When the song comes on, you don’t quite roll your eyes at me and I don’t quite reach my hand out to squeeze yours. Kylie’s syrupy voice is still lush and full of life. I speak before Nick Cave can cut in with his murderous baritone,
“You want another karipap?”
I’d been standing next to you at assembly that day thirty years ago when Puan Salmah announced your sister was missing. An entire school of girls with their hands to their mouths, tears welling. She’d been head girl—pretty, popular. We were mousy Third Formers, all our potential concentrated in points of purulent acne. Of course, this wasn’t news to us after our huddled weekend while your parents had urgent, hushed conversations with the tall Polis. We’d giggled, stood at the top of the stairs to catch a glimpse of his butt tight in navy drill. We were sure Laine had just missed her bus or something.
“Anyway, this isn’t the best murder ballad,” you say.
Laine had always either ignored us, or pulled us up for some minor infringement—nail length, colour of our hair ties, whether our socks had been folded the regulation way. She was as put together as a Barbie in a box—her wide forehead smooth and unblemished, her upper lip curling a little at the left edge where there was a beauty spot lightly filled in with mink. I remember having an urge to press a black marker pen against it.
“Hazard’s much better.”
“That Richard Marx one?” You’ve never gone for that kind of music, all precisely plucked strings and soft drums. Richard Marx was much more Laine’s style. I don’t say that to you though. I don’t think I’ve said Laine’s name out loud in thirty years. At her vigil, it was rows of heads bowed over sticks of incense. No one really spoke. Your mother wept quietly. Your face like a stone. I remember biting my cheek to stop myself crying. Laine’s garlanded picture, her skin smooth and shiny like a boiled egg. Her breasts tenting her pinafore, my hands cupping involuntarily.
“Where the Wild Roses Grow is so obvious. Like—here’s a pretty girl. Here’s a scary guy. The thing you think will happen happens.”
What did we think happened to Laine? Whatever happened, it meant we were never allowed out. That you chafed against it, crawled out of your window so many Friday nights. I went along with you, my heart hammering the whole time because I’d never have forgiven myself if something happened to you. I don’t even think you enjoyed the partying. At least monthly there’d be someone crying all over you telling you how sorry they were about Laine. Once, you bit back “she was a slut and she got what was coming to her.” I pulled you home, tucked you in bed. Lifted your head up to a bottle of Brand’s Chicken Essence. “You’re not my fucking mum!” you yelled. Then I held you while you cried. Your parents didn’t even ask why I was there in the morning—just went about their day like zombies. I was grounded for a month though.
“Hazard’s all first person, but we get angles too. The way he looks to others, the way Mary looks to him.”
I’ve never thought this hard about a song, but then, Laine wasn’t my sister. I saw her one time, coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her. She caught me staring. She cocked her hip, smiled out of one side of her mouth, made to drop her towel. Then she laughed and laughed at me. “Ham sap” she always called me after that, she and her glam friends laughing every time I walked past.
“Have you seen the video for Hazard? Richard Marx looking all bad boy. You’re never quite sure who Mary is with and if she wants it or not.”
“Sure you don’t want another karipap?”
Once I went into Laine’s room. You were out cold with half a bottle of Thai Song in you. The air was still, musty, like a tomb. Posters of Backstreet Boys, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the bow of a ship pretending to fly, clothes strewn about the place—a pair of frilly pink undies. I shivered seeing that crumpled on the ground like she’d just slipped them off. I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms to stop myself picking them up and holding them against my nose.
You grab your keys and stand, scraping your chair against the kopitiam floor. The song is in its death throes, Kylie throwing a dead girl’s name against an ending.
“The thing about Hazard is that you never know what actually happened.”
You leave not checking if I’m following. As always, I am.
Sumitra Singam is a queer, neurodiverse Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for Best Small Fictions 2025. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com