My mother got home late that Saturday night. When she walked in, I stayed in my bed and pretended to be asleep, but I caught glimpses of her through my bedroom door, stumbling in her heels, her bird’s nest hair all messed and matted like some forgotten doll in the bottom of a toy box.

After dumping her handbag on the small island bench, she wobbled to the kitchen, opened a cupboard door and poured herself something yellow to drink. She took a swig and despite our rule about not smoking in the apartment, she lit a cigarette. Everything about her seemed frantic and way too fast. The way she sucked on the cigarette, the way she heaved on its tip reminded me of Byron Walters, a boy at school, when he tugged on his purple puffer during sports.

I lost her for a bit as she moved through the smoke haze and out of sight, then her glass clinked on the coffee table and she reappeared in my bedroom doorway. Her tiny frame splashed a shadow across my face and as she made her way into my room, I rolled over and faced the wall. A few seconds later, the mattress dipped as she sat herself down on the edge of my bed. She placed a hand on my shoulder and began to cry.

‘I’m sorry, Lexie,’ she said. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

There was a time early on when sorry might have worked, when it might have got me to roll back over, but she’d said it too many times now, broken too many promises and the word had lost its meaning. I clung to the edge of the mattress, dug my fingers in and hoped she’d leave me alone, but after wiping the tears from her face, she lifted the blankets up and got into bed beside me. As soon as her head hit the pillow she began to fidget about. She inched herself closer then spooned against my back as if the two of us were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and she was trying to make us fit.

But we didn’t fit.

Not anymore.

I woke to the sound of screaming in the apartment next door. Mustaffa and his wife were going at it again, hurling insults back and forth like it was tennis. Something shattered on the other side of the wall, a glass maybe, and I raised myself up and clambered over my mother who was tangled in the blankets beside me. When I got to my feet, I stopped beside the bed and waited quietly for a breath. I watched her chest and listened, and when it came, the breath was shallow, a tiny gasp like a fish that’s been hooked then left for a few minutes in the sun. Despite her pale skin and the red sores around her mouth, she looked strangely peaceful lying there asleep in my bed. But the peace and calm never lasted. Tomorrow or the day after, the demons would come for her again. They’d come howling and screaming for more and they’d keep at it until her hands began to shake, until she scratched at her skin and made it bleed. Sometimes, if she was feeling strong, my mother would fight. She’d curl up in her bed, cover herself with blankets and rage against them as best she could. But in the end it was always the same. In the end she’d surrender. She’d give herself over to the demons and she’d head off into the night and fill her veins with poison.

I tiptoed quietly across my bedroom floor to the pile of clothes in the corner of the room. I rifled through them, sniffed at armpits and undies before deciding on what to wear. When I was dressed, I grabbed the sparkling gold cowgirl hat from the dresser against the wall, the hat my father had bought me at a discount store the week before he died. I placed it on my head and walked quietly into the grey gloom of the living room.

Everything in the commission was grey. Grey walls, grey floors and grey ceilings. Sometimes, when the sky outside clouded over, it seemed as if the whole world had turned to grey. But of course, I knew it hadn’t. Surfers Paradise wasn’t grey. Surfers Paradise was every colour you could imagine. It was brilliant blues and dazzling greens and it was blinding yellows just like the postcard I’d stuck to the wall above my bed. I’d found it one day, hidden between the pages when I was flicking through my father’s Rolling Stone music magazine. On the postcard, three meter maids wearing gold cowgirl hats, bikinis and heels were feeding coins into a parking meter. Behind them a beautiful blue sea sparkled as if it was dotted with jewels.

One day, I told myself. One day I’ll move to Surfers Paradise and dye my hair golden like the sun. One day . . .

While it was hard to know when my mother would wake, I decided I’d surprise her with scrambled eggs. I knew from last night that there was nothing in the fridge so I headed for the emergency money stash we kept hidden in an old biscuit tin. Not surprisingly my mother had been at it and all that was left were coins. I tipped them into my hand and after off-loading them into a pocket I made my way over to the spare key hanging on a silver hook below the shelves. When I lifted it off, Miranda came to life.

