With his small taste of Christmas spirit curdling in him, Hirsch carried on through the town, checking on the Cobbs, the Washburns and an elderly woman whose husband had dementia. These two were also on their front veranda, watching the sunlight advance across the quiet world. They were holding hands. Hirsch didn’t go in, merely chatted briefly from the footpath. ‘Going to be another scorcher,’ he said, wishing them a happy day, lifting one hand in a wave goodbye. The woman smiled and nodded, but didn’t wave, didn’t break the spell of her husband’s hand in hers. She’s counting the Christmases left to them, Hirsch thought.

He showered, changed, brewed coffee, called his parents, then Wendy and Katie, then there was no one else to call. The walls of his cramped house drew in around him a little.

Relief came with a phone call via triple-zero: a crash reported on a bend of the Barrier Highway north of Mount Bryan. Hirsch raced down there on an empty road, through slumbering country, to find the witness had overreacted. A station wagon had gone straight ahead instead of around the bend and ploughed through a wire fence. No blood; minor damage. The car sat, barely scratched, a few metres inside a paddock. The greatest risk was a grass fire set off by the hot underside of the car, but there wasn’t enough grass to burn. The paddock lay fallow, a dismal stretch of red dirt and sparse dead stalks.

A stocky, grey-haired man stood, bent at the waist, near the front of the car.

‘Need a hand?’

The man straightened, brushing his hands. Dark trousers, dusty black shoes, a white short-sleeved shirt and a clerical collar. He winced to see a man in uniform.

‘Checking the radiator and headlights.’

‘Anything?’ asked Hirsch.

The minister shook his head. ‘Dents and scratches.’

Hirsch came closer to look for himself. ‘Not the best day to run off the road.’

‘You can say that again. I’ve got three services this morning and I’m already late for the first one.’

A country minister tending to dwindling flocks in dying country towns. ‘What happened?’

‘Act of God?’ the cleric said, with cheerful vigour.

Hirsch grinned. ‘You haven’t, umm, been hitting the Christmas sherry?’

‘That comes later. No, took my eyes off the road for a second.’

Hirsch glanced at the car’s interior. Sheets of paper on the passenger seat, scrawled handwriting. ‘Rereading your sermon?’

The man blushed. ‘I was, as a matter of fact.’

‘Don’t you know them all off by heart?’

‘Nothing is fixed or certain. My sermons evolve,’ the minister said, with good-natured self-mockery.