The Last Love Note(7)

He seems to deliver this pep talk to himself. Is he even old enough to carry a gun? I’m at the age where new professionals are starting to appear impossibly youthful, but this kid seems fresh from high school.

He leads me and Hugh through the front hall and straight into the fray: two days’ worth of dishes piled high in the sink, a herd of clothes horses staggering near the window, Lego just . . . everywhere.

‘Uncle Hugh!’ Charlie squeals, bounding in from the lounge and leaping into my boss’s arms, almost knocking him off balance.

Grace’s entry into the room, and into Hugh’s presence, is frostier. What’s that saying again? Never play matchmaker and dip your best friend’s pen in your boss’s ink? No. That’s not it. Is it the other way around? I’m trying to rearrange the analogy in my head when the officer says, ‘Right. Where is this object?’

Justin reveals the grenade on the kitchen bench like he’s a model on Wheel of Fortune. He’s sensibly placed it in a melamine Peppa Pig bowl left over from Charlie’s afternoon snack.

The constable looks into the bowl and says, ‘That actually looks like a grenade.’

I don’t know what he expected. Why would I make this up?

Hugh can’t help himself. He moves closer, and now it’s the three of them bent over my kitchen bench, heads together, examining the evidence like they’re on a Boys’ Own Adventure.

‘These items are sold to enthusiasts all the time,’ Hugh says while the constable takes photos. I imagine the pictures being tendered in court as evidence and wish he’d let me tidy up a bit.

‘If you can just stand back, please,’ the officer says, pulling out a notebook. ‘It’s not going to explode if we don’t pull the pin?’

It’s unclear whether that’s a statement or a question. I place the pile of submissions on the distressed pine table, pull out a chair and sink into it. The sudden injection of testosterone in my kitchen fills me with nostalgia. I used to sit there at that same bench, sipping wine, eating cheese, flicking through the weekend papers and solving the world’s problems with Cam as he ad-libbed something incredible for dinner. A ghost of that memory seems superimposed on the image before me now of the constable, Hugh, and Justin, and I wonder how in hell I got from point A to B.

Stand back from Kate, everyone. Don’t pull the pin . . .

If I lost this house, I’d lose Cam all over again. His presence is cemented into the very foundations. It’s painted onto the walls and sewn into the fabric of the soft furnishings. He’s everywhere, in every room. Even in the tired sticky notes he used to obsessively label everything when he got sick, in a way that, years later, is helping Charlie learn to read. I trace one now, stuck to the back of the chair beside me, reinforced with tape. I flick the hot-pink paper where the edges have curled and faded in the sun. The word ‘chair’ is written in Cam’s solid handwriting, and I move my thumb across the individual letters, trying to sense the pressure of his pen on this inconsequential little note, made magical because Cam once touched it, too. It’s a thing his eyes once focused on, like mine are now, as I try to align us through time and space and somehow bring him back.

‘I’ve secured the weapon,’ the constable reports into his two-way radio. I’m not sure Peppa Pig is a suitable guardian for Cam’s grenade, but okay. Then he looks across the room at me. ‘What were you doing when your son wandered out with this?’

His question plays into every insecurity I hold as a parent. Well, Officer, my bestie and I were drinking wine on a school afternoon, translating Tinder acronyms and perving on the Adonis to your right.

‘Grace and I were in the front room,’ I answer.

Do NOT lie to the police.

‘We were just – looking out the window and . . .’

Don’t reference a Greek god, Kate.

Justin straightens, blond hair shining under the halogen down-lights, as if he’s presenting himself as Exhibit A.

‘We were birdwatching,’ Grace says simply.

It could be true? The suburb is surrounded by bushland and backs onto Mount Jerrabomberra. I wake to birdsong every morning, do I not? I don’t even get my 10,000 steps in spring, because I’m fearful of all the swooping magpies.

‘It’s like Hitchcock around here sometimes,’ I add, for emphasis.

Justin coughs, to stifle a laugh.

‘And you were where, exactly?’ the officer asks him.

‘Directly opposite Kate’s front window.’ Is it my imagination, or is he flexing his muscles? ‘Hitchcock Central.’

Hugh chuckles, and I have an uncomfortable flashback to my crush being revealed in front of the entire class in Year Nine. The police officer writes these details in his notebook, while the four of us stay silent. From mortification, in my case.

‘Note to self,’ Hugh says quietly, after a long pause. ‘Buy Kate binoculars for Christmas.’

My hand finds Grace’s abandoned glass of wine on the table beside me. I want to scull it, except, as irresponsible parenting goes, it’s probably bad enough that I seem to be harbouring some sort of bomb.

‘So, your son was playing with it?’ the officer queries again. He’s like a dog with a bone. ‘While you were occupied at the window in the other room. Birdwatching?’ He frowns at Justin.

Yes, yes. I think we’ve fully established I was in the grips of a galloping infatuation while my child played unsupervised with bombs.