‘Please tell me you’re not wearing that hat out in public again.’

I was hoping to avoid Miranda for a while. I was hoping she might have the decency to keep her mouth shut for a bit. But she’s here now so I may as well get it over with and introduce her. The thing is, Miranda and I used to be friends. That’s going to sound weird, I know, because she’s not actually a person. She’s a smiley face. My mother drew her on the wall beside the fridge with a texta just below her mobile number. She did it when she first started going out so that if ever there was an emergency I could call her. I guess the smiley face was supposed to make me feel better or something. Anyway, for the first few weeks the face just sat there on the wall doing nothing. Then one night out of boredom I grabbed the texta and added to the face myself. Above the two dotted eyes I scribbled a mop of black with two plaited pigtails dangling from the sides. Each night my mother went out, I added a bit more. I gave the face a proper smile, I gave her teeth and I gave her lashes and eyes, I even gave her a name and the two of us became the best of friends. I suppose she was company, early on. I didn’t have any girls I could call friends so Miranda was someone to talk to, someone to fill the hole where my parents were supposed to be. But like always, the friendship didn’t last.

‘You look ridiculous,’ said Miranda.

‘Thanks.’

‘No, I mean it. It’s not even a proper hat. It’s plastic. It’s just weird. No wonder you haven’t got any friends.’

‘Well I like it. My dad gave it to me.’

‘Your dad? God, don’t get me started. Why don’t you grow your hair, Lexie? You look like a boy.’

From the corner of my eye I caught sight of my boyish reflection in the glass oven door. I shifted about, tried to find an angle that was all right, a piece of me that didn’t disappoint. I reached my hands up and smoothed my palms down my chest.

‘You can look all you want, Lexie, but there’s nothing there. And don’t think I haven’t seen you with the measuring tape. What, every Friday, is it? I mean, who the hell measures the size of their chest, anyway?’

‘Shut up, Miranda.’

‘I’m serious. You’re flat, okay? You could iron a shirt on that chest of yours.’

‘Goodbye Miranda.’

‘Hey, where are you going?’

‘Out.’

‘Out where? You’re going to see that boy again. I know.’

After tucking the spare key into a pocket, I headed for the apartment’s front door. When I turned the handle and pulled it open, I heard Miranda’s voice behind me.

‘Oh, by the way, Lexie. Happy Birthday.’

I didn’t bother looking back. I closed the door behind me and started for the elevator at the end of the corridor. Outside one of the apartments on my left, I noticed a pile of plastic bags filled with offcuts of denim. I slowed down a little and peeked through the open door as I walked passed. Inside, the Vietnamese family called the Nguyens were sitting at a long, white table, stitching jeans. There were five of them, maybe six, and each face was lit by the tiny lights in the whirring sewing machines in front of them. The grandma at the end of the table looked up and threw me a toothless smile.

During my four and a half months at the commission, I’d learnt quickly about staying alert. As I continued along the corridor, I kept my eyes peeled for movement and inhaled the strange cooking smells that still lingered from the night before. When I got to the end of the corridor, the red numbers above the elevator doors said twenty-two. I pushed the button scarred by a cigarette lighter but nothing seemed to happen. Maybe the elevator was stuck. I pressed the button again, thought about taking the stairs, when all of a sudden I heard an almighty crunch as the elevator began its descent. It ground downwards, blinking numbers as it dropped and soon the elevator shuddered and stopped. When the doors heaved open, two older boys wearing baseball caps and hoodies were leaning against the back wall inside.

Davey had warned me about these boys. Their names were Gordo and Nate. I took a step back and considered my options.

‘Come on, then,’ one of them said. ‘We ain’t got all day.’

Everything told me not to get in, but fear was something these boys knew well. If they saw it in my face, even a hint, they’d use it against me every time we met. Despite my better judgement, I shuffled inside and stood near the front with my back to the side wall. When the doors closed, I could feel them looking so I dipped my eyes and stared at the floor. The taller boy, Gordo, had a spray can in the side pocket of his pants. He started talking as if the elevator stop had interrupted a story.

