Page 10 of A Murder is Going Down

In the living room, someone is playing a song on the piano that would be perfect for the moment in a period movie where the heroine realises she’s actually in love with the penniless hottie who then turns out to have tons of money after all. (So convenient.) I follow the sound down the hall to find Aunty Sam ladling porridge into a row of bowls. Elena is at the table, reading the newspaper and drinking some pretty pungent ginger tea. It’s Patrick providing the piano soundtrack. If I’d been more awake, I might have put a dressing-gown over my pyjama shorts and the Taylor Swift t-shirt I got for my thirteenth birthday, which is now so small it exposes my outie belly button.

‘Morning,’ Elena says.

‘Nice t-shirt,’ Patrick says, swapping the piano for a bowl.

It’s too early to snark back.

Elena hands me the newspaper. ‘I’m done.’

‘Can I have the cryptic crossword?’ Patrick asks me. I hand the relevant pages over and pretend I didn’t even want to take a crack at the nine-letter word puzzle.

Having a newspaper (or most of it) to hold turns out to be a good thing. Not because I love reading a physical newspaper the way Aunty Sam does, or even because there’s nothing like reading about conflict in the Middle East to put your own problems into perspective. But because it givesme an excuse to ignore the other three people in the room while I wake up. It also means I can eavesdrop without seeming to, which means I’m sittingright therewhen this conversation takes place.

‘Have you decided whether you’re going to sell the house?’ Aunty Sam asks Elena.

‘Probably,’ she says. ‘I can’t pay the mortgage on my own. I’m not sure I can afford to buy another place on my own either.’

‘Felix had life insurance,’ Aunty Sam says. ‘Won’t that be enough to help out?’

‘There might be a problem with that.’

‘With what?’ Aunty Sam is pouring tea.

‘With the life insurance.’

‘How so?’

The pause is long enough to make me look up from an article on the world’s ugliest dog.

‘The police think Felix’s death might have been suicide,’ Elena says. ‘Life insurance doesn’t cover suicide.’

‘What?’ Patrick and I say at the same time.

Aunty Sam, who is more restrained, only raises an eyebrow. But I see the way the tea splashes over the rim of the cup to scald her fingers.

‘It’s not decided yet,’ Elena says. ‘It might go to a coronial inquest, the police family liaison officer told me. But she told me suicide is a possibility.’

‘No way didFelixkill himself,’ Patrick says. ‘He is the least suicidal person I’ve ever met.’

‘Do you meet a lot of suicidal people?’ I ask, although I’m inclined to agree with him. I’d be less surprised to hear that Felix had murdered someone.

‘I think I drive them to it,’ Patrick says, straight-faced.

I smirk. ‘Actually, that makes perfect sense.’

‘Patrick, you may be my moronic kid brother, but I’m pretty sure even you know that suicidal people don’t exclusively wear black and listen to Boygenius,’ Elena says.

Patrick shakes his head. ‘I found their new album pretty upbeat.’

‘Anyway,’ Elena goes on, ‘depending on what the official cause of death is, I might get the money from the insurance or I might not. Either way, I can’t imagine continuing to live in the place where Felix died.’

I turn the pages of the paper loudly, feigning interest first in the horrific road accident that’s killed three people and then the fertility struggles of a local TV star, which makes me think about Mum. Felix and I were both IVF babies, which I think is why we had such a big age gap. I once read that siblings born ten years apart are basically only children.

‘What doyouthink happened to Felix?’ Patrick asks. There’s a bad moment when I think he’s asking me, but he’s looking at Elena.

‘It was an accident,’ Elena says. ‘That cliff next to the house is steep. He’d had a few drinks. He must have slipped and fallen.’

‘Do the police think someone could have pushed him?’ Patrick asks.