Free Checkers by John Marsden

were doing.
    Dad looked tired and irritated. To my surprise he walked in the door about five minutes after the interview ended. He looked even worse than he had on TV.
    â€˜I just saw you,’ I said.
    â€˜Saw me? Oh, you mean on TV. They taped that this afternoon.’ He sorted through the mail. ‘So, how’d I look?’
    â€˜Tired.’
    â€˜Oh well. That figures. How’d I sound?’
    â€˜Convincing.’
    â€˜Good.’
    â€˜It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Typical business problems. We’re not worried. We’ve been through worse.’
    â€˜No you haven’t,’ I thought. Out loud, I said, ‘There’ve been more reporters calling. I took a few messages. They’re on the pad at the hall phone.’
    â€˜OK, thanks honey,’ he said, but I don’t think he’d really heard me.
    He went through to the kitchen and I followed, watching as he started to make a sandwich. ‘What’s in the fridge?’ he asked, as he spread the bread.
    I opened the door and reported. ‘Couple of slices of ham, turning up at the edges. Half a tomato. Bit of lettuce. Lots of cheese. Pâté, but I don’t like the colour of it.’
    â€˜OK, I’ll have the tomato, and you pick me a cheese that looks interesting.’
    â€˜So are you going to get out of all this?’ I asked, as I sliced some cheese for him.
    He shrugged. ‘Sure. It’ll blow over.’
    â€˜But it’s getting so serious, with the Premier and everything.’
    He was about to take his first bite of sandwich, but he stopped and looked down at a stain on the table.
    â€˜That’s the biggest thing,’ he said, almost to himself, then to me he said: ‘We’ll be OK as long as there’s no connection between us and the Premier. Koneckny, he’s an idiot. He nearly screwed the whole thing up. I warned Jack, but he wouldn’t listen. But I think the damage can be stopped now. The Premier’s big enough and powerful enough to do anything at the moment.’ He shook his head, almost in admiration, and took the first bite. ‘He’s amazing,’ he said, through the sandwich, smiling at me. ‘He just does what he wants. No-one’s strong enough to stand up to him. The press, the Opposition, least of all his own party. They’re pretty pathetic really.’
    My father always seemed to have too much respect for strong people, people like Jack.
    â€˜Do you know him?’ I asked, trying to look cool, but holding my breath as I waited for the answer.
    â€˜The Premier? No, never met him before in my life.’
    I knew he was lying. Or else why’d he say ‘before’?

C HAPTER T EN
    Daniel got really twitchy in Group today and Marj noticed, as she notices everything. Group can be a kind of game sometimes, when someone decides she wants a bit of attention. It’s usually Cindy. She sits there looking so sad and depressed, head down, ignoring people when they try to talk to her, till Marj finally says, ‘I think we have one person in Group today who’s feeling particularly upset,’ and we all look at Cindy and make sympathetic noises and wait for her to spill her guts.
    When Marj is away, as she is often, like every second day—I don’t know how she has the cheek to collect her pay some weeks—her replacement, Lesley, is almost exactly the same but not quite. It’s like a cardboard cut-out of Marj, or a Marj doll, because the words are the same but they come out of Lesley’s mouth at a slightly different speed, and she says some words differently.
    Anyway today it was Marj and, instead of Cindy being the drama queen, it was Daniel. Whoops, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Even if Daniel would have been the first to laugh.
    He wouldn’t have laughed today, though. He wasn’t in laughter mode. He wouldn’t say anything for quite a while, but