Deb straightens up the car on the road. The next-door neighbour, Steve, is waving at her from behind a sagging chain link gate at the side of his house, jerking his arm strangely, like he might be having a stroke. When Deb takes a closer look, she realises that he isn’t waving at all, but gesturing towards her house.
‘Back in a second ok?’ she says to Rhys, who is strapped into the car seat behind her. ‘I have to find out what Steve wants.’
Steve lumbers down the side path towards Deb, rubbing at a crusty tumour on his nose.
‘You’ve got rats,’ he says. ‘Plural. Jen was having coffee in the breakfast room. Thought they were squirrels. But they weren’t squirrels, Christ no.’
Steve shapes his hands to indicate the size of the rats, which to Deb seems pretty small in the scheme of things.
