‘She’s not going to let you save The Lodge. That’s why she sent me to court to bugger up your case.’

‘I didn’t need your help doing that.’

‘The old lady doesn’t leave anything to chance. She needed to make sure it went her way. She’s going to do up the Hilton and sell it all, lock, stock and barrel, Hilton and Lodge, to the Chinese.’

‘So what does she want from me?’

‘Don’t ask me, champ. That old duck’s five steps ahead of all of us.’

Gordon thought: She is only a few years older than me and yet she’s old. We’re all old. She’s a powerful old woman and I’m the sad old deadbeat whose fate is in her hands.

Dog’s phone beeped. He read the text message.

‘Go to lunch, Gordo.’

‘Huh?’

‘Leonie’s cancelled. Enjoy the arvo. Enjoy every minute in this place like it’s your last. Tell Victa I said g’day, and tell Norma happy birthday from me,’ he said, giving Gordon a look to say he wished he could find better words to express his condolences.

THE FALL

The fall

‘This is nice. This is just how I like things.’

As she raised her glass to her birthday, Norma Grimes scanned the faces around the circular table: Gordon, Ron, dear sweet Ben, Lou, and so lovely of Kelly to come, even if Norma had had to bribe her. Really, she’d had to bribe them all. They weren’t a large family or one given to ceremony, but she could still marshal the forces of guilt and a free lunch to get them to come and toast the birthday girl. Ron took a sip, though he wasn’t meant to. The waiter came and served him roast beef with gravy and buttered potatoes, a dish as rich in prohibited items as a crime bust. Ron underlined his naughtiness by smothering it all in salt, and raised his glass of red to Norma.

Gordon watched her from a position of braced self-defence. He detested the country club, this den of middle-class complacency, and had tried to wriggle out of coming, but his mother had hit him with the magic words: ‘It’s probably Dad’s last, you know.’ So Gordon was in, as to his surprise, was Kelly, over whom Norma also exercised some mysterious emotional hold.

His gift of the vase had been met with the mildest pleasure, as if Norma had known of both its chequered provenance and his original plan to give it to her as a token of apology for his recent neglect. ‘You’re not easy to buy for,’ he’d said as she rotated it in her hands and summoned up a grateful expression. What, he’d thought, do you give a woman who’s had a gutful of everything?