‘Carl’s a fucked-up acid casualty. He’s too hopeless to pull off any grand schemes. Here, that reminds me …’

Kelly reaches into her bag by her feet and fishes out a small shoe polish tin, from which she takes a fresh joint. She offers it to Gordon, who shakes his head. She digs into her bag again and comes up with a document in a clear plastic slip.

‘What’s this?’

‘Duh. You’re a Justice of the Peace now, aren’t you?’

Gordon sniffs. His father’s renal failure had advanced swiftly after he was relocated to Acacia floor. His kidney specialist said Ron had defied the odds in staying active for as long as he had, and his sudden decline had nothing to do with the car accident or the move to the locked ward. Gordon and Norma could not help but link it with his escapade, though. With the smash-up of his getaway vehicle came the obliteration of his hope. He did not speak to a soul for three weeks after the abortive trip to Chester Dam. Gordon and Norma sat by his side every day. The staff tended him and gave him medication, but he had decided to die. Gordon consoled Norma through this final act. Dying: it fucks you up even worse than your mum and dad.

And then, in the final days, after Ron stopped eating and drinking, a glimmer of beauty. The old misanthrope, a skeleton of bad intent, whispered something to Norma.

‘I can’t hear you!’ she shouted.

Norma wanted to put her ear to Ron’s mouth, but she could not flex her hips. Gordon acted as go-between, getting onto his knees to hear what Ron was whispering.

‘What’s he saying?’ Norma demanded.

Gordon heard the words rustle from Ron’s lips. He stood up and held his mother.

‘He said he’s been lucky to have us.’

Ron was saying something else. Gordon got back down and bent his ear to Ron’s mouth. His father’s lips shaped a wordless breath. Gordon stayed there for long moments, but couldn’t hear what Ron was saying.

‘What?’ Norma said. ‘What!’

Gordon sat back on the carpet, on his bottom.

‘He said he loves us, even if he has a strange way of showing it.’

Norma looked at Ron, and he bobbled his eyebrows. Whatever he had really said, Gordon thought, he approved of the translation. Norma subsided into a fit of crying so heart-rending that the staff shifted her off the floor, as she was causing several of the Alzheimer’s residents to become upset, some of them bursting into contagious tears.