Her righteous anger on his behalf was pretty bloody great, though. They’d been seeing each other for a couple of months at that point, having first hooked up at the shopping centre Christmas party, and he assumed she was in it for the sex, because, let’s be real, what else could a gorgeous, super-smart pharmacist mum-of-two want with an uneducated, bogan, ex-drug dealer trolley boy? But when she went off her head about his getting fired and got her dad to help him find another job, it was honestly the most loved he’d felt in years. Maybe ever. He grew a whole foot taller just listening to her defend him. He’d moved in a week later, adjusted easily to life with two sweet, funny, needy little kids. Which is not to say he didn’t look forward to the one week a month they were with their dad and Mercy ground him almost to dust (happy, grateful, lovestruck dust) with all the fucking.

Anyway, turned out his initial instincts were spot on and the happy family bullshit was, well, bullshit, and here he was now, retrenched from the warehouse and fired from his role as Mercy’s fuck toy/live-in babysitter and therefore unable to ask her dad to help sweep his past under another HR rug, and so it was back to sitting across from blank-faced recruiters buzzing with anxiety about if and when he should disclose that he’d been locked up.

Lena’s name popped up on his screen and he clicked through to the new message:

Shit. Maybe you’re the one who’s dead and rotting and that’s why you’re ignoring me. Soz if true. My bad

That one he heard. It made him laugh out loud (like a self-talking lost cause?) and it gave him the next step. He took a gulp of lukewarm coffee, dug his nails into his palms while the wave of tooth pain crested, navigated away from the job ads, then used almost every dollar left in his account to book a one-way ticket to Sydney, leaving that arvo.

Meanwhile, old mate in the corner had switched up his routine: No rain on the radar, he reported. Hot, gusty winds forecast across the state. No relief in sight.

LENA

LENA

Three hours into Lena’s Friday night shift, right when she was due her tea break, a man buying a kilo of extra-lean pork mince and a four pack of top-of-the-range toilet paper asked her if he knew her from somewhere.

‘Don’t think so,’ she said. ‘Do you need a bag?’

‘Yeah, give us a bag, thanks. I do know you, though. I’m sure.’