The Sound by Sarah Alderson Page A

anything, you just need to ask.’ He steps out into the hallway. ‘Goodnight.’
    ‘Night,’ I murmur.
    Once he’s out of sight I cross to the door and close it, then I tiptoe towards the window, take hold of the chair and carry it back and wedge it against the handle.

 
14
    The next morning I drive Brodie to camp and Braiden to childcare. I clutch the steering wheel in both hands, forget several times that I only need to use one foot as this car
is an automatic, and I chant ‘right, right, right-hand side’ the entire way. I do not crash which I think is more down to luck and the lack of stop signs than any actual skill on my
part.
    As I walk Brodie through the little outdoor play area beside the building where camp is held, I spy Noelle Reed playing on the slide. She waits while a little boy sits down and then she gives
him a hard shove so he goes flying, shooting off the end of the slide and landing in the sand at the bottom head first. He sits up spluttering, purple-faced and crying.
    Brodie inches closer to me.
    I bend down to her level and look her in the eye. ‘Brodie, if Noelle does anything or says anything to you that you don’t like I want you to tell me or one of your camp teachers,
OK?’
    Brodie nods. I take her hand. ‘Bullies suck, OK? You have to stand up to them or they just keep bullying. But you don’t have to stand up to them by yourself. I’ll help
you.’
    I leave her there but not without a sense of disquiet. Brodie seems uncharacteristically subdued – she hasn’t asked me about Jeremy once all morning or fought with me about putting
on sunscreen. I decide to mention something to Carrie later about Noelle and her Rihanna-style influence.
    I have the whole day free until pick-up time, so I decide that as I’m in town I may as well have a mooch around. I head down the street, past the place I bought the water and ran into
Jesse Miller, and on towards the harbour, glancing in the windows of some very expensive-looking boutiques as I go, though not daring to step foot in any of them because I’m not dressed in
black-tie clothing and I don’t shower in champagne.
    I pass a bookshop that looks really cool (and not as intimidating) so I take a look inside, intending only to have a browse. It’s an awesome independent, the kind I wish we had back home
– it has high-backed armchairs and tables heaving with books, as well as a young adult section that makes me want to drool. At the back there’s a whole café area with sofas and
what looks happily like cake. I trawl the books for about half an hour, picking out two novels and another non-fiction about the 1970s disco scene in New York. I take them to the till and then go
and find a table in the café area and order a café latte with vanilla syrup and a chocolate muffin.
    I plug my headphones in and curl up to start reading. I am starting to really love my job. Despite the fact that the dad might be a serial killer with a penchant for nannies. I am ostensibly
getting paid to read, go to the beach and drink coffee.
    I decide I’m going to read for half an hour and then write a blog post but soon an hour has gone by – I can tell because the album I’m listening to starts to repeat. I glance
up to check the time and notice Jesse Miller standing by one of the bookshelves near the cash register.
    I blink. It’s as unexpected as seeing Britney Spears giving a Ted talk. Jesse Miller doesn’t look like the kind of guy who reads. I mean, possibly magazines about bikes or ones with
girls half naked on the cover and words like ‘nuts’ and ‘phwoar’ in the title, but not books. I watch him from behind my raised hardback.
    He’s holding a paperback book in one hand while reading the blurb on the back of another. I can’t see what the books are and have an overwhelming desire to know. Jesse Miller gets
more and more intriguing by the minute.
    I watch him take both books to the cash register and pay. Then, as I sink down