomach heaved. He looked back at Tiffany and he was reminded of the day of the barbeque, how in times of crisis a person's face is somehow stripped back to something essential and universally human: all those labels like 'beautiful', 'sexy', 'plain' became irrelevant.

'Fuck,' she said sadly.

Oliver pushed the door all the way open and took a step forward into the dim light. He'd never been inside before. All his interactions with Harry had taken place in front yards. Harry's front yard. His front yard.

A single light burned overhead. He could see a long hallway with a surprisingly beautiful red runner leading off into darkness. A staircase with a curved wooden banister.