By the time he had reached the shed his back was aching. His knees felt as though they would seize up. He rested the barrow and sat down and rubbed at his knees, his shins. He had never felt so old. Light was beginning to peek up over the horizon.

He opened the shed door wide and wheeled in his load. Carefully, with a straining back, he lifted both barrels out and put them on the floor. The car he’d returned earlier that day parked near a couch. Useless bloody gesture. In the cupboard he found a Phillips head screwdriver, which he stabbed into the base of a barrel. The plastic gave quickly and the liquid spilled out, covering his hands. The chemical smell instantly made him dizzy. He struggled to stand.

Then he stabbed the second barrel. It too started to leak over his hands, his shoes. Tried his damnedest to not make a sound. He fumbled with the lighter, found a flame, and held it to the liquid.

His arm immediately caught fire. He swore loudly and jumped, and, strangely, tried to hug the arm to his chest. As soon as the flame touched the fabric covering his torso he changed his mind and ripped at the shirt, his fingertips searing. He managed to undo the shirt and somehow run without conscious thought out of the shed, into the early morning. The flames inside licked up the spill he’d created. He ripped the shirt off and scrunched the shirt up into a ball, muffling the flames, and pounded at his hands. His eyes went up when he heard the muffled sound of an explosion.

It shook him and threw him down. He landed with a thud on his arse and then fell onto his now naked back in the cold grass. He scrambled up. The door of the house was opening, somebody was rushing out. He tried to run. The flames behind him searing. He jogged as far as his old wounded knees would take him. A magpie, possibly the same he had seen yesterday, squawked at him from its fence post.

TWENTY-FOUR

SIDNEY CAHILL

They had both woken when his daughter started to cry. It was a pitiful sound, mournful, full of doubt and fear. He went to her quickly and scooped her up, holding her to his ear. He shushed her as he brought her to her mother: there was only one thing that would soothe her and it wasn’t his voice. Sarah, still bleary, sat upright and held Amy to her breast. Soon his daughter was contentedly feasting. He watched. He knew Sarah did not regard this act with the same reverence he held for it. She did not begrudge her daughter but to her she was a cow, a service beast for the suckling. For Sidney this was far more than machinery and mechanism. This was magic. Although there were problems between them, there was also happiness and through this act he knew all three of them would forever be lashed to one another.