Carl Bagshaw completed the thought. ‘…with the patching truck.’

‘Fill your driveway potholes,’ Ivan said. He was lubricating the net-tightening winder, Ivan stirring a tin of white marker paint.

Hirsch glanced uneasily at Martin, who was hovering nearby with the air of a foreman. ‘That’d be great.’

‘Crack of dawn,’ Carl said.

‘I’ll be ready.’

The brothers were employed by the council to maintain roads, replace bullet-holed speed signs, repair broken swings and prune the war memorial roses. Unhurried, sleepy-eyed men who, with racquets in hand, were quick, precise doubles sharks. Off court, they viewed the world as mildly amusing: not much mattered, no point in trying to change things. They drove Martin Gwynne to distraction.

And now Martin was telling Hirsch he’d be helping repair the nets. ‘Quickly now.’

The nets were beached at one end of the main court, ready to be unfurled for mending. ‘There’s needle and thread in the box.’

‘Right.’

‘You didn’t think to bring leather gloves?’

No, Hirsch hadn’t thought to bring leather gloves—or any kind of gloves. His life was full of things he hadn’t thought to do, and things he knew he ought to have done.

‘I’ve got a spare pair in the ute,’ Carl Bagshaw said, ambling away with a lazy wink.

Hirsch gave them an hour of his time, then returned to Kitchener Street.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing.’

Nothing all day, nothing they couldn’t manage, and Hirsch, conferring by phone with Comyn and Brandl, sent everyone home at 4 p.m. He’d leave the barricade in place for a couple of days, but the weekend was over, and it was Christmas in a couple of days’ time, so he wasn’t expecting a last-minute influx of bored rubberneckers.

He spent the rest of the afternoon sluicing back-country dust from the wheels and panels of the HiLux, phoning his parents and contemplating the dingy walls of his office. Start painting the walls, or chill out with a beer?

That was easy. A short time later he was reading his present from Wendy under the ceiling fan, a beer at his elbow. The book proved to be more absorbing than he’d expected. The Keir family was there, Keir homestead, the Redruth copper mine, the Cornish miners, in text and photographs. The Razorback draped in snow; a field of wildflowers out east; the shepherd’s son’s grave; a Ngadjuri grinding stone; a bushfire in the Tiverton hills. He flicked through to the index: Muirs and Bagshaws had been in the district since records began.

Armed with Christmas chocolates and a bottle of Clare Valley riesling, Hirsch knocked on the Gwynnes’ door at six-forty. He heard Martin on the other side: ‘Can you get that, Mother?’ Then Joyce Gwynne was opening the door with a curious bob—half shy curtsy, half sheer terror—and not meeting his gaze. Proffering the chocolates and wine, Hirsch said, ‘Hope I’m not too late?’