5

Lunchtime the next day I sat at my pry desk and placed the phone to my mouth. Spoke into my hand’s screen as if cupping Ollie’s ear.

‘Hello, son. Day going well?’

‘Yeah, pretty good. I…’

His sentence became lost among the seagully voices of playground boys.

I cupped my hand closer.

‘Speak up, Ollie.’

‘You there, Dad? I got want you wanted.’

‘You did? Excellent. Good boy.’

‘It’s Grace.’

‘Say that again.’

‘His surname is Grace. G-r-a-c-e. Gordon Grace. I went into Mum’s purse and found his business card.’

‘You keep how you did it quiet.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Discretion. It’s very important.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Also, you shouldn’t make a habit of going into your mother’s purse.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Not unless I say to.’

‘I won’t.’

‘This is a special circumstance. Well done. Good work.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘You didn’t get any other details? What was the company name on his business card?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Remember in future. Details are very important.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. You did well.’

‘Sweet.’

The seagull-boys screeched from what I presumed was a chase or ball game.

‘What book are you reading at the moment, Ollie?’

‘Book?’

‘For school.’

‘I don’t know. There’s a choice of things. Like, young-adult fiction or a harder thing. But that’s for advanced kids.’

‘What’s the harder thing?’

‘Animal something.’

‘That’d be Animal Farm?’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

‘What are you going to choose? I think you should choose the harder thing. It’s a masterly novel. If I recall—and it’s a been years since I read it—there were some grammatical matters that needed editing out in Orwell—the overuse of informals such as “sort of ” and “kind of”, but his books are very serious for all that.’

‘It’s advanced.’

‘So? You take on that challenge.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do it. Try.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I said try.’

‘If you think I should.’

‘I do think you should. You’re in training now. A trainee wordsmith. You still want to be, don’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Haven’t gone cold?’

‘No, I want to.’

‘Good. Then choose the harder book.’

‘I will.’

‘We can read it together.’

There is an equation to shame where wrongdoing is converted to rightness. It requires no thinking—it does the reasoning itself. My asking Ollie to spy was a shameful act for a father, but my religion of family made it dutiful.

Gordon Grace. I treated him like a suspect for investigation. Searched his name on pry’s electronic library: every news story in the nation for the last thirty years.

No matches found. I clicked on ‘land titles’ and ‘company records’. And yes, there he was, four pages of property holdings, all the plush locations. Toorak, Armadale. A retail block on Collins Street. The Toorak title I presumed was his home. It was three titles in one like the rich have for tennis courts, buying next-door’s backyard and putting in floodlights.

Ten companies were listed with him as sole owner—GorGrace NurseCare Limited, GorGrace Aged Service, GorGrace this, GorGrace that. They caused me to slump in my chair, these documents of wealth. I took no comfort from his birthdate—he was sixty-four last May. A man of means and thus a good catch despite the miles on him. If Emma put us side by side in a ledger his ‘for’ column would have more entries than mine. The definition of life is holding on to where you are in society. Hopefully getting ahead or not falling back too far. It’s having loved ones looking up to you, admiring how you’ve held your position. In holding on well in the world you hold on to their hearts.

I stood up to walk my despondency out. Clomped down the stairs onto a blinking footpath. Lightning was shining the way for a storm. Thunder rumbled across rail tracks like lorries. Wind pulled on the oars of tree branches. I jogged to get under the nearest awning—Go Joe’s cafe, where outside tabletops suddenly spat up pips of hail. The first hail of spring. It clicked along concrete and stone, became loud enough to switch my thoughts to its drama. Sinewy arms of water reached along drains, grabbing at sticks and paper, unable to hold them.

Then it was all over in a gust of steam. The sky scurried clear except for a sun shower down from the blue. The canvas awning creaking and dripping.

‘Words.’

It was Mai Tran cradling a tray of takeaway coffees. She held her bum against the cafe door to stop it slamming.

‘You okay? You look lost,’ she said, and winced with worry that she’d been too familiar. ‘I mean, not lost but, you know, concerned or something.’

‘Just ruminating,’ I said, without a polite return of smile.

Mai took a firmer grip on the bendy cardboard tray. She lowered her head and went off through the wet sunny air, tiptoeing through puddles, past the smashed plastic shell of a disused phone cubicle. The pulse in my throat swelled and fluttered. That phone box. There you go, Words, what a perfect idea.

‘Mai,’ I called. ‘Just a second. I have a question.’

She halted her tiptoeing and turned around with slow high steps as if the bottoms of her shoes were unglueing.

The moment she faced me I thought better than to ask my question. I held up my hand. ‘Sorry, nothing. Forget it. I might have a story for you. But not now.’

She said okay and glue-stepped back the other way towards the office.

My unspoken question was: You’ve worked in the tax department, Mai. Do they follow up all anonymous tips? If you dob someone in over the phone, do they act immediately or let matters drag?

When I got back to my desk there was a sticky note for me. Words, I’m not feeling well. Justin is driving me home. Man the fort…Jenny X.

The kiss surprised me. She’d not X’d me before. I must be doing something right, fitting into the team, a valuable presence. This provided a nip of satisfaction to my spirit. Not an all over tonic but some numbing for the GorGrace bruise.

It only lasted a few seconds. The bruise was too fresh, too purple-painful to ignore. I looked up the tax-office phone number. The toll-free connection called Hotline.