The Suncorp Bank loan officer had been kind when rejecting his application. The officer cited Lucky’s lack of income in the past twenty-four months, without stating that he was too old anyway to take on substantial debt. He possessed no assets; there was no loan guarantor. The officer said she liked the idea of a person starting over. She couldn’t be more sympathetic. Her parents, on special occasions, used to take the family to Lucky’s former restaurant in Stanmore. She remembered the jukebox, the fat chips, the decor like the set of a TV show. And she acknowledged Lucky’s later history, referring to ‘the tragedy in your life’. If only Suncorp loaned on those grounds. At the end of their interview, Lucky admitted to the loan officer that her bank was the last in a list of lenders he’d approached. ‘What does that tell me?’ he said as he thanked her for the appointment, feigning concession, not wanting to come across sore, but what the final stop on his unsuccessful circuit of loan applications told him was this: the banks in Sydney were too conservative.

The light from his muted television faded and flared in the lounge room. An advertisement for a sports betting company ended and the middle segment of Wheel of Fortune began. They’d finished with the pointless speed rounds. The three contestants today all looked startled. They appeared miscast, thrown together behind the scoreboard. Lucky solved two puzzles before one of them even touched the wheel. Food: Bacon bits. Phrase: To go in pursuit.

Lucky Mallios scooped the rigani into a spiral jar and balled up the newspapers, sending green dust into the air. He got up when the phone rang, his eyes not moving from the television screen. Five beeps and a delay: an international call. ‘Lucky’s!’ he sang down the line.

Chapter 2: 2002

2002

1.

Emily Main stood at the corner in a grade of sunlight she associated with photographs of people at the peak of a mountain. The blue sky tinted the windows of cars as the traffic moved in a series of jolts through the intersection. Emily no longer felt exhausted: the breeze set off a thread of energy. It was the middle of the day. Somewhere in transit between London and Sydney the wheels had buckled on her suitcase, and they produced an abrasive sound when she crossed the road and entered the hotel.