‘It was a stupid thing to say. It came out wrong.’

He takes a step back but can’t stop looking at her, this woman who knew Mum better than anyone else in the world. Did she even think about the impact of saying something like this? It’s unforgivable. ‘How can you tell me what I’ve become wouldn’t be enough for her? Go, Yvonne, I don’t want to spend time with you.’

‘Please,’ she starts. But he turns away, he doesn’t want to see her face softening as she realises she crossed the line.

He heads back inside the stairwell. Now what? He takes his phone out and watches the little reception icon hover at four bars. He leans his head against the mucky red wall and considers calling Dad. But to say what? Dad is always saying how proud he is of him, and while Kiama appreciates it he also wants to know that Mum would have felt the same way. Now he knows she wouldn’t.

But he is trying; no one showed him how to do this. There’s no set of rules of how to behave after you go through what he did.

Purity, that’s who he could talk to now. She knew Mum too, maybe she wouldn’t agree with what Yvonne just said.

‘Hey?’

Delia stands a few steps up. ‘You alright, hun? Has she gone?’

He puts his phone away and faces her. ‘Yeah. She’s gone.’

‘You look like you need a drink. A proper one.’

And here’s another option, to get so drunk he doesn’t have think or stress about any of this for the next ten hours. He nods and heads back up.

Chapter Nineteen

The Luck Hut

August 2009

Yvonne

Yvonne walks around the flat updating her list of all the things that have gone wrong this week; the doors on the wardrobe which have been put in upside down, the dripping boiler and the alarm system that keeps going off at 1.58 a.m. Some days, the list is endless.

‘I feel like this place is getting more dangerous every time I visit,’ Lewis says as he ducks to avoid the wires that hang from the ceiling. ‘Is it definitely safe to use the gas again?’

‘It’s perfectly safe now. I even have a certificate.’

‘Really? Maybe you should get it framed; you can put it over one of the holes in the wall.’