I go straight to my gun cabinet, grab the keys, unlock it, and extract my .22, my .222, the 12-gauge shotgun, and ammunition for all three. I take them back to the kitchen and put them where I can easily get to them. Drastic, but the evening has been way too unsettling. When they come for me, I’ll be ready. It’s only 8.30. Too early for bed. I make myself a peanut-butter sandwich with nearly fresh bread for dinner.

Then I get the box out again. The hammer drill parts come out, and I count and pack $250,000 in piles back into the box, and then tape it up and take it to the mailbox. I leave it underneath the mailbox so the mailman doesn’t have to become involved. It feels like one way of drawing a line beneath everything. They can come and get their loot, and leave me alone. Then I can return to my version of normal. This doesn’t sound all that attractive, because now more than ever it is obvious that my life is rubbish. A few violent criminals couldn’t make it any worse. But they could make it worse for others, so that is enough motivation to give them back what is theirs. Besides, I now have over $160,000 of my own that will pay a few bills, and even a bit of wooing.

Back at the house, I get out of the ute, and feel my lungs expanding because a downward force has been removed. The night is still and warm, and the stars are a kind of existential joke: perpetually awesome, beautiful, just outside every night, but never looked at, never appreciated. The air has the lightness that suggests the brutal leftover heat of summer is gone and the pleasure of autumn is here. For those who know pleasure.

I watch TV, and sleep on the couch, and wake, and look at crap on my computer, and doze, and am glad to see the morning.

When it is time, I ring the hospital, and the nurse, Jennifer Peach, who nursed my mother and my father at the end, asks seriously if I’m a relative. I say, ‘No,’ and she apologises, but declines to let me talk to Elaine. It is before visiting hours, and the hospital has strict policies. Then I hear a voice in the background say, ‘She checked herself out. With her husband.’

I begin to say, ‘That’s not possible,’ but I stop myself. Lately, anything is possible. I ask, ‘Did she look happy to go with him?’

Then Jennifer puts her hand over the mouthpiece, and asks the voice behind her, ‘Was she happy to go?’ The voice returns, ‘Not unhappy. A little anxious, but that was probably because of the night she’d had. We didn’t want her to go. She and her husband insisted.’

Jennifer asks me, ‘Why?’