Baz, dark-haired and clean-shaven but for a neat Ronald Colman moustache – the fashion of the day – was good-looking, and popular with women. He appeared to have led a charmed life, but in fact he’d had a tough beginning. Born in Melbourne, the youngest of nine children, his father a waterside worker and opportunistic thief, his mother an obsessed Roman Catholic, who between giving birth spent every morning and evening at mass, young Barry Taylor’s childhood had not been a particularly happy one. His older siblings either bullied him or failed to notice him altogether, he was never sure which galled him the most.

So Baz had rebelled. Following his father’s example, he’d become a petty criminal, compiling a list of convictions in the Children’s Court before being institutionalised at the age of twelve. He’d escaped Melbourne when he was fifteen, slowly travelling north to Sydney and committing ever-bolder crimes along the way, only to be once more hauled before the juvenile court system on breaking-and-entering charges. After being put into the boys’ home, he’d managed again to escape, and at eighteen had been sentenced to three years in Long Bay Gaol for stealing and receiving stolen goods.

Upon his release, Baz had headed north and finally settled in Townsville, where nobody knew him. He’d lived in the same boarding house in Walker Street for the past nine years, always paying his rent up front and doing regular favours for his widowed landlady, old Mrs Cheetham, who considered him the nicest young man she had ever encountered.

Since arriving in Townsville, he’d given up petty crime as a career choice, although he’d continued to operate just a little outside the law, running a two-up school on a semi-regular basis and an occasional poker game. Oddly enough, despite the uncertainty of gambling, he’d miraculously managed to always stay in front. Lucky.

Then he’d met Val. Even luckier.

Then the war had engulfed Townsville. The Yanks had arrived, and the black market thrived. Luckier still. Baz was now in his element.

The mob in the bar was lapping up the music. It wasn’t even a Saturday, but there was quite a crowd. People had flocked in off the street upon hearing the piano.

Betty had finished thumping out ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’, accompanied by a chorus of voices from those who knew the lyrics and hand-clapping from those who didn’t, and now at a cry of ‘Little Brown Jug’ from one of the Yanks, she segued straight into the next number. She knew all the popular songs and could play them without sheet music. Who needed sheet music? Betty had an excellent ear and was a natural on the piano. She could play a song after hearing it only twice.