‘Kitchen.’

‘Okay.’

‘Good. Now shut up. I wanna get some sleep.’

Later, when he starts snoring, I tell him.

‘I’m gonna beat you.’ But personally, I’m not really too convinced.

16

The money sits on the kitchen table and we all stare at it. Mum, Dad, Sarah, Rube and me. It’s all there. Notes, coins, the lot. Mum lifts Rube’s pile up just slightly, to get an idea of how much there is.

‘About eight hundred dollars all up,’ Rube tells her. ‘That’s between Cameron and me.’

Mum holds her head in her hands now. Thursday nights shouldn’t be like this for her, and she stands and walks over to the sink.

‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she tells us, bent over.

Dad stands, goes over and holds her.

After about ten silent minutes, they return to the table. I swear, this kitchen table’s seen about everything, I reckon. Everything big that’s ever happened in this house.

‘So how long’s this been going on exactly?’ Dad throws out the question.

‘A while. Since about June.’

‘Is that right Cameron?’ Mum this time.

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ I can’t even look at her.

However, Mrs Wolfe looks at me. ‘So that’s where all those bruises came from?’

I nod. ‘Yeah.’ I go on talking. ‘We did still fight in the backyard, but only for practice. When we started out, we told ourselves that we all needed the money …’

‘But?’

‘But, I don’t think it’s ever been about the money.’

Rube agrees and takes over. He says, ‘Y’ know Mum, it’s just that Cam and I saw what was happening here. We saw what was happening to us. To Dad, to you, to all of us. We were barely surviving, just keeping our heads above water, and …’ He’s getting feverish now. Desperate to tell it right. ‘We wanted to do something that would lift us up and make us okay again —’

‘Even if it makes the rest of us ashamed?’ Mum interrupts.

‘Ashamed?’ Rube boxes her through the eyes. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you saw Cameron fighting, standing up, over and over again.’ He’s nearly shouting. ‘You’d fall to your knees with pride. You’d tell people that he’s your boy and he keeps fighting because that’s the way you brought him up.’

Mum stops.

She stares through the table.

She imagines it, but all she sees is the pain.

‘How can you go through that?’ she begs me. ‘How can you go through it, week after week?’

‘How can you?’ I ask her.

It works.

‘And how can you?’ I ask Dad.

The answer is this:

We keep getting up because that’s what we do. Don’t ask me if it’s instinct, but we all do it. People everywhere do it. Especially people like us.