He must have been sick, or didn’t want to linger in the whispering grass so near the trees, quarrelling. At any rate, he didn’t point out that last time I’d driven a car, I’d crashed it. He wasn’t even sarcastic when I struggled with the gears. Harder than remembering how to ride a bicycle. Easier than sitting in the passenger seat, thinking.

We had a long drive back to Runagate, the road bleached in our lights, cold and fright and weariness settling into my fingers where they knotted on the steering wheel. My jaw, set, was stiffening and my neck began to ache, but at least I was not thinking of knives and flowers, only remembering how to be alone in my own body.

A hail of moths stormed the headlights and blew away like blossoms. The stars were a great wheel down the centre of the sky. Indistinct animals bounded across our way, at the border of the shadows. Gary’s face was turned to the rushing darkness, as if he expected to see something pacing us.

Home, soon. Safe, with the curtains drawn in the warm, pleasant kitchen. I would bring the chicks inside, I decided. But still only I would be there, and the silence of the lemon tree. When I washed my hair, the sink would fill with blood and wilted petals. Here, I did not feel so alone.

“Will Patricia— Will Trish be well?” I asked when we passed Carter’s Crossing.

“She just shot a boy she went out with,” said Gary. I hadn’t known. “And something else happened, when she was outside … I’ll ask her more tomorrow. You know,” he added, as if it were connected, “I didn’t realise the old ute your brothers fixed up was Uncle Davy’s. Not until I looked at it again tonight. I wonder where they got it. Uncle Davy…”

Old Dave.

Gary rolled down the window to shake his head in the chill blast of air. I wanted him to shut it but was too tired to remember how to ask without making him do it, sideways.

“Sorry,” he said, before I could shiver. “I’m trying to keep awake.”

He rummaged under the seat, only hissing pain once or twice through his teeth, and dug up an old rug. It smelled of horse and engine oil, wire and dirt. He tucked it around my shoulders, then rested his head against the door until we hit corrugations and I heard his teeth jar, saw the faint reflections on the windscreen blur.