It wasn’t that Uncle Steve was a secret. Will had always known his mum had a half-brother who was much older and who had died young. But the tidbits of info mum dropped about him when pushed made things less rather than more clear. What was he like? Will asked once, and Mum said, He always brought me and your aunty a bag of mixed lollies from the corner shop and a box of Roses for our mum. When he asked what Steve did for a job, Mum said he worked in a tool shop, but another time she said he worked in a factory and another time that he was a cleaner, and when Will wanted to know why he had so many jobs she said, Not everyone works in the same place their whole life, which didn’t answer the question but did seem like a dig at Aunty Nic, who had worked at the same place since she was a teenager.

It wasn’t until the morning after fourteen-year-old Will came home from a mate’s place with a vicious case of the giggles and bloodshot eyes that Mum sat him and Lena down and told them their uncle had died from a drug overdose. She didn’t say which drug, or that his death came after a decade of addiction, including short stints in jail and rehab—these details were filled in later. At the time, she made it sound as though Steve, like Will, had smoked weed one night with a mate and that was the end of him.

Later, after Will’s arrest, Aunty Nic had asked him if he was an addict, if that was why he’d been dealing. He told her truthfully that he didn’t even use, and she’d sucked in all her breath and let it out again and started talking about something else altogether. Some dumbarse reality TV show. Even at the time he’d known that was fucking weird. Her nephew facing serious drug charges and she’s rabbiting on about some bloody cooking comp. When he mentioned the weirdness to Mum she’d said, My sister is not good at handling hard things, and then hugged him for the thousandth time that night.

Mum wasn’t that great at hard things either. Never talked about her brother, never talked about her dad, but at least when Will and Lena’s dad died she let them ask as many questions as they needed, always did her best to answer, even though it was obvious how hard it was for her to speak without crying. But, then, his death was innocent. His life, too, as far as Will knew. Too short to have done much damage.