‘Well, he’s been busy. He quit the bank, no questions asked. He’s been earmarked as the curator of the museum.’

‘Wow.’

‘I’m surprised you haven’t spoken,’ Kelly says. ‘You two are so close.’

‘We’re good.’

‘Hm.’

‘A man’s got to have some mystique about him.’

Kelly narrows her eyes and looks out at the bush. ‘Do you miss it?’

‘Miss what?’

‘The Lodge.’

‘Do you?’

She shakes her head. ‘I feel like I’ve been carrying a burden all my life and suddenly someone’s told me I don’t need to anymore. Sure, I miss it. I got used to the pain.’

Gordon eases into his chair and passes Carl’s application back to Kelly. She slides it into its plastic folder, which she puts into her bag. Gordon notices: an Italian designer job. A rich divorcee like her can take her pick of the field down Bluebird way.

So why. Why is her leg extended and her toe outstretched, tracing a circle on Gordon’s calf. Why. He watches her toe like it’s a zoo animal, and then he meets Kelly’s eye.

A set of headlights appears at the end of the dirt road; the crunch of a manual car’s gears. Kelly’s new BMW kangaroo-hops up the hill.

‘Little bugger,’ she says. ‘I told him he wasn’t allowed to drive alone.’

Gordon nods towards the approaching car. ‘He’s not,’ he says, and fixes a steady eye on his ex-wife’s toe, which is still on his calf. ‘He’s not alone.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements

I owe a great debt to these honorary Bluebirders who read drafts of this novel and contributed to its development: Christos Tsiolkas, Michael Robotham, Jon Casimir, John Edwards, Lyn Tranter and Christa Munns; and especially to my two loyal partners in crime, Jane Palfreyman and Wenona Byrne. Thanks also to the whole team at Allen & Unwin. Appreciation to Stevie Harris, John Hopkins, Sarah Hopkins and Helen de Mestre for sharing their love of books for many years and for wondering why there isn’t an Australian Richard Russo. Russo is a source of some of Carl Chidgey’s mutterings, as are Cervantes, Beckett, Philip Larkin, Martin Amis, and the Dandy Warhols, among many other scraps from which that bower bird built his nest. And a special note of gratitude to Ali Lavau, who turned herself into a Bluebird local and knows what lies under every rock.