‘I’d stopped drinking hours before,’ he sniffles, his beautiful face stained with tears. ‘I swear I thought I was right to drive. Then they made me go in the paddy wagon to the cells.’

This is too much. We all start to laugh so hard that soon I can’t breathe. I try to picture Max, in his designer shirt with his perfect smile and big blue eyes and razor-sharp intellect, sitting in the back of a police truck in the middle of the Australian bush.

‘What did you say to the police?’ I ask him.

‘I started crying straight away,’ Max says, looking a bit embarrassed. ‘But, like, you know … Then they told me I was under arrest and when I got here I tried to call you guys but no one answered.’

‘We were drunk in the backyard,’ Estelle explains sheepishly.

‘So, I called the Godfather. I was so desperate I could barely talk, and he said he’d come straight away and get me but when he got here …’

‘Yes, we know,’ I say quickly.

‘Lucky they didn’t drug test him,’ Max whispers, looking around anxiously. ‘I mean, wouldn’t look too good, would it?’

It’s funny how quickly abnormal things become normal. My compass is constantly in full spin. North is south and east is north. I feel myself acclimatising too quickly to situations the younger me would have been horrified by.

‘You doctors are crazy!’ our friend the local policeman says happily a few minutes later as he liberates Max from his cell. ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘I’m on the news?!’ Max turns pale. ‘I think I’m going to vomit.’

‘Not you, mate,’ the officer says. ‘I mean your friends in the big smoke.’

He informs us that back in the city two surgeons have been found operating after doing cocaine all weekend, and the media’s jumped on it. The health minister has been on a rant about how disgusting we all are: we’re meant to be doctors, he scolded, not drug lords. (No doubt doctors in hospitals all over Australia agree loudly and then go home and text their dealers to start using a less-obvious car.)

The police officer signs Max out of custody and gives him his list of criminal charges as a parting gift. ‘We’ll be in touch with the court date,’ he says cheerily. ‘Great to meet you guys!’

You have to hand it to country folk; they are pleasant to a fault.

We find the Godfather lying down behind the shrubbery, staring at the darkening sky.

‘I feel amazing,’ he says dreamily. ‘Look at how big the world is.’ Estelle and I drag him to his feet, and the four of us walk home.