Even at their most inaccessible Mrs Whalley liked to finger her children. Touch often assisted thought. But she liked the feel of them as well. She was glad she hadn’t had girls. Boys turned into men, and you couldn’t do without men, even when they took you for a mug, or got shickered, or bashed you up.

So she put her hand on Lummy, tried to get through to him. He was dressed, but might not have been. Lummy’s kind was never ever born for clothes. At fourteen he looked more.

‘Well,’ she said, sourer than she felt, ‘I’m not gunna cry over any sulky boy. Suit yourself.’

She moved off.

As Dad had got out the old rattle-bones by now, Lum began to clamber up. The back of the ute was at least private, though it wasn’t no Customline.

The fact that Whalleys ran a Customline as well puzzled more unreasonable minds. Drawn up amongst the paspalum in front of Whalleys’ shack, it looked stolen, and almost was – the third payment overdue. But would slither with ease a little longer to Barranugli, and snooze outside the Northern Hotel. Lum could have stood all day to admire their own two-tone car. Or would stretch out inside, his fingers at work on plastic flesh.

Now it was the ute for business. The bones of his buttocks bit into the boards. His father’s meaty arm stuck out at the window, disgusting him. And soon the twins were squeezing from the rusty boiler. The taffy Gary – or was it Barry? had fallen down and barked his knee.

‘For Chrissake!’ Mrs Whalley shrieked, and tossed her identical taffy hair.

Mrs Hogben watched those Whalleys leave.

‘In a brick area, I wouldn’t of thought,’ she remarked to her husband once again.

‘All in good time, Myrtle,’ Councillor Hogben replied as before.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if there are reasons.’

Because councillors, she knew, did have reasons.

‘But that home! And a Customline!’

The saliva of bitterness came in her mouth.

It was Daise who had said: I’m going to enjoy the good things of life – and died in that pokey little hutch, with only a cotton frock to her back. While Myrtle had the liver-coloured brick home – not a single dampmark on the ceilings – she had the washing machine, the septic, the TV, and the cream Holden Special, not to forget her husband. Les Hogben, the councillor. A builder into the bargain.

Now Myrtle stood amongst her things, and would have continued to regret the Ford the Whalleys hadn’t paid for, if she hadn’t been regretting Daise. It was not so much her sister’s death as her life Mrs Hogben deplored. Still, everybody knew, and there was nothing you could do about it.

‘Do you think anybody will come?’ Mrs Hogben asked.

‘What do you take me for?’ her husband replied. One of these cleervoyants?’

Mrs Hogben did not hear.

After giving the matter consideration she had advertised the death in the Herald: