‘Nobody likes a know-it-all,’ Lou said, her eye on Jude.

‘Somehow he thought it would work the other way,’ Gordon said.

They contemplated the game. Carl’s hands were spitting out cards so fast the players were having trouble catching them.

‘Carl calls this place the Bureau of Missing Persons,’ Gordon said, ‘because if anyone can’t be found where they should be, they’ll turn up here.’

‘Poetic,’ Jude said.

‘Yeah, but it’s from a book. Every word Carl says comes with quote marks.’

‘So what will you do with him?’

‘The question is what’ll he do with me.’

‘You might become a missing person yourself.’ Jude nodded pensively. ‘He on his meds?’

‘Taboo subject. Every day we get through without an incident, I chalk it up as a win.’

‘He’s okay?’

‘You know how it is.’ Lou, having opened another bottle of Old, edged Gordon aside. ‘The bit where he’s okay comes before the bit where he’s in a police station. Or a hospital ward.’

‘And Ben?’

‘Wait, what?’ Lou said.

Jude smiled in recognition.

‘Downstairs,’ Gordon said. ‘Knuckling down with his schoolwork. Or something.’

‘He must really want to avoid these people,’ Jude said. ‘Has he said anything about Daniel?’

‘Are you going to tell me what happened at school?’ Gordon smiled. ‘Or are you going to keep faking it with me?’

‘There’s some white male privilege speaking,’ Jude said to Lou. ‘Gordon’s allowed to fake it, but we’re not?’

Lou and Jude smiled each other into silent submission. Eventually it was Lou who couldn’t hold on. Jude was a school principal; she won staring contests against harder cases. Dropping her eyes, Lou levered up a clump of Hemingways and, from beneath, picked out a Wharton.

‘Gordon could never have made the hero of a man’s story,’ Lou said, scanning the back cover of Ethan Frome. ‘Men’s heroes have motivations to act. Gordon makes excuses not to. A man’s hero is compelled by his desire to surmount obstacles and negotiate complications. All Gordon wants is the status quo.’

Jude nodded at the book in Lou’s hand. ‘He belongs with Edith, not Ernest.’

‘Hello?’ Gordon said. ‘Is your hero still in the room?’

‘With the rainbow that landed up his arse the day he was born,’ Jude said to Lou.

‘And all the fortune he’s pissed away.’

‘I’m just another Bluebird battler,’ Gordon said.

‘If you could grow up in Bluebird and still consider yourself a battler,’ Jude said, ‘I congratulate you for achieving a feat of unseeing that would be admirably stubborn if it wasn’t so pitiable.’ ‘You feel pity for him?’ Lou asked.

‘Only for them.’ Jude tilted her head towards the living room. ‘The inherited blindness. The quickness to disown privilege. The pride in the chip on the shoulder. The fetish for underdog-ism. The strident ordinariness.’