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I was him I wouldn’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about it either because I’ll have to tell him what I said, how she got me to say things and then all of a sudden they meant something I didn’t want them to.
    The trouble is, Ranga and I have always told eachother everything; at least I thought we had. Maybe Ranga has had this big, dark secret he’s never told me. Maybe his mum does hit him. No, not Ranga! He can’t keep a secret about anything. The harder he tries the more likely he is to blurt it out.
    Then he does blurt it out. ‘You know that lady, the one in Mr Sutton’s office?’
    I nod.
    â€˜She was asking me questions, and no matter what I said, it felt like she thought Mum was hitting me. It was like being in a trap.’ He stops and stares at me.
    I feel relief from my fingers to my toes. ‘She was the same with me. She told me she wanted to help you but she wrote stuff in her book whenever I said anything, and I don’t reckon she wrote what I said.’
    â€˜Was she a social worker?’ James asks.
    â€˜I don’t know.’ Ranga shakes his head. ‘She seemed more like a detective.’
    He’s right. She said she wanted to help but it felt more like she was out to get Ranga’s mum.
    â€˜What’s going to happen now?’ I ask Ranga.
    â€˜She’s going to talk to Mum.’
    Silence for a while.
    â€˜When?’ James asks.
    â€˜Dunno. Now maybe.’
    We all eat our ice-creams for a bit. What’s going to happen to Ranga tonight when he gets home? If his mum is belting him he’ll cop a hiding. Even if she hasn’t ever hit him things are going to be bad, for the both of them. I can’t imagine how bad it’s going to be. What will they say when they see each other tonight?
    James is the first to talk. ‘I see social workers all the time. They try to help but sometimes they interfere too much.’
    He stops. I wait, but he doesn’t say any more. He can’t say something like that and then just leave it. I can tell from the look on his face that Ranga is thinking the same thing. We’re both looking at James but he’s staring into outer space.
    â€˜What? What do they do?’ Ranga asks.
    â€˜When I was a kid …’ James starts.
    â€˜You are a kid,’ Ranga says.
    â€˜No, when I was a little kid.’
    â€˜You are a little kid,’ says Ranga standing up. ‘You only come up to here.’ He holds his hand against his chest at the exact height of James head.
    James stares at him for a second and then cracks up. We’re all killing ourselves laughing and whenever wemanage to stop one of us snorts and then it’s on again. We can’t stop until we’re too weak to laugh any more.
    My ice-cream has melted all over my hand while we’ve been laughing and I’m licking it off my fingers when James starts his story again.
    â€˜When I was a little kid,’ he says. We only snigger for a bit. ‘When I was a little kid, my big brother …’
    â€˜I didn’t know you had a big brother,’ I say. ‘Where is he?’
    â€˜He works in the mines, up in Karratha. He’s an apprentice fitter.’
    â€˜How old is he?’
    â€˜He’s nineteen,’ James says. ‘Anyway, when I was a little kid, Brad used to take me for rides on his Peewee 50 motorbike all around the farm.’
    â€˜How?’ Ranga says. He’s leaning forward.
    â€˜He used to sit me on the bike in front of him and put a strap around us so I wouldn’t fall off, then we’d ride all around the bush tracks near our house. It was the best fun I ever had.’
    â€˜Didn’t you get in trouble from your parents?’ I ask.
    â€˜No, they let us do it.’
    My parents would never let me do something risky like that, and I’m healthy. I used to get busted for dinkingwith Ranga when we were little. It was fun but we