Frontal was taller than Carl Chidgey. Carl had always seemed to loom over him, but now he had a slump, a stoop, and his physique seemed both puffed out and shrunken, as if he had put on volume while losing density.

‘You have no business being with my son,’ Frontal said.

Carl sniffed as if conceding an immaterial point. Another quick exchange of looks between Carl and Daniel brought Frontal’s blood to the boil. This drugged-up thug was owning his son, like the old men of this beach had always owned the boys.

‘I guess he’s old enough to make his own decisions,’ Carl said.

Frontal gaped at Daniel, who opened his mouth to explain, but Carl interrupted: ‘Gotta fly. Good chat, Frontal. Enjoy your mental health break.’

Frontal watched them walk away. He tried to call out to Daniel, to reel him back, to stop time, but the words dried in his throat.

‘You idiots,’ Frontal said as his binoculars dropped from his hands and bounced on the dune grass. ‘Dear Lord, please forgive those fucking, fucking idiots.’

SISTERS

Sisters

Kelly was thinking, as she stood at the boundary fence the next afternoon waiting for Ben’s practice to finish, that it was remiss of a hate-saturated world not to have found a word for how much she hated cricket. Teenaged boys so pleased with themselves, the pock of the ball on the wooden bats, that nitwit Ryan Stoyle strutting around on his little legs, harvested a disgust that had germinated during childhood Saturdays sitting uncovered in the sun waiting for her father to finish playing, then after his retirement waiting for him to finish umpiring, and finally, after he became club president, waiting for him to finish presidenting. Cricket rejuvenated her, if rejuvenation meant turning her into a bored, sulky young girl. Best that Ben never understand what a sacrifice it was for her to be here.

Seeing him so keen, practising in his full Saturday whites when all the other boys looked like they had just got out of the surf, darkened her mood further. Kelly had seen enough cricket to appreciate how hopeless he was; he couldn’t catch, he couldn’t throw, he couldn’t bowl, and he seldom got a turn to show that he couldn’t bat. She and Gordon had failed as parents in not steering him away from this unwitting torment.

The other boys couldn’t be bothered teasing him. Fortunately, Daniel wasn’t allowed to be here. Only that delinquent Zane Dwyer talked to Ben, leaning close to his ear. Rather than protect her boy from being bullied, Stoyle let it sort itself out. The Bluebird way.

‘Hello there.’