The problem, in both cases, was the lack of business. They could get by in summer when everyone was down at their shacks and in need of bread and milk and a feed of wedges or a flat white branded with a foamy love heart or leaf, and when tourists were tripping about in campervans and wanted to stop off for a snack en route to Port Arthur or Remarkable Cave. But then autumn would come, and the shackies would head back to their town houses, and the traffic would thin to barely more than a trickle of locals, surfers and recreational tuna fishermen. The population of Eaglehawk residents just isn’t big enough to sustain its very own shop, and the surf’s too cold and fickle for a dependence on the surfer trade to be a viable business model, and the tuna fishermen are rushing to the boat ramp in the morning, or rushing to the pub in the twilight, which is probably why the pub—tiny as it is—can sustain itself at Eaglehawk Neck while a shop can’t quite seem to, and which is why, if Jem and I need milk, we have to make the trip south to the township of Port Arthur, just as I did, that day.

