It didn’t matter to Achilles whether they believed him. That he had made the effort to lie and save face was enough.

He objected to the popular idea that all Greek-owned cafes in Australia were copies of one another, identical in architectural design, offering the same dishes at similar prices, served on creamy, oversized, oval plates. But he never convinced himself that his own establishment was a thing of originality. There were times when he looked at the large sign that hung above the kitchen door—

our motto: cleanliness and civility

—and was reminded that an identical motto was installed at cafes run by the Economos family elsewhere in Sydney, and the Koutsakis family in Melbourne (who owed Achilles a favour). They followed each other in the fledgling sense of a new tradition. But Achilles held on to some sense of distinction: for example, no one cooked as well as he did. And he had in mind an enormous chain of cafes—a franchise of outlets all named the Cafe Achillion. First: a few more years of profit at the Achillion in Bardwell. Second: a loan for a sister business. Then: great success and many outlets nationwide.

On the main street, the Cafe Achillion neighboured a weakly lit pharmacy—all drawers and cabinets, no open shelves—run by a Catholic family who held moral objections to contraceptives. Such products could be easily and discreetly procured from Achilles, at the cafe, so long as you approached the man himself and not his eldest daughter. Special customers popped in and took away large paper bags of Dunlop condoms, and it dismayed Achilles that many of these men were clearly odd. Even mad bastards had a lot of sex. At the other side of the cafe was an empty allotment that nursed brown weeds and crawlers that ensnared flyaway newspapers, cigarette butts and pet dogs. Achilles was appalled by the vacant plot and the imaginative and entrepreneurial vacuum that allowed it to exist, but he rarely went onto the street and could forget about the eyesore for weeks at a time, until its presence came to him in a passing rage.

The entrance to the Cafe Achillion was one boundary of what might be called Achilles’ world, outside of which he felt vulnerable and alien.