‘We’ll stay at the pub,’ she says, whacking my shoulder with her elbow as she clambers back into the driver’s seat. ‘I’ll call Dad and tell him we’ll be at his in the morning.’

‘If you were okay to scrub up in the car, why didn’t we do that and go to Dad’s?’

‘I can’t face him tonight.’ She holds out her hand to show me how badly she’s shaking.

I hold up my own hand so it’s level with hers. I’m shaking, too. We stay that way for an instant, her left hand and my right twitching like wounded moths, thumb and finger almost touching, dirt under our nails, her wedding ring glistening, and not a drop of blood between us despite what we’ve done. Will I think of this moment every time I look at my hand? I already know I won’t. Life will go on, and I’ll forgive myself. I’m not so sure about Abby.

We drive to Chinchilla, a town that’s no more than a lick of buildings either side of a skinny road, a strip of runway lights back to the highway, a patchy receiving line at a shotgun wedding. The first building we see as we drive over the plank bridge, across the rising creek, is the Chinchilla Pub. It towers over everything around it. At two storeys, it would, in the daylight, cast a shadow over the corner shop, haberdashery shop and the few surrounding weatherboard houses. Painted white, dark trim, white verandas. Lights shine through the red, green and clear cut-glass windows downstairs.

We park on the dirt lot next to the pub, grab our bags and run, shake the water off ourselves, and open the double doors into a wide hallway. The Ladies Lounge, signed to the left, is dark; from the room to the right we hear muffled sound through an ornate panelled door. The three men perched on stools at the bar, each one nursing a sweating pot of beer, stare at us as we enter the room. Whorls of smoke rise from ashtrays. A radio calls out the results of the night’s greyhound races.

The men wear checked flannel shirts with rolled-up sleeves, left open to show singlets of white or slate blue, with work shorts or jeans. Two of the men are in their fifties and one is about half that age, but they all sport the same hairstyle: slicked back with a wide-toothed comb so the neat lines of hair resemble a ploughed field. The only man wearing long pants is running a carpet-sweeper across the floor. He nods to us, and we nod in reply, drop our bags near the wall.

‘Wet enough?’ he asks.

I offer an awkward smile.

‘I’m about to close up,’ he says. ‘But I could pour you a drink.’

‘We’re after a room, two rooms, for tonight,’ Abby says.

The man pushes his sweeper upright. ‘Reckon we can squeeze you in.’

The men at the bar chuckle.

‘And a beer,’ I say.