‘Sucked in, you mean old prick, they changed the code today!’ Gordon shouted, and Kelly doubted Ron could have heard him, but as she dropped the car into gear and squealed off, she thought she caught a glimpse of the old man giving them a thumbs-up.

ONE FOR THE ROAD

One for the road

Kelly and Gordon sat on the deck overlooking Bluebird Beach, mortally fatigued, minds racing too fast to sleep. Gordon had told her about the earlier part of the evening, before she got home. All those plates he had been spinning were falling to the ground. Lou was going to leave by Carl’s settlement date, once she’d got the StairLift installed. Something was going on between her and Jude Oxenford. Ben’s involvement with Daniel had Gordon on high alert. There was the fight, or fights, and the still unresolved acts that had provoked them. There was Carl, there was Carl, there was Carl. There was Dog’s information about David Archer, aka Archer David, and the collapsing real estate market. There was Ron, there was Ron, there was Ron.

There was his conversation with Sam, but he did not tell her about that.

There were unseen forces closing in. Maybe not unseen: there was, in his hand, Frontal’s letter.

‘At least I know how to deal with this one,’ he said.

From between two deck boards Gordon prised a matchbox—must have been Dog’s, dropped during the fight. He lit the council letter.

‘If Frontal wants me, he knows where to find me.’

‘Hey, lighting fires is illegal.’ Kelly pulled a doob from her handbag and lit it with one of Dog’s matches. ‘Oh well, if you insist … You don’t mind?’ she said, the kind of politeness that had come into their marriage once it was over. She watched Gordon flick the last ember of the council letter over the rail. ‘Have you seen the new blue post the council has put in down at the top of the path?’

Gordon shook his head. ‘Post?’

‘The list of things you can’t do. They had to extend it to fit in all the pictograms. It’s taller than me. It looks like an Egyptian obelisk.’

Gordon said, ‘The Dog. No Dogs.’ A reference to a photo they had taken of a pub, years ago: the pub was called The Dog, and next to it was a sign saying no dogs. It had become one of their thousand points of private language. They shared a mellow chuckle, the unintended consequence breaking over them: they couldn’t mention Dogs anymore without a second wave of remorse. Maybe, Kelly thought, of all the things that had been lost, that was the worst of them, the innocence of their language.

‘I heard you had an interesting encounter at the golf club,’ Gordon said.

‘Oh?’

‘With Sally Gilsenan.’