‘I don’t know.’
‘Why would you do this to ustoday?’ she shrieked. ‘We have a house viewing in forty minutes! We might as well cancel it! It looked better with the scrapheap outside than…this.’
Okay, words found… maybe not the best ones, but they were flying out anyway. ‘I didn’t do this!’ I shook my head in disgust. ‘Do you thinkIspray-painted that I’m a bitchon my own house?’
‘You want to keep the famous author living next door. Wangle your way in and see what you can get out of it. And if Mack goes you’ll have no one to spy on, will you?’ She screwed up her nose. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at him. What’s your plan, seduce him and sell your story to some sleazy magazine?’
‘What on earth are you talking about? I know authors need a good imagination but let’s try to keep a grip on reality, shall we?’ My head was starting to fizz. I put my hands on my hips to stop them accidentally punching a nearby nose. ‘Someone has graffitied our houses with horrible, slanderous things about me, and somehow this becomes all aboutyou? I think the fame’s gone to your head.’
‘Well, if you’re so bothered then why aren’t you up a ladder cleaning it off?’
‘I only just saw it!’
‘What, you didn’t see it when you left this morning?’ she spat. ‘A likely story!’
‘I’d say it’s pretty likely that I didn’t ride my bike backwards as I left, yes.’
‘Well, you’ve seen it now so what are you going to do? You’ve got thirty minutes to sort it or I’m going to sue.’
I laughed then. ‘You can try.’
Before she could slap me, and her hand was twitching angrily, Mack drove up. He climbed out of the Mini and proceeded to lift a pressure washer out of the boot.
‘Hi, Jenny. I’m really sorry.’ He walked over to give Hillary a kiss, but she reeled back. Just as well, because I thought I saw froth bubbling out of the corners of her mouth.
‘I can’t believe youlikeit here,’ she snapped. ‘Sort it, or I don’t care about your pride, or how much you hate him, we’re accepting that slug of a property developer’s offer!’ And she stalked off.
Mack stood looking at the ground, hands on his hips.
‘You didn’t just buy that today, for this, did you?’ I asked.
He shrugged, glancing up. ‘I borrowed it off a mate.’
Taking a huge bottle out of the car, he started pouring it into the pressure washer.
‘I didn’t think you had any mates.’
He wrinkled his brow. ‘I thoughtyouwere my mate.’
‘I meant apart from me.’ I scuffed one foot against the dirt, then got out my phone and took a bunch of photos while Mack attached a hose to the washer.
‘Ready?’ he said, holding the gun like a graffiti cowboy.
‘Let me do it. It’s enough that you set it up.’
He held the gun out of my reach. ‘You’d better get changed first. Wouldn’t want to ruin your clothes.’
‘I’m shooting water at a wall. How am I going to ruin my clothes?’
‘I don’t know – it should be impossible. But I have an ominous feeling you’ll find a way. Call it a hunch.’
And of course, by the time I’d put the bike in the shed, stomped inside, dug out some clothes that I didn’t mind getting paint-and-water-splattered, and then swapped them for alternatives that I didn’t mind Mack seeing me in, made two cups of tea and come back out again, half the graffiti was gone.
Mack had washed off all the horrible bits, leaving a wall of meaningless pronouns and words like ‘next’ and ‘of’. And, for some reason, that little piece of thoughtfulness, rather than the torrent of threatening abuse all over our houses, made me want to weep.
He took the tea, brow furrowed. ‘Why don’t you go inside? I’ll finish it off. It’s nearly all done anyway.’
‘No chance.’ I wrenched the washer out of his other hand, rather more forcefully than planned, pressing the release button as I jerked it back.
