The van pulled up outside a yellow weatherboard house in the town of Nevertire, and from the front window Emily’s grandparents watched the three of them get out, watched them come up to the door, as if they didn’t know why the visitors came.

‘Would you like to borrow a brush?’ Emily’s grandmother asked her, once everyone was inside. ‘Your hair is knotted.’

Emily said yes, not knowing she could have refused, and inside the door Grandma brushed her granddaughter’s hair briskly. The guests removed their shoes.

‘What are you doing for work these days?’ the grandmother asked Rick.

‘I’m an electrician.’

‘Is business good? Any employees?’

‘It’s me for the time being.’

‘You could’ve married an electrician here,’ said Emily’s grandfather, addressing Heidi.

Emily could feel this comment stab the atmosphere of the lounge room. Heidi led Grandma into an adjoining kitchen, where they spoke with a degree of privacy. The curtains of the west-facing lounge room were drawn, and hung without a fold, and light entered from the doorways. Emily sat on an upholstered stool. The massive body of her grandfather, in his reclining chair, had its back to the light. His head bent forwards, furrowed, perhaps angry. His feet were bare and blackened on the sole, and Emily’s attention drifted to the pile of her grandparents’ shoes near the door. They were mainly of two kinds: sandals and work boots. Seeded into the carpet were burrs, some of which looked like the thorax of an insect, others like the spiky mouthparts of bugs.

Emily’s mother’s voice was rising in the next room, a slow gradient. Rick tried to make small talk with Granddad. ‘Driving up we saw a few roos,’ Rick said. Then, from the kitchen, Emily’s grandmother shouted, ‘I didn’t ask none of you to come!’

Heidi returned to the lounge room and for a moment she and Rick looked at each other, wordlessly deciding what to do next. Then Heidi grabbed Emily’s hand and they stuck their feet into shoes and left the house, and the grandparents did not follow.

As they pulled the van doors closed, Emily looked at her stepfather, expecting him to lighten the situation, to say perhaps: ‘It’s gonna be a scorcher.’ But Rick, without a word, pointed the van down the road, turned left and, following his wife’s directions, left the village of Nevertire and drove to the next town, Narromine.