‘I was told that New Zealand was a boring provincial country, and provincial it certainly is, but boring – not entirely, and so beautiful. I can’t remember if you’ve been?’

‘Once. I flew over from Oz for a week when my sister and brother-in-law spent a year there. Lovely scenery, quite boring. New York now . . .’

‘Love it or hate it.’

‘Love, but it must be about eight years since I was last there.’

‘It’s changed a lot – but then again, it hasn’t changed at all. New York doesn’t change, it just reinvents itself every decade.’

‘We should go. I’ve got some leave to use up . . . let’s do it, Rachel.’

She turned her head away, to look out of the cafe window at nothing in particular. Drank her coffee.

‘I’m sorry,’ Simon said.

She took a moment before looking at him again and he could not read her expression. Not annoyance. Not surprise. What?

‘You’re a bit like New York,’ she said. ‘You’ve changed, and then again – you haven’t.’

He could not process that and she did not explain, so he set it aside, to think about later.

‘How’s the bookshop?’

‘Fine.’

‘Profitable?’

‘More or less.’

‘Still a labour of love.’

‘Why not?’

Her cup was empty and he started to get up.

‘No, Simon . . .’

But he had already caught the attention of the barista.

‘I have changed,’ he said. ‘I used to be incautious but losing the arm made a difference.’

‘As in crossing the road without looking both ways.’

‘Whereas you . . .’ He touched her hand. ‘You haven’t changed in the slightest bit.’

She would not meet his eye.

‘Still beautiful. Still the same woman.’

Then she did look directly at him, so that he caught his breath.

‘How can you possibly know that, Simon?’ she said.

‘I know that I want to.’

In the silence between them then, he had a moment of absolute clarity in which he did know, he knew everything – Rachel and what she had meant to him, what they had had and, more than anything, what he had been. A complete bloody fool, he thought.

More people had come in and he sensed that one of them was looking at them from across the cafe.

Their coffees arrived but Rachel poured some water into hers, drank it quickly, got up.

‘Rachel . . .’

‘No.’

‘I’ll walk back with you.’

‘And if someone has put a notice on my windscreen, you are going to deal with it, right?’

‘Of course.’

He held open the door and put his hand on her back as they left.

Fern Monroe watched until they were out of sight before taking a sip of her coffee.

‘So,’ Donna said, ‘who was that?’

Eight

‘Hello!’

The man stepped out of nowhere so suddenly that Brookie dropped his carrier bag into a puddle of muddy rainwater.

‘Man, what are you like?’