My father left me some money, and I’ve assumed Simon got the same. Mine gave me my start in skiing. When my mother died, I got what was left. I was the child with no fixed address, no roots in the earth anywhere. Every visit home, my mother would ask me if I’d bought a house yet, and talk about leaving me money for one. It was still sitting in a term deposit when Simon and I reconnected on Facebook. Any ‘like’, any comment, fell under the shadow of that big pile of cash that should have been his as well as mine.

I offered him half, and he took it, in an uncomplicated way. No gratitude. The more I waited for gratitude, the more I realised it wasn’t my place to. We were two absent sons of a vanished family. My half of the money was enough for a shipment of toolboxes and half a house, when I found Lacy and Cedar and a reason to buy one.

Simon rolls over on his mat and pushes himself up to a kneeling position.

‘It’s Annabel’s plan now,’ he says. ‘Med at UQ.’ He stands, slowly. ‘I thought I should tell you that.’

‘That’s great. Really.’

He nods. ‘Okay, then.’ He picks up his water glass. ‘Okay. Good.’

‘Tell her to turn up with her physics ready and I’m sure she’ll be fine.’ It’s not in me to tell him twice that Medicine was not my dream. I wonder if they still do the problem based on Caesar’s assassination. His breath is still in the lecture theatre, I know that.

Simon takes a second to process what I’ve said, then gives a small laugh. He goes to the water cooler to refill his glass.

‘We might be on the Sunshine Coast by then,’ he says. ‘Who knows?’

Outside, Lacy has noticed the telescope and tilted it down to look across the bay.

‘Wrong lens for that.’ Simon’s watching her adjust the focus. ‘Or not the best lens, anyway.’ He downs the water in one go, then turns the spigot to fill the glass again. ‘That’s a new toy. New since the CABG. I was watching the news on TV in hospital and they said Voyager 2 had reached interstellar space. Actually left the solar system. Remember the Voyagers? I bought the telescope online that afternoon. I’m all about impulse buys now.’ He laughs at himself. ‘I spent all those years up in the sky and I never stopped to look at it, and now I can. A human-made object has left the solar system. Our solar system has less mass now. Weird idea.’

Lacy stands up and pushes the viewing end of the telescope back down, putting it back to its original tilt. She notices Simon watching her, and shrugs.

When she opens the door to come inside, he says, ‘I’ll get you the right lens.’ He wraps his towel around his shoulders. ‘There’s a better one for looking across the bay. At things closer than space. The one in there is good for Jupiter, Saturn, things like that.’