Mum told him to make sure the room wasn’t left in a mess, so James went to straighten the bed he and Tony had shared. On one side, the shape of his cousin showed where he’d wrapped his large body around James’s smaller form. Two impressions showed where their heads had lain. The tell-tale stains had dried, and James tested the crusty edge of one patch with a fingernail. Whether it was his or Tony’s, he couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. It was both.

‘Johnny Jones wasn’t a good choice for best man,’ he heard his aunt whisper in the hallway. ‘I’ve been on at Tony to ask someone else for weeks.’

James leaned back to see his mother and aunt fixing their hats at the hallway mirror.

‘God, it’ll be a very sad day for some,’ Mum said.

‘Well, at least we got some notice,’ his aunt replied.

He lifted the thin blanket and gently placed it over the shared bed so as to disturb things as little as possible. Soon, he would see Tony again.

Mum pulled over at the row of letterboxes on the Kippen Road so James could retrieve his shoes, but she made him put them on while she drove. As he tied the laces, she started to sigh like she wanted to say something.

‘I’d better fill you in,’ she said. ‘There’s been a terrible death.’

James sat up and let his head come to rest against the car seat.

‘Do you remember the Fryers?’ she asked. ‘They have that big sandstone place along Kippen Road, about twenty minutes further out, on the right, well past the Jenkinson’s.’

He knew the name. He pictured the line of stocky, brown-haired brothers.

‘All the Fryer kids are older than you and Alan,’ she said. ‘The eldest, Brian, jumped off Kippen Bridge the night before last. That’s why Aunty Doris had to sort out the place cards, because none of them are coming to the wedding now, of course.’

James nodded. They’d be crossing the same bridge any minute now. He didn’t want to lose the feelings he was having wearing Tony’s clothes.

‘It would have been quick. He wouldn’t have suffered at all, Jamie.’

They crested the hill and Kippen appeared in the distance.

‘He’d been living in Queensland,’ Mum said. ‘Came home for the wedding.’

They descended onto the flat expanse that ran all the way to the river, where the high railway viaduct cut across fields out of nowhere and came into line with the road, before both ran parallel over the twin bridges.

‘He was a very nice young man. A bit of a loner, but one of those boys that everybody loves, you know? Makes you really wonder. It’s those ones you have to watch the most.’