I put my head down on the dash in front of me. ‘My brain is so tired. I’m so tired. I can’t get a break.’
‘You’ve been so strong.’ Dad pats my hair gently. ‘I know you’re exhausted.’
‘What do I do?’
‘I can only tell you what works for me. Sometimes I distract myself if I’m overwhelmed, and sometimes I go into the feelings, talk to someone about them. Both things work, at different times. And I keep people close around me, even when I’m not in the mood.’
I lift my head up. ‘Does that mean you think I should go back to school this week?’
Somehow I’m stuck on going back to school, even though there’s no real dread in it. I don’t mind seeing that complainer Petra, I’m not scared of any of the teachers, and Claire and Milla and I made our peace at the memorial service.
‘Not if you don’t want to. Take all the time you need. But maybe a bit of routine might help. Doctor Radcliffe is going to talk to you about all of this, and I’m always here for you. You’re absolutely not on your own.’
‘I already hate Doctor Radcliffe,’ I say with all the passion I can muster.
‘I know,’ he says and I suppose he probably does know. He finds a park close to the doctor’s fancy consulting rooms and switches the engine off. He reaches out and we hug extremely awkwardly over the gearstick.
‘Love you,’ he says quickly.
DAY 77
Natalia’s house is overwhelming—lush cream and beige everything, carpet that’s pillowy underfoot, abstract art on the walls—but at least her bedroom is relatively ordinary, if you ignore the fact that she has her own en suite bathroom.
It’s awkward at first, of course, in the way that it’s always awkward when you first go to someone’s house. Natalia hasn’t been to school for weeks, and the last time I saw her was standing up at the pulpit for Yin’s memorial service.
The light is good in her room, and it’s the archetypal teenage girl’s bedroom—bed, desk, wardrobe, ruff les, posters, lamps—which is exactly what I want.
Natalia shows me on her laptop how easy it is to find out where someone lives. We sit at her desk and gape.
‘How did you found out this guy was a suspect?’
‘He was mentioned in this thing called the Echo Files, under a fake name, but then these web sleuths found out his real name.’
She takes me through the steps, his crimes, the court documents, the phone directory.
‘And then I went to his house,’ she says.
I’m so shocked that I hit her on the arm, harder than I intended.
‘Ouch! Abusive, Cardell.’
‘What the hell? Are you joking?’ But I can see from her face that she’s not. ‘When? Why? What happened?’
‘Shh, calm down. You’re the first person I’ve told.’ Natalia snaps her computer shut. ‘I need you to be more chill, Chloe.’
I inhale deeply, summoning the type of fake inner calm I use when Sam is being a brat. Natalia wears a deep scowl so I tone it down. ‘When was this?’
‘School holidays.’
‘Why did you do it?’
Her eyes dart about; she swivels back and forth on her computer chair. ‘I just wanted to do something. I felt an unbearable itch that I needed to scratch.’
I try not to let any dread creep into my voice.
‘What happened?’
She puffs out her cheeks and lets a long whoosh of air go.
‘He was there,’ she says. ‘He saw me scoping out his house and he confronted me. I’ve never seen a creepier man in my whole life, and that’s saying a lot.’
‘Did you talk to him?’
‘We yelled insults and accusations at each other a bit and at first it felt good to tell him how evil he is, but then I woke up and realised the madness of standing metres away from a predator and a convicted criminal and I got out of there quick smart.’
She looks pale even talking about it.
‘And when you saw him, did you think that he could be Doctor Calm?’
‘No.’ She fiddles with the edge of her desk. ‘I don’t think they’re gonna find him, are they?’
You’d think the reward or Yin’s death would have ramped things up a bit, made things happen, but it doesn’t seem that way.
‘I don’t think so, or maybe not for a long time,’ I admit. ‘And so that means he wins, and in a way we lose.’
Natalia watches me silently, her eyes deep and dark as rock pools. It’s hard to know what she’s thinking.
My phone beeps. ‘It’s them. They’re almost here. They took the wrong tram.’
Natalia rubs her hedgehog hair.
‘I’ve been thinking about not wasting my life,’ she says eventually. ‘How we have to make it count. Maybe that’s how we win.’
Bochen and Cherry arrive in a flurry of bags and perfume and exclamations over how nice Natalia’s mum is and how hard her street was to find. They carry their shoes in their hands, because there’s nowhere to leave them at the door, and bring a bag of vacuum-sealed bubble cups. I can tell Natalia hates her herbal jelly drink but she drinks it anyway, to be polite. Maybe some of the things I’ve said to her have gotten through.
I show them some reference shots, some famous, others maybe not so much. The famous ones are Ai Weiwei flipping the bird at famous monuments around the world, and most controversially, sticking his finger up at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square.
‘I like the spirit of rebellion,’ I say. ‘I want to capture that.’
‘You know he’s a friend of Bochen’s parents,’ Cherry says cheerfully.
Bochen shoots her a dirty look. ‘Not friends. Perhaps they are in the same scene.’
‘Her parents are artists.’ Cherry is oblivious to Bochen’s discomfort. She points. ‘She’s supposed to be an artist too, she’s
