The tiny scratches around the front door lock were the only indication that anything disturbing had happened here at all. An easily picked lock, the police said. As they were leaving, they told Lena she should look at getting it replaced with something sturdier. Given the state of the place it’d be a better idea to remove it altogether. Leave the door swinging open. Welcome, Neighbourhood Burglars. Take whatever you like. Please.

In the hallway, Lena dumped the sleeping bag and backpack of clothes and toiletries that she’d lugged on and off the bus. She coughed violently, swiped at her streaming eyes. It was barely 8 a.m. but the air was murderously hot and smoky already. Not much better inside. A desperate inhale between coughs lined her throat with dust. She rifled through her bag, grabbed her empty water bottle.

The kitchen was blocked by the newspapers she’d helped clear from the hallway the other day. They coated her hands in black powder as she pushed them out of her way. Why were Nic’s papers so fucking dirty? Lena handled newspapers all the time and they never left her with more than slightly gritty-feeling fingers, and that was only if she was unusually sweaty in the first place. Most nights it was cool by the time she carried them. Last job of her shift, clearing the low shelf to the left of the cigarette counter of that day’s leftovers. Sometimes there were few enough she could sweep them up in one hand as she passed. Other times she needed a trolley to lug them out to the recycling. She never wondered why until the day she arrived for her shift and noticed the counter already clear, a handwritten sign declaring PAPERS SOLD OUT SORRY.

‘That woman drove her kids into a dam,’ Kim at the ciggie counter said. ‘People can’t get enough of it.’ After that, when there were few papers to clear at the end of the night, Lena would take one for herself to read on the bus home. Always something bloody and tragic on the front, with kids or a pretty girl. Occasionally a terror attack somewhere famous, like Paris or London. Sometimes the front-page stories were horrifying enough that she couldn’t sleep. A couple of months ago a man out in WA killed his whole family. She’d lain awake all night thinking about how there were times up in Brisbane when she had churned with rage at the Dick, and sometimes at Mum, too, for inflicting him on their family. Still never occurred to her to murder them in their beds. Punch the Dick in his dick, yes. Drive his car to a cliff top and release the handbrake before leaping clear, sure. But not while he was inside it or anything.