‘What are you doing?’ Ron shouted. ‘Put me down, you idiot!’ Gordon felt a rise of such anger he could have hurled his father off the steps like a bag of trash. Alas, too many witnesses. He felt exhilarated. Release! Fuck, that felt new.

‘Gordon, put him down.’

This was Kelly. Life was queuing up at a coconut shy to have a go at him. The others had scored glancing blows, but here was Kelly, with the biggest coconut, standing so close she couldn’t miss, and a load of power in her cocked arm.

Gordon gave her a nod and set Ron down on the bench. Out of the corner of his vision, he thought he saw a dark shape, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, silhouetted against the sky on the crest of the grass bank south of the Father McCarthy eucalyptus grove. Leonie had been avoiding him, he was now sure, for weeks. He had thought he was avoiding her. He realised, at this moment, that he could walk over to her and say whatever he wanted. She had no leverage over him. Did she realise that? In all the shuffling of property titles, tightening her grip on this Bluebird she hated with a vengeance that was like a duel to the death, she had made one critical lapse in judgement: she had taken him for granted. She had counted on his loyalty. But she had no hold on him anymore, for he was literally, materially, actually as opposed to morally, bankrupt. Owning nothing, he had nothing to fear. As far as he was concerned, she could fuck off. They all could. He was free.

He bent in front of his father.

‘You won’t be taking that document to the coach or anyone else. They’re kids, Dad. Ben’s out there. Let them have their day.’ Gordon would have liked to see his father regard him through newly opened eyes. He had never asserted himself like this. He would have given anything to win his father’s respect, to overcome his resistance, on a point of doing the right thing. But instead, Ron gave an easygoing shrug and said, ‘Fair enough. You always get more out of them with the threat than if you follow it through. Oh, look at that.’

Gordon glanced up to the grass bank. If Leonie had been there, she was gone now. Maybe he had only imagined her. Then he saw what his father was seeing.