Old people were reputed to want to spend their last precious days with their grandchildren, and certainly Norma doted on Ben, but despite a wealth of common interests—stamps, coins, cricket, bridges, dams, trains, train tracks—Ron had never shown the slightest desire to share those passions with Ben. To Ron, the fact that there was a young boy in the family who loved what Ron also loved was mere coincidence. He had a long aversion to investing time in children. You couldn’t count on them to repay you.

‘The only one of you I have any time for is that girl. What’s her name?’

‘Lou? You barely know her.’

‘That’s the one,’ Ron said happily. ‘I always got on well with the rug-munchers. You’d be surprised at how many of them we had in the family. But it wasn’t really spoken of in those days.’

‘Okay, I’ll ask Ben and Lou to drop in when I see them later.’

‘It’ll be too late for you.’ Ron was waggling his index finger like an Old Testament prophet. ‘What do you stand for? You’ve staked your existence on stopping anything from happening to that rundown dump. What’s the point? How does it feel to have a goal of nothing? I can see your headstone. Here Lies Gordon Grimes: He Made Sure Nothing Happened.’

Gordon wanted to ask: Aren’t you speaking for both of us? Isn’t your version of nothing—an eventless life, an armchair and a newspaper and the ABC and Mum at your beck and call—what you always strived for? Don’t tell me about nothing.

He took a breath. It felt good to get that off his chest. Then he realised that he’d said none of it.

‘Dad, you can’t hurt my feelings.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings!’ Ron dismissed the accusation as a master corporate criminal might brush aside a charge of shoplifting. Hurting Gordon’s feelings was beneath his pay grade. ‘I could save your house for you. I’m experienced; I know how council works. You have a valuable resource here and you won’t use me, out of misplaced pride or plain stupidity—I struggle every day to guess which it is. I have never been able to decide whether you are a stubborn idiot, or just an idiot.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘Don’t thank me for the offer,’ Ronald said, ever insensitive to double meanings, as wedded to the literal as if it were the staff of life. ‘Accept it! I could provide professional services, your mother-in-law could pay me, you could secure your little clubhouse’s future and I could secure your mother’s, uh’—he paused to scratch his chin—‘her security. Everybody wins—all you need to do is listen!’