Circle of Flight Read Free Page B

get. Gavin’s my adopted brother more or less, and when we went looking for his little sister, we found her, but unfortunately the man who had been their stepfather found us first. No-one but Gavin knew the truth about him, that he had murdered Gavin’s mother. And when you’re the only person in the world who knows about a murder, you’re not in a very comfortable position. We found ourselves in a very uncomfortable position, getting wet and bloody, in a fountain in a park, trying to defend ourselves against a knife attack, and not making a very good job of it for a while. We both had the scars to prove that.
    What it did lead to was a new experience for both of us, going to court for a criminal trial. It was one of those things where you feel kind of excited, but guilty for feeling excited. Nervous as well of course, definitely nervous. OK, I’ll be honest, scared, but you can’t help having the other feelings as well. The trial was in Stratton. One thing that was good these days was that the legal system had been streamlined under the new constitution so things got dealt with faster. A law student I was talking to at the court said that in the old days it might have been a year before this case got heard.
    We stayed with Lee and his siblings again. I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced this was a good idea, given that Lee’s catering depended on how many pies were in the freezer, and his housework depended on whether the path through the lounge room to the front door was still open to traffic. When it was completely blocked he’d schedule a ten minute clean-up.
    The filter in the dryer had like three kilos of lint in it. OK I’m exaggerating again, but I don’t think anyone had cleaned it since they bought it. I explained to Lee about the fire hazard but I had the feeling it wasn’t going to make a substantial difference in his life, and I didn’t feel really confident until I’d found Pang, his little sister, and explained it to her. Honestly, without Pang that family would have to call in Meals on Wheels. Lee’s in his own world half the time. Phillip, the nine year old, is a bit obsessive. His three main interests are computer games, footy stats and reading Deltora Quest books. This does not necessarily make for good conversation. I mean, the kid collects light globes. Used ones. He has about twenty of them in a cupboard. Pang showed me.
    Paul, who’s seven, is the quiet one, with his nose in a book, quite like Lee in some ways but not as determined. Then every once in a while he just gets the devil in him and goes through the house looking for ways to create havoc. Intira, the smallest, is a four year old with anger-management problems. As all four year olds have anger-management problems I wasn’t too concerned about this, but in a small apartment it’s not so good.
    When we got to Stratton for the trial I suddenly thought that I should get them presents, but there wasn’t much time, so I grabbed a box of chocolates at a shop near the station. Stupid really, everything’s so expensive nowadays, and you only get about twenty choccies for thirty bucks. I’d have been better off going for quantity instead of a nice box with lots of packaging inside. Anyway, before anyone else realised, Intira had raided the box and wiped out half the chocs, and if that wasn’t bad enough she then had a monstrous tantrum when Lee took the box away and told her she was a greedy little guinea pig, or words to that effect.
    The one thing that didn’t happen while I was staying with Lee was a sudden romantic windstorm that blew us both away. Maybe I’m looking for excuses but I gotta say there’s not a lot of room for romance when five kids are bouncing off the walls of a flat that doesn’t have bounceable walls. That sounds so middle-aged, like a suburban mother in the
Women’s Weekly
explaining why the romance has gone out of her marriage, but for the first time in my life I had a bit of sympathy for suburban