‘Are you going to make a pot of coffee or did you just want to give me the shits?’

‘I’ll make coffee if you can find the lid for the blasted machine.’

I resist the urge to swear at him. The lid is in clear view on the dish rack.

‘What’d you wake me for anyway?’ I ask as the first drops of coffee hit the glass-bottomed pot.

‘We’re going to fetch the boy,’ he says, then slaps the laminex by way of full stop. ‘Today.’

He walks me out to the veranda so we can talk without fear of Abby or Mark overhearing. They’re up now, going about their morning routines. I balance my mug on the wooden railing and watch the street wake. A powder-blue Kingswood reverses down a driveway, a sprinkler flicks sparkling drops of water across a lawn, a bare-chested man framed by an open window calls his labrador – ‘Ruuuby’ – who bounds towards him.

‘He’s living with his dirtbag father, in a tent on a hippy commune.’

‘Eumundi?’

‘No place for a child.’

‘I don’t know about that. And he’s not your kid, right?’

‘Drug addicts and dropouts. And they’re into some extremely dodgy business, Charlie.’ He stops, as if to decide if I’m up for whatever it is he was about to say. Evidently not. ‘They don’t send the kids to school, let the young girls run around with nothing on, work the women like they’re animals. The boy’s father is their self-styled leader and –’ Again with the half-thought. ‘Brute of a man, a criminal. The stories I heard from Skye would curdle your blood.’

‘Let me know when you’re up for telling me what those meaningful pauses are for. Whatever you’ve seen or heard, it won’t shock me.’ I flick the ash from my cigarette over the railing. ‘Did she live there for long before she met you?’

‘For a time.’

‘A time. And she had Beau with her at this commune, right?’

‘She did.’

‘Well, if she left him there it can’t be that bad.’ I lift my mug, feel the smooth warmth against my bottom lip.

‘It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.’

I laugh.

‘I don’t see what’s so funny.’

‘Nothing, Dad. But if you want me to help you kidnap a child I’ll need more than “it’s complicated”. I can’t think of anything that’s not complicated right now.’ I take a drag on my cigarette. ‘Seriously, if it was such a bad place why did she let her son stay there? Why did you, for that matter?’

He lifts his head up. A plane makes its way across the sky, leaving a thin white trail in its wake. I’d give a million dollars to be on that plane, flying away from all this, flying to Bali, to Sal.

‘She went back for Beau three times, only once when I knew her, early on in her pregnancy. But she didn’t tell me until she came back. I wanted to call the police but she . . .’