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nodded at Dee. ‘At university.’
    Dee smiled. ‘She’s got a point.’
    Tom shook his head. ‘Dee cooked. I was at work until six. You two are doing the dishes.’
    I was about to insist, to tell him that he never did anything around the house. We were the only ones who had picked up the slack since Dee started studying, but I could tell he was on the verge of losing it, and although it was rare for Tom to shout, it wasn’t good when he did.
    Later that night, when I’d finished my homework, I showed Dee the book that Mrs Scott had lent me.
    She told me she’d read it. ‘There’s a copy upstairs.’
    I said I’d flicked through it, but it looked a little boring to me, although I did agree with what she was saying – ‘Germaine, that is.’
    â€˜Tom doesn’t do anything around the house,’ I insisted.
    Dee agreed he didn’t do much. ‘He’s better than a lot of men though.’ She was sitting at the kitchen table trying to finish an essay, and she looked tired. ‘But when you talk about equality between men and women, it’s more than just housework. It’s being able to do the same jobs that men do. If you want to be a builder like your father, why not? If you want to go into politics, or run a company, or drive a truck – your gender shouldn’t matter. There’s been a division between what’s regarded as women’s work – usually the caring professions like teaching and nursing that are always chronically underpaid – and men’s work, which usually has a higher status in society. I can give you some other books to read.’
    I shook my head. She was boring me now, and I wished I’d never opened up the conversation. ‘I just think things need to change around here.’ I waved my hand towards the sink.
    â€˜They are changing,’ Dee told me, and she nodded at her books. ‘More than you realise.’
    She turned back to her papers and then looked up at me one more time.
    â€˜Keep an eye out for your brother.’ She had pushed her glasses down to the end of her nose and was looking straight at me. ‘This has been upsetting for everyone – but very much so for him.’

five
    Theory: Amanda Clarke killed herself.
    Sitting in my bedroom, looking out at the darkness of the Moreton Bay fig that grew in our garden, I heard the bats screech, their leathery wings a whoosh in the night as they swept down on the rotten fruit that clung in clusters to the branches.
    I hated bats. Once Joe had knocked one down from where it was stretched between the telegraph lines, electrocuted. Its wings were shrivelled, cracked and crisped. He had challenged me to touch it. He had promised me his pocket money for the next month. He had even said he would do all my chores. It was one of the only times I didn’t take up a dare.
    I was meant to be in bed so I had only my desk light on to see by. This was the first entry where I had moved away from facts and decided to leap straight into something larger – theories. I didn’t know whether Amanda Clarke had killed herself but it was certainly possible. We had talked about suicide in social ed. People killed themselves when they were in trouble or depressed and believed they were alone. Father Mullaney, who took the class, told us that suicide was a sin. Only God could decide when our time was up.
    â€˜What happens if you don’t believe in God?’ I asked, and he fixed me with a cold stare.
    â€˜That,’ he said, ‘is the problem. Lack of belief will drive any of us to despair.’
    Kate thought Amanda had been strange before she died.
    I didn’t know her well enough to tell whether there was a change to her. From a distance, she seemed like someone who would have had no reason to kill herself. She was Amanda – cool, perfect and untouchable. The only noteworthy event in her life at that time (that I knew