Shocked by the abruptness and violence of Hector’s manner, mindful of the basic respect owing from one race to another, and emboldened by all that the Boab had provided, Ros wound down her window and addressed the youths. ‘As a stranger to this town, though not the state,’ she said, ‘and as a guest of this gentleman’s, I regret that I am unable to accord you the courtesy which, in other circumstances and at any other time, I would consider it my pleasure and indeed my bounden duty to . . . ah . . . accord you; not least in the light of the obligations I feel, both for myself and on behalf of others, towards those whose deprivations and disadvantages are such that it would be the grossest discourtesy to compound them in any way – any way, that is, that might . . .’

‘Jesus!’ Hector said, speeding away, ‘that’s the longest sentence those bastards will ever have heard. They have enough trouble just handling bloody pidgin.’

We didn’t stay long at the disco. Just long enough for me to look after Hector’s purse while he did his Fred Astaire routine with Ros and then his Clifford Chatterley with me. Out of the blue – unless it was his leg that reminded him – he brought up the Falklands War. He told me that within hours of the first news of the Argentinian invasion thousands of West Australians with British blood in their veins had volunteered to spill it. There was war fever in the state, he said.

I must have replied with something like, ‘How bizarre,’ because he was suddenly booming again. ‘It is not. It proves the old loyalties are still there. Principle. You fight for principle. And that doesn’t change.’

I gave him back his purse. Before he left he reminded us that he’d be calling in the morning.

‘That makes about twenty of them,’ I said to Ros as I set the alarm clock. We went to sleep worrying not so much which arrangement we should keep but how we could get out of all of them.

But we needn’t have fretted. Orlando De Biasi did not wake us at five a.m. and neither did anyone else. By noon the next day we were as friendless and alone in Derby as we’d been the same time the day before. And still without any means of getting about. We sat at the table of an outdoor takeaway joint and watched the dust settle on our spring rolls. A passing Aborigine in a Hawaiian shirt asked us ‘ow we were goin’, otherwise the streets were deserted. ‘I feel like Cinderella,’ I said to Ros. ‘Last night I was somebody. Now look at me.’

‘Do what you did yesterday,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Get a taxi.’