James woke early in his old bed at The Mulgas with a full bladder.

The bathroom floor was stained with Alan’s blood and littered with discarded bandage wrappings. A trickle of water had diluted a patch of red and was sending it towards the drain. James pissed then fished under the sink for a cloth to wipe away the night’s evidence.

Further down the hall he listened at the door to his parents’ bedroom. It was here that he’d stood eavesdropping on their desperate, late-night arguments. James turned the old wooden knob with the familiar crack running from top to bottom and made a space big enough to look through.

The heavy curtains weren’t quite closed, allowing a shaft of light to fall across the mess of clothes, most of it his father’s uniform. Dad slept soundly with his back to the door, the stripes of his pajama top crushed into a thick knot under one arm and a tuft of his grey-flecked hair rose from behind a pillow. The other side of the bed was empty.

The pantry yielded nothing for breakfast. The refrigerator contained only milk. James thought about showering, but within a minute he’d gently closed the side door of the farmhouse and was halfway up the hill.

He’d walked to Glen Alpine many times with messages from his mother, or eggs, or just because he wanted one of grandma’s hugs, when she’d fold him into her apron and squeeze him tight against her belly.

The gate that gave onto the fields stood ajar, long grass holding it slightly open, giving unseen creatures regular access. The dampness in the soil started to work its way into James’s trouser bottoms as he wriggled through the gap.

Inside, the old vegetable garden was sending up neglected seed heads. A bucket had rusted its way off the clothesline and upturned, leaving a pile of weathered wooden pegs through which ants were pushing up their nests. Blackberry canes tapped at the window panes along one side of the house, given a leg-up by the tank, perched at a dire angle.

The front verandah was still safe above the tendrils of hydrangea that reached up to the hanging baskets, their lilac-and-green flower heads shimmering. James mounted the steps, the scene of annual family photographs, and tried the front door.

It was securely locked, but a sliver of light revealed a chink in the window above. Both of the French doors that gave onto the verandah were heavily curtained, but when James put his eye up to the cold glass by the door, he could see into the hallway that ran through the guts of the house.