‘So tell me,’ he said, weariness glugging up his words. ‘What do I do? If I leave here, that’s the end of it. Bluebird becomes just another place. Leonie will sell up and you’ll leave. I can’t do it, Kel. I know Ben comes first, but Ben’s going to leave one day. That’s what kids do. You’re right. He doesn’t love the past like I do. Doesn’t love this place. Nor does Lou. They go before we’re ready.’ He swallowed back a lump. ‘They’ve got their lives ahead of them. Dad’s wrong about living for the future. My life—mine is behind me. It’s the part that’s behind me that I want to save.’

Kelly upended her beer bottle over the rail. It spattered on the kikuyu grass like a balcony piss.

‘And you can’t leave your parents, because of—that part that’s behind you. That you can’t save.’ She was glad he couldn’t see her properly in the darkness.

‘Happy families,’ he said unhappily.

‘You’re a good man, I get that you feel your obligations, but you’re in truly fucked-up shape. You think you’re protecting Ben and staying here to be a good son to your parents and, oh yeah, preserving Bluebird and The Lodge, but you’re not, you’re just going crazy in your little cage, walking round in circles like you have been forever.’

Suddenly he looked so tired, she wondered if he was asleep.

‘The cage is me. Why would I want to leave me?’

‘Because you’re breaking the heart of everyone who loves you!’

She flicked a hand at him and looked over the beach, as if what she hated might give her peace.

‘If I could do anything to make you happy with me right now, what would it be?’

She looked at him sadly. ‘Let your anger show. Smack me in the face. And then I can go to sleep.’

Sleep. She pictured Gordon’s cramped little bunk; it must have been reaching out to him like a plushly petalled flower.

He shook his head. ‘I’m not angry with you.’

‘Then why? Why aren’t you angry with me?’

Gordon’s face dropped. She didn’t need an answer. He didn’t know. He just didn’t know. Did his ability to forgive say something terrible about him? Was she saying that his forgiving, non-violent nature was his great failing? The poor guy wasn’t just confused about her. He was confused about himself.

‘I’ve been tormenting myself over my feelings about you for quite a while, Gordo. But you know? In the end, once I’d dug over the entrails for the thousandth time, I ended up asking myself what I have no answer for. It’s why you fell out of love with me.’

‘I didn’t,’ he said helplessly. ‘I didn’t.’