‘She’s Indian,’ Josie said significantly.

The men shifted. Kelly could have sworn Dog took the moment to rearrange his block and tackle inside his board shorts.

Kelly couldn’t think of which of Bluebird’s two dozen working hairdressers in four competing salons Josie might be talking about, but that was irrelevant because Josie was really talking about her, about Kelly. These moments were always aggravating, more so as she got older. Months and years could pass without her being reminded of the colour of her skin. She was not Indian, of course; she was Australian. But to a certain generation of Bluebird people, birth could not wash out your ‘real’ origins. No matter where you were born or to whom, Josie deemed it important that you knew ‘another’ Indian person on the beaches, just because, well, you lot might want your hair cut by your own kind. Kelly had been teased as a curry-muncher, of course, but a long time ago. People forgot. Or you saw the same people for so many years, day after day, that you assumed they forgot. The deadening of your senses protected you. And then someone like Josie or Norma would come out with shit like this, which made Kelly think that the whole thing was a charade and the moment her back was turned they would all be referring to her, particularly when her infidelity to Gordon came up, as ‘that Indian’. No matter how long you lived with them, you never forgot that one time you caught them putting on an accent and a head-wobble. She supposed they saw their racial prejudices as evening the score, a fair exchange for the fact that she was Noel Chidgey’s daughter and part-owned this fucking house.

‘Do you know her?’ Josie persisted.

Red Cap muttered something to his mother, which caused her chin to drop into the wattles of her neck. Josie refocused on the jigsaw, as if that were dignity.