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bikinis. My boobs were on the modest side, which is why they usually supplemented the articles with pictures of Chloe: a bottle-blonde with far more impressive assets. I’d been approached to tell my story more times than I could count, and could have made a lot of money, but I was enough of a joke as it was. I didn’t want to go on A Current Affair and lose what last shreds of professional dignity I had left.
    For all my raving I hadn’t said a word to Nick about what had happened to my mother, even though I was sure he knew. Three months earlier a missing person job had turned ugly and gotten too close to home. Mum survived, just, but her partner Steve had been killed. I was still pretty fucked up about it and the last thing I wanted was sympathy or, god forbid, a hippy-style back-rub. I’d seen a counsellor for a while but she’d had such a hard time getting me to talk that she actually suggested we quit the sessions until I thought I was ready.
    ‘How’d you become a writer?’ I asked. Nick had more than enough background on my life. Now we’d clocked off it was my turn to interrogate him.
    He grimaced and ran his fingers through his thick hair. ‘God,’ he said, ‘where do I start? Wanted to be one since I was a kid. Soon as I could pick up a pen I’d be jotting down stories about cowboys and aliens and monsters. I was sick a lot when I was little so I spent a lot of time propped up on pillows, writing from my bed. Then as a teenager I had a rather unfortunate case of acne.’ He gestured towards his face. ‘I didn’t socialise much. There’s all the time in the world to write if you’re not burdened with the responsibilities of partying and picking up girls. What can I say? I was a nerd.’
    ‘I was kind of nerdy too,’ I admitted, and Nick rolled his eyes like he didn’t believe me.
    ‘Anyway, I went to uni, studied English lit, did a Dip Ed, met my first ex-wife, Jenny, and started teaching. I was always writing and finally finished a semi-autobiographical novel based on my childhood growing up in Sale. A small press offered to publish and I was thrilled—my lifelong dream was coming true. They warned me it would be a small print run, two thousand copies, and I wouldn’t make any money out of it, but I was stupidly optimistic. In my heart I just knew it would take off, get published overseas, and someone would turn it into an award-winning movie.’ He smirked at himself, shook his head, drained his beer and moved on to the whiskey.
    ‘I’m guessing it didn’t work out like that.’
    ‘Book got some good reviews, but pretty much sank without a trace. I kept teaching and continued writing. Beavering away on my next manuscript in the evenings after school. Damn thing was giving me grief though. Classic second-novel syndrome. I couldn’t make it work, so I started penning this hard-boiled detective novel. I’d always loved crime. Read it to escape from all the dense, literary stuff I studied at uni. I created this character Zack, bit of an alter ego, and he took over and the book seemed to write itself. I was way behind schedule with the serious novel, and in a meeting with my publisher I told them, just joking, that I had a PI manuscript in the bottom drawer. They wanted to see it, and the rest is history. My crime series sold ten times better than my literary novel, and is really taking off now the first one’s come out as a telemovie. The others are in preproduction as we speak.’
    ‘Wow, congratulations.’
    He shrugged, then looked at me and asked something weird. ‘Why are you a private detective?’
    ‘I already told you about the cops saving my mum and stuff.’
    ‘That’s the how. I want to know the why.’
    I’d asked myself the same question but had never come up with a definitive answer. I liked being my own boss. I got a kick out of spying on people. I was easily bored and addicted to adrenaline. Sticking it to the Victoria police by proving I was better than them was part