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out for me.
    I headed straight for the kitchen. It was a house rule wherever we lived: one corner of the kitchen bench was always reserved as our in-and outbox. It was where I would leave newsletters, permission slips from school, and any messages that came in while she was out. It was where she would leave embarrassing lovey-dovey messages when she had to leave before I got up in the morning, five dollars for tuckshop, instructions on what I had to do before I left the house and when I got home in the afternoon. Buy milk. Bring in the washing. Hang out the clothes. Put the sheets in the dryer. That kind of thing.
    If Mum’s new phone numbers were anywhere, the end of the kitchen bench was where I would find them.
    I skidded to a stop and pounced on the bright orange note, recycled from some yoga flyer dropped in our mailbox.
    Hi honey-bun ... blah blah, mushy bit, blah blah, washing, blah blah – ah, there it was. Location Location Location – that must be the name of the real-estate agency where she was working – and her numbers.
    I grabbed my only-for-emergencies, bottom-of-the-range Samsung mobile and tapped in her mobile number, hoping to catch her in the car. Her voice clicked in, bright and sunny in the panicked fog of my morning.
    â€˜Hi, honey-bun. Did you meet our lovely new neighbour yet?’
    Was she kidding me? ‘Mum – are you nuts? Are you talking about that crazy serial killer who–’
    â€˜Come on, honey, Caleb is a perfectly nice man. He introduced himself this morning and told me he was planning on having some moving-in drinks tonight–’
    I snorted. ‘Is that what he’s calling it? He and his evil dead cronies filling a coffin with–’
    â€˜Honey, for heaven’s sakes, be a bit nice! The poor man hasn’t even moved in and you’re inventing some ghastly–’
    â€˜I’m not inventing anything. Him and his mates are freakozoids. I heard them last night talking about coffins–’
    â€˜Henry. That’s enough. You’re being ridiculous–’
    â€˜But Mum–’
    â€˜Oh God, there’s a police car and I’m not on hands-free. I have to go. See you tonight. Love you.’
    I stared at my mobile in disbelief. She’d hung up on me.
    I tossed the phone onto the kitchen bench in disgust. It slid to a stop on top of the note she’d left me not ten minutes earlier. Decorated with love hearts and kisses.
    What the hell was that supposed to mean when she couldn’t bring herself to listen to, let alone believe, a single word I had to say?
    I paced the worn lino in the kitchen, unsure of my next move.
    A packet of Weet-Bix caught my eye, on the bench where she’d left it out for me. Might as well eat while I tried to figure things out. I threw four biscuits into a bowl, covered them with sultanas and brown sugar, then put on some toast while the milk soaked in.
    I grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and studied my distorted reflection in its stainless-steel back. Swollen and unappealing; a face that only a mother could love. I turned it over and my reflection flipped upside down in the curved surface of the spoon.
    Cool.
    I kept turning the spoon, watching my reflection flip over and back again.
    Sometimes it helped to look at a problem from a different angle...
    Mum was taking the new neighbours at face value. Because she hadn’t heard what I’d heard, or seen what I’d seen.
    I flipped the spoon again and saw a straightforward solution.
    Evidence. That’s what I needed. That would convince Mum. Then she’d have to believe me.
    I buried my reflection in the milk-softened cereal. The sultanas had plumped out and the brown sugar had melted into a syrupy stain across the surface of my breakfast.
    Seeing was believing.
    I hooked into my Weet-Bix, a plan beginning to take shape in my mind.

CHAPTER NINE
    There was a truck parked out front when I marched down the front steps