My ex-wife called me as I sat in the boarding lounge at Cairns airport, hiding behind a magazine. Whenever she calls these days I get a stab of pain in the chest, knowing it can only be bad news. Kelly doesn’t call to shoot the breeze. I answered, still shielding my face from the rest of the waiting passengers with a copy of Empire.

“What’s up?”

“Are you coming down to Sydney tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, my nose inches from some celebrity I didn’t know brandishing a laser gun. “I’m going to give a statement about the allegations tomorrow morning. I also said I’d drop in and talk to those people. The Innocent Ted people.”

“You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“I didn’t really tell anyone I was coming. Last time I came down I had Khalid and his boys trying to take care of me. I’m hoping he doesn’t find out about the Innocent Ted thing.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have told him,” Kelly said. “Your secret would have been safe with me.”

“I thought it was probably too short notice to set up a supervised visit with Lil so I didn’t bother,” I said. “Unless you think we can sort something out? I’d love to see her.”

“Oh, um.” Kelly clicked her tongue, thinking. “Probably not. But you could just come to the house.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I laughed.

“Why not?”

“I’m in enough trouble at the moment. I don’t need to be upsetting the court by violating my visitation provisions.” I paused as a flight announcement murmured overhead. “And going to the house might be hard. For me. I haven’t been back there since…”

Since I packed my things and fled like a fugitive, my life in tatters and the people baying for my blood, I thought. Since I tried to decide if I would leave my wedding ring on the dresser or take it with me, my wife having not looked me in the eyes across the courtroom in weeks. Kelly hadn’t been there to say goodbye. She’d been staying with her mother. The house had been cold. Too quiet. All the things suddenly not even half mine, not mine at all—pictures of Lillian as a newborn only just framed and hung on the coral-pink walls.

I imagined myself going back there now, seeing my old books taken from the shelves and boxed up, Jett’s things on the table on my side of the bed. New things Kelly had done or changed around the place. Had she replaced the old cracked stair off the back door? I winced, the desire to cry prickling painfully in my nose.

“Maybe we could see each other,” Kelly said.

I dropped the magazine in my lap. Remembered myself when a woman across the aisle glanced at me.

“What for?” I asked.

“What for?”