‘She what? Why don’t you call them now if you think there are kids in danger? Call Doyle.’

He scoffs. ‘He’s the last person I’d call. Anyway, they’d put Beau into some type of state care. He needs to be here where I can look out for him.’

‘I hope you don’t mean here here, as in Abby and Mark’s house.’

He ignores me. ‘Listen, I have no legal connection to that child.’

‘Glad we agree. So why is kidnapping him okay?’

‘Rescuing him. The boy needs to be with a proper family. I should’ve forced the issue with Skye months ago.’

‘Is this bunch a cult or something?’ I ask.

‘Enough questions, Charlie. Do me a favour and believe I know what I’m talking about.’

‘I gotta ask, Dad. What kind of woman leaves her kid behind with a man like that?’

‘A good one, an angel. A woman you wouldn’t understand. You gad about with women who don’t know the first thing about selflessness or sacrifice.’

‘Sweeping generalisation.’ Also, ‘gad’: don’t think that’s a real word.

He looks down at his polished brown brogues, dappled from the sunlight pushing through the leaves of the eucalyptus tree. ‘His name is Finn and she thought he was going to kill her the night she left. He would have. She had to get out to stay alive, and she was in no state to take a child with her. Bastard broke her collarbone, beat her black and blue.’

‘Whoa.’

‘Then told the other dumb-as-dirt hippies Skye’d turned on them, turned on their ideals, abandoned her son and gone back to the world they rejected. Because –’ he gestures to the street in front of us, its green gardens and neatly parked cars – ‘it’s so horrendous. So when she showed up for Beau they chased her out. They’d been brainwashed, the lot of them. And I couldn’t care less about what they think or what they get up to, except that Beau’s there with them and he meant the world to Skye.’

‘Dad, I still don’t get why she didn’t call the police and report the assault, get her son brought to her.’

‘She abandoned the boy. She left. And there’s no one at that place who’d hold up her side of the story about why she left or who’d hurt her.’ He hits the railing with his palm. ‘You think you’re worldly because you’re scruffy and unemployed and own a backpack, but –’

‘Not unemployed.’

‘You don’t have a clue about this type of thing. You don’t call the police to a drug farm when the police are running it. You don’t demand the police arrest someone they’re doing illegal business with. They have millions of dollars growing up there and even the fact she knew that was dangerous. Skye is –’

‘Collateral damage,’ I say.

I stand in silence for a moment, taking this in. ‘Okay, I get it. And that’s totally something you want to stay out of. But to the boy, this place is home. And you don’t know what they’ve told him about his mother or the outside world or strangers. So we can’t show up out of nowhere and tell him to come with us. Even if he knew us, he wouldn’t want to leave his dad and friends, would he?’