Some time later, I was sort of asleep while still awake. Everything was fuzzy and distant and I found myself sitting on the kerb outside the block of flats. Even though it was late winter, I wasn’t feeling a thing, except for maybe a trace of a Lingerer in the park on the other side of the road. I think my pendant was buzzing, a little, but I ignored it. Off duty means off duty.

My special jacket had a stain on one sleeve. Could have been tomato sauce, could have been guacamole. Hard to tell against that colour. I couldn’t remember how it had happened and that made me a bit sad.

Bec came and sat next to me on the kerb. I wasn’t really surprised when I looked to my left to see Rani sitting there, looking cool and self-possessed, humming under her breath whatever song it was she’d been dancing to.

‘Sorry,’ I said to them both.

Bec and Rani both leaned forward and shared a look before Bec asked, ‘What for?’

‘For not being the life of the party.’

‘Hard to be the life of the party when you’re not even at the party,’ Rani pointed out. ‘But, as the birthday boy, you’re entitled to do what you want.’

‘Within reason,’ Bec added.

‘Within reason,’ Rani agreed. ‘We can’t have it outside reason, because that’d be unreasonable.’

Bec nodded solemnly. ‘And we can’t have it within raisin, because that’d be all grapey and sugary. Sticky stuff.’

I took in this exchange solemnly. ‘I needed some fresh air, is all.’

Another shared look, even more meaningful than the last. ‘You’ve been out here for an hour,’ Rani said.

‘We kept an eye on you from the balcony,’ Bec added.

‘Are they still dancing up there?’ I asked.

‘Wall to wall,’ Bec said. ‘Good thing we invited all the neighbours, otherwise we’d be getting complaints.’

‘Nice,’ I said after a while, when it seemed like I should say something.

Rani nudged me with her shoulder. Carefully, her being all super-strengthy and all. ‘Look, Anton, we’re not saying we’re worried about you.’

‘Not yet, that is,’ Bec said. ‘But should we be?’

Something snappy was on my lips before I really thought about the question, something along the lines of Anton being a Worry-Free Zone, but it died because this was a fair question. Bec and Rani had concerns, and they were about me. They’re both smart, so take a good look at yourself, Anton.

‘Just the birthday blues,’ I said finally. ‘Plus I’m tired. So many ghosts out there lately.’

‘Told you,’ Bec said to Rani, who nodded thoughtfully.

I frowned. ‘You told her what?’

‘Part of the reason for throwing such a sensational party was to stave off the birthday blues, but I’ve seen them hit you often enough to worry about a relapse.’

‘You’re making it sound like I’ve got Ebola or something.’

‘Bec told me that you often get morose on your birthday,’ Rani said.

I couldn’t feel that Lingerer anymore. Must have subsided. ‘Morose?’

‘Glum, miserable, sombre, forlorn, down in the mouth,’ Bec said. ‘A general sad-arse, in other words.’

‘Me? When have I ever been a sad-arse?’

‘Every birthday since Carl died.’

It was like a hit between the eyes with one of those giant frozen tunas you see in Japanese fish markets. ‘Oh.’

‘You and Carl sharing a birthday,’ Rani said gently. ‘No wonder it gets to you.’

Carl, my baby brother, the one who was never going to get older than the three years he was when he died in that accident, the one that was the start of the end for our family as it used to be. ‘He was a good little kid,’ I said after I inspected the gutter for a while. Nice neighbourhood. Such clean drains.

‘He was.’ Bec knocked her head against my shoulder. ‘That laugh of his.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ghost hunters deal with death’s aftermath all the time.’ Rani had her knees pulled up and her arms wrapped around them. ‘We should be used to it. And yet when someone close to us dies, we do strange things to ourselves.’

‘Such as?’

‘You blame yourself for Carl’s death,’ Bec said. ‘You have forever.’

The automatic answer was on my lips in an instant. ‘I wasn’t even there.’

It was Mum who blamed herself for what happened to Carl. She was the one in the garden with him, she should have been watching him closer, she shouldn’t have used those bamboo stakes that were right at the wrong height for a little kid blundering around and bending over like that.

I heard all that, and more, in the days after Carl died. And when Mum wasn’t saying it, muttering it, sobbing it, I could tell that she was thinking it.

So it was her, not me, blaming herself.

Or was it? How many times had I wished I’d been there in the garden with them instead of in my room reading some book about the exploits of mighty Marins of the past? I could have been with him, weeding and digging and making sure nothing bad happened. And then there was Dad, who did the self-blame thing pretty well, too. Why had he been in the bookshop? Why hadn’t he been at home? Why hadn’t he been able to see the danger well before it had even started to happen? Why had he let everyone down?

