Meredith takes me to the Wright tenancy, then we stop at a deli for lunch.
‘I usually try to time it so I’m in the area at midday. Best continental rolls in Perth, but you’ve got to be early, or they’re all gone.’
We get lucky and take our rolls to a picnic table between the shopfront and the carpark. Meredith jams one end into her mouth, rips it off and chews. I do the same. I’m hungrier than I thought and get halfway through mine before I come up for air. Meredith scratches the side of her mouth and I wipe mine and suck a glob of pickled eggplant off my finger.
‘They’re adorable, aren’t they, the Wrights?’ she says.
I nod, washing down the roll with water from my bottle. William and Barbara – Bill and Ben – Wright live in a blue fibro cottage buried in pots of rose geraniums, fishbone ferns, cyclamen, and pansies. They chatted to us over milky tea in bouncing sentences and hard Gs. Ten-pound Poms, they told me, and proud of it. They’d raised three children since coming over on the boat and had lived in the blue house since Bill retired after he fell from a roof at work. He tapped his leg with his cane and grinned at the hard knocking sound it made.
‘I always said he had hollow legs, and now he’s got a real one,’ laughed his wife.
‘Shame I didn’t land on my head,’ said Bill. ‘Would’ve done less damage.’
‘I see them every six months,’ Meredith says, munching on her roll. ‘Never any problems, although the department takes advantage.’ She switches to a Scouse accent. ‘I don’t like to complain, love, but do you think you could get them to look at the hot water? They don’t return my calls and we’ve been having cold showers for the last month.’
Meredith slides the Abadi file between us and scoops up the sliced olives that have fallen onto the bare tabletop. She tosses them into her mouth. ‘We’ll go see Aaron on the way back to the office. This is his first time in public housing and I’m hoping it won’t be for long. He’s a nice man, got a cute kid, gets on with his ex. It’s just a shame he lost his job. It wasn’t his fault. His employer lost a major contract and didn’t have the work. I’m hoping he’ll pick something up soon.’
‘There’s plenty of work out there.’
‘Yeah,’ Meredith grimaces. ‘Problem is, one of the big contractors was going to take him on and he didn’t pass the pre-employment medical.’
‘Drug screen?’ I ask, thinking of the pathology request form in Jack’s apartment.
‘Yeah. Meth. He told me it was a one-off and he’s never taken it before.’
‘Right.’
Meredith shrugs. ‘Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t. I told him it doesn’t matter, just to make sure he doesn’t do it again.’
We gossip about Weymouth on the way to Aaron Abadi’s apartment. Meredith was in the same year at school as Dave’s girlfriend. They stayed at Meredith’s house the last time they were in the city and, according to Meredith, she’s just what Dave needs to keep him in line. Not that it should be a woman’s job, she points out as she shunts the SUV through another orange light. And Jack, she says, could do with a partner too. She wonders out loud if he prefers men or women and I say women maybe a little too definitely. I see her smirk out of the corner of my eye.
‘Maybe we should all get together for a drink next time they’re here,’ she says. The handbrake screeches, and she opens the car door. ‘Come inside and meet our Aaron.’
This apartment block is a good forty years older than Harbour Lights. The staircases on each end are open and evaporative air-conditioning units jut from windows. The building casts shadows over the surrounding 1940s bungalows, and the footpath is slippery with damp and smells of figs. It’s in a part of the city where single-storey homes are being sacrificed to infill, taking advantage of the nearby train line and hipster shopping strip. From the third floor, I can see the central business district through an orange haze that will blow away in an hour when the wind turns. If this building wasn’t government-owned, it would have already been sold and redeveloped with three times the number of apartments.
Meredith knocks on the screen door at number fourteen. It rattles and she opens it to knock again on the solid core front door.
‘Coming!’ calls a man’s voice from inside, and a heartbeat later, the lock clicks and the door swings open. Aaron Abadi beams at Meredith and gives me a generous smile. ‘Welcome! You must be Frances. Meredith said you were coming.’ He offers tea, shuffles us to a cracked leather couch covered in a checked picnic rug and, after putting the kettle on, sits himself on a yellow plastic stool with fat, rounded legs. His knees prop up well above his hips and he leans his elbows on them, hunched over.
