Like I’d feared, my palms were so wet that they slipped, slipped, slipped. I grabbed harder. I felt every little crack and bubble in the paintwork. It too was rough but very different to the bricks of the wall. I grabbed again for the last time and gripped.
I hauled myself up. The muscles in my arms were bulging. My armpits were as sweaty as my palms. I got my head over the sill, my right shoulder, wriggled the left shoulder over, and at last knew I’d made it. I still hadn’t been able to give a thought to what might be waiting. Enemy soldiers with guns? No good thinking about that until I was safe from falling. Sam Young with a camera trying to focus, at the same time as he was rolling around laughing? No good thinking about that either. In a truly stupid and bizarre way I would actually have preferred to find enemy soldiers than Sam Young laughing at me.
I was in a bedroom. I realised it was Shannon’s. I took it in with just one glance but even that was enough to appreciate how good it looked. Three walls were light mauve, the other lime green. The cornices were dark purple, good enough to eat. Doesn’t sound like it should have worked, but it did. She had a big bed made of some reddish- brown timber, maybe jarrah, and a desk to match. There were some fascinating paintings on the walls. One of them was a face of great beauty, a woman who looked at the same time peaceful, wise and worried. Shame I didn’t have time to look closely.
It seemed almost too serious a room for Shannon, because she was always laughing, but still, it had to be hers. I knew that because, as I ran to the bed and ripped a sheet off it, I saw a drawing I’d done for her just a week ago: a kind of tangram thing. She’d pinned it to a curtain, right next to the bed. I was pleased about that.
I rushed back to the window. Peeping out I saw Homer and Gavin, looking up anxiously. I trailed the sheet down the wall so they’d have something to hang on to as they came up the ladder, then hung on to it myself as hard as I could.
Gavin came up first. It wasn’t a problem holding him — he weighed about as much as a newborn calf — but Homer was more like a Grand Reserve bull at the Wirrawee Show.
Homer came through the window, grunting with the effort. As soon as he was in the room I said, ‘Grab my legs,’ and started going back out again, head first. He got the idea fast enough. I felt his strong hands grip me around the knees, then the ankles, as I dangled down. Down and down I went, like I was on an elevator. ‘Don’t drop me, Homer,’ I pleaded silently as I got closer and closer to the top of the ladder. On my first swing towards it I missed by a couple of centimetres. On my next, my fingertips brushed against it. I still needed a few more centimetres. I tried to look up, but couldn’t very well. It wasn’t comfortable, with the blood running to my head. I had a sense of Homer leaning dangerously far out of the window. I hoped he didn’t overbalance. I hoped no enemy soldier grabbed him and suddenly took him away.
Somehow he found another centimetre or two because I lurched down again. I tried not to panic, and grabbed the top rung. He waited a moment, I guess to be sure I’d got it. There was no way I could give him a signal. Then he started hauling.
It was heavy for me. I don’t know what it was like for him. And somehow I had to get in through the window without dropping the ladder. Homer ended up on the floor with me off-balance and the ladder sticking out from the house at ninety degrees. Gavin came to the rescue, holding it till Homer and I got our balance back enough to take it from him.
We manoeuvred it in. Seemed like Shannon now had another piece of furniture for her bedroom. I left Homer to move it away from the window and turned around to see what Gavin was up to. Typical. He’d already opened the door and was peering down the corridor.
‘Geez, Gavin,’ I said, which wasn’t a lot of use as he couldn’t hear me.
I raced to the door. Standing above Gavin I did my own peering.
My eyes had to get used to the light but I couldn’t see any movement. I tapped Gavin on the shoulder. He looked up. I gestured ‘Do you see anything?’ and he shook his head.
Between us we eased the door open. We took our first step. By now Homer was right behind us. I thought this was a bad idea. If a soldier suddenly appeared he would be able to take all three of us with no trouble. I turned around and whispered to him, ‘You should hide. Just while we check out this floor.’
He thought about it for a moment. He looked disappointed but he knew I was right. After all, he’d forced us to make some tough decisions in the past. Now he made a face, looked around, and then opened a door right next to me. It was a kind of hall closet, where they stored their suitcases and winter clothes. With a little smile at me he shrugged, disappeared in among the coats, and closed the door behind him.
Gavin and I tiptoed forward. I didn’t want to do much, didn’t want to take on an army of hostiles. I just wanted to know what was going on. I could see the head of the staircase and I moved carefully towards it. I thought the stairwell would amplify any sounds from downstairs.
In fact the first sound I heard would have reached any corner of the house. A door opened downstairs, to the left, and a roar of laughter came out. I grabbed Gavin by the arm, hard, and we both stopped dead.
Maybe the Youngs were having friends for afternoon tea? I didn’t think so. I snuck closer to the edge and peeped over. I caught a glimpse of the man. He didn’t look like one of the Youngs’ friends. He walked across to a pot plant in a big blue and white tub, unzipped his daks, and started pissing in the plant.
I grabbed Gavin’s arm again, just as he tried to grab mine. As the man sprayed all over the broad green leaves he kept talking in a loud voice to other people in the room he’d left. Someone answered him and there was another shout of laughter, even louder.
I couldn’t believe him. I hated him, the way he was so calmly and arrogantly taking over my friends’ house. Plus my most hated thing is people spitting in the streets and here was this guy going about a hundred degrees worse.
The pungent smell drifted up to us and I wrinkled my nose. Seemed like these guys urinated every time I got near them. I thought of yelling out ‘You’re killing the flamingo flower’, just so I could see his expression.
The man finished and started back to the room. The door closed and everything went quiet again.
I looked at Gavin and shook my head. He looked at me. His eyes were the size of my watch face, which is big. Without saying a word we both snuck back a metre. Then we tiptoed down the hall to the cupboard. I knocked on the door, which might seem stupid, but I didn’t want Homer bopping me with a walking stick. I opened the door and Homer emerged from the coats, brushing them away from his face.
‘They’re here all right,’ I whispered. ‘Downstairs. Sounds like they’re having a party.’
‘How many of them?’
‘I don’t know. We only saw one. They’re in a room to the left, the sitting room I think.’
‘Any sign of the Youngs?’
‘No.’
‘We should check the rooms up here, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, absolutely.’
We knew Shannon’s bedroom was clear, so we started with the next one. We didn’t go about it like the professionals — well, the professionals we’d seen on TV anyway, the ones who bust down the door and cover each other while they search. We didn’t have any weapons to speak of, so we quietly turned the knob of each door and let it swing open, then waited a minute. If nothing happened we snuck in and had a good look.
There were four bedrooms and a bathroom and a sewing room. Each of the kids had a bedroom. Occasionally as we slipped from one to the next we heard more noise from downstairs. There were shouts, laughter, even, once, breaking bottles. They had occupied the house and were enjoying themselves. I was sure they were getting well and truly into the grog supply.
I just wished I knew what they had done with the Youngs, and I had the worst fears about that.
We ended up in Alastair’s room. He had a poster of Terri Boswell on the wall, and a few photos of her on his cupboard, and more sports equipment than I’ve seen outside a branch of Rebel Sport. Apart from that and the basic bed, desk and dressing table, there wasn’t much else. It was such a boy’s room.
‘So, what do you think?’ I asked Homer as we crouched in a corner.
I’d been thinking desperately and hadn’t come up with the beginning of a plan. But I knew we had to act fast, because if the Youngs were still alive, we had to get to them soon. Their chances would be lower with each minute that passed.
Homer pulled out his phone. ‘Call the cops,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah!’
It seemed so obvious. But I was really startled. For so long we’d lived in a world where police did not exist.
