I can’t just wait for something to happen. Jordan Mullen lives in a rambling Spanish-style house in a new estate. The driveway winds up between white rosebushes that bloom on cue all the way to the front door. He has two parents with real jobs and a dog that can fit on your lap. His street’s barely a twenty-minute walk away, but it’s different here: greener, cleaner, safer. I know where he lives because every Valentine’s Day for the last five years I’ve dropped a pathetically anonymous card into his polite little letterbox. Last year, I stopped, because it was futile and tragic. Until he stole the package, he’d never spoken to me. Here, the whole street smells fragrant. Not just a patch of it, like ours, where the smell of flowers is so out of place. There, it’s spooky, like you’ve walked through a stranded soul. I stand on the opposite side of the road from the Mullen house, heat beating my scalp. The driveway is empty, the windows shuttered against the brutal heat. A brown and white terrier peers hopefully between the iron bars of a side gate.