‘And the best bit was,’ he said, ‘when I chucked him off, he started flapping his little legs like they were wings. Flappity-flap, flappity-flap, all the way down. You should’ve been there.’

I hadn’t meant to look up. I didn’t know I had.

‘The hell you looking at?’ said the shorter boy, Nate.

The elevator seemed to be taking forever. I glanced up and saw that we were only just passing the tenth floor. I didn’t answer Nate but I could feel them looking harder than they’d been before. A new story had begun. And the story was me.

‘You lost your horse, or somethin’?’ asked Gordo.

I snatched a look and caught his eyes.

‘Sorry?’

‘What’s with the hat?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘It’s just a hat.’

Gordo seemed to be processing something in his head and by the looks of it, that something didn’t add up. In the short time I’d been in the commission I’d tried my best to steer clear of Gordo and Nate but it was impossible to avoid them completely. At our past meetings when they’d bailed me up I’d simply lied. I’d told them I lived in an apartment in Carlton and that I’d come to the commission to visit my friend Davey. But this time things seemed different. Gordo had connected some dots.

‘What floor you on again?’ he asked.

I opened my mouth, went to speak, but he raised a finger in the air and cut me off.

‘I’d think very careful before you answer that,’ he said.

Gordo was enjoying things now and I had no option but to come clean.

‘Sixteen,’ I said.

‘Sixteen what?’

‘Sixteen B.’

The two of them glanced at each other and smiled.

‘Sixteen B,’ said Gordo. ‘That’d make you the druggie mum’s daughter. Where ya goin’, druggie mum’s daughter?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere? You must be going somewhere?’

‘I’m going for a walk.’

‘Check the book, Nate. See if her mum’s paid her tax.’

Something told me that Nate was used to following orders. He pulled a small notepad from his pocket and after flipping it open he ran a finger down the page.

‘Let’s see . . . Sixteen B . . . Says here she’s up-to-date, Gordo. Paid last week.’

Gordo seemed disappointed. He went to say something but the elevator made a clunking sound and began to slow. It bounced when it landed as if it had overrun its stop then finally settled on the ground floor.

Mr Nguyen was standing in front of us when the doors opened. I hurried out, slipped quietly past him and heard Gordo’s voice behind me.

‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t our little mate.’

Nate must have had the notepad out.

‘He’s two weeks late, Gordo.’

‘Two weeks,’ said Gordo. ‘Is that right? How about we go for a ride, then?’

I fought the urge to look back, continued walking and heard a familiar clunk as the elevator began its ascent. I breathed a sigh of relief and after pushing through the commission’s front door, I stepped outside and looked up at the dirty dishwater sky.

Grey had no business calling itself a colour. Even outside I felt trapped. I could feel the clouds above me and the concrete below, pressing like a vice, squeezing all the goodness from the day.

With the likelihood of rain, some of the residents had already made a start to their day. Up ahead, two Somalian boys were inspecting the heart-shaped stain on the ground. Another bunch of kids clambered over the ancient playground equipment while their mothers sat on a bench nearby, sipping on silver coffee mugs. A tram rattled along the metal tracks on Brunswick Street and soon enough the concrete became grass.

I followed a well-worn path and as I approached the store I read the headlines on the newspaper poster out front.

NEW YORK NIGHTMARE
THOUSANDS KILLED AS TOWERS GO DOWN

Crazy Col was standing beside the rubbish bin nearby with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He seemed to be talking to himself, tracing a finger in the air as he spoke. The gusting breeze made it hard to hear but as I drew near, I realised he was repeating the same words, over and over to himself.

‘Thousands killed . . . thousands killed . . . thousands killed . . .’

He stopped raving when he heard me. He swung his head, looked at me as if I was a monster, then scrambled off to his trolley half filled with cans.

‘Thousands killed . . . thousands killed . . .’

I loved the store. When I pushed through the door, a woman was standing at the counter plucking coins from her purse. She was down to the small stuff, counting them out like a school kid. The owner, a friendly Indian man called Ramesh, looked up at me and smiled.

