When the two policemen from Trenton had found her earlier in the day, they hadn’t been able to meet her eyes. Perhaps they felt some shame in seeing a woman so pulverised, her face and nose the colour they were. She wanted to laugh at their propriety. Supposed it was sweet, in its misguided way. She’d told them where Vernon lived, that there’d be people out for him. To expect trouble. They’d nodded solemnly before heading out. Later she got word Caleb had escaped from Boodyarn. Trevor and Robert were out helping co-ordinate the search, but come daybreak they’d have to call in more Trenton boys. Maybe even Melbourne. Things in Newbury kept on getting worse and worse.

She knew Ernie was in a room nearby. She’d seen Cassie earlier, walking by, but Cassie hadn’t cared to enter and say hello. Hadn’t even spared Sharon a glance.

She wanted to see him, though. To see him in his agony.

She sat up and swivelled her feet out of bed. She disconnected the drip from the cannula, in the same manner she’d seen the nurses doing it. The tube hung free, flashing red on the machine. She pressed a button and it seemed to stop. She waited for the nurses to rush to her aid, but no one came.

With hesitant steps she hobbled out of the room, looking both ways, listening for voices that would send her back. Her bandaged body felt heavy as she walked on down the ward, checking each room until she found the one she wanted. Esther Cahill sitting by her husband’s bedside. Ernie mummified. Heavy gauze, a little red seeping through patches of the cloth. The television cast them both in coloured light. The same gameshow Sharon had been watching. She stepped inside.

Esther heard her and turned. ‘Sharon, you can come in.’

Sharon inched forward. Ernie’s face and head were completely wrapped in bandage. Just two small holes for his nostrils. Plastic tubing ran to a machine snaking from a hole where his mouth should be. This man who had so intimated her was reduced to this, to nothing. What he’d always been, really: a sack of flesh.

Sharon said, ‘How’s he doing?’

Esther stared at her. ‘How’s he look?’

‘Yeah, alright.’ Sharon took another moment. ‘What did we do to deserve them?’

‘What do you mean?’ Esther had turned back to her husband and placed a hand beneath one of his, bandaged.

‘These men.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Your husband’s an arsehole, Esther.’

Esther still didn’t look up. Sharon’s words stuck in the air like hair clogging a pipe.

Eventually Esther said, ‘I suppose he is.’

Sharon hadn’t been expecting agreement. It made her pause. ‘So what did we do to deserve them?’

‘Ernie does care, in his way.’

‘So that excuses what he does?’

Esther shook her head. ‘I suppose it doesn’t.’

‘So why do you stick by him, then?’

‘Well,’ Esther said. ‘I reckon I give as good as I get.’