He came every morning, with breakfast, and every afternoon with dinner. It was how she knew the days were passing for her calendar.

And sometimes he came at night. It was when he brought things she needed. Fresh clothes. Cleaning supplies. A new toothbrush.

And when he wore the blue bathrobe. He never took it off. He just undid the belt and let it fall apart and then made her lie face down while he did what he did.

After he’d raped her he would often stare at her, silent and impassive. She had the impression he was waiting for her to say something, but she never had anything to say. All she wanted was for him to leave her alone.

Now, though, three or four days could go by without him showing up at night. She suspected that, as he grew older, he was losing interest in sex.

It was, other than Max, the only bright spot in her dismal world.

He was coming tonight, though.

The door handle turned and, with a click of the lock, it opened. He stepped inside, his bare shins sticking out from under the bathrobe, the ankles mottled and dark.

He locked the door, the key – as always – suspended on a chain around his wrist.

He was tall, certainly taller than her father, who was six foot one, which put him at what – six three? Six four? – and he wore thick-rimmed, old-fashioned glasses. The lenses were always perfectly polished, and she had a recurring image of him sitting in a floral-patterned armchair, news on the radio, his glasses in one hand and a cloth in the other. When he wasn’t in his bathrobe, he dressed in shapeless grey trousers and white or blue short-sleeved shirts, which, although clean, were faded and shabby, and carried a musty odour, as though they had been left in the wardrobe too long.

He looked at her, his gaze resting on her face, before moving down over her breasts and then legs. It was an appraising look, like the look a farmer might give a cow.

He nodded at the mattress where Max was sleeping. ‘Move the child.’

She picked up Max and laid him on the carpet next to the barrel-bath. She put a pillow under his head and stood up.

The man put his hands on her shoulders and turned her away from him, then pushed her face down on to the mattress. He tugged at her shorts and underwear, then waited as she pulled them down. She heard the noise of tearing as he opened a condom packet – he always used one when the boys were alive, only getting rid of them when she was childless, for reasons she had never understood – and then she felt his weight on her back.

She closed her eyes and thought of the light beam. Of the Man in the Moon. Of Australian beaches she had only seen on soap operas.