She’s disappointed, Hirsch thought. She almost never was, when his work intervened. But she might be forgiven for feeling something at Christmas time—for wanting to spend some time with him. And he might be forgiven for wanting that, too.

He found himself stumbling: ‘I’ll make it up to you after Christmas. I’ll—’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said, her voice warm again. ‘If you can’t come to us, we’ll come to you.’

He liked that about her. She didn’t dwell, she found positive alternatives. ‘That’d be great.’

‘But we won’t man the barricades.’

‘Fair enough.’

Mother and daughter reached the police station at seven-fifteen with the makings of a stir-fry. Katie asked where her Christmas present was as soon as she got out of the car.

‘I can see I’ve trained you well,’ Hirsch said, putting his arm around her while Wendy looked on, familiar with their routines by now. Giving Hirsch a complicated look. As if to say, don’t take me for granted. As if to say, sorry about earlier.

Hirsch shot her a look of his own then turned to Katie. ‘More to the point,’ he said, ‘where’s my present?’

‘It’s so big we needed a truck.’

‘And the truck broke down.’

‘Got lost. No one knows where it is.’

The banter died away and was replaced by a strange shared anxiety, as if a malign force had rolled across the highway from Nan Washburn’s street.

‘Let’s eat,’ Hirsch said, ushering them into the police station.

They dined in his backyard, wearing paper hats and reading aloud their lame Christmas-cracker jokes. Then present-giving: from Wendy a history of the mid-north written by a retired headmaster of the high school where she taught maths, from Katie a CD she’d burnt for him titled Old Fart Songs. They exclaimed pretty convincingly over his gifts to them, and finally Wendy was saying, ‘We’d better go, early start in the morning.’

Out on the footpath again, the highway silent, insects flickering in the street lights, Hirsch kissed them goodbye. ‘Safe trip, speak to you Christmas Day.’

‘If not before,’ Wendy said, her warm shape briefly pressed to his.

Then she stepped back a little and gazed at him straightforwardly. ‘On Thursday Katie and I are going to my brother’s for a post-Christmas lunch. We’d like you to come with us.’

Her brother and his family lived in Morgan, she said, on the River Murray, and wouldn’t be attending the main Christmas gathering that year. ‘They usually don’t,’ she said balefully, ‘so we go to them. Otherwise I’d never see them.’

They never come to see you, Hirsch thought. ‘I’d love to.’

She laughed. ‘…Because I’ve made it sound so inviting.’