The procession, that’s what it seemed like, passed by without noticing her. Sylvie watched them wander away, bewildered, along the edge of the creek.

She sat down where she was, at the foot of a tree.

‘I’d like to go crazy before I die,’ Sylvie’s grandmother had told her once. They had been sitting on the balcony of a small country pub.

No worries there, Sylvie had thought.

Cath wore long, expensive, filthy dresses, and was very deaf.

‘Anyway,’ Cath continued, ‘I’ll be dead soon enough so, you know, feel free to tell me whatever you want.’

And so Sylvie had, eventually. It was like putting things into a locked box.

But something else had happened, too. She had not thought about this for years.

Driving back to Melbourne, Cath had nearly crashed the Volkswagen. ‘Can you see them?’ she’d cried, swerving into a petrol-station carpark.

Sylvie followed her grandmother’s gaze up through the dirty windscreen.

‘What? What?’

‘Angels.’

They flooded the bleak sky above the KFC, apparently. Luminous, in their thousands.

Cath had wept.

Sylvie hadn’t known what to say.

And a few months later, back in Melbourne, Cath suffered a massive stroke, then died.

Sylvie said goodbye to her dad at the office the next afternoon. They even hugged each other, and she did not pull away until he did. He smelt of alcohol and his own odour, almost familiar to her now. He didn’t ask about the gun, which Sylvie had left lying on the bed in the cabin. Nor did he mention the gravestones, which she hadn’t got round to repainting.

‘I hope you’ll be okay, Dad,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah, we’ll be fine,’ Joe said, raising his hand to shield his face from the sun. ‘Nothing to worry about here, Vee.’

It had rained briefly and then stopped, and now the clouds were moving in two directions at once, fast, low grey ones beneath zones of slower pink. She looked away and when she looked up again, a kind of giant black kitten was floating ominously over the paddocks towards them. The kitten turned into a hand with seven outspread fingers, then dispersed, and vanished among massive, inarticulate layers to the east.

They stood in silence for a few seconds. Then the car door opened, and Sylvie got in.

Joe came over and leant on the open window. ‘This really is a very nice car,’ he said.

She started the engine.

‘You know it’s not mine, Dad.’

‘I figured that, yeah. Harlow’s?’

‘Harlow’s mum.’

He nodded. ‘Very swish.’

There was another pause.

‘I’m pregnant, Dad.’

‘Okay,’ he said, taking his arms off the window and standing back. ‘Shit Vee, that’s. What is that? You should have told me. We could’ve. I don’t know. Had a beer.’

‘I’m telling you now.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s fantastic.’