Tristan Bancks: The Fall

‘Don’t stick your big bib in!’ he shouted as they drove across to the car space in front of their room.

Ben didn’t even wear a bib. What did ‘stick your big bib in’ mean?

Soon Dad emerged from the bathroom with close-cropped hair – another unhappy customer. Ben tried not to laugh.

‘Go to sleep,’ Dad grunted, switching off the TV and lamp and flopping onto the big bed.

Ben lay down on the couch in a rectangle of light from the bathroom. When Mum appeared half an hour later she was hardly recognisable. Her hair, usually halfway down her back, was now boyish and weird-looking.

‘Why did you do that?’ Ben asked.

‘Go to sleep. We leave early.’

He watched her. She laid Olive down on a blanket on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him for a long while.

‘How early do we leave?’ Ben whispered into the darkness.

‘Four.’

‘Why?’

‘Because your father says so… Go to sleep.’

Ben lay there, eyes open, listening to rain beating the roof. The couch cushions smelt mouldy and felt itchy. He wondered if there were bedbugs. He imagined his body swarming with mini-beasts, hundreds of thousands of them eating him alive. He closed his eyes and saw it like a stop-motion movie with tiny bedbugs made of clay.

Dad’s snoring filled the room.

Ben tried not to think about the bites. He thought about Nan, his dad’s mum. She lived around the corner from them, right on the highway. She always had time for him and was interested in what he had to say. Nan was rake-thin, a tough old bird, one of those old people who sat on the front steps watching the world go by. She had probably seen their car leave town. Ben wondered if she had picked up Golden. Even though it was past midnight, he knew that Nan would be lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to talk radio and world news. She only slept for a couple of hours just before dawn.

Ben’s eyes closed. He thought about the four police officers. He had asked Mum about them again and she said that there was a break-in at the wreckers. That’s why the police showed up. But who would steal something from that place? It was a dump. An actual dump.

Ben touched his spiky hair and scratched his skin. He felt hungry. He silently prayed for the holiday to be over soon.

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Version 1.0

The Fall

ePub ISBN 9780143783046

First published by Random House Australia in 2017

Copyright © Tristan Bancks 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

A Random House book

Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

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www.penguin.com.au

Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Bancks, Tristan, author

Title: The fall / Tristan Bancks

ISBN: 9780143783046 (ebook)

Subjects: Detective and mystery stories

Cover images: main image Hayden Verry/Arcangel; boy and dog image majivecka/Shutterstock; branches seeyou/Shutterstock

Cover design by Christabella Designs

Ebook by Firstsource