The Year My Life Broke Read Free

was wishing I’d said yes, but I was still worried about the cop cars parked outside their house, and I didn’t want to get involved. I went inside, back to my book. But at dinnertime I asked my parents, ‘What is it with the people next door?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ my father asked. I was a bit surprised, because he said it aggressively.
    â€˜Well, how come the cops are there all the time?’
    To my surprise he jumped up. ‘What do you mean?’ he said again. He looked really fired up. ‘Are they there now?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I said, worried and puzzled at the same time. How come he hadn’t noticed the police cars there? And was it such a big deal? I’d been kind of kidding myself about the drug bosses and Godfathers, because I didn’t imagine people like that hung out in Tarrawagga, but maybe it was true.
    â€˜How often have you seen them?’ he asked. ‘When was the last time?’
    â€˜I don’t know. Um, I saw them yesterday. They’re there all the time.’
    He marched off to have a look and I followed while everyone else sat at the table staring at us like we’d cracked. Only trouble was, when my father got to the back room he turned right instead of left. He headed for the window, but I said, ‘Not that way. Not that side. The other house.’
    He looked at me like he agreed with the other three about my sanity. ‘What are you talking about?’ he said.
    I pointed back over my shoulder. ‘The house on that side. There’s cops checking them out every other day.’
    His shoulders sagged, and he walked back past me, laughing, relaxed. ‘You turkey. They live there.’
    I followed him back to the table. ‘Who do?’
    â€˜Two police officers. They’re brothers. One’s a sergeant and the other’s a senior constable. They share the house.’
    â€˜Oh.’ I did feel like a turkey. ‘What about the girl?’
    â€˜Harriet? Have you met her? She goes to your school and I think she’s in Grade 6. She’s Lenny’s daughter, she lives there too, most of the time, when she’s not with her mother. Lenny’s the younger brother, the senior constable. He and his wife are divorced.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    He seemed to know a lot about them. I hoed into my lasagne. I needed to readjust my thinking. And I did as good a job on that as I could, but a long time after I’d finished I still had a question. How come my dad reacted that way when he thought I meant the other place? It was like I’d been suspecting the wrong house. Maybe there was something dodgy about the other one instead? The way my dad headed for the window, it was like he wouldn’t have been surprised to find that empty-looking house swarming with the Drug Squad, the Homicide Squad, the CSI guys and a couple of SWAT teams. Maybe my dad was a cop keeping an eye on the place? Maybe my mum was? Their real jobs used to be financial adviser and property broker, both working for Antelope Investments. And look where that had got us. Into a scummy house in scummy Tarrawagga. Any job would have to be better than those. I would have settled for at least one parent as an undercover agent.

We had PE at school once a week, with a teacher called Mr Surrey, and right from the start I didn’t like him. The first five minutes of the very first class was a disaster. We started by playing dodgeball and I was one of the people he put on the outside, to be a thrower. I threw all right, hard and fast, right into Mr Surrey’s face. It wasn’t my fault! He was bending over picking up a ball and never saw it coming. It would have hurt though. He jumped up holding his face, then yelled, ‘Who did that?!’
    Considering everyone was staring at me in horror it was pretty obvious. I put up my hand, he bawled me out, then sat me on the bench for the whole lesson while he walked around holding an