‘No, Dave.’ He gets out of his car and comes over to me. ‘You look like shit. I can’t just let you go home on your own.’ He grabs hold of my door as if by sheer strength he can stop me driving away.

‘I’m fine. Just a bit tired.’

‘Bullshit, Dave. Come home with me. Just for the night. We’ll look after you — have a big breakfast together in the morning. Nothing’s so urgent, is it?’

To accept his offer would be an admission of weakness and a nod to desperation. I am a mess, but if I don’t concede it to anyone else, I feel like I can pretend that my mess is a secret, or at least most of it.

‘Really, I’m okay.’

He is quiet, not letting go of the door. ‘Maybe you could come for a cup of tea and a chat?’

‘It’s midnight.’

‘So what? Mandy would love to see you, and she worries we don’t look after you as well as we could when you’re on your own down here.’

The cup of tea is a clever get-out clause. I don’t want to be in my house tonight, and he wants to make sure I’m not going to kill myself. ‘You sure Mandy isn’t asleep?’

‘She’ll have the kettle boiled by the time we get there.’

‘I’ll come for a cup of tea.’

‘Terrific.’ He finally lets go of my ute and gets back into his car. He leans out the window, and says, ‘If you chicken out, I’ll have to come back down here and sleep in your bedroom with you, and you don’t want that.’ Then he is gone at the steady pace you would expect.

The Blent house is a simple rectangle on the side of a low hill facing north. The garden looks small but heavily populated in the dark. The Blents are not wealthy, but they are not wanting either. They are people in control of their farm, and their lives. Willing to help those out of control.

In the kitchen, Mandy is waiting, dressed for an outing, and almost too bright, and friendly. She is a small woman with bouncy brown hair and quick, busy movements. I know this is not a place where lethargy gets a look-in. I consent to tea, and as the kettle re-boils she puts out homemade biscuits that it seems possible she has baked in the last half-hour. She apologises for sending Ian off to have a look around my place in the middle of the night, and hopes I don’t think he was snooping.

‘It is just that I thought I saw light coming from the area of your house, and I even thought I smelt smoke at one stage. You can’t be too careful these days.’