Even though he feels like he could explode inside because all he wants is for her to pick him, for her to say, You might not have much to offer me but all you have is all I need; for her to wrap her legs around his waist and let him sit her on the butcher’s block and sink into her again, right here, right now, because he’d be damned if he isn’t bloody well barring up—even though he yearns like nothing else for these things, all he says is, ‘No worries.’

‘Best leave things like this for now, ay? Until I sort all this shit out,’ Lucy says sadly.

At the door, she looks up at him, stricken. ‘Oh my god, a man’s dead,’ she says in that small voice.

‘Yeah,’ Harry says, helplessly. Because it’s all he can say. And it’s all he can do to hold himself together until he’s down the front steps and shattering and shattering as he climbs into his ute. Hard little tears force their way out of his ducts as he drives a lap of the peninsula, through the towering bluegum forests; past the scraggly old pear and apple orchards; past the old prison; past the bays so bleak in this weather they look like they’re full of dirty dishwater; and through the deadbeat little towns. He drives, because he can’t go home and face his mother like this and what sort of a bloke is living with his mother at his age anyway?

Flo dashes through the drizzle from her car to the veranda of Lucy’s house. She knocks on the door, opens it, and calls ‘Hello!’ all at once.

‘In the kitchen, Flo,’ Lucy calls back.

Flo trots down the hallway, into the kitchen which merges into a dining room. She loves this room. Something about it seems to Flo so Lucy: trendy and rough and sophisticated in all the right ways.

‘Tea? Wine?’ Lucy offers.

‘What are you having?’ Flo asks.

‘Wine,’ Lucy says. ‘Definitely wine.’

Flo peers at her. She looks unhappy and exhausted, and gaunt with dark rings under her eyes.

‘Tough day?’ Flo asks.

‘Tough few days.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

‘Nah.’ Lucy shakes her head. ‘It’s just, I have to sort some stuff out with Jem and he’s not getting back from the coast until tomorrow.’

‘Ah,’ Flo says, nodding. ‘And this sort of weather, ay? Makes everything seem glummer than it is.’

‘Something like that.’ Lucy shrugs, then tugs her face into a smile. She grabs a bottle from the fridge, places it on the butcher’s block and turns to get two glasses from the cupboard.

‘Hear about that bloke, drowning at the boat ramp?’ Flo asks. ‘The poor brother, hey?’

Lucy doesn’t turn to Flo as she speaks. She stands, facing the cupboard, with a wineglass in each hand. ‘If it’s okay with you, Flo, I don’t really want to talk about it,’ she says. Each word sounds stilted and deliberate.