‘It’s a quote my dad cut out of something and stuck up on the wall of his study years ago,’ she said. ‘He told Tom and me it actually means that people reject other people they don’t understand. But I think it’s a whole lot simpler. I think you either hear the music or you don’t.’

‘We sure as hell do,’ he said, rising on one elbow and kissing her gently. ‘We hear the same music, you and me, Betty. We’re in each other’s blood.’

She cuddled up to him. ‘Tell me something about yourself that I don’t know, Kasey,’ she said. They’d talked so much, about so many things and so intimately. She knew his mother had left the marriage when he was a child, that he’d been shunted around among various aunts, and that he’d been in trouble with the law as a juvenile. But she wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything about him. ‘Tell me something special,’ she begged, ‘something nobody else knows about you.’

‘Well, for a start my name’s not Kasey.’

‘What?’ She sat bolt upright. ‘You’ve been lying to me?’

‘No, no, I swear. My name is Kalvin Chester Davis,’ he said in all seriousness. ‘When I was a little boy my momma called me KC and that became Kasey and then it kind of stuck. After she left, I stayed being Kasey and I’ve been Kasey ever since. To everyone. Nobody except you knows, I promise.’

‘Good.’ She smiled happily. ‘I consider that special.’

‘Hey, I got a present for you.’ Jumping from the bed, he crossed to the table and took the bottle of champagne from his kitbag. ‘What do you say we toast to us?’ he said, holding it aloft.

‘Most definitely.’ She jumped up herself and fetched two glasses from the cupboard over the sink. Champagne, how suitably romantic. She should have thought of it herself; she could easily have scored a bottle from Baz. But then, probably not a good idea. Baz would have twigged.

‘I don’t know how cold it’ll be,’ he said as he popped the cork.

‘Who cares,’ she replied.

They sat cross-legged and unashamedly naked on the bed as he poured the champagne into the cheap glass tumblers she held out to him.

‘I’m sorry I don’t have proper glasses,’ she said.

‘Who cares,’ he replied.

They toasted each other and drank a full tumbler each, which on empty stomachs went straight to their heads. She offered the sandwiches, but they didn’t get around to eating them; they made love again instead. Then they finished the champagne, while discussing how they would continue their affair. They didn’t have regular whole days off for trips to Magnetic Island. But there was the little upstairs bedroom where she often stayed at The Brown’s, she told him.

‘You can reach it via the back stairs that lead to the gambling room,’ she said.

Problem solved, they made love again.

They ate the sandwiches on the late-afternoon ferry back to Townsville.