‘Ah, Miss Lexie,’ he said. ‘Already I have checked and once again is beautiful in Surfing Paradise today. Today he has sunshine and twenty-five degrees.’

‘Thank you, Ramesh.’

I smiled at our game then headed to the far end of the store for the milk and eggs. After retrieving them from the fridge, I took a different route back past the biscuit display, then I stopped at the magazine rack a few metres from the counter. While Ramesh was busy re-counting the woman’s coins, I looked at the famous faces on the magazine covers. I spotted the Queen and Prince Philip and wondered if they had to do any swimming, if they ever struggled with things the way everyone else did.

‘Miss Lexie.’

I turned to the sound of Ramesh’s voice then walked over and placed the milk and eggs onto the counter in front of him. He closed the till and craned his head to the magazine rack.

‘You want one?’ he asked.

‘Nah, I was just looking.’

Ramesh threw me a smile then punched some numbers into the register.

‘Nine dollars and seventy-five,’ he said.

When I up-ended the coins onto the counter it was pretty clear that I didn’t have enough. Thinking I could make the scrambled eggs without milk, I grabbed the carton and started for the fridge at the back of the store.

‘Is all right, Miss Lexie,’ said Ramesh. ‘Today is on my house.’

I stopped walking and turned around.

‘Really? On the house?’

‘Surely, yes. You think Ramesh be forgetting your birthday?’

‘Well, I wasn’t sure. I mean, I only mentioned it once. I didn’t think you’d remember.’

‘I remember, Miss Lexie. And Ramesh have present also.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course.’

Ramesh stood quietly for a moment then raised a finger in the air as if he was checking the direction of the wind. He screwed up his face then something came to him and he began rummaging through the shelves under the counter.

‘Shanti never listening,’ he said. ‘I tell her one hundred times not to move my things.’

Presents didn’t come my way very often. After raising myself onto my toes, I placed my arms onto the counter and inched myself forward for a better look. Ramesh seemed to be getting annoyed.

‘Where? Where? Where?’

A few minutes later, Ramesh stopped searching and took a long deep breath.

Still on his knees he rocked back a little then snatched a quick look over his shoulder as if what he was about to say was secret.

‘You know what Shanti be meaning in India, Miss Lexie?’

‘I’ve got no idea, Ramesh.’

‘It be meaning “peace”. But you think Shanti be giving me any peace?’

I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged my shoulders and kept my mouth shut.

‘No peace, Miss Lexie. Only headache.’

Ramesh caught sight of something in front of him and almost instantly his face seemed to soften. He smiled and retrieved a battered cricket bat from the shelves and got slowly to his feet.

‘Ah, yes.’

I ran my eyes over it, over the red spots dotted along its wooden face.

‘You got me a cricket bat?’ I asked, trying to hide the disappointment.

Ramesh wrapped his fingers around the handle and looked at it lovingly, like it was an old friend.

‘Not for you, Miss Lexie,’ he said. ‘A long time ago in Jaipur, Ramesh hit many runs.’

‘Really? And you’ve kept it all these years?’

‘Yes. But use now for hitting heads.’

‘But you were good, yeah?’

‘Yes. I was good.’

‘You sound pretty sure about that.’

‘You don’t believe, Miss Lexie? You think Ramesh be making up stories?’

As if to prove a point, Ramesh began to demonstrate a few defensive shots behind the counter.

‘Patience, Miss Lexie,’ he said, looking up. ‘Ramesh be always waiting for the right ball. Waiting, waiting, waiting and when it comes . . .’

All of a sudden Ramesh cut loose. He shifted his weight to his back foot and swung the bat at an imaginary ball coming at him chest high. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten about the limited space around him, and as he followed through, the bat hit a metal display rack and swept it off the counter behind him. Packets of chewing gum flew into the air and clattered onto the concrete floor. Ramesh ditched the bat under the counter then tiptoed quietly to the closed door behind him. He raised his hand up as a signal I should be quiet and put his ear against the wood.

‘I think is all right, Miss Lexie,’ he whispered.

