And maybe that was the reason I dreaded meeting Mike. Dreaded even calling him. In Astra’s handwriting, in blue ink on a yellow sticky-note, his phone number frightened me. I had forgotten the way a telephone number can possess an aura when it’s written out on a piece of paper. Sarah had given me her number like that, years earlier — a note handed to me surreptitiously in a crowded room — and suddenly life had swerved in a new direction. I was thinking about that moment, an otherwise dull book launch at the university, that first, startling conversation, and the way Sarah had smiled and pressed something into my hand as she turned to leave. But I was also thinking about the story Astra had mentioned: the screwdriver and the tree. And so I put off calling Mike until my own procrastination became unbearable and began to outweigh my fear. Love should be put into action, I thought. And in any case, the number Astra had given me was only seven digits long; she doubted it was still connected. Finally, I picked up the phone and dialled, adding a nine to the front. I was praying that Mike wouldn’t answer — I almost hung up — but then he did.

Reluctantly, as if he had no choice in the matter, he told me to come and see him. He had a soft voice and a distracted, cautious manner. He gave me his address. He lived in Footscray. ‘Come in the evening,’ he said. ‘I’m better in the evenings.’

I caught the train out later that week. I knew almost nothing about the western suburbs of Melbourne, although this was where my father had spent a few unhappy years as a teenager, crashing cars and blowing things up, and I felt a jolt of excitement to be there, as the train rose from underground into the blue twilight. Out the window I saw the moon above an expanse of dark railyards, which I didn’t recognise: machinery, bridges, heavy shadows encrusted with lights like red and golden jewels, and it seemed as if the city I knew was gone and had been replaced by something else, a different city, or the same city from a distant future.