Ali looked up from her phone, then slipped it away again. ‘Yeah, sure, sorry,’ she said, thinking, Dan Lawrence, speak to me.

Tahnee yawned, and stretched like a cat, spreading her arms, arching her back. ‘I’m whacked,’ she said.

‘Come on, honey,’ Ali said, and she stood up. ‘You’ve had a long day, it’s home time.’

Cass, in search of further fun and company, begged a lift to Hindley Street, then Ali and Tahnee drove on in easy silence, westward-bound down the Port Road towards a different world, one Ali had loved since she first came here, of ships’ chandlers, wharf-side warehouses, the ghosts of the city’s maritime past. Ali had always felt at home in Port Adelaide, more so than in the genteel complacency of North Adelaide; something about this place – the industry, the spirit of endeavour – spoke to her urban soul. But Michael had laughed when, many years ago, she’d suggested they buy a place here, something run-down, something with lofty ceilings and tall windows overlooking the water, something they could restore and make their own. This was before his father and mother died, when sharing the parental home had seemed, to Ali, an unnatural thing to do, a strange, co-dependent, vaguely infantilising existence. In the end, he’d seen she was serious, but he still wouldn’t countenance Port Adelaide, so they’d settled on Norwood, a very different proposition but good in its way, probably better than the port, full of young families and funky cafés and wide streets where Thea and Stella learned to ride bicycles and played skipping games with the neighbours’ children. The house hadn’t been majestic or colonial or expansive, just exactly the right size, and Ali had loved it there, but only for a short while, only three years, because in that time James died, and Margaret began the process of dying, and Michael missed the grand bluestone house, he missed the gracious proportions, the sweeping staircase, the gardens, the pool. Someone must live there, he said, and he didn’t want his brothers to have it, or – God forbid – a stranger. It was closer to the girls’ school, he said, and didn’t Thea and Stella prefer it in North Adelaide, with their own swimming pool and the parklands nearby? Put like that, the little girls had to agree, and Ali, out-manoeuvred, had bowed to the inevitable. They’d sold the Norwood single-storey and trooped back to where Michael belonged, and at least Beatriz had been there, waiting for them with the steadfast patience of a woman who’d known they would come home. And look, it’d hardly counted as a sacrifice, going back to the McCormack family seat; Ali knew she couldn’t complain. She didn’t complain. She would never be so crass, or ungrateful. It was only that sometimes Michael’s rock-solid certainties gave her the sense that she’d led someone else’s life instead of her own.