Driving only by moonlight, the pale night sky blazing.

“I was at home, asleep,” I said, holding to what I knew was true. “Wasn’t I?”

Trish opened her mouth to answer. Gary said to me, “Don’t, Tina. Trish?”

Trish turned to look at me, then back to Gary. “She was with us,” she said slowly. “With you and me and Chris and Mitch.” She rounded on me, furious, as if it were my fault she—we—had forgotten. She spoke quickly. “You were there the whole time! It was your idea. You got us in trouble, and you didn’t get blamed at all! It wasn’t fair! Then your dad disappeared, so everyone was sorry for you and no one wanted to dob you in. Shit. Gary. How did I forget?”

Strong emotions were unbecoming. Unsettling.

“The Scotts are persuasive,” said Gary.

“Why do you remember?” she asked him.

He shrugged, worked up through the gears as we got on our way again. “Practice. And Tina didn’t talk to me at all. But I’m glad you remember. I was starting to think I was the crazy one.”

Trish crossed her arms. My mind choked with leaves and dust and distance, the slow unravelling of certainties. I missed sitting empty under the lemon tree, thinking only of the lace of the pepperina, the dance of Mr Alleman’s lantern-bush.

“She was with us,” she repeated, and looked at me. “For a while there, people thought you did it, Tina.”

So many questions, but I knew she was waiting for me to ask another. Reluctant, I said, “What did they think I’d done?”

“Trish,” said Gary, wearily.

“Killed your dad,” said Trish.

There weren’t many appropriate replies to that. Trish watched me. Gary drove on beneath a tunnel of arching branches, the sun spangling down on the blue-patched bitumen.

There must be some deep aquifer of emotion I could not tap. I couldn’t have killed my father—a lady doesn’t. Had I known I was suspected of it? Closing my eyes, I felt gingerly among these stirred-up memories, not wanting to discover too much. Mother must have protected me. But Mitch and Chris would know what had happened.

Gary swore. I opened my eyes. He reversed off the broken shoulder, turned us around and went back until he found a road he’d overshot. The bitumen gave way once more to red pebbles and white dust, but rougher here, and the paddocks between the trees were overgrown, shaggy with silver grass, laced with wandering creek beds.

A single low old telephone wire from tree to tree beside the road; the shadow of the truck flickered along the raised bank of the verge. Keeping pace.

“Mr Scott found me, after the crash,” said Gary at last.

“You mean he found ‘Jack’,” said Trish, half-heartedly.