Don’t be hysterical. You weren’t meant to say that to women, Mercy had taught him. There was a whole history which they all apparently knew and were scarred by even if you, the one using the word, had no fucking idea. Anyway, you weren’t meant to label people’s emotions. Just respond to the material facts of the situation.

‘There’s lots left,’ he pointed out. ‘Heaps. Look at—’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘Aunty Nic, I wish you’d—’

‘I should call the police on her, the little thief. Bet she’s made a fortune selling off my stuff. Is it drugs? You’ve seen how skinny she’s gotten, how puffy around the eyes. Taking advantage of an injured woman and sold off all my things for her meth or whatever.’ She pounded the floor with her fists. ‘How can I live?’

‘I think once you calm down—’

‘Stop! I don’t need to be patronised and and and—just stop, Will. Go away. Go.’

He backed from the room slowly, unsure of whether it was okay to leave her alone in such a terrible state. Her sobs followed him right down the hallway.

He found Lena on the front step, scrolling through her phone, the whites of her eyes streaked the same colour as the eerie red sun.

‘I keep thinking about that skip,’ she said. ‘How quickly we filled it.’

He’d been thinking of that, too. The relief of having it taken away, problem solved—as long as you didn’t picture where it was going, which was to landfill. How when it got there it would contribute to the increasing toxification of the earth as the mercury and cadmium, the solvents and acids and lead, the PVC and arsenic locked away in all those electronics and bits of plastic crap leaked into the soil. And when it rained, water would turn the chemicals into leachate, which did what it sounded like, leached right into the ground, poisoning the soil and water.

Taylah had taught him all that. Or he’d taught himself after he’d stayed up half the night reading in-depth after helping Taylah with her Earth Day project. Imagine if she could see what he’d done here, see his hypocrisy and blatant disregard for the planet. The shame of it made him want to crawl into the skip himself.

‘I just … How can someone accumulate so much stuff?’ Lena went on. ‘In such a short time, too. It’s like she was trying to bury herself. And now she’s angry we’ve dug her out.’