With his head on an angle as it was, something caught his eye and the corners of his mouth turned upwards and made a smile.

‘Ah-ha.’

He reached a hand out to the space where the metal rack had been and picked up a small round object no bigger than a cupcake in size.

‘Your present, Miss Lexie.’

When he placed it onto the counter I took a step back. I raised my hands up, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to touch it.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Open and see.’

Ramesh seemed even more excited than me. As he drummed his palms against the counter, I reached my right hand out and picked it up, feeling its shape with my fingers as I drew it in.

‘It feels hard,’ I said. ‘Round on the top and kind of flat on the bottom.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘I think . . .’

‘Do not think, Miss Lexie. Just open.’

The red wrapping was secured with a long strap of sticky tape. I dug a nail in under a corner and as I peeled it off, the paper tore down the middle and uncovered my present inside.

‘Is Surfing Paradise, Miss Lexie.’

I lifted the snow dome up for a closer look and saw a mum and dad and a kid making sandcastles in the sand.

‘It’s perfect,’ I said. ‘It’s the best present I ever got.’

Ramesh was beaming. I threw him a smile then looked back down at the dome and shook it.

Hundreds of tiny snowflakes exploded inside.

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘Surfing Paradise,’ said Ramesh. ‘It is good to be dreaming, Miss Lexie.’

All of a sudden a voice began to bellow behind the closed door.

‘Ramesh!’ yelled Shanti. ‘Ramesh, come here!’

After rolling his eyes, Ramesh placed his palms together, raised them up in front of his face and looked at the ceiling.

‘Please, be giving me strength.’

It was time to go. I thanked Ramesh for the present again and after placing my things into the plastic bag, I pushed through the door and walked outside.

The weather had turned nasty while I’d been inside. As I stepped away from the shelter of the store, a gusting wind nearly pushed me off balance. There was movement everywhere I looked. Metal cans tinkered across the concrete concourse. Plastic bags and coloured wrappers danced through the air, spiralled and dipped until they snagged and found new places to rest.

I pushed my hat down on my head and began to run. The rain was coming down sideways now. Halfway across the concourse, a raindrop the size of a marble exploded against my neck. It trickled down my back and when I looked up at the clouds, ready to give them a serve, something in the fairy floss grey caught my eye.

It was a tiny figure, standing on top of the commission tower. At first I thought I was seeing things but when I stopped running and wiped my eyes the figure was still there, perched on the ledge of the building.

I was a long way from the rooftop, too far to make out what was going on. As stupid as it sounds, part of me wondered if it might be kids, mucking about, daring each other to walk along the ledge, but something about that solitary figure made me think of someone else.

A party in Brunswick came rushing back, the one just before my father left when I saw him from the kitchen window, sitting on a swing in the backyard, alone in the dark. I wanted to go to him, wanted so badly to push that swing so he’d stop being sad, stop staring at the ground. But I didn’t know how. I was scared. I always regretted that. It might not have changed anything, pushing the swing that night, but he was my father and I should have tried.

Maybe it was that leftover guilt that got me moving now. After another quick look up, I started to run. I quickened my pace and with a final burst, I pushed through the commission doors and into the empty foyer. As I pressed the elevator button, I considered stopping at Davey’s apartment and dragging him away from the computer so that he could help me deal with whatever was happening on the roof. But what was happening on the roof?

Different scenarios flashed through my mind as the elevator made its way up. To be honest I wasn’t even sure if the elevator would take me all the way. After all, no one lived on the twenty-seventh floor. There were no apartments and, like the rooftop, you could only gain access with a special key. Still, nothing in the commission ever worked as it should. Security was slack. Things had a habit of playing up and when they did, no one bothered to fix them.

I was in luck. As the elevator travelled slowly upwards, I watched the red numbers above the door. Twenty-four . . . twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . . twenty-seven.

As soon as the elevator doors started to open, I turned sideways and squeezed myself out. I looked around and searched the empty corridor and saw a series of metal steps off to my right. Leaving my plastic bag on the floor, I ran up the stairs, and when I got to the landing, I stopped for a moment and poked my head through the open door.

