Outside Aunty Nic’s room, Lena reminded Will not to say anything about the house. ‘As far as she knows, I left and never went back.’ He thought it was stupid to lie about it—she was going to find out sooner or later—but this was Lena’s show; he was merely the supporting actor.

If Lena hadn’t been there it would’ve taken him an age to figure out which of the six seemingly comatose, elderly white people was Nic. But Lena went straight to the middle bed on the right-hand wall, plonked herself in the visitor’s chair. ‘Wakey, wakey, Nic. Big surprise for you today. Huge!’

The eyes opened, blinked a few times and there, instantly, undeniably, was Aunty Nic. For a terrible second he was sure he’d burst into tears, instead he said, ‘Haven’t you been in the wars?’ like an awkward grandpa talking to a toddler. Lena had taken the only chair, so he hovered a minute and then perched on the end of the bed, millimetres from the blanketed lump of his aunty’s left foot.

‘Surprise all right! Geez, I would’ve taken a dive from my dressing table years ago if I thought I’d earn a visit from the one and only Mr Will Harris.’ She said it in the same light-as-air tone she used the last time they saw each other, the day before his sentencing. She’d hugged him tight and told him it was a blip, that no judge in his right mind would put away a kid like him for supplying a little pot, whatever that legal aid moppet said. Mum said Nic was exactly right, which made him relax all the muscles he’d been tensing since his arrest. They never agreed on anything, so this must be, like, inarguable. Aunty Nic said she wasn’t even going to come to court because she’d just see him at home after.

And here, nearly seven years later, he was the one to come to her, the one asking her how she was coping.

Aunty Nic flicked the question away, sending tubes shuddering, making Lena suck in her breath and gently press the hand back down to the bed before running her fingers over the cannulas, checking they remained attached.

‘Stop fussing,’ Aunty Nic said, then to Will, ‘Tell me everything! How’s Queensland? What is it you’ve been doing up there? Something in the mines?’

‘Nah, nah. That was a while back. Lately I’ve been in a warehouse. Packing and transporting produce. Getting it from the farms out to grocery stores and that.’

‘And where is this again? I know Lena told me.’

Will himself has told her more than once in the odd, rare text or Facebook message.

‘Mackay,’ Lena said now.

‘Yeah. Actually, though, I was let go last week. The drought and the fires and all. Not so much produce to be moved at the moment, so …’