The time began to drift. They played both sides of the Genesis and then one side of something else, before Hamish said it was a mood-killer and chose the next album himself. The one he selected seemed much gloomier than its predecessor, dirgey and tuneless, but the three older girls nodded along to it anyhow, with what looked like conviction. No one put the records back into their covers, but left them out on the table top next to the gramophone. Stephen fought the desire to prevent them getting scratched by at least reintroducing them to their inner sleeves. Away from the adults, Lucy became more and more talkative. She told a long story about how someone at the local riding stables where she worked on Saturday mornings had been mean to her, but the others weren’t really listening. Hamish didn’t seem to pay Cass any attention; it was Georgie he mostly interacted with. You couldn’t really call it conversation. She would say something like ‘I love this track’ and he’d agree. Once he asked her to pass the ashtray. Cass looked more and more pained, Stephen thought. It was almost a relief when Hamish stood up and said, ‘Cass, you coming?’ and without a word she followed him out into the corridor. They heard the garden door open and shut behind them.

‘I’m going to go through to the kitchen and see if there’s any more booze,’ said Georgie.

Once she was out of the room, Helena came and sat next to Stephen on the divan. She leant against him. She could feel her bosoms flattening against his arm.

‘Ooh, I’m actually quite stoned,’ she said. The idea came to her of pretending to fall asleep, half on top of him; but she couldn’t be sure he’d realize this was a come-on. He might just lift her legs on to the divan and put a rug over her and leave her to sleep it off. He was that sort of person. He’d probably take her shoes off, first. And in any case, Lucy was still in the room, prattling now about a boy at school who’d given her a gonk and whether that might mean that he liked her.

‘Do you have gonks, in Australia?’ Helena asked him. It suddenly seemed incredibly funny to imagine: gonks at the Sydney Opera House, or on the Barrier Reef. Gonks in the pouches of kangaroos! Gonks held aloft by koala bears. Laughter frothed in her. She tried to communicate these comical images to Stephen, but he only looked puzzled.

‘Yeah, we have them,’ he said. ‘My sisters have them, on the ends of their pencils and stuff. Bigger ones too. You can win them at fairgrounds.’

Helena couldn’t stop laughing.

‘We have all the same stuff you do, pretty much,’ Stephen said. ‘It’s not a desert island or anything. It’s a helluva size.’