The rooftop was bigger than I’d thought it would be. Despite the handful of utility sheds dotted across its surface, I guessed the area was about half the size of the soccer pitch at school. After stepping through the door, I looked to the city skyscrapers then pointed myself towards the western corner of the building and began walking.

The clouds seemed so close now. It was as if I was walking straight through them. The rain had all but stopped but I could feel the clouds like spider webs against my face, all velvety and wet.

I had no line of sight to the western corner. When I’d first looked out across the roof, it had seemed as if the handful of buildings took up most of the rooftop space but after about twenty metres of walking, I came into a clear section and saw the strangest thing.

In front of me was a large rectangular frame made out of wooden sleepers. The construction seemed simple enough. The horizontal sleepers were stacked three high and were held in place by longer vertical ones positioned at two metre intervals along its sides. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was supposed to be but another pile of sleepers nearby suggested that whoever was building it wasn’t finished yet.

I was close now. I must have been ten, maybe twenty metres from the western corner but I still couldn’t see the ledge. A smaller building with a padlocked door blocked my view. When I got to it, I slowed myself down and made my way along its eastern wall. Scared of what I might find beyond the building, I stopped at the corner and placed my palms against the cold wet bricks. I took a long deep breath and when I inched my head out I saw a familiar figure dressed in a grey coat, standing on the waist-high ledge. I wasn’t sure what to do so I just said the first thing that came to mind.

‘Mister.’

The word didn’t stand a chance. As soon as it left my mouth, the gusting breeze got hold of it and tore it apart. I had to get closer so I shifted out from behind the bricks and edged myself through the jagged opening cut in the wire security fence. I moved slowly forward, careful not to startle him until I came into view on his left. An empty bottle sat on the ledge beside his right boot.

‘Mister, please.’

When he turned his head, the sudden movement threw him off balance. I darted forward ready to grab him but somehow he managed to right himself again.

‘Please come down,’ I said. ‘It’s cold.’

‘Go away, little girl.’

The commission was filled with people from all over the world but the Creeper’s accent was hard to place.

‘I’m not going,’ I said. ‘Not until you come down.’

He looked at me again, so I placed my hands on my hips like I meant business. For some reason he seemed to find that funny.

‘Is cowgirl, yes?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Your hat, is cowgirl, yes?’

‘You’re drunk,’ I said.

‘Yes. I am drunk . . . like mister skunk.’

Apparently that was funny as well. After a burst of drunken laughter, he bent his knees a little and reached a hand down for the empty bottle on the ledge beside him. As his fingers tried to find it, he lost his balance again. His feet slipped on the ledge, and when he waved his arms and rocked back, I reached up, grabbed the tail of his coat then pulled him back with all my strength. Unfortunately it didn’t go like I’d planned. He fell backwards, landed on top of me with a thud and knocked the wind straight out of me. It took a while before I could breathe properly again and after pushing him off, I hauled myself up and got slowly to my feet.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

It seemed like a stupid question after what had just happened. I mean, someone who was thinking about throwing himself off a tall building was far from okay but right then talking seemed to be my only option.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked.

The Creeper didn’t seem to be hurt. He rolled onto his back then stretched his arms out to the side and made a ‘t’ shape on the wet concrete. He looked different from yesterday. Up close, his face seemed kind of wooden. His forehead was rippled with lines, deep grooves that looked as if they’d been crafted with a sharp tool. His beard too was longer than I remembered. It was scraggy and grey with a tinge of ginger around his mouth.

‘You need to sit up,’ I said. ‘You need to get out of the water. I’ll help you.’

After shifting around behind him, I got my hands under his arms and managed to prop him up against the ledge wall. He didn’t seem capable of standing, not yet, so I lowered myself down and sat beside him. With my mind on the task at hand I hadn’t noticed the quiet, but now that the urgency had gone and the Creeper was safe beside me, I became aware of an eerie hush, a strange and ghostly silence. It was as if the world below didn’t exist. Right then it was just the two of us, me and him, and we were the only ones alive.

