We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it’s beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it’s shared and taken and fought for.

That’s the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? Our own place is small perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow, you realise that maybe in every house, something so savage and sad and brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it.

Maybe that’s what these pages of words are about:

Bringing the world to the window.

‘It’s okay,’ Mum says one night. I hear her from my bed, as she and Dad discuss paying the bills. I can picture them at the kitchen table, because many things are fought, won and lost in the kitchen at our place.

Dad replies, ‘I don’t understand it — I used to have three months’ work ahead of me, but since …’ His voice trails off. I imagine his feet, his jeaned legs, and the scar that angles down the side of his face and on to his throat. His fingers hold each other gently, entwining, making a single fist against the table.

He’s wounded.

He’s desperate — which makes his next move pretty understandable, even if it can’t be condoned.

It’s door to door.

Door to dead-set door.

‘Well I’ve tried advertising in the papers.’ He raises his voice in the kitchen again. It’s the next Saturday. ‘I’ve tried everything, so I decided to knock on doors and work cheap. Fix what needs fixin’,’ while my mother places a chipped mug of coffee in front of him. All she does is stand there, and it’s Rube, Sarah and me that watch.

The next weekend it gets worse, because Rube and I actually see him. We see him as he returns from someone’s front gate and we can tell he’s copped another rejection. It’s strange. Strange to look at him, when just a matter of months ago our father was tough and hard and wouldn’t give us an inch. (Not that he does now. It’s just a different feeling, that’s all.) He was brutal in his fairness. Cruel in his judgments. Harder than necessary for our own good. He had dirty hands and cash in his pocket and sweat in his armpits.