FREDERIC REFUSED to be offended, no matter what she said to him. He already knew what she was like. He said that. He may have even been correct. But then he told her he would teach her to code, and assumed that was just so attractive. How totally up himself. She was a girl so she must want him.

On Monday, after everything she had said to him in Coburg, he tried to catch her eye. Even while she ignored him she wrote “Frederic” in her notebook and scribbled over it, obliterating him forever. She went into the loo and ripped him out and tore him up so small no-one would ever know what she had done.

She got back home and a telegram arrived—the first telegram she had seen that was not in a movie. She signed for it and left it on the table for her father who threw it in the trash when he was finished with it. Soon it was covered with spaghetti bolognaise, so obviously it was from Celine.

Is it Frederic? her father asked. Is that why you’re so sad?

That was him? Saying she was sad? What had been in the telegram?

I’m studying Cicero if you want to know.

Gaby, I’m not sure Frederic likes girls.

Oh aren’t you? she shouted, without warning, even to herself. Really? she yelled at him. She threw her book on the floor. Who was he to talk? What a mope. Letting Celine get away with all that shit.

He patted his big hands before his chest. He said, it was just my feeling.

And what are you, a homophobe?

It was as if she had slapped his face. Oh God, she thought, please Daddy, don’t be drunk.

Why don’t you just go and get her back? she said. Just get her and bring her home.

Then he was offended and shook his head at her, like some awful TV actor trying to convey disappointment. Then he stormed out of the house. Up to the Albion, of course.

And this was just one of many incidents that occurred in the two weeks when Celine was sending telegrams from Moggs Creek. On another night: Gaby had been looking through the cardboard box of Dylan Neil Young Jefferson Airplane Beatles. There was Rickie Lee Jones doing “Chuck E’s in Love.” She had danced to this track with her mother when she was a little girl, Celine crooning. He learn all of the lines, and every time he/don’t stutter when he talk.

On this night, Gaby thought, Frederic! (And it’s true! It’s true!) And then, the needle scraped across the vinyl and her father was home and the vinyl was flying through the open doorway out onto the dirty street, and all her insides were cold spaghetti. Her father was insane. Why would anyone do a thing like that?

Because—duh—it was a song about an actor. Celine was with an actor. Shagging. It made her sick. He was not even a Christian so was he putting up with Celine’s bullshit to make a happy family? Was he turning the other cheek? If so, don’t do it on her account. She stood on a kitchen chair and pulled the hems of Celine’s dresses, tugging, dragging until clothes pegs popped and clattered against the wall. She twisted clothes hangers beyond their useful shapes and the room got lighter and brighter until finally the ceiling was all bare and she didn’t know who she was cross with but she fetched the black rubbish bags from the kitchen and stuffed them full of Celine, five full bags of them and tied them up with yellow ties. She was a cat running screeching over lily pads, nothing to support her, each pad sinking as it took her weight. She waited and waited but her father stayed upstairs. Finally she locked the front and back doors and the window to the lane.

At her father’s door she called to him. Are you OK?

The streetlight illuminated his blue shoes protruding from the murky blankets. She found a place beside him in the musty tangle.

Will Mummy come back?

Yes my love. He tucked a quilt around her and she did not wake until the middle of the night when he carried her back to her bed. In the morning she found him in the kitchen drinking instant coffee. The black rubbish bags were now lined neatly against the wall and Gaby saw that the attack on Celine’s clothes would not be undone now. Those body bags would still be there, lined up in evidence against her, when her mother finally came home.

After school the four girls, the Keppel Street Quartet, as they called themselves, were walking north along Rathdowne Street. They were not really a quartet at all. They were Gaby and Katie and Nina, but they always had to include Katie’s little sister. Her name was Jenna and she needed a good whacking.

Crossing Elgin Street they all saw Frederic carrying another cardboard box entirely on his lovely head. It was a shock, Gaby said, to see his beauty displayed in public and to recall how she had bled onto his sheets and listened to his feathering clicking nails, black as beetles.

Jenna said, Hello Frederic. In a cheeky tone of voice.

Frederic lowered his burden to the footpath. As anyone could see, the box contained a brand new Knoll office chair, but Jenna asked: What’s in the box, Frederic? The lurker loser, it was not her place to speak at all.

Frederic said it was a chair. He was being funny. They did not get it. He was a hundred times brighter than the lot of them.

That’s nice, Jenna said. Did it fall off the back of a truck?

Gaby said, Shut up Jenna. She gave Frederic a quick nod.

Hubba-dubba, said Jenna and the other girls stayed silent. Katie lifted her finger at Jenna who stuck her tongue out. Frederic picked up his heavy box and continued up Elgin Street without any sign of strain, walking with that beautiful bounce, presumably towards his home.

He’s strong, said Nina, as he walked away. He has endurance.

At which Katie and Jenna both burst into laughter.

You’re really rude. Gaby spoke to Jenna but she included Katie, obviously.

I’m what?

Your little sister told him his father was a thief.

Get real, Gaby, said Katie. His father is a thief. Everyone knows that.

His father is an anarchist, said Gaby. Did you know that?

Gaby, darling, Katie said, selling left-wing newspapers doesn’t stop him being a thief.

Have you ever heard of Proudhon, Katie? No, you haven’t. Don’t smirk at me, Jenna. You couldn’t even spell it. Just look it up, Katie. See what Proudhon said. And leave Frederic alone.

Hubba-dubba.

Babe, you’ll only get your heart broken, Nina said. I had a friend who fell for one of those. It destroyed her life.

Well, I don’t have that sort of problem, said Gaby who was amazed with herself for making up the story about Proudhon.

Well, you have some sort of problem.

No, you do.

What sort of problem do I have?

This, cried Gaby, swinging her bag by its straps so it whizzed past Katie’s freckled button nose. And that was how they temporarily resolved their problem shrieking all the way to Keppel Street. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da in vinyl talk.