‘I’m sorry about your dog, mister,’ I said.

The Creeper seemed confused. He turned his head and looked at me as if he wasn’t sure why I was there.

‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Lexie, Lexie Quinn.’

I waited for him to say something but nothing came.

‘Your accent,’ I continued. ‘It’s German, is it?’

The Creeper raised a hand up and ran his fingers through his grey, mad-scientist hair.

‘There was a German lady at our old commission place,’ I said. ‘Mrs Krautz, her name was. Everyone called her Fraulein.’

‘I am not German, cowgirl.’

The rich drawl in the Creeper’s voice sounded sticky and sweet, like honey.

‘So where are you from, then?’ I asked.

‘I am Russian,’ he said. ‘From Moscow.’

I tried to remember the camping trips with my father when he would talk about the exotic places and far-flung destinations we could go to if Surfers Paradise ever got flattened by an earthquake.

‘I don’t think I’ve been to Moscow before,’ I said. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Is cold.’

‘Colder than here?’

‘Here?’

The Creeper lifted his head and gazed up at the dirty grey sky above us.

‘Here is like heatwave, cowgirl.’

I looked down for a moment, at my right foot and began to pick at the rubber capping on the toe of my battered Converse.

‘I hate it here,’ I said. ‘I’m going to leave one day.’

He turned his head again and I felt his eyes on the side of my face.

‘And where will you go, cowgirl?’

‘Surfers Paradise.’

‘Surfers Paradise? I have not heard.’

‘It’s a place up north that’s sunny every day. That’s why they call it paradise. You can ride a moped around in a bikini if you want. You have to wear a helmet, though.’

The Creeper looked exhausted. Even the simple act of talking seemed to be an effort. As I sat there beside him, he rested the back of his head against the bricks and when he shut his eyes, the lines on his forehead seemed to disappear. He was someone else now. I saw stories in his face, sad and painful things I had no right to know. I fought like hell not to ask him but the words lined up in my throat and spilled from my mouth.

‘Were you really going to do it?’ I asked.

The Creeper opened his eyes and slowly turned his head.

‘Jump,’ I said. ‘If I hadn’t found you, do you think you would have done it?’

‘I am old, cowgirl. Old and tired.’

‘So why don’t you go to bed, then? I always reckon things get better after a good night’s sleep.’

‘Better than what?’

‘Just better.’

The Creeper craned his head to the ledge behind us. He raised his index finger then brought it down slowly to a high-pitched whistling noise that ended in an explosion.

‘If you had not come, I would be sleeping now,’ he said.

‘That’s not sleeping,’ I said. ‘That’s dying.’

‘And who would care, cowgirl?’

‘Well, me.’

‘You?’

‘Yeah, I would. You seem . . . nice.’

Nice sounded kind of lame but the Creeper seemed to like it.

‘But you do look terrible,’ I said. ‘And it’s getting cold. How about I help you get back to your apartment? Can you walk?’

The Creeper shifted a little beside me and managed a tiny smile.

‘Not as good as you talk, cowgirl.’

‘Yeah. I kinda do talk a lot. Only with people I like, though. I just ramble sometimes without thinking. Still, it’s better than not saying anything. Don’t you reckon?’

The Creeper didn’t answer so I got to work trying to help him up. After a lengthy struggle, I managed to get him onto his feet. He was in no fit state to walk on his own so as we started across the rooftop, he wrapped an arm around my shoulder and I took his weight.

‘You haven’t told me your name, yet,’ I said.

He began to veer left so I grabbed at his coat with my right hand and straightened him up.

‘I think maybe you know my name,’ he said.

‘Not that name. Your real one, I mean.’

‘Is Sergei,’ he said. ‘Sergei Romanov.’

‘Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mr Romanov.’

As I’d expected, the walk across the rooftop took forever. When we finally got to the door at the other end, I had to stop for a bit and lean Mr Romanov against one of the buildings while I caught my breath. As I breathed in the crisp clean air, I had a think about how best to tackle the metal steps.

