Over by the supply cupboard, Kayla stood motionless, her thumb in her mouth. I smiled at her and held out my hand.

‘It’s all right, Kayla. Don’t worry. Your mum will be here soon.’

She took her thumb out. ‘Mum says you’re a died,’ she announced.

I assumed she meant dyke. Unless Joyce had been threatening to kill me?

Krystal’s couch arrived in a white van just before three on Saturday afternoon. I’d been waiting around for hours, cleaning the kitchen and making chicken stock. I could have left the garage open and gone shopping, I suppose, but I didn’t want to encourage Scott Rooney. God knows what he could have done. Left a snake inside?

Two hefty young blokes wearing sleeveless shirts manoeuvred Krystal’s couch into my garage, supervised by a leathery little woman in a fedora hat. I soon worked out they were part of the same family; the two blokes were cousins and the woman was their aunt. ‘What are you moaning about?’ she said to the bigger cousin when he banged his head on the garage door. ‘You’ve got no brains to hurt.’

The couch was a three-seater, wrapped in so much plastic I could barely see what colour it was. The delivery docket attached to it had my address scribbled over the original one, which was unreadable. As soon as the van had roared away, I relocked the garage and left a message on Krystal’s voicemail. She called back an hour later while I was pushing a trolley down the pasta aisle at Foodworks.

‘They reckon we can pick up the keys around seven,’ she told me in her hesitant, preoccupied way. ‘But they’ve cleaned the carpets and they’ll still be damp, so…’

‘So you want to collect the couch tomorrow?’

‘Is that all right, Robyn?’

‘As long as you’re not too early.’ After wrangling kids all week, I liked to sleep in on Sunday mornings. ‘How’s Aaron?’

‘Good.’ She didn’t sound very sure. Most children react badly to upheaval; the thought of what Aaron would be like on Monday made my blood run cold.

‘Give me a call before you come,’ I said, popping a can of tomatoes into my trolley. ‘I don’t like leaving the garage unlocked.’

‘Okay.’

‘That couch looks pretty heavy. Are you sure you can manage it? Just you and Mitch?’

‘Oh, yeah. We’ve got a trolley thing.’ Somehow her tone didn’t fill me with confidence. I had a feeling I would be roped in to help.

‘All right.’ I wondered if she’d be bringing Aaron with her. I didn’t want him running around loose in my yard. There was no telling what he might do with a pair of secateurs. ‘Will Aaron be coming?’

‘I think so. Is that a problem?’

‘Oh, no.’ Yes. ‘I just wondered if I should buy him something to eat. Does he like Tim Tams?’