‘It’s kind of awful out here,’ Lena said. Bushfire haze from the north had settled over the city earlier in the week, making her throat itch and her eyes stream every time she stepped outside. ‘I feel like I’ve smoked a pack of ciggies just crossing the lawn.’

‘You city kids are so soft. Where I’m from we run marathons in smoke like this.’

‘Explains a lot.’

‘Sit down and finish the story, Harris. Where was this rose garden?’

Lena sat, burning eyes and throat be damned. ‘My parent’s backyard. Mum went into labour during a party and everyone was too drunk to drive so they called an ambulance, but it took forever and I arrived before it did. My aunty and nan helped Mum through it, and Dad sat cross-legged in front of a rosebush and played his guitar. He didn’t even stop when I was out. Aunty Nic was the first one to hold me. “Born amongst roses and music. What a happy life you’ll have, my love,” she said. At least, that’s all according to family legend.’

‘Your family has legends. Wouldn’t have guessed it.’

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? she wanted to say, but that would only make his point for him. ‘Oh, yes. Volumes of legends,’ she said, easing herself onto her side, so she could look at his face and he could look at her cleavage. ‘You could fill a book with stories of my maternal grandfather alone.’

‘Yeah? Give me the back-cover summary.’

‘Conman, showman, bookie, war hero.’ Murderer, she left out. ‘He lived twenty lives in his fifty years.’

‘He died young.’

‘All the men in my family do.’ An image of Dad, his face blurred by tubes. Where were they all going? He only had one mouth, two nostrils. Had they made extra holes in him somewhere? ‘So the legends foretell and so it is.’

‘You mean prophecies. Legends tell of the past, prophecies of the future.’

‘Legends can foretell.’

‘I think you’ll find—’

‘Any retelling of past events can also foretell future ones.’ She knew boys hated it when you cut them off, but for fuck’s sake, he was being painful. She sat up straight, tucking her legs beneath her, looking down at him. ‘Like, if I told you that the five o’clock bus had been at least ten minutes late every day this year, you’d agree I shouldn’t bother rushing to the bus stop on the dot.’

‘But that’s learning from lived experience. Legends aren’t lived experience. They form a specific function in normalising—’

‘Legend has it that the men in my family die young because the women in my family become murderous when mansplained to.’