It was only after their mum dumped the letters out on the floor that Nic brought up the subject of their dad again with Steve, who was by then twenty-five or twenty-six and already in the grip of his addiction, though she didn’t yet know how irredeemably. She told Steve how for years and years whenever she did anything good, like get 10/10 in a spelling test or come first in the fifty-metre sprint at the sports carnival, she would write about it to Dad as soon as she got home. If a whole week passed in which she’d done nothing good (and this was lots of weeks, even though she tried very hard all all all the time) then she’d write a letter anyway, because otherwise he might think she’d forgotten him. In those letters she sometimes told him good things Michelle had done (there were lots of those) and sometimes good things Mum had done (not as many), but mostly she just told him whatever she could think of that wasn’t bad: the funny dog she saw on the way to school; the chorus of the song that was her favourite that week; the colour of the new dress Nan had given her for her birthday; the funny show she and Michelle watched on Saturday mornings while they ate their Rice Bubbles. Just all the things that, if she was the one in prison, would make her think, Hmmm, that sounds pretty good, I’m going to be very well behaved so I can go home soon.

She told Steve how she stupidly stupidly stupidly imagined the letters Dad was writing back to her but for some reason not managing to send. She imagined his letters said, My precious girl and I love you more than the world and I think about you every day and I’m very proud of you. And she imagined what it would be like when she finally saw him again. How she might come out of school at the end of the day and he’d be there waiting at the gate, and even though she hadn’t seen him since she was tiny and they both had changed a lot since then, they would recognise each other straight away and she would run run run and he would run run run and then in the middle they’d nearly crash into each other but he would grab her hard but not hurting-hard around the middle and lift her into the air and spin spin spin and all the other kids would be watching so that she felt embarrassed but at the same time prouder even than at the recorder concert at the Opera House.