On Emily’s first day in Sydney, Lucky told her nothing about the Benny Goodman fraud, or the Cafe Achillion, or where he’d found the funds to start the franchise, or how he’d find the money to open a new restaurant. The interview was brief. Lucky promised to talk at length another time. He walked Emily down to her rental car and she allowed any pauses in conversation to hang in the air between them, hoping that Lucky might feel pressure to say something, to offer information. And he did; as he raised his voice to compete with the rumble of a plane overhead, Lucky recommended she get in contact with a detective, Peter Popescu, who’d attended the scene at the cafe on the Third of April. Popescu, who had since left the police force, Lucky said, was the sort of cop who liked to give his opinion. He now worked for a company that sold medical supplies to clinics and hospitals. A few months ago the former detective had called Lucky out of the blue, and contacted also the survivor of the shooting, Sophia Cootes, to see how they were doing many years later.

‘I’m still in touch with Sophia,’ Lucky added. ‘She’s the daughter of Valia, my ex-wife. The child of her second marriage. I wouldn’t say she’s like a daughter to me, because that sounds corny, but I like Sophia and her kid. I don’t see them often. We’re all busy, I guess. Different times of life.’

‘Do you have children of your own?’ Emily asked.

‘No family at all,’ Lucky said, grinning broadly, as if everything had worked out for the best, as if this fact about his life had happened according to plan. ‘Do you have kids?’

‘I was going to have a child, but now I’m probably not,’ she said, opening the car door. The possibility had been extinguished—she tried to build a family home and the walls came tumbling down. She felt like a cartoon character who’d smartly pursued something across the desert only to be squashed by a dumb object. Oh well, she thought. Oh fucking well.

2.

The midday streets behind the beach clattered with prams and bicycles and the clap of thonged feet. Cars could barely move. A tourist helicopter veered inland and white gulls floated above the water. The sea, as the tide receded, dropped like loose freight onto the sand, leaving behind little curls of sea vegetation. Emily leaned on the promenade wall and felt herself abstracted by the movement of the ocean and thousands of accumulating bodies. The sun shone as if stuck.