‘Blaming yourself isn’t always a rational thing,’ Rani said. ‘I could give you a thousand reasons why you couldn’t have done anything about it and you’d still wonder why you couldn’t save him.’

‘I should have.’

‘Use the day to honour him, Anton,’ Bec suggested. ‘Instead of beating yourself up about something you can’t change.’

I bopped myself on the knee a couple of times. ‘That laugh always cracked me up.’ I stood, and cleared my throat again. ‘Morose mode cancelled. Let’s get back to the party.’

Rani rose and held out a hand to help Bec to her feet. ‘If only it were that easy.’

‘Trust me. Moroseness is now dialled back to two. Three, tops.’

‘That only leaves your extreme fatigue,’ Bec said. ‘Ghost hunting proving too much for you?’

‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

No one argued with that. Must have been the birthday thing.

Bec led us back to the flat. As we mounted the stairs, the music got louder, echoing off the delightful concrete and the tasteful cream bricks. The handrail was vibrating as I hauled myself upwards.

The closer we got, the more it became obvious that the flat party had grown into a whole block party. Doors were open, people were spilling out, happy faces all round. As she reached the landing, Bec turned and spread her arms. ‘These are our people. Rejoice, we said, and be happy.’

Rani whooped. ‘And they did!’

Inside, the flat was chock-a-block. People cheered as we squeezed in and the whole mass was bumping and jumping roughly in time to the music. It was like being in an extremely tightly packed commuter train that had accidentally taken a wrong turn and was running on a roller-coaster rail while music was pumped in from an industrial noise testing centre, I imagine.

Much later, things wound down. Bec made sure that I farewelled everyone as they were leaving. Part of the job of Guest of Honour, apparently. Many slaps on the back, lots of kisses on the cheek, so it wasn’t all bad – and a whole lot better than the other way around.

When it was just us, we sat in the tiny kitchen among all the debris. So many bottles, so many greasy pizza boxes, so many empty chip packets.

‘Actually, you do look tired,’ Rani said to me.

I squinted at the clock on the wall, the one I’d given them as a housewarming present. It was a maneki-neko, which was cute, but not always the easiest to read the time. ‘I’m out of my routine. My body clock’s screwed up.’

Bec tapped her fake eye thoughtfully. ‘You know, this ghost outbreak’s starting to sound familiar. Something in your Aunt Tanja’s journals, Anton?’

‘Maybe. Those notebooks are packed with stuff like that.’

‘I’ll need to spend some time in the archives,’ Bec said, ‘but I do have other things on my plate.’

It was like that at the moment. Lately, so much needed to be put aside. I eyed some of the boxes of board games that were sitting accusingly on a shelf near the door. Is there anything sadder than a board game sitting on a shelf gathering dust? It says a lot about your priorities if you’re too busy to sit down and simply have fun. Fun is important. If you take fun out of your life you might start to wonder what’s the point. You could pretend it’s delayed gratification, but it’s just busyness.

Telestrations. Photosynthesis. And we hadn’t even unboxed Exploding Kittens.

One day, I vowed, we would get back to board games. I’d get Dad to play, too. Let me tell you, when I dream, I dream big. ‘We’ve been missing out on cosplay, too,’ Rani said softly, noticing my wistful gazing at the board games. ‘We’ve skipped three big-time opportunities over the last couple of months.’ She smiled. ‘We were looking forward to seeing your burgeoning cosplay skills on display, Anton.’

‘That’s a downer. I have ideas, too.’ And I did. I’d been kicking around a notion of some sort of steampunk robo Indiana Jones. Dad had a hat in his collection that’d do in a pinch, so that was a good start, and I always fancied carrying a bullwhip, so I was almost halfway there, probs.

I yawned, nearly cracking my face in half. I had to use both hands to cover it politely. Manners, after all. ‘I’m heading home.’

‘Before you go,’ Rani said, glancing at Bec. ‘One last thing.’

‘Sounds suspicious.’

Bec rustled around in the debris on the kitchen bench and found three mugs. She handed Rani and me one each, and then opened the fridge. ‘Here.’ She poured.

I sniffed. ‘Grapefruit juice?’

‘The champagne of fruit juices.’

‘We’re having a toast,’ Rani said. ‘It doesn’t matter what we use.’

‘A toast? Been done a couple of dozen times tonight.’

‘Not to you,’ Bec said. ‘To Carl.’

Friends. They have a habit of saying the right thing at just the right moment and it chokes me up. I raised my mug. ‘To Carl.’

We clinked and sipped and that bruised part of my heart, the one that had never really healed, ached a little bit less as I thought of him instead of me.