Ned didn’t ask his father why he was doing it. He knew what was in the cindered pages. The reports remained hollow. The absence was now so vast that Ned couldn’t think about it. He could only remain upright by thinking of Bill the way he had as a child: Bill uncannily competent, Bill near to invincible.

Eventually his father noticed Ned on the other side of the smoke. Looked at his son for a while, then gestured at his chest, his mouth. ‘They taught me this. Calms you down, when things aren’t looking too flash.’

Ned hadn’t realised his father was doing the slow breathing again. He’d been too focused on the fire. Now he heard the air pausing in his father’s chest, before running in a steady stream out his nose.

‘No doubt they taught your brothers too.’ He balled another sheet of paper in his hand. Fed it to the flames. ‘It helps.’

Ned didn’t know what to say. His father talking about breathing, talking about his brothers: it brought back the night Bill had come home after helping his friend rescue the ram. How in the driveway he’d fallen out of the truck, exhausted and unspeaking. And how before he’d made it inside, as Ned and Toby had watched from the window, their father had gone out to meet him. Ned was sure the old man was going to belt Bill, or at least grab him by the ear. But instead, their father had only stood before him, doing this breathing thing, shaking as he did it. Shaking all over, shaking hard enough to fall. Before he did, Bill caught his elbow. Snatched it from the air and propped the old man up. Looked into his face and copied the slow, deep breaths until their chests were mirrors of movement, pumping and collapsing with measured synchronicity. If they’d spoken, Ned hadn’t seen it.

Remembering this tightened him up. It was a vice on his neck, a belt around his throat, so he began talking about the boat, about how he’d got a sail, how he’d rigged it up, how he’d caught some decent-sized flathead just that afternoon. How he’d taken Maggie out, how he thought she enjoyed it. How easily the boat handled the river, like a falcon in flight, like a Russian dancer. As if it had not been sawn and built but had grown out of the river itself, massaged into shape by the water’s touch.

A look swam onto his father’s face. A memory arriving. ‘Some fellas in town asked me about that boat.’ He rubbed the smoke off his eyes. ‘Looks like you found a real treasure.’

Ned remembered Singline. The oddness of the interaction. ‘I’ve been lucky.’

His father grunted. ‘How’s that tiger cat, then?’