She stood for a few more seconds and then clapped her hands together, which made Z blink in surprise. I think Aiden and I did as well.

‘Okay. I’ll keep an eye on it. Now. You kids. First of all, clean up this mess. You know where to find fresh bedding. When that’s done, you can make a start on retraining the dog.’ She pointed at Z. ‘It’s meant to be a toy. If it destroys anything else then it will have to go.’

We must’ve both made groans of horror because Mum held up her hand.

‘This is non-negotiable. I will not have a machine that can cause you physical harm in the house.’ She looked at me. ‘Whether it’s by accident or not. So be warned. And if you want to keep your dog then I suggest you make your retraining of it really good.’

I can’t pretend her words weren’t scary. We loved our dog, even if he had bitten me, even if he had been naughty. But we both knew by the expression on Mum’s face that she wasn’t bluffing. I vowed that we’d work hard on training to make sure Z didn’t destroy anything else in the house. But if he took a playful bite out of either of us … well, we’d put up with that.

And keep it secret.

It was the last week of school and I must admit I was glad. We’d only have two weeks off before we were back again, but I was looking forward to the time away. Mum had even said that there was a possibility she’d take us with her on her four-day conference trip to Perth, which was scheduled in that break. That was exciting because Mum had never taken us away with her before. She explained that it was dependent on a number of things, the main one being, of course, the weather in what was left of Western Australia. There had been three cyclones that season that had come perilously close to doing to Perth what one had done to Darwin forty years before – levelling the city to the ground. Nobody there had had the energy, money or labour resources to rebuild it. Mum said she’d flown over the Top End once and the sea and the bush had reclaimed the city completely.

So, the weather was a key factor. And Mum said that even if we went we’d have to stay in the hotel during the day. In the evening she’d be able to show us some of the sights, her workload permitting.

We kept our fingers crossed.

But events made all of that irrelevant.