CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The followers were coming every day, and whenever they tweeted their photos and videos of me even more of them came. They pushed open the gate if it was closed. They let themselves into the house if nobody answered the door. There was no stopping them. ‘Hello?’ they called. ‘Anyone home?’ One day Marnie returned from the supermarket to find a Norwegian couple feeding me honey-roasted peanuts on the coffee table. ‘It’s not what it looks like,’ they said, but it was. Marnie marched over to the black box behind the Eye and pressed the button to turn it off.

‘You need to start locking the place when you’re out,’ Rob told her that evening, which was not how houses worked – not how houses in Wilderness Road worked.

‘Except the locks are as good as broken,’ said Marnie. ‘And none of the windows shut properly.’

‘Hvem er en flink gutt?’ I said.

‘What?’ said Rob.

‘Hvem er en flink gutt?’

‘I think … I think it’s Norwegian,’ said Marnie.

‘These are completely legitimate concerns,’ said Lakshmi when they called her on Rob’s laptop. ‘I hear what you’re telling me.’ Her face took up the whole screen, life-size.

‘We need some security,’ said Marnie. ‘A padlock on the gate, at least.’

‘Sure sure. Your privacy is important.’

‘Pepper spray,’ said Rob. ‘Tasers.’

‘I know you’re joking,’ said Lakshmi, ‘but we mustn’t alienate our followers. They’re our bread and butter.’

Marnie ran a hand through her hair. ‘We’re not getting our work done. There’s a huge backlog of orders I need to pack up.’

‘I did wonder about you taking on the distribution yourself.’

The house creaked and ticked as it cooled in the evening air.

‘Rob wants a sign at the gate,’ said Marnie. ‘Trespassers will be—’

‘Shot on sight,’ he said.

‘Asked to leave,’ she said.

The little red stone at the side of Lakshmi’s nose glinted. ‘Leave it with me.’

A few days later the sign arrived: pictures of me down one side, and a row of boxes down the other. Each morning Rob was to tick a box to show where I was, and why I was unavailable. Marnie read me the big red heading: Tama Requests Privacy. He Is Currently … I don’t know where Lakshmi found the pictures, because they showed me doing things I’d never done. Sitting in a spa pool, up to my neck in water. Lying back under a white towel, slices of cucumber over my eyes. Being fed lobster by women in gold bikinis. It felt strange to see those Tamas – as if there were stories about me I didn’t know, memories I couldn’t remember.

At first the followers liked it. They tweeted photos of themselves next to the sign, and photos of me sitting on the sign when clearly I was supposed to be somewhere else: having a pedicure, working on my screenplay. They brought me all kinds of treats, which I ate out of their hands, and Rob and Marnie kept reminding them that too much human food was dangerous for me, and could they please consider my welfare? And it was true, I was starting to feel sick, and one morning I barely sniffed the morsels of cake and pizza they pushed at me. As soon as they’d all had a chance for a selfie I headed off in the other direction – up towards the woolshed, where Rob had made space for all the extra toy Tamas. Up towards the gut hole, where he disposed of the pests he shot. Up towards the pines, where I found my father showing his three new children how to listen for buried grubs. They stood there in a row, heads tilted, listening, listening, one eye on the ground and one on the sky. I think he spied me lurking at the edges of his territory, because all of a sudden he said to his three new children, ‘Who kills with cars?’

‘Humans,’ they chorused.

‘Who kills with bullets?’

‘Humans.’

‘Who kills with hands?’

‘Humans.’

‘Who kills with poison?’

‘Humans.’

‘Who kills with traps?’

‘Humans.’

‘If a human threatens you,’ he said, ‘they are threatening the whole family – the whole flock. You must swoop. Go for the hair, the scalp, the face. Pierce their eyes, drink their blood, clean their bones.’ He paused, paced. ‘Your older brother and sister have disgraced themselves with humans. They have gone to them of their own free will. Things do not end well for birds who go to humans of their own free will.’

‘Yes, Father, yes,’ said his three new children standing all in a row.

‘We have no memory of your older brother and sister,’ he said. ‘If you hear their voices, close your ears. We have forgotten them. They are not even ghosts.’

‘Not even ghosts,’ they said.

He never so much as looked in my direction.

On my way back to the house I recalled Ange’s words: that Rob would love to put a bullet through my brain. I crept under the bath and examined the clues I’d gathered about him. You have to stay one step ahead of the perp, Trent. Figure out his MO, then beat him at his own game. I pushed the evidence around the dusty floor, trying to read the story it told. Bottle top. Coin. Chicken bone. Box of cigarettes with dying man. Box of cigarettes with breathless baby. All day I thought about what it might mean, but there was no escaping the absence of bullets, the lack of a single bullet. And wasn’t Rob bringing me clothes pegs to play with? And bits of bacon and dried apricot? Wasn’t he scratching my back, sometimes when the Eye couldn’t even see him? That very night, wasn’t he building me a pine tree in the living room, pushing the wire branches into the plastic trunk so it looked just like a real one? Weren’t he and Marnie decorating it with silver pine cones, golden birds? Wasn’t I their little boy?

Then one evening Lakshmi called to tell us we needed to address the access issue. She said, ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, but the followers are getting pissy. They’ve seen the footage of people in Tama’s kitchen, in Tama’s bedroom, and so they go to the trouble of making the trip themselves, only they can’t even get their hands on him at the gate. What a joke, they’re saying. What a scam. They should be booted off the internet. Fuckin fags – and so on. You’ll have read the comments. The thing is, you have to give them what they want. You have to give them a piece of him, or at least the belief that they’re in with a chance to grab a piece of him. So, this is the strategy: once a week or so, you let in a select few. Like a bouncer who has his VIP list and only admits normal people if they’re super attractive. A nine at the very least. Except in your case you’ll be letting in the influencers, whether they’re attractive or not. They’re usually attractive. Any press, naturally. And the kids with the wheelchairs and the leukaemia and what have you – they’re allowed in too. Decrease supply, increase demand. Tama can still make appearances at the gate to greet the others. He’s still free to do that, like the Pope. Let the great unwashed kiss the hem of his garment, etcetera.’

Rob said he’d choose which followers to let in, because he didn’t want Marnie in the firing line. I had no choice but to fly down to the gate every few days as well, and walk along the fence, and hang upside down, and pose for selfies. My right eye saw all the followers waving their treats, holding up their phones, but my left eye saw the orchard where the early cherries were red and ready. My left eye saw the glint of my sister’s trap through the trees.

I turned my back on her. I turned my back on my blood. I kept my distance from my sister, just as my father had commanded. Rob and Marnie were my family now.