She picked her way through the narrow streets, most of them chock-a-block with parked cars, back to the closest spot she’d been able to find, a couple of blocks away. It was always the way – close to impossible to find a space, only to realise it was a metred one when you finally did.

‘Of course,’ she muttered as she ripped the little white ticket off her windshield.

She should have known she would get a ticket: a $115 fine for overstaying the allotted hour by fourteen minutes. Fourteen fucking minutes. She scrunched up the fine and threw it onto the backseat, the ball of paper joining a ragtag collection of rubbish, clothing and sports gear – some of it his. Usually organised and unable to function unless everything in her life was in order, she hadn’t cleaned her car for months. She just didn’t care. Not about her car. Not about anything.

She fired her Ford Focus to life, and huffed and puffed as she was forced into a tight turn to get out; some dickhead in a Range Rover had done his best to park her in. The sadness returned as her irritation dissipated, the ticket and the arsehole in the four-wheel drive having distracted her briefly. From thinking about what she had lost.

She turned up the radio, looking for another diversion. A song came on, the singer telling his girl not to forget about him.

‘Ahhhh,’ she screamed as she mashed at the display, Simple Minds rapidly replaced by Top 40 trash. She turned it up to eleven, grabbed first gear and dumped the clutch. Mind numbed by the music, the all-the-way-up heat roasting her cheeks, she weaved her way through the narrow streets.

‘Stupid dream anyway,’ she muttered aloud to herself. ‘Two million dollars and you don’t even get a garage.’

An amber light at the entrance to the freeway stopped her in her tracks.

Tap! Tap!

Startled, she turned to see a man knocking on her window. Clad in black and mounted on a motorbike, he had pulled up just inches from her door. She killed the radio.

‘What now?’ she groaned as she wound down her window without thinking. She quickly checked she hadn’t inadvertently put the hazard lights on when turning the radio off – it wouldn’t have been the first time. She could almost hear Riley’s voice gently scolding her. Ni-ik! he would say, exasperated but also laughing and shaking his head.

She suddenly remembered that it was stupid to wind the window down to a stranger, especially one whose face was concealed under a dark helmet. Was he about to reach in and grab her handbag? She reached for the window switch again, but fumbled, grabbing at the toggle for the side-mirror before finding the button she wanted and holding it down. She exhaled as the glass began to rise.