I hold out my hand. ‘Let me see.’ It’s the big house, with the steep driveway up on the hill. Walking distance from the Anglers but not on the water like ours. ‘The house is nicer but we’re in a better spot.’ I see all the other listings dotted around the lakes area. Lots of people are doing it apparently.

‘Oh,’ Claire interrupts. ‘Lina you’ve not seen the terrace.’

‘It’s finished?’

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s have a look.’ She leads me outside onto their deck, up a set of steps. As I follow her the city emerges from beyond the other rooftops, an entire landscape before us. All those lights, bushfire embers in the darkness. We reach the terrace on the roof of their townhouse. It’s fake grass and deck chairs and I find myself wondering if this addition is in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

‘God look at that,’ I say.

‘It’s nice right?’ she says. ‘Good night for it too.’

‘Stunning,’ I say, barely keeping the note of envy out of my voice. Claire has a yoga studio and Axel has one of those gyms that’s full of ropes, boxes and tractor tyres. He wants to open more, a chain of them, an empire. Axel was the one that put the idea in Cain’s head to start his own personal training business; thus Commando Fitness was born. The first time Cain told me the name Axel had suggested it was with a cringe. ‘I like it,’ I’d lied. He still cringes now, whenever he updates his website or Facebook, when someone points out the logo on the skin-tight t-shirts he trains in, the cartoonish muscle man in military fatigues squatting beneath an impossibly bent bell bar. Commando emblazoned in block letters above it and Fitness below.

He trains people out of Axel’s gym, paying a small fee each month to do so. Despite his injuries, the scars and a knee that barely bends, he still manages to keep strong. Suits and yuppies like the idea of training the way the SAS do, that’s the gimmick, but Cain’s had a hard time gaining new clients and keeping them.

‘The guests must love this?’

‘This is the first booking we’ve taken since the renovation,’ Claire says. She’s got her glass of Chardonnay with her and it’s clear from the way she seems to oscillate the glass, almost spilling it, that she’s at least halfway drunk. Cool girls, girls like Claire, I had always assumed would drink negronis or craft beer, not the variety of wine I’ve come to associate with middle-aged housewives.

‘Have you guys had any bad reviews?’

A long silence, she takes a sip now and the air becomes thick and cool.

‘Not yet,’ she says. Then she turns away from the skyline, facing me. ‘How are you guys going, Lina?’