Lucky ran a joint in Stanmore, Antony Glavas and his brother Jim worked a restaurant in Castlereagh Street in the city, and Peter Niforis and his wife Roslyn, a Ngiyampaa woman, introduced Lucky’s to the suburb of Marrickville. Peter could cook (he made a perfect boutridia) but Roslyn captained their franchise, turning over tables, calling the customers sweetheart, calling the suppliers matey when they tried to game her. At their first meeting, responding to an advertisement for franchisees, Roslyn was all stratagem and honesty and unmoving confidence and said her plan was to work like a team of twenty and save the surplus for a new, independent restaurant, leaving Lucky’s behind as soon as possible. Lucky told her the Glavas brothers had the same idea. He said the businesses weren’t traps, weren’t factories, weren’t eaters of employees.

But they ate the franchiser. On the way back to Sydney he stopped for lunch at the outlet in Mittagong and heard the news: on Monday, John Bakris in the Canberra business had been arrested for assault after attacking a difficult customer with a rolling pin. The kitchens needed rolling pins for the one Greek dish on the franchise menu: Kefalonian meat pie (Lucky had plans to add stifado). The injured Canberra customer was still in hospital and Bakris remained in jail. John’s family requested that Lucky visit Canberra and resolve the mess, or wire bail money, or make a call and come to terms with the victim’s family. Yes, a phone call, a settlement, he might try something like that, maybe tomorrow. The job could be low-pitched, Lucky thought. You dealt with good franchisees, and then there were the violent and uncompromising and cruel, the Achilleans, after whom everyone picked up. The kind of men you wanted to forget. What a power it would be if Lucky could pick the men like Achilles at interviews and refuse them any position.

On the road, he gripped the steering wheel firmly and thought: I own this monstrous business, but I’m not a true leader. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m still an imposter. I’ve built a castle that exposed me. The structure ought to be stronger, higher, gleaming.