While prison loomed? Who’d possibly have a relationship with someone like that?

Someone looking to save a lost cause, that’s who.

He felt a pang of fear. If he went back to prison – which was the most likely outcome of his upcoming sentencing – he’d be alone again. He didn’t want to be alone again.

These were the unhappy thoughts in his head as he limped to the chemist, the gulls cawing overhead. There was the smell of roasting coffee from a van set up in a little park, and he could hear the shouts of children on the swings there. Sunshine beamed. You’d never know the Black Wind was on its way, except for those rippled clouds blowing in from the horizon.

A couple of local men saw Mack limping past and spat at their feet. This attitude was why no one else in town would give him a job. He tried not to mind. It was just lucky that he could work on Big Mane’s boat as a deckie, on the few occasions his best mate actually had the work for him.

‘Morning, Mackenzie,’ said the pharmacist, the bell jingling as he walked in the door. Fishing lures and glass floats dangled from the ceiling and caught the light. She opened the safe and pulled out his Webster pack, pressing the two pills and a sublingual strip into his hand, which he had to put in his mouth in front of her.

‘Want some water today, darling?’

He liked the pharmacist for lots of reasons, but mainly because she was nice to him.

‘Not today, thank you, ma’am.’

One antidepressant. One painkiller. One opioid replacement, called Suboxone – he’d become hooked on that, in prison. Well, he had been the one who was dealing it to the others in prison, but still . . .

‘How’s your day been so far?’ he asked.

‘It’s been good, thank you, Mackenzie. You’re not out on the boat today? You heard the weather report?’

‘Yes, ma’am. No boat for me.’

‘Oh good.’ She nodded, a crease of concern between her brows. ‘I know how you like to take risks.’

Risks like drug dealing.

Risks like returning to Shacktown even though he’d been warned what would happen if he did.

Risks like getting his hopes up that he might have a normal life one day.

He laughed. ‘Not anymore. I’ve taken enough risks for one lifetime. They didn’t pay off.’

And he meant it.

He hoped it came across like he meant it.