Welcome to case closed. You're listening to The Shadow House by Anna Downs, narrated by Natasha Beaumont and the author. Let's pick up where we left off last week.

Alex, chapter 10.

Home schooling is just so hard.

Leila reached for the platter, cut a fat slice of cheese and pressed it onto a cracker.

I'm lucky that Amy is so good, but Violet never listens to me. I can't make her do anything. I don't even

know where she is half the time. Tucked away at the back of the village and high up on the slope.

Leila's unit was probably one of the best positioned in the whole of Pine Ridge.

She had the upper floor of a split level similar to Jenny's, with huge windows and stone bench tops

and an enormous entertaining deck with a panoramic view right across the valley.

The outdoor dining table was large enough for 12, but that afternoon it was just Lila, Shannon, Marico and me.

Plus our kids, who, by happy accident were all occupied and quiet.

Kara was under the table, playing with measuring cups and sauce pans,

while Marico's almost three-year-old son buried Lego in the planters.

Amy was inside, sitting up at the kitchen bench diligently doing some art homework, and Shannon's

six-year-old twin girls were in the communal garden out the front playing on a wooden swing set.

Violet and Ollie had rejected us all and taken their skateboards down to the cycle path that looped the dam.

I could see them in the distance,

wheeling around with two or three other teens, yelling out to one another and sucking on

Leila's homemade ice blocks. You know you don't have to do it right? said Mariko, dipping a tortilla chip into

the guacamole bowl and popping it into her mouth. There's a perfectly good high school down the

road. I've heard it's good, agreed Shannon, but I totally get why you'd rather have them here.

It's such a delicate age.

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