‘You can still come down and see your parents; they don’t actually need you. You spend your whole time putting up these fake obstacles.’

‘Ben’s not a fake obstacle. I can’t move him up there before he’s done with school.’

‘He didn’t say anything about him!’ Lou waved her hands in exasperation. ‘Ben wants you to do what’s good for you, for once in your life!’

Gordon tried not to feel hurt that Ben and Lou wanted him to move away. It made a kind of sense, if he could talk his mother-in-law into letting him sell his share of The Lodge—and if he could ensure The Lodge was left in safe hands—but unfortunately making sense was like physical exercise. Some was good, but too much sent you into meltdown. And in his shape, you couldn’t do it two days in a row.

To change the subject, he said, ‘How much do I owe you for food?’

Gordon had for some time been trying to reimburse Lou for the coffee beans, focaccia bread, Vietnamese groceries and other expenses she incurred feeding the hungry masses. She rebuffed him always, but this time she grinned mischievously. Gordon thought she was going to accept, but she opened a kitchen drawer and produced a stuffed envelope which she pushed across the breakfast bar.

‘For you.’

Gordon lifted the flap, saw green and yellow notes, and slid the envelope back at Lou with his knuckles as if scared of leaving a fingerprint.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘I did a fundraiser. Two, in fact. While you were away. We had music, food, dancing—I got seventy people in.’

‘Tell me you’re kidding.’

She pushed the envelope back, like a puck on a shuffleboard table. ‘You need money. I want to contribute.’

‘We’ll get slammed by council. Running a business out of here?’

‘So what? All they can do is send you a cease-and-desist letter.’

‘You don’t realise. Fixing it up for the inspections alone will cost more than we could ever raise, let alone the improvements they’ll force on us. It’s what they require you to spend, that’s how they get you.’

‘What they don’t know can’t hurt them,’ Lou said. ‘You really have to let me help.’

Gordon was about to raise more objections, but Dog was in the doorway with a face calibrated between pathetic and abysmal, an empty Big W mug dangling from his finger.

To Gordon, Lou said, ‘I think I can hear my squad arriving.’

Dog nodded genially, as if Lou ignoring him was a shared joke.

Children’s voices drifted up from the lawn.

‘Right on schedule,’ Gordon said.

‘They don’t play by my rules, they don’t get to train,’ Lou said, fixing a seawater plug into her ear.

‘How else will they learn discipline?’ said Dog, the soul of indiscipline.