Truly Madly Guilty

Dakota's mother put her hand over her mouth. 'Oh God. That poor, poor man.'

Great. Now her mother would feel even guiltier about horrible old spitty Harry.

'We took photos,' said Steve solemnly.

Dakota thought that was kind of inappropriate. Was he going to put the photos of the dead boy's room on Instagram now?

Dakota's dad was getting restless. He rattled his house keys in his pocket. 'Let's put that beautiful globe safely inside, eh, Dakota?'

'Thank you,' said Dakota to Steve again. 'Thank you very, very much for this.'

'You're very, very welcome,' said Steve. 'I'm sure Harry would have been happy for you to have it.'

'Old Harry was very fond of Dakota,' said her dad. This was such a big fat total lie, Dakota could hardly believe it. 'He just maybe didn't always show it, you know.' He looked at Steve. 'Mate, do you need a break? Do you want to come in for a coffee? Something to eat? We've got -'

'We're going for a walk, Vid,' interrupted her mother.

'Oh yes,' said her dad gloomily. 'I forgot for a moment.'

chapter eighty-three

The day of the barbeque

Harry climbed the stairs, hand over hand on the railing, like he was climbing up a rope. It was unacceptable that a man couldn't even climb his own stairs without his legs aching like they did. He'd once been as strong as an ox, and he'd always taken care of his health. He was interested in health. He kept himself up to date with things. As soon as the surgeon general released the report about lung cancer and cigarettes, Harry gave up smoking. That same day.

He knew about that food pyramid. He followed it as best he could. He did regular exercise. He took a multivitamin as recommended by his GP, who looked like he was still in high school and maybe he was still in high school, because the multivitamin was a waste of money. It had no effect whatsoever. Every day he felt a bit worse. The manufacturers of that vitamin were laughing all the way to the bank. Harry was considering writing a letter of complaint. He averaged two to three letters of complaint a week. You had to keep corporate Australia accountable. When he was in the corporate world there were standards. People cared about quality. The shoddy workmanship these days was a disgrace.

He stopped halfway for a rest.

This was why old codgers had to move out of their homes into those god-awful retirement places - because they couldn't make it up their own bloody stairs. What a joke. He wasn't moving anywhere. They could carry him out in a box.

He could still hear the music from next door. Very selfish, bad-mannered people. He would call the police if necessary. He used to call the police all the time, when the son had those parties while the parents went off on their bloody river cruises in the south of bloody France. The son with the long greasy hair like a monkey. Disgusting creature.

But those people weren't there anymore, were they? He knew that. Of course he knew that. They moved out about ten years ago. He knew that perfectly well. He did a Sudoku puzzle every day. His mind was fine. It was just that he sometimes got fuzzy about time.

It was the big Arab guy or whatever nationality he was. Probably a terrorist. You couldn't tell these days. Harry had his mobile number. He had all his details carefully recorded just in case he ever needed to pass them over to the police. He kept an eye on him. The wife had said they would turn down the music but Harry strongly suspected they'd turned it up. What could you expect from a man who wore a bloody bracelet? The wife wasn't bad to look at but she had no class. She dressed like a whore. That girl could have learned a thing or two about class, about elegance, from Harry's wife. Elizabeth would have set her straight.

Their kid reminded Harry of Jamie. Something about the shape of her head. And something else: a kind of stillness, like a birdwatcher, as if she were studying the world, carefully working it out. Jamie had been a thinker. It made Harry furious to look at that child. How dare she look like Jamie? How dare she be here when he wasn't? It enraged him. Sometimes when he

looked at her, he literally saw red. Like a fire glow.

He kept climbing the stairs. One hand after the other on the railing. Harry used to run. He was a runner before running became trendy. This body used to run. He didn't recognise his own withered old legs anymore; looked like they belonged to someone else. Why had no one invented a drug to stop this happening? It couldn't be that hard. It was because the researchers were all young and they didn't know what lay ahead. They were oblivious! They thought their bodies were theirs forever and then by the time they found out, it was too late, they were retired, and their minds were all fuzzy, although Harry's mind wasn't fuzzy, he did Sudoku.

'Don't run, don't run!' Elizabeth used to shout at Jamie when he ran along the bush tracks. She was worried he'd slip, but he never slipped. He was nimble. They used to walk out the back door with a packed picnic lunch and be at the waterfall within the hour.

Now Harry was marooned in this house, like he was marooned in this body. He didn't even know if that walking track was still there, the track where Jamie used to run. He could find out, but if it was under a shopping centre he'd be angry and if it was still there, if other kids were running along it while their mothers shouted, 'Don't run! Don't run!' he'd be angrier still.

He was at the top. What a palaver to climb a flight of stairs. Now, why was he up here? What did he need?

His mind wasn't going. Sometimes he couldn't find the right word for a thing, but he remembered that sometimes Elizabeth couldn't find a word, 'Where's the thingamajig?' she'd say, and she'd been so young, so beautifully, gorgeously young, she had no idea how young she was, and he had no idea why he'd come upstairs.

He could still hear the music from next door. Even louder now. Who did they think they were? Pretending to be artsy-fartsy types. Elizabeth used to love classical music. She played the violin at school. She had more class in her little finger than that little two-bit whore had in her whole body. She'd have shown her a thing or two. How dare they play it so loud? Inconsiderate.

He imagined calling the police and telling them the neighbours were deafening him with bloody Mozart. Wasn't Mozart the deaf one? No wonder he wrote such crappy songs. Elizabeth used to laugh at his grumpiness. Elizabeth had a good sense of humour. So did Jamie. They both used to laugh at him. Once they were gone nobody laughed at him ever again. All his funniness flew away with them.

It was the neighbours' fault he couldn't remember why he was up here. He'd got distracted. He went into Jamie's room to calm himself and turned on the light.

He looked out Jamie's window. The neighbours had all their outdoor lighting going. It was like bloody Disneyland down there.