I suck in a breath and scan up and down the hallway. Nothing hangs on the walls. Anything that did long since succumbed to the flames. Straight ahead is a hot-water cupboard, robbed of any linen and towels - probably reduced to ashes - but is now home to a few spider families spinning webs in its damp corners. I give them a wide berth, even though they’re minute. The creak of the floorboards underfoot makes me wince. Abe is half a step behind me. Through my scarf, I muffle for Abe to go check out everything down the right side in the house and for Maple to sit and stay. He says he will call out if he finds anything. He creeps down one way and I head the other towards the left side of the house, stepping carefully, as though one wrong move will upset the dust or cause the earth to swallow the property like a sinkhole. 

The house is larger inside than it looks from the outside. The ceilings are almost three metres high and the hallways could probably fit a loaded camel - perhaps my parents were the types of people to host dinner parties. Every surface is bare and blackened like burnt toast. Even through the scarf and my extra layers, I can smell and feel the dampness. Years upon years of torrential rain and stinking hot days have left the house shriveled like a date and rank with black mould. It's apparent that people have been in here before the world went quiet, teenagers or gangsters most likely. They've left beer bottles scattered and graffiti on the walls. A packet of smokes. A few holes in the walls. 

How long would it’ve taken for smoke to consume this place? Where did the fire start? What did the suspect use to start the inferno? What was the arsonist’s motivation behind it? Was the arsonist really my father?

The eeriness inside the house is hollow yet lived in. I shuffle as quietly as possible like a child up after bedtime. Of course nobody is here except us. There’s probably a few mice or lizards hiding, but no humans. That doesn’t mean the answer that’ll make everything right again isn’t here. It very well could be. We just have to keep our eyes peeled. 

My breathing becomes more shallow as I edge nervously towards the first room on the right and poke my head in. I freeze when I see a face peering at me, but then breathe out when I realise it's just a portrait someone has graffitied on the wall using charcoal. I inch inside what seems to have been the living room. 

My eyes swoop to a large pile of ashes on the floorboards, then dart to the fireplace opposite it. If the fire had started naturally, it would’ve been most likely from the fireplace or the kitchen. Something like a smouldering hot piece of kindling, since it was mid-autumn, or an unattended frying pan. But, no, it was arson, suspectedly committed by my father.

There’s a gaping hole in the middle of the back wall, as if a wrecking ball smashed through the centre Mould is taking over in the corners of the other walls. A dead mouse is on its back in front of the fireplace, stale as old bread. I think back to detective movies I’ve watched where the guy in the grey suit and the fedora hat steps on a loose floorboard and lifts it up to reveal something secretive. Entertaining the possibility, I drop to my knees and feel around the gnarled boards. But they’re tight. Not budging a bit. But one does seem slightly raised. Slowly, I shuffle over to it and give it a heave. The board comes away fairly easily without much resistance, just as if it was carpet being ripped up. Excitement surges through me, but it’s short-lived. Much to my disappointment that there’s nothing under it. Just the concrete foundation.

I take out the craft knife and etch into the wood, Charlie Whittaker was here, 1992. I guess Charlie Whittaker was also here in 1975 until 1977. A part of me has been here every day since Nana revealed the truth about what happened. She told me a few things, but not everything; she thought it could’ve scarred me, because the truth is a fickle, complicated thing. Age sixteen is when she first tried to tell me the story, but when she sat down she couldn’t bring herself to it. I was left only with the knowledge that my parents died in a fire. On my seventeenth birthday, she prepared herself to tell me the story straight. That went much like the first time.She began by telling me my mother was a gifted and talented artist, but then said she moved away when she was my age. Moved away is not the same as ran away. Now I know. She got to the point of telling me about the fire, then got overcome by sobs. My eighteenth birthday, she promised, is when I’d know the full story. My eighteenth birthday is just one week from now. I’ve been waiting on the doorstep, hand on the lion knocker but never rapping it against the door, for fear of what I’d find inside. 

Why did Nana have to sugarcoat the story instead of telling it truthfully? It was my right to know. She was just trying to protect me, but it’s done more damage by not knowing. I could’ve handled it. I’m sure. I’m not angry at her, just confused. No wonder I went off with Penny in search of the truth. The truth is black and blue and it comes down to the kid with the gun. Apparently.