Chapter 3
Am I taking too long to get to the murder? I might be taking too long to get to the murder. But without this helpful scene-setting you’d have missed the clues about who did it. Did you notice them? There’ll be others.
For now, let’s jump ahead to dinner and I’ll try to be quick.
Dinner is what we’re told is chicken casserole, and because it’s from GG’s freezer, I’m not supposed to criticize.
It’s one of those sticky nights where a thunderstorm threatens, so we’re all a bit sweaty, and Dad keeps opening the windows to get a breeze through, then shutting them when someone complains about the mosquitoes.
Aunty Bec tries to make small talk with GG about the casserole—it’s delicious!
When does she find the time?—but GG puts an end to that by insisting she didn’t make it.
So far as she’s concerned, it appeared in the freezer one day (information, by the way, she shares only after it’s been defrosted, cooked, and partially consumed).
I try not to think about the likelihood that it’s been here since Grandad died a year and a half ago—a death in the family being the conventional time for people to turn up with foil-wrapped casserole dishes.
If it’s been here since Grandma died eight years ago, we’re definitely done for, so best not to contemplate it.
“Does Mrs. Whatsit still own the place next door?” Dad asks, poking his fork into something unidentifiable and brown.
“She died. There’s a young bloke there now.”
“Ah, that’s right, you said—the phone guru,” Dad says.
Dylan, who hasn’t touched his meal, appears with a stack of buttered toast and slides a piece onto my plate.
“In case you’d rather not die of salmonella,” he whispers, and I’m grateful enough to not even mention that you don’t get salmonella from food being in the freezer too long.
As the last of the casserole is being choked down (Aunty Bec) or scraped discreetly into the bin (me), Aunty Vinka arrives home in a taxi.
“Nick’s fine,” she says, before anyone can ask.
“That’s great,” Aunty Bec says. “Did they give him antivenom?”
“Not exactly.”
“Is antivenom not the done thing?”
Aunty Vinka goldfishes her mouth, like she’s not sure how to say the next bit. Even GG is paying attention. “The snake didn’t bite him.”
“What?” Dad says.
“The doctors think maybe he got stabbed by a bit of wire or even just a really sharp stick when he was trying to catch the snake.” Aunty Vinka delivers this at 1.5-times speed.
“Are you joking?” Dad asks.
“It was an easy mistake to make. We all saw the snake.”
“So why isn’t he with you now?”
“There was an, uh, incident at the hospital.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nick, uh, sort of tripped when he was mucking around with a soccer ball—”
“In the hospital?”
“—and fell down some stairs—”
Dad swears under his breath, but the way you do when you want everyone to hear you.
“—and broke his leg. Quite seriously, actually, Andy, so I hope you feel bad now.”
“Don’t be a—” Dad swears again, and this time I’m pretty sure I’m not meant to hear it, because it’s the word that once prompted him to give me a ten-minute lecture on misogyny in rap music. Then maybe he thinks better, because he adds: “Sorry, Vinx.”
“He’ll be discharged in the morning. I was going to stay overnight with him, but those hospital chairs are bad for my alignment.”
Having Aunty Vinka home and Nick definitely not dead lifts the mood, and after a glass of wine Aunty Vinka relaxes enough to offer a reenactment of the accident, which makes Dad laugh so hard he goes briefly nonverbal.
The mood is upbeat until the table is being cleared, when Aunty Vinka swoops in to take GG’s barely touched plate.
“Have you had enough to eat?” Aunty Vinka asks.
“I’m fine.”
“Is your stomach bothering you?”
“No more than usual.”
“Do you want me to get your medicine?”
“No.”
“Have you taken it already tonight?”
“I don’t need it every night.”
Aunty Vinka frowns. “Are you sure? I thought I saw on the box it said—”
“Vinka. It’s fine.”
“Gertie,” Aunty Bec tries, a bit more gently, from the other end of the table. “I think what Vinka is—”
“Rebecca,” GG says sharply. “I’m not a child and I’m not senile.”
