Whenever anyone asked, she said that Billy had gone on an exchange. He had gone to Switzerland, she said. He was staying with a lovely host family, Hans and Helga Fischer, and their daughter, Marcia, who was Billy’s age. The Fischers lived in Zurich. They went skiing on weekends. They had a large hound named Bruno who was fond of her son. There was every chance that Billy and Marcia would share a tender and appropriate first love.

She found a postcard of Zurich, its buildings iced with fresh snow, and stuck it on her fridge.

As the weeks went by, she found herself thinking of Zurich while she was on the bus to see Billy. She’d picture the Fischer family rolling with their dog in the snow, carolling with their neighbours at Christmas, drinking mulled wine in front of a log fire.

She’d think of them as she opened the fridge to find a single egg to boil for her dinner, and when she shrank and huddled her body under the cold sheets, trying to warm the bed.

After a time she began to envy her son, to envy the memories, so clear in her mind, of his exchange. She’d flick through them like a series of snapshots – Billy outside a historic church; Billy on skis, waving, his hands in thick red mittens; Billy grinning, young and pink-cheeked, Marcia’s smiling face pressed into his shoulder.

Joyriders

Maybe it stuck in my mind because I heard there were two boys and a girl and my work crew was the same: two boys, me and Curtis, and one girl. Erica.

Erica was drinking a 7-Eleven cappuccino when we first heard about the joyriders. We were at the depot waiting for the day’s work order. I watched her pour three packets of white sugar into her coffee, one after the other, and stir it with a plastic straw.

‘That stuff will kill you,’ I said.

She didn’t even look up.

Two boys, one girl, all under eighteen. That’s what they told us. They had tied scarves around their faces and worn baseball caps and sunglasses and robbed three service stations using weapons that looked like they could have been found in someone’s kitchen, someone’s garage: a knife, a box cutter, a screwdriver with a pink handle. One of them always sat at the wheel of their stolen, plate-less car, revving the engine, waiting to scream off down the highway.

On the way out of one petrol station, they had sideswiped another car and sent it rolling onto the verge. They hadn’t stopped to see what damage they’d done.

My crew’s job was to clean up their mess.