Gordon was midway through texting Kelly to say dinner would just be himself, Ben and Lou, who was back from training and taking a shower, when Dog poked his laughing-clown head over the saloon door.

‘Sausages, champ!’

‘Ben’s favourite,’ Gordon said, heavying up the hint for Dog to leave. But Dog didn’t do hints. His will was stronger than Gordon’s, and his observance of the forms of Bluebird mateship unbeatably cunning.

‘Music to my ears. I’ve got the munchies. Or I will in ten minutes!’ He waved a wiry-looking joint and trotted out to the balcony.

‘Shit,’ Gordon muttered. He was changing his text to say Dog was staying to eat, when an incoming message from Kelly saved him the trouble.

ok ill eat out

When Gordon took the food out to the card table, the wind had dropped and the lights from the toilet block at the north end of Bluebird shimmered on the bay. Like man’s best friend resting after a long walk, the beach inhaled and exhaled, small waves sighing on the sand.

Gordon laid the four plates on the $220 French jacquard tablecloth Lou had placed delicately over the jigsaw puzzle-in-progress. She nodded at the fourth plate.

‘You’ve got to ban him from The Lodge. Nobody would argue.’

‘You’re quick to judge a person you barely know.’

‘Saves time.’ Lou sighed. ‘Gordon, you’re so understanding. What the hell is wrong with you?’

‘That seems to be the question of the day.’

Ben was drawing shapes with his finger on the tablecloth: one of the tells for his retreats into his safe interior. Here was their refugee crisis, a child taking shelter from warring adults.

But Gordon couldn’t bring himself to ban Dog. If he let himself go in that direction, he could not say where he would stop. Gordon, who believed it was his responsibility to his fellow Bluebirders, whatever he really thought of them, to be the Bigger Man, said, ‘Dog’s been annoying forever. Where’s the justice in banning him now?’

A moan escaped Lou.

‘You think you’re old school, you do things the Bluebird way, but actually you’re just gutless.’ She flicked a napkin at his face, accidentally hitting him in the eye. ‘We can dump him at sea, shark food, nobody would ever know,’ she said with disturbing matter-of-factness. Far from recoiling from conversations about murdering people and dumping their bodies, Lou relished them. This was the problem with the long-lost part of reconnecting with your long-lost goddaughter. The long-lost was the histories that wised you up on who it was you were talking to. He was pretty sure she was joking. ‘I keep telling you,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to help you catch up with your own life, only you won’t let me. Is your eye okay?’