An Isolated Incident by Emily Maguire

my way to an interview so I don’t have long. What’s up?’
    â€˜Why does your by-line suggest that you wrote your last two articles from a place called Strathdee?’
    â€˜Huh, weird. I’ll have to talk to the sub desk about that.’
    â€˜Yeah, well, thanks for letting your family know.’
    May picked up the map from the dashboard and fanned her face. ‘I’m just covering a story. I haven’t moved here.’
    â€˜Still could’ve let us know. It’s school holidays. I would’ve loved a road trip.’
    â€˜Max, you would hate it here so much. It’s, like, ten degrees hotter than anywhere else on earth. No breeze at all. Plus, no banh mi, no craft beer, no skinny jeans.’
    â€˜Sounds like Blacktown.’
    â€˜Please, Blacktown had banh mi twenty years before your gold-hipster-plated hood did.’ May had never hated the suburb they grew up in the way Max did. But, then, she hadn’t been a smaller-than-average, fine-boned boy with soft curls and a tendency to forget himself in public and sing out loud. Not that she wasn’t bullied, but her tormentors were only at school whereas Max copped it everywhere outside their home. God, imagine how he’d fare here, where even preschoolers looked like Clint Eastwood.
    â€˜Whatever. When are you coming home?’
    â€˜Don’t know.’
    â€˜Ugh. I’m bored.’
    â€˜You sound twelve.’
    â€˜I might as well be. Nothing to do all day, no money, no car, no sex.’
    â€˜I can’t help you with any of that. And I really have to go.’
    â€˜Selfish bitch.’
    â€˜Yeah, love you, too.’
    At the police station she had a chat with the sweet young guy on the front desk who, it turned out, was not only one of the first response officers when the body was called in but also knew Bella personally. May asked if she could buy him lunch and he blushed and told her he could meet her at Frederica’s – ‘it’s in the mall, but really nice, not in the food court or anything’ – at twelve, and then she hotfooted it out of there before someone with guile or experience came along to ruin things.
    She drove over to the nursing home, but turned around when she saw the Channel 7 van out front. Next was the sister’s house, where the door was answered by a bearded giant who told her that Chris wasn’t doing interviews. When May persisted, asking him if he might like to say a few words about the deceased, he told her that she should be ashamed of herself for harassing the grieving.
    May almost told him that harassing the grieving was the least of what she was ashamed of, but her remaining morsel of dignity asserted itself in time. She thanked him and, after he closed the door in her face, slid her card underneath it. She dragged her shameful self up and down the street, knocking on doors, collecting a handful of tidbits that would do if they had to, then headed to the mall to meet the young cop.
    She still had fifteen minutes before he was due, so she spent the time talking to smokers leaning against the grey, rippled concrete walls, grabbing a few more quotes, each a variation on the same theme. It could’ve been me. Could’ve been my daughter. Could’ve happened to any of us.
    Constable Matt Drey was five minutes early, grinning from oversized ear to ear. He took her elbow as they entered Frederica’s and pulled out her chair to seat her.
    â€˜What’s good here?’
    His grin, impossibly, got bigger. ‘Oh, everything. I’m a bit biased, but. It’s me aunty’s place.’
    â€˜Your aunty is Frederica?’
    â€˜Nah, nah. Her name’s Jo, but you can’t call a restaurant that, can you?’
    No, May thought, but then this isn’t really a restaurant, is it?She asked him to order for them both, which seemed to be the best thing that had happened to him for a long while. The waitress was a girl he