The best way to get a handle on what Elaine is really up to is to spy on her. Or maybe it’s the worst way, but it is a way, and it gives me something to do that I am willing to do. That first day, when she came to my place looking for a box of crockery and later received it in the mail, doesn’t fit with my theory. Perhaps Tito had sent it as a decoy, and Elaine was expecting it. But he’s been dead for a year. This suggests that someone else sent it. And it turned out to be just rubbish, didn’t it? And why did Ben also come looking on that day? Was that just a coincidence? There are plenty of reasons for people to get parcels in the mail or have one go missing.

In the dark, I ride my old pushbike halfway to Elaine’s, and pull off the road past the table drain and into the long grass alongside the fence that runs up to a nearby ramp. I still have a couple of kilometres to walk across wheat paddocks and sorghum stubble, but if I don’t want to be seen, there’s no choice. There is only a half moon, but it is bright, and the night is clear, so I can make out detail in everything around me. My shadow is defined as though it were daylight. I climb the fence and set out with long strides, sticking to the wheel tracks in between the perfect crop rows, and keeping an eye out for random vehicles and errant piggers. The cicadas sing their persistent background song: the sort of quiet noise you can’t get closer to or further away from.