Lena shook her head, swiped the back of her hand roughly across her face. ‘She helped us pack and clean up before we moved. Her and Mum fought the whole time. Bet there’s other stuff here that she nicked.’

‘You think she nicked these? Maybe Mum—’

‘Why would Mum give her Dad’s tools?’

‘I dunno. Why would Nic steal Dad’s tools?’

‘Seriously? Look around! She’s nuts.’

‘I guess, but … I mean, she wasn’t like this then, was she? Her place was neat. Not like Mum-neat, but normal.’

Lena’s phone buzzed and she flinched as though it had transmitted a tiny electric shock through her arm. She kept staring at the vice grips. After a while, he said, ‘Anyway, I’m glad she took them. Probably would’ve been chucked out otherwise. Now we’ve got something else of Dad’s to remember him.’

She was up and off the sofa in a second. ‘I don’t need a chunk of metal to remember him!’

‘Good. You won’t mind if I keep these then.’

‘It’s sad, you know. Needing an object to remember someone you loved. Your own father.’

‘Didn’t say I needed it to remember him. Just that it’s nice to have.’

She kicked a garbage bag, as hard as she could judging by the way her whole body shook and staggered. It moved maybe a centimetre, stopped from going any further by the other bags surrounding it.

Will pressed the vice grips to his jaw. The initial contact killed but the cold was soothing. He’d never thought to ask what happened to Dad’s stuff. Last of his worries at the time. It was sick-making to think of Dad’s tools dumped into the stinking abyss of the council tip or accumulating dust in a cardboard box at Vinnies. Or, god, his clothes! They were bloody terrible, Dad’s clothes. A family joke that Will was never quite sure if Dad was in on or not. He could see the stack on the ironing board, folded and ready to be put away: couple pairs of fading footy shorts, a thick stack of flannies, that one dressy shirt he got from the Country Road clearance sale, three identical pairs of Kmart jeans that Mum said made his bum disappear. No one would want any of that shit. Will didn’t own enough clothes to fill a small backpack and even he didn’t want it.

But.

Still.