The annoyance on his face now morphed into one of despair.

‘Mum?’

She strode forward, put one hand on his, wrapped him in an awkward smile. He sat up, draped his good arm around her and started shaking with sobs. She returned the hug, glad for it, feeling strange all the same. She spared a look for Margie, who stood in the doorway. Her face looked like she’d heard a sad story on television—the same connection, happiness, tears, taking somebody else’s drama and living it at a safe remove. Penelope put her hands on her son’s back and stroked him like she was burping him.

‘There, there, my boy. You’re alright,’ she said, in the same cooing tone she’d used back then.

Melissa’s broken face in her mind. She wanted to slap him.

He sat back. ‘Dad said you’d visit.’

‘You alright, then?’

He nodded at his plastered forearm. ‘Did Dad talk to you?’

There came a shouting from the administration area.

‘What was that?’ Margie said. Her face grew fearful and she stepped further inside. ‘Should we shut the door?’

Penelope went over to shut it, after first looking down the hall. There was nothing to see, but the voices carried to her. Behind the door she put her hands on it. There was no lock on the door.

‘No lock?’ she said.

Caleb said, ‘They don’t need to lock it from the inside, normally.’

‘Does that sort of thing happen often?’

‘What sort of thing?’

She looked at him. ‘The shouting.’

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

It came again, wafting into their room like thin streamers, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

‘You heard that?’ Margie said.

He nodded, his face like she’d caught him stealing coins from her purse. ‘That’s Brendan.’

Then the sound of a door opening and being slammed shut. And footsteps down the hallway, hurried, clomping like cattle. Penelope grabbed at the handle as it started to turn, put all her strength into not allowing him entry. A pounding on the door threatened to knock it off its hinges.

‘Who’s in there?’ came a large voice from outside.

Caleb shouted, ‘I’ve got a gun this time, Cahill!’

‘Bullshit you do. They wouldn’t let you have a gun.’ Another yank on the handle. Margie was stepping back, her hands splayed behind her. When they found the wall opposite she kept right on walking, as though she meant to melt herself down and slither through the gaps in the floorboards.

The door was pulled free from Penelope and she stepped away, towards her son, her eye on the lout framed in the doorway. His shoulders and gut were heaving. There was a deep discolouration to his neck that made his head seem like a cauliflower grown out of dirt. In his hands he held a cricket bat, loosely, letting it swing near the wooden floorboards.

‘Who are you?’ he asked Penelope.

‘You leave my boy alone,’ she said, not a hint of certainty in her voice. It bounced like she was atop Caleb’s childhood trampoline.