‘How’s Beck?’ Daniel ventured.

Doris started shaking her head. She muttered something to Bill and disappeared into the hallway.

‘Sorry, mate,’ Bill said. ‘It’s best you stay away, just for now.’

Daniel replaced his hat. Alan stepped forward.

‘Stay here and look after your mum?’ Daniel said.

His son nodded. Daniel couldn’t look at his brother.

The whole way back to Kippen, Daniel imagined arriving solo at The Mulgas without either of his sons, in the place where his littlest boy had his life snuffed out in the water tank.

Nobody had ever said anything to him about that bloody tank. They’d struggled on with the old one for years, patched it up time and again. Even when the water went rusty, the new tank sat out the back of the machinery shed, empty. He’d never even tried to sell it. Who would want a water tank that a little boy had died in, for Christ’s sake?

If he were to go home now, that tank would sit watching him, the glint on the top edge stubbornly reflecting the light from the back door, like the eye of some creature that knew more than him and would never let on. He should roll it down the gully to the rubbish dump before it got blown up the hill during one of their big storms.

He parked in the field by the police station, crossed to the front verandah and flicked the station sign on. Set above the road, the dull light started attracting insects almost immediately. As he shut the screen door a gust of wind rushed through the gap between his arms and his sides, chilling the sweat in his armpits.

Daniel flicked the radio unit into life and twisted the dial around, listening to the chatter, hoping like hell that something would come back about Jamie; but they were having a quiet night out there. It was these dead bloody evenings that had led to the cutbacks that saw them sharing night duty rosters with the guys up the ranges at Wishaw, halfway to the coast. Someone was on the line dealing with an ambulance run for a heart patient. That was it.

He decided to leave the volume up, let the scramble of the radio annotate the evening and retrieved the rest of his half-eaten chips from the bin.

Beck had never let him resort to takeaways. She’d always brought him a covered tray before the sun went and too many roos were on the move. She’d hated him working late, and she’d hated him having to rely on fast food. Her photograph was no longer on the shared desk. It had taken him a good year after she’d gone to take it down, and even that was at the suggestion of his counsellor.