The sliding door opens, letting through the smell of buttery toast and the faintest hint of a song on the radio. Sarah sticks her head through the gap.

‘What are you doing?’ she says.

‘Morning, Miss Sarah,’ I say.

Dad turns his head and offers her a small smile.

The woman next door has left her hose whipping like a cut snake in wide arcs on her driveway.

‘Are you fighting?’ Sarah asks.

I flick my dead cigarette over the railing. ‘Not anymore.’

Abby asks me to keep an ear out for the kids while she’s in the shower. I say yes, though I’m not entirely sure what she means. Mark is outside washing the car. Dad walks into the kitchen, sits, and watches as I unwrap a slice of cheese.

‘I’m making a grilled sandwich,’ I say. ‘Want one?’

‘Strange breakfast. Is that what you eat in Bali?’

‘I have tomato, onion, cheese.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

I rest the knife on the chopping board. ‘You’ve got to eat, Dad.’

‘We’ll aim to get to the commune before sunset. Too early in the day and they’ll be working outdoors. And once it’s dark we won’t have a hope of finding him. Two-and-a-half-hour drive, I’d say. We’ll leave here at two o’clock.’

I spread mustard onto a slice of bread.

‘Plenty of time to gather yourself.’

‘I’m gathered, Dad. Just not sure I want to steal a child.’

He stands up. ‘I’ll find a reason to borrow Abby’s car. Setting off on the dot. I hope you’ll be with me. You could be an asset.’

‘Asset?’

‘Long hair and unwashed t-shirt, you’ll fit right in if we’re seen.’

‘Thanks. Thought I might be an asset because I’ll stop you getting killed.’

He raises his eyebrows. ‘Your old man’s tougher than you think.’

I drop a lump of butter in the frying pan and watch it sizzle. ‘You want me to go or not, Dad? It’s not much of a pitch so far.’

He walks around the bench to stand by my side. ‘I need you, Charlie.’ Suddenly everyone needs me.

Outside, a tinny rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ grows louder as an ice-cream truck drives along the street. Sarah thunders down the hallway, shouting for Abby.

I use the spatula to flatten my sandwich. ‘Broad daylight, Dad. That’s a dangerous choice.’

‘He can’t answer to his name if he’s asleep.’

‘If you call his name, other people will hear you. People you’ve just told me are brainwashed and growing dope for corrupt cops and most likely protecting that crop with guns. People who’d rightly be suspicious of two strangers rocking up with no good reason to be there.’

He doesn’t bother offering any rebuttal, just huffs. There’ll be no talking him out of this. It’s the shittest plan I’ve ever heard. But I can’t let him attempt this alone. For my grieving father, for the woman I ran off the road, I’m in.

‘Don’t cook anything for us tonight.’

Abby is mopping the bathroom tiles, beige ceramic with spider veins of brown. I don’t know who their tiler is but he’s laid the tiles too far apart from one another; the grout’s thick and it’ll crumble. And he should’ve used caulk in the joins. I learned about tiling from Ketut, when we remade the bathroom at KD. I watch water pool in the grooves in the wake of Abby’s mop. Though she’s opened both tiny sliding windows, the room is crazy hot. I never know what’s going to bring on a wave of protectiveness for my sister, that weird feeling that I’m not looking out for her the way I should be. But tiling, evidently, is one of those things.