The road quickly dropped down to the creek that never ran dry, even when there hadn’t been rain for months. Past the lines of old willows, their grandparents’ homestead, Glen Alpine, stood on the left at the top of the hill.

Grandpa Len was long dead and Grandma Gladys had been moved into Kippen’s nursing home. Nevertheless, James pressed himself against the window to take in the gloom of their neglected garden.

Glen Alpine overlooked Deloraine, Uncle Bill and Aunty Doris’s farm, and as his aunt turned the car and the wheels drummed over the cattle grid, James got a glimpse of The Mulgas right at the end of the lane, where his father would be getting ready to go to work and probably just didn’t want his kids around.

Uncle Bill’s dogs fussed at the scent of new kids, then settled into their kennels after a few commands from Tony. Moths already worried at the one light by the door. Alan and James were herded inside, Tony still the self-appointed sheepdog. Yvonne disappeared into the hallway and Aunty Doris wrangled the wall phone. Uncle Bill was in the end room where the television flicked light around the door, weather report turned up loud.

‘You’re both in with me,’ Tony said, pointing into the dark passageway. Alan forged ahead and plonked his backpack down on the first bed and closed the bathroom door behind him. James waited in the dark, letting his eyes adjust.

Tony noticed this reticence. ‘Want the light on?’ he said.

James nodded and the little lamp was punched into life, revealing the bareness of the room in harsh light, shadows at all angles.

Yvonne swung in with two towels, throwing one at the foot of each bed. ‘Your mum’s not home,’ she said.

‘Don’t you have an answering machine?’ Tony asked.

James shook his head. No quick word with Mum, then.

He needed the toilet, but Alan was using it and Tony and Yvonne were lingering.

‘You have my bed,’ Tony said. ‘It’s more comfortable than the other one.’

‘Where are you going to sleep?’

‘Out there,’ Yvonne replied, raising one arm towards the verandah. ‘He sleeps out there sometimes, when it’s too hot in here.’

They all listened as Alan pushed his last piss into the bowl. Yvonne giggled and left.

Tony went for the chest of drawers, but stopped. ‘I was going to get some things out, but you boys don’t mind me coming in when I need to, right?’ he asked, leaning into the mirror to squeeze a red mark on his shoulder.

James kicked his feet against the metal legs of the bed, and watched as his cousin pulled a face and silently swore. Hung from the top of the mirror was a large key, one of those twenty-first birthday presents covered in gold glitter.