‘It would help a great deal if I knew the sale price,’ said Emily. Obviously they were hiding the price for a reason. Maybe there was some other way she might find out the sum paid. She felt good. She felt things were within reach. Like when a task seems difficult or impossible for months and then it suddenly doesn’t; like you’ve squeezed out all the nagging and worrying.

‘Can’t do,’ said Shirley. ‘We’ll give you something else instead. What do you want to know?’

‘Lucky doesn’t talk much about the start of the business.’

‘We don’t know much about his life before Lucky’s,’ said Shirley. ‘There was a rumour that he came into some money and that’s how it started.’

‘How did he come into the money?’ said Emily.

‘There were two rumours,’ said Shirley. ‘One was that it came from an insurance scam, which doesn’t fit with Lucky’s character. The other rumour we heard was family money.’

‘We can’t verify this,’ Sam put in. ‘It’s hearsay from another time.’

‘He hasn’t told me about an inheritance,’ Emily said. ‘I’m aware his parents weren’t wealthy.’

‘He’ll tell you what he wants you to know,’ said Shirley. ‘You can’t blame him for wanting to control the way his story is presented. For you it’s an article. For him it’s his life.’

A waiter brought out another bottle of wine, but Shirley waved it away and asked for a bottle from the Otago region. Emily stared off, thinking about the rumour of an inheritance; yes, she made the pieces fit. She was relying on Lucky, and he was still screwing things up. She had relied on her husband, and he fucked up. She needed Liam to be her friend, but he couldn’t be that person.

Shirley and Sam posed, tricked out in their success, their sense of who they were, wanted to talk about the expansion of the Lucky’s franchise. How they got rich. Shirley and her husband thought they were the story.

2.

Two messages arrived while Emily was at lunch, and she checked them once back at the hotel. First voicemail: Lucky reminded Emily about the taping at the studios the next day, which started at 10 am. And there was a voicemail from Michael: he sounded close to tears. It was a short message, during which he said he hadn’t slept much. ‘I don’t know if I love Therese,’ he finished.

Emily still had credit on the Go Bananas international calling card. She called her mother in Ipswich.

‘How are things with Michael?’ said Heidi. ‘Is he making amends?’

‘There is no mending, Mum,’ said Emily. ‘When Ian was in Australia, did he give anyone a large sum of money?’