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my painted face. His sneaker heel went through my painted canvas mouth. The canvas broke and a hole appeared.
    â€˜Idiot!’ I grabbed at him and he twisted his foot out, but the sneaker hole was still there. Realising what he’d done, Luke paled. ‘Can’t we use supa-glue or something? Or a band-aid on the back?’ He ran his fingers around the jagged hole in the canvas, and tried to make the splintered wood fit back.
    â€˜Like first aid for Gran’s painting?’ I started to laugh and then it changed into crying. ‘I don’t think that will mend anything. Gran’s gone. No one else will want my painting…or that one of Bark. Who would want to look at a dog and a bone on their wall forever? Only Gran really liked Bark.’
    I wasn’t sure why I was crying. I never liked that painting anyway. I pulled stringy, third-hand tissues from my pocket. Tears leaked through. My nose ran. My eyes dripped everywhere.
    â€˜Sorry, Zoe,’ Luke stood up. He didn’t touch me. ‘Your gran probably thought it was special. Although, up close, the face doesn’t look much like you. Maybe we could stick it up in your bedroom at our place? Then no one else would see the hole. Or we could put a patch on it and then paint over the patch.’ Luke squinted at the painting. ‘No one would know the difference, would they?’
    â€˜Forget it.’ I sniffed, and my nose was still all runny. I felt such a wet mess. Everything was going wrong. And I was the only one left to fix things.
    I tried to lift the portrait, but it was too big to balance. ‘Let’s leave it. I’ll tell the Trustee about this later. Or maybe he won’t notice?’ I leaned my portrait against the wall, but Luke flipped the canvas over. ‘Hey, there’s another painting on the other side.’ He stood back and half-closed his eyes the way he imagined experts did. Then he kneeled and squinted at a blob in the corner. ‘Looks like your family tree with faces on branches, and squiggly initials. Must have taken ages to paint. Easier and quicker to do family trees on a computer program. Are you on here?’
    â€˜Dunno. First time I’ve seen it.’ I peered at the tree painting, which had a few brown branches. ‘Look.’ I pointed.‘Up the top, on a little branch. There’s my face and a Z.’ I looked further down, at the back of Luke’s sneaker hole. ‘Can’t read what’s here on the tree trunk.’
    I squinted at the bottom name. ‘It’s been signed
Dagmar
. Why would she sign it with a different name? Artists like to be known for their work, don’t they?’
    â€˜Sure it’s not Magda and the writing’s hard to read?’ Luke said quickly.
    â€˜Maybe Dagmar was her real name? Or one of them,’ I suggested. ‘Not Magda.’
    â€˜Same letters, except for the r. Different order,’ said Luke.
    That was true. Luke’s mind was different from some people’s. I felt a little curl of excitement. ‘Dead right.’
    â€˜Gross,’ said Luke, just as I realised what I’d said. So many sayings had ‘life’ or ‘death’ in them. But you couldn’t stop using death words just because your gran died. But I could keep wearing my black gear after the funeral. No choice about that.
    Where should we start looking? In the sitting room, there was a tape still in the player. Kat bought it for Gran last Christmas to record her favourite docos. Gran’s docos, that is, not Mum’s. My mum only likes wildlife programs about birds or icebergs, but Gran was interested in people and history and all that old stuff. She’d watch anything about the past. ‘What you call history used to be current affairs for me,’ Gran said once.
    I hit EJECT. Out slid the black tape. Written down the side, in Luke’s writing, was
Hungary 1956.
    â€˜Did you write this