Emily said goodbye and kept her chin firmly tucked into her neck, sinking her range of vision. Nicole’s turquoise shoes were the brightest objects she could see. The snake clasped Emily’s shoulders tightly as she burst down the steps and hurried across the lawn, a stiff shadow moving towards the street.

Sophia came to the open window of Emily’s car. ‘Part of me wishes it was a venomous snake that could bite Nicole. Then Louis would be his own solution. What will you do with it?’

‘I still have no idea,’ Emily said as she started the engine and Louis II curled around her torso. The next day it occurred to Emily that she ought to have pulled over further down the road and put the snake in the boot, but at the time, hyper-aware of the creature’s presence, all she thought to do was keep driving to the centre of this unfamiliar city, hoping to be struck by some useful thoughts regarding Louis II’s fate. Inside the car, the snake unravelled and lowered itself, like a slow tentacle, onto the floor. Emily said: ‘Oh, fuck this, really!’

She changed lanes, merged, and turned onto a gridlocked highway, the traffic as neat as the aisles of a supermarket. Louis II lay somewhere in the footwell. Emily implored him to stay away from the pedals. The phone rang inside her handbag and she reached over, but caller ID didn’t recognise the number, which happened with overseas calls, meaning it might be Michael again. His divorce psychodrama happened to be a crisis that involved her, but one which was not much like her own. She let the phone ring out. A voicemail arrived and at the next set of lights she listened to the start of the message—‘It’s me. It’s early in London. I need to tell you something important …’—before the traffic moved again and so did Louis, sliding up the door and onto the seatbelt anchor. Emily dropped the phone back in her bag. Louis rolled down the strip of seatbelt until he rested snugly in her lap, as if he were in on the story of her marriage. The traffic stopped and she called Lucky.

‘I can’t talk for long because I’m driving and I have a python in the car.’

‘A what?’

‘I’ve got a snake with me. A reptile. I met Sophia and we discovered her son Jamie secretly acquired a pet snake and they needed to get rid of it.’

‘Then bring the beast over!’

6.

Emily drove with one hand on the roof grab handle, one eye on the snake in her lap. She left the highway. She knew the way: she passed fences covered with tags, concrete walls cracked and streaked, here and there scaffolding, new and narrow buildings, convenience stores, corner hotels, a cricket field hidden behind gum trees.