Cats were everywhere, unconscious in the light, watchful in the shade. Coloured glass spun lazily in the windows. I should have been glad to be on solid ground again, but everything here made me itch, as if the place were pushing me away. The day’s heat made the palms of my hands, the backs of my knees, the creases of my elbows sticky with sweat.

Gwenda Sage stood at the screen door, a wiry woman with a cloud of hair the colour of clay mud spilling down over her bare arms. A cat circled her ankles. She was thin and leathery, and her eyes were sharp. Whatever her relationship to the postmaster, she looked nothing like comfortable Mr Sage.

“Marilyn’s boy?” She pointed secateurs at Gary. “You aren’t meant to be here, Damson.”

“Guess you want this,” said Gary, holding up the mail. We picked our way across too-small stepping stones, through the garden.

Gwenda Sage gave a hefty sigh, pulled off gloves, rolled them around the secateurs and held out a dirty hand. Gary walked up the veranda steps, but Trish and I stayed in the sun.

“I smell smoke,” I said. The scented smoke in my mother’s room.

“Just incense,” whispered Trish. “Cheap stuff.”

“You can’t come in,” said Gwenda, looking at Gary as if over glasses, although she wasn’t wearing any. “Who are those two?”

“Bettina Scott and Trish Aberdeen,” said Gary flatly.

“Then they can’t, either.” She snorted. “Marilyn’ll have your guts for garters. I’ve heard about them.”

“I’m hoping you can help us,” said Gary. “We’re looking for someone from the back country. He goes by the name of Smith. Light brown hair. Beard. Old Holden ute, cages on the back. There’s another man with him, sometimes.”

Gwenda Sage chuckled drily. “What do you have to do with that lot?” she replied to Gary. “Your mother really won’t approve.”

Her hands weren’t dirty after all. My schoolyard scrapes had long faded (Don’t you think they’re a bit fainter today, Bettina?), but little black marks pitted Gwenda’s hands and there were knotted white scars on her arms, which she hadn’t covered up, although she was older than my mother.

“They’ve been here, once or twice,” she said. “Wanted anything left in the sheds from when old Sylvie died.”

“This was Sylvie Spicer’s house?” said Trish, suddenly interested. “It doesn’t look at all like the pictures on file—” She bit her lip. A police file? I wondered what had happened here.

Gwenda ignored her. “A few boxes of books, rotten. Some old crates and cages. Photos I guess your mum didn’t want. Your dad would have told me to burn them, I bet.” She gave Gary a yellow grin.

“My dad asked you to stop burning things,” he said.