‘Now, these stairs, Mr Romanov . . . Do you think you can manage?’

‘Yes. I can manage.’

‘You sure? I don’t want you falling down them.’

‘I can manage, cowgirl. I am old but my legs are strong.’

‘That might be true but it’s that empty bottle back on the ledge I’m worried about. Put your left arm around me and use your right hand to grab the rail. I think we might just fit.’

We took our time going down the stairs and after a couple of close calls we managed to arrive at the bottom without incident. My plastic bag was still where I’d left it so I picked it up and threaded my hand through the carry holes at the top. After a short ride in the elevator we arrived at the twenty-second floor. When the doors opened I froze for a moment and ran my eyes down the corridor, down the trail of dried blood dotted along the floor. I hooked an arm around Mr Romanov and the two of us shuffled out and headed for 22C.

The twenty-second floor smelt different to the sixteenth floor. It was the same colour grey of course, but it was musty and damp and had none of the cooking smells I was used to. An electric guitar began to wail as we walked past 22D then a few metres on I looked ahead and spotted something black on the front of Mr Romanov’s apartment door. I couldn’t make it out at first but as we got closer I saw that someone had sprayed the words WOOF WOOF across its wooden face. Gordo. I imagined him here, his smug smile and his putrid breath, standing in this very place, beside the pool of dried blood at Mr Romanov’s door. I felt my teeth grind and my hands ball into fists. I couldn’t bear to stand there looking at what he’d done a moment longer than I had to, so when Mr Romanov handed me his keys I opened the door and steered him inside.

The place was a mess. There were dirty dishes piled high in the sink, empty food tins and wrappers strewn across the kitchen bench.

‘This is nice,’ I said. ‘The cleaning lady on holidays is she?’

Mr Romanov was struggling to stay awake. I could feel him heavy on my shoulders as we stepped through the maze of rubbish on the living room floor. After almost tripping on a stack of DVDs, I made a beeline for a battered old armchair. When we got there, I managed to turn him side on. I bent my legs a little and when I let him go, he fell into the chair and its dodgy frame shuddered under his weight. The impact woke him up and he looked around as if he was trying to work out where he was. He saw me standing beside him and something seemed to click.

‘Ah, cowgirl. You are here.’

‘Yes, Mr Romanov, I am here. And you need a bath.’

‘I need vodka.’

‘No more vodka, Mr Romanov. I’m serious. You have to wash. You’re on the nose. Big time.’

‘I will wash, cowgirl, do not fear.’

‘Do you promise?’

‘I promise.’ He raised a hand up and began drawing on his chest with a finger. ‘You see, I am crossing my heart and hoping to die.’

‘Good. And this place . . . God, it’s a pigsty.’

‘You don’t like my place?’ he said.

‘No, I don’t like. How can you live like this?’

Mr Romanov was trying his best to stay awake but he was fighting a losing battle.

‘I’m going to go now,’ I said. ‘But I’ll come back, maybe tonight, and I’ll help you clean it up.’

‘I am okay, cowgirl.’

‘You’re not okay. You need to have a bath. A really long bath. Have you got any soap?’

‘I have soap, cowgirl.’

‘Good. So I’ll see you later, then, all right?’

Mr Romanov had nothing left. All he could do was bob his head and blink his eyes as a signal he understood. As I went to leave, I spotted a scrunched-up blanket on the floor beside the chair so I picked it up and lay it across his lap. I placed my hand on his forearm and after giving it a gentle squeeze, I noticed that the buttons on his shirt were all wrong. His top button pulled the collar tight around his neck but the next one down had skipped a hole and had thrown everything out of whack. I squeezed his arm again one last time then straightened up and made my way back through the piles of junk on the living room floor.

I imagined Mr Romanov dressing, cooking, doing all the normal things people do and I wondered how many of those things he got wrong. When I got to the door I stopped for a moment and turned around. I looked back and saw him sitting alone in his chair, all crooked and sad.

‘Mr Romanov.’

Like a bedside alarm, my voice jolted him awake and he opened his eyes.

‘I’m really glad you didn’t jump,’ I said.