‘You can sleep here tonight, then I want you gone.’

Late afternoon I realise that if I’m going to stay we’ll need food. I’ve looked in his fridge – eggs from his chickens, the heels of a loaf of white bread, milk, some wrinkly carrots. Not sure what he thought he was going to eat for dinner but this is not enough for two people. I have a carton of beer in the boot of Abby’s car – an ill-considered peace offering – but it truly didn’t occur to me to bring food.

I find Dad in the laundry, angrily shoving another load into the washer as if he hates the machine and everything he’s putting in it. I tell him I’m going to Chinchilla to get dinner supplies.

‘What, cornflakes?’ he says. I’m going to have to take blow after blow until he softens. Which might be never. And my only adult choice is to do nothing, let it wash over me.

‘I’ll buy some chops, vegetables, some bread. Anything else you want while I’m there?’

He turns around and huffs. ‘You’ll never find the supermarket. And I don’t want you on the road. You’re a menace.’ Ignoring the fact I drove to him from Brisbane. ‘I’ll drive.’ He waves a sock at me. ‘But you’re paying.’

‘Not a problem. I’ll cook, too,’ I say.

He throws the sock in the machine and turns it on. ‘You don’t know how to cook.’ Then leaves the room.

The Chinchilla supermarket is small but our needs are basic. I push the wobbly trolley along the scuffed lino to the tune of ‘hurry up’ and ‘where are you going?’, with a brief break from the droning personal criticism while Dad vents his spleen on the kid stacking shelves: ‘Sold out of it every time I’m here.’ Dad decides on chops, green beans and mash for dinner and, since I’m paying, adds shampoo, laundry soap, insect spray . . . I don’t care. I take two tins of tomato soup, a box of Weet-Bix and a jar of honey from the wooden shelves and put them in the trolley, trying to think ahead for Dad, channelling Abby’s forward planning, and remain quietly proud of myself even when Dad notices and says, ‘Your money.’

The fluorescent lights seem to glow brighter as the sky outside darkens. A storm is on its way. We were lucky to make it inside before the rain came. Through the plate-glass windows I watch a beer-bellied man in overalls make a surprisingly graceful dash across the road from the feed store to the chemist.

As I force my trolley to turn into the next aisle, I hear Dad – who’s stomped off ahead of me – speaking.

Roberts looks genuinely surprised to see me, but so did Finn in the RE beer garden. This encounter isn’t as suspicious as that one since I know Roberts lives in Chinchilla and the town has a population of about three, but still . . . Are the cops and their crooks following me? That sort of thing happens. They could’ve even bugged Dad’s farm, Abby’s house. I walk towards them with the trolley.