No fun being a Christmas orphan, he thought suddenly. No fun being a small-town policeman on Christmas Day. He trudged back towards the police station, wondering when the shit would hit the fan. The expectation was unremitting. It was like a blanket in this godawful heat.

‘Merry Christmas.’

He hadn’t noticed Gemma Pitcher and her mother behind the grapevine draped along their veranda. He stopped, blinked. Creased faces, unruly hair, they were not long out of bed. Drinking tea and contemplating the soft morning light.

‘Same to you,’ he said.

Eileen Pitcher was tiny where her daughter was large, a dry, wizened woman with a flinty soul. She drew hungrily on a cigarette and extended a smidgin of Christmas cheer: ‘Tea?’

The old Hirsch might have said, sorry, too much on, but today’s Hirsch was consumed with his homesick blues. A cup of tea might be just the job.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He perched on the veranda boards, his spine against a paint-peeling post. ‘Plain black, please.’

Assigned, with the merest jerk of her mother’s chin, the task of making it, Gemma shuffled in pink slippers and huge T-shirt over satin pyjama shorts to the screen door and into the house, her thighs, branded with a criss-cross pattern from her chair, winking at Hirsch. He looked away. Presently tap water splashed, a kettle grumbled, a cup hit a saucer.

Meanwhile Eileen was staring out at the sun-lit world, ignoring Hirsch as if he was one of the veranda posts.

‘Best time of the day,’ he said.

She grunted and then he was saved. Gemma was there with his tea—and it was weak, milky, sweet. All at once the world was nothing worse than ridiculous. You had to laugh.

The conversation—Hirsch’s conversation with Gemma—veered from Nan Washburn’s horses to the TV vans and Hirsch in a Santa suit. Until Gemma said, ‘Did that man find you?’

‘What man?’

‘He come in the shop yesterday.’

Hirsch waited. In his experience, no one ever just spat it out. They delayed and withheld as if they were on an hourly rate. ‘Yesterday,’ he prompted.

‘That lady with the baby in the car.’

‘Mrs Rennie?’

‘He said her name was Reid.’

‘A man came into the shop and…?’

‘He wanted to know where she lived.’

‘What did he look like?’

This seemed to be a difficult question. Finally Gemma shrugged, ‘Average, I guess.’

‘Age?’

She assessed Hirsch. ‘A bit older than you?’

‘Forties?’

‘S’pose.’

‘Did he say why he wanted to find Mrs Rennie? Or Reid or whatever?’

Gemma shrugged again.

‘Do you know where she lives?’

Gemma shook her head. ‘Told him to ask you.’

‘Didn’t see him,’ Hirsch said.