She said it needed a proper job, he had to get rid of the breeding earth. She took no pleasure in saying so. She didn’t want to be the baddie; she knew the eviction of the foxes would distress Ronnie. He saw them as his friends, furry counterparts of a sort. How was she going to tell him that their homes had been destroyed?

She arranged for the work to happen while they were away. Flying Heathrow to Sydney for the second time in six months made her feel pre-emptively exhausted. They flew as a trio at the beginning of December: Nina and Brent, both with their laptops for emails, and Ronnie with his own small backpack of toys.

Nina’s brother met them at the airport and drove them to Wollongong, to save them renting a car. He made one stop, to show Nina the residential home in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

‘It’s on our way,’ he pointed out. ‘It’ll take us twenty minutes.’

She was jet-lagged and unimpressed, but she agreed. They toured the home. It was nine in the morning when they reached the complex, the sun was rudely bright and Ronnie’s hat was buried somewhere in their luggage. This was nothing to him, of course. He had slept well on the second leg and now tottered happily behind, holding his dad’s hand. The home was well laid out as a series of share houses for three or four residents. Each house was fitted with special lights and special doorknobs, a manager told them. The lights were ambient and soft, and the doorknob for every room felt different, features designed to reduce disorientation. Nina listened politely. She duly admired the fittings. She whispered to her brother so the manager wouldn’t hear her, ‘This is overkill, Jared. She doesn’t need this stuff.’

He pretended not to hear her. ‘It’s not like other old people’s homes,’ he said. ‘There are no stupid crafts, which is good if you’re like Mum and you’ve never been into crafts.’

When they finally reached the real house, Nina’s childhood home, her mother was inside waiting, still wearing her floral cotton nightie. Ronnie launched himself at his nanna. He rarely saw her in person, but they spoke every week on Skype.