‘Why did Daddy have a grenade in his study?’ Charlie asks, materialising beside me.
But this is no time for war games. In the interests of future neighbourly relations, I’m mentally searching for plausible explanations as to why Grace and I have been all but dangling out the window. Neighbourhood Watch?
‘Er, DEFCON 1’， she whispers.
‘I know. I’m mortified.’
‘No! Not Jon Bon Jovi across the road,’ she says. ‘Charlie!’
I look down at my son. He’s got his dad’s golden curls, his freckles, his mischievous blue eyes . . . and his grenade?
Cam might have taught English, but his real love was history. He was always collecting souvenirs from overseas battlefields. Bullets from France. Random bits of gun shells. A little vial of sand from the beach at Gallipoli. And apparently the very legitimate-looking grenade that’s currently in the hot little hand of our excitable five-year-old.
‘Let me see that,’ I say, lifting it off Charlie’s palm as gently as possible. Of course there’s no chance it’s live. Cam only ever bought artifacts from bona fide collectors and registered antiques dealers. If he was here now, he’d crouch down beside Charlie and explain how it worked, Charlie would graduate from the conversation slightly more knowledgeable, and I would have one less thing to explain about the world. The thought of all the lost conversations between them makes my heart ache as much as it hurts my head trying to bridge the gap.
‘This is Peak Kate,’ Grace says, snapping a photo of me holding the grenade. She crops it so it’s just my Oodie-clad forearm and hand in the frame and has it uploaded to Facebook before I can think straight. I know she tags me in it, because my phone flashes with a notification on the sofa. I’ve got my settings locked down for situations exactly like this, where Grace’s love of drama clashes with my desire to not invite my entire friends list to witness every single episode of my mayhem.
‘It’s fine,’ I reassure her. ‘It’s Cam!’ Thorough, dependable Cam, who would never store a live weapon in the house. The very idea that this thing could be genuinely dangerous is laughable.
Nevertheless, I am an aspiring writer. My imagination has not only stayed intact through my grief but been actively fed by it. I’m forever inventing dire scenarios in which something else is snatched away from me. Someone. And finally, the mother in me gets her head together.
‘Grace, why don’t you take Charlie somewhere? Drive-through soft serve?’
‘Epic!’ Charlie shouts, dancing on the spot. He’s so excited about the ice cream and bonus time with Grace that I have to side-step out of his way so he doesn’t knock this thing out of my hand.
It’s a testament to our friendship that Grace has a car seat for Charlie permanently installed in her car. But before they can go, we’re interrupted by Siri, informing Grace of an incoming FaceTime call.
‘Give me a minute, mate,’ she says, as she touches her screen to answer. He’s barnacled to her leg, trying to drag her towards the door, and I have to call him off.
‘Where are you?’ a woman’s voice says as soon as the video connection cuts in. I can’t see the screen, but her voice has an edge to it. ‘Grace, listen to me. I’m in the sandpit . . .’
Charlie releases Grace’s leg and pulls at her arm so he can see this sandpit, but I know from my short-lived public sector career that she means she’s posted somewhere in the Middle East.
‘I’ve just shown your Facebook post to my colleague here,’ the woman explains. ‘He’s an ammunitions engineer. Look, I don’t want to alarm you, but you need to call the police.’
There’s a knock at the door and Grace and I flinch.
Is that them? No. What? We haven’t even phoned them yet.
I tiptoe carefully down the hall, past the boxes of Cam’s clothes I finally sorted through on the weekend. I thought two years had been long enough and I Kondo’d the daylights out of his side of the wardrobe while comfort-viewing Bridget Jones on the laptop. But I overestimated my ability to let them go. To let him go. It turns out I might want to look through them one more time. And possibly wear them. Potentially forever.
When I open the door, it’s lucky I don’t drop the grenade on the spot and blow up half the street. Gosh, he’s good-looking. It’s verging on ridiculous, up close. For just a second, I bask in the magnificence that is my neighbour’s chiselled face. And body. The whole ensemble that is his person, really. And I forget I have something in my hand that could potentially detonate.
‘Hey,’ he says warmly, wiping his hand on his jeans and offering to shake mine. When I don’t accept, his attention drops to the grenade in my palm and he falters, then says, ‘Sorry, is this a bad time?’
I mean, sure. I am standing here swamped by a penguin-themed wearable blanket, clutching an apparently genuine, potentially live, unexploded device while high-powered expats in the Middle East crisis-manage from the next room . . . but I extend my free hand anyway. Niceties need not fly out the window just because we’re at Code Red.
‘I’m Kate,’ I tell him confidently. ‘Welcome to Braxton Street.’ I peer past him, beyond the Apple Box eucalypts in my front yard, all the way down the street and across the suburb, until I catch a glimpse of the purplish haze of the Brindabella Mountains in the distance.
What am I looking for, exactly? His white horse?
‘Saw you and your friend in the window,’ he says. The shame. ‘Thought I should say hello. I’m Justin.’
‘I’m Charlie!’ My inquisitive little boy pushes around me and stands directly in front of him. ‘What is DTF?’
Seriously? This whole neighbourly meet and greet has been a PR disaster. One I have to rectify, fast, if I’m ever to look this man in the face again.
‘I have a grenade,’ I blurt, holding up the evidence for Justin to scrutinise more closely. As distractions go, it’s a precision strike. He seems bamboozled. ‘But it’s okay!’ I rush on. ‘A friend of a friend knows a military weapons expert. I’m sure she’s overreacting – but now Defence is intrigued, and half of Facebook is onto me, so I’m going to have to follow through and get the police involved.’
It’s too much information, far too soon. Justin looks both alert and alarmed, as well as romance-novel-cover hot, but I don’t have the bandwidth to develop a crush right now.
Cam would have found this whole situation riotous. He’d have dined out on the story for years. Did I tell you about the time my wife caused a global security incident with a replica grenade I picked up at a militaria emporium in Vietnam?
‘It’s not mine!’ I explain quickly to Justin. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not a terrorist.’
I can hardly wait for Grace to dissect this conversation later. I know she’ll want to coach me on my sub-standard banter. Look, Kate, the main thing is to avoid giving him the impression that this is a hostage situation . . .
Justin stares at me as I place my phone down on one of Cam’s boxes, put it on speaker and click on the number for the local police station. What with him looking so spectacular and eyeballing me so intently, I briefly wish I did look a bit more DTF. But there’s no time for regrets. I try to pull the pencil out of my hair in case I need to write instructions, but it’s stuck in a knot of curls and now I’m just yanking knotty hair instead of allowing it to tumble dreamily over my shoulders like it would if I was anyone but myself.