This is more awkward than the time my computer science teacher typed in the wrong URL and our whole class learned what a foot fetish is. I look at Dylan, who is cheerfully eating toast and watching like this is The Real Housewives of Dunsborough.
“Does anyone feel like dessert?” Aunty Vinka asks too loudly.
“Is there any?” Shippy looks hopeful. “I could murder a crumble.”
“It’s not a restaurant, mate,” Dad says.
“I just meant—”
“There’s ice cream and I think I saw some chocolate sauce.”
There’s a round of “Yes, please” from everyone, including GG, who seems keen to bounce back from the awkwardness. It might take more than a bowl of ice cream, in my opinion, but what do I know? (Sure, I know who’s about to die, but still.)
When I go to collect my ice cream, Aunty Bec and Aunty Vinka are talking quietly: a classic sign they might be worth eavesdropping on.
“…usually like that,” Aunty Bec says.
“You don’t know her like we do.” Aunty Vinka pulls open a cupboard door and takes out a bottle of chocolate sauce, the kind that goes pleasingly hard when you put it on ice cream. “This is pure chemicals, you know.”
“Jealousy is a curse.”
“I’m telling you: Try vegan ice cream just once and you’ll never go back.”
Aunty Bec ignores that lie. “Do we push the meds thing?”
“Dad said she always dragged her feet. He used to put them into her food sometimes.”
“Like, crushed up the way you would for a cat?”
“It’s a liquid. But he was probably joking.”
They finally spot me and hand over a bowl of ice cream, which I take, along with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, up to my creepy-arse room while the grown-ups argue about whether to play the 1986 or 1991 version of Trivial Pursuit.
Have I mentioned my creepy room? The entire house is a bit of a horror show at night, all wood paneling and mirrors with a perpetual film of dust, but only my room has an entire glass-fronted cabinet filled with eerie, faceless china figurines that definitely plot my demise the moment the light goes out.
Possibly I need to stop watching horror movies.
The figurines are a GG addition to the house, and, no, I don’t know why she doesn’t keep them in her own bedroom except that, presumably, they also horrify her.
I read until exhaustion turns all the r’s in my book into n’s, then lie in bed listening to the adults finish their game (pretty sure Aunty Vinka won because Dad seems pissed) over the distant rumble of thunder.
The storm that’s been promised for hours finally seems to have arrived.
Footsteps go up the stairs and doors are opened and closed.
Only when the house is quiet and dark do I realize what’s keeping me awake: I need to pee.
“Don’t even think about moving around when I’m gone,” I whisper to the figurines as I pass. They don’t answer, which, on balance, is a good thing.
The nearest bathroom is one floor up, one of many quirks in Grandad’s questionable design skills, but when I get near the top of the stairs, a strip of orange light from under GG’s bedroom door—and whispered voices—tell me she’s still awake.
I can’t recognize the other voice, but they sound like they’re arguing, which I guess means I’m going to the downstairs bathroom.
(I could have saved some time solving the crime if I’d stayed to eavesdrop, as I’ll eventually discover, but nobody’s perfect.)
Apparently nobody in this house is asleep, because downstairs not only do I see the flare and fade of someone smoking in the part of the garden visible through the living room window (who smokes?), but I can hear the kettle boiling in the kitchen.
The bathroom mirror shows me the beginnings of a whitehead right between my eyes. I poke it a little in the hope it might make a satisfying mess on the mirror, but it just throbs beneath my fingertips and turns an angry red. Great.
The smoker is gone by the time I head upstairs, which is probably a good thing because the thunder has been joined by crackles of distant lightning, and surely rain can’t be far behind.
Two steps into my bedroom, I stop. Something is wrong and the room has rearranged itself in my absence.
I must be tired, because it takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize I’m standing in Dad’s bedroom, which adjoins my own.
I start to apologize, then stop when I see his bed is empty.
Back in my own room I get into bed and finally fall asleep, listening to the rumble of the approaching storm. I wish I could say that the next thing I know I’m awoken by a scream—it would be more dramatic—but the truth is, nobody finds the body right away. We’ll get there, though.