‘Meredith said you work for some government watchdog,’ he says, repeating Joleen’s line from earlier in the day. ‘I bet you see some things.’
‘Frances is OK,’ interjects Meredith, ‘I knew her in school.’
‘You’re from Weymouth? Been up there lately?’
‘Just last week,’ I reply. ‘Went up to see my dad. He was in hospital.’
‘Yeah, Meredith said that’s why you couldn’t come last week. I’m sorry to hear it. Is he OK now?’ His question is warm. I like him and find myself smiling and nodding reassuringly. He tucks a dark curl behind his ear, and I silently curse when I catch myself doing the same.
‘He is, yeah, thanks.’ I return my hand to my lap.
‘I worked up there on that new Department of Housing block of flats.’
I suppress a smirk. I’d love to see Duncan hear his baby called a block of flats.
‘I didn’t know I’d be living in public housing myself in two years,’ he adds.
‘Things will turn around for you, Aaron,’ says Meredith, ‘don’t you worry. Just keep on the straight and narrow and you’ll have a job in no time.’
‘Yeah, I messed up there, hey? Won’t happen again.’
I believe him. He looks too clean, his skin too fresh, his apartment too cosy, to be a meth-head. Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe it was a one-off.
‘What did you say your name was again?’ He leans forward and my limbs loosen.
‘Frances Geller.’
‘I thought so. I’ve watched your brother play. Fastest man on the wing I’ve ever seen. The way he shepherded that ball …’ He shakes his head and smiles.
The looseness abandons me, and a familiar weight lands on my chest. ‘I stayed in one of those apartments when I was there,’ I say. Meredith gives me a look. ‘They’re pretty flash for government housing.’
Aaron frowns at the abrupt change of topic and glances at Meredith. ‘Yeah, they’ve been finished well. Underneath, though, the structure is the same as everywhere else. Nothing special. In a few years, it won’t look much different to this, depending on the punishment it gets.’
Meredith asks Aaron if everything is going well with his tenancy. She asks if the department has visited lately, what the neighbours are like, whether he is receiving his monthly statements, and whether they are accurate. He tells her that he is still waiting on someone to come out and fix the window in the bathroom. It’s jammed shut and mould is growing around the frame and in the grout. He’s worried that if it gets out of hand, he’ll be blamed for it and lose his bond.
‘What about the extraction fan, does that help?’ Meredith asks.
‘Nah, it’s broken. I’m waiting for it to be replaced.’ He shrugs. ‘They don’t cost much. Maybe I’ll do it myself, fix the window as well while I’m at it.’
‘Well, it’s an option,’ Meredith concedes, ‘but make sure you get the department’s permission first. Does it need to be wired in?’
‘No idea.’
‘Don’t go doing any electrical work.’
‘I won’t.’ He grins at her in exactly the same way my dad used to do when he was reassuring my mum. I don’t believe him for a minute and grin back at him.
‘What did you mean by punishment?’ I ask.
He looks sheepish. ‘I don’t mean to judge, but some tenants, well, they don’t know how to look after a place. It’s not their fault, maybe they just never learned how, but doors can get banged pretty hard sometimes, windows broken. One dude, Yamatji guy next door, he was working on car parts in the living room. He had newspaper spread under them, but that will only soak up so much oil, you know?’
‘That flat looks empty,’ Meredith said, frowning. ‘Is he still there?’
‘Nah, he was evicted. Not that you’d ever know. He was quiet as. Never heard a peep out of him.’
She writes in her notebook. ‘Well, unless there’s anything else, Aaron, we’ll head back to the office.’
‘Nah, I’m good. I’ll let you know about the bathroom.’
‘Ta. Look after yourself and your boy.’
‘Will do.’
He sees us out and Meredith pauses at the window next door. It is covered with a pull-down blind. She mutters something about checking the tenant’s file and we walk to the end of the balcony.
‘Nice to meet you, Frances,’ Aaron calls from the front door as we turn down the open stairwell. I look back, and he’s waving. ‘Careful on those stairs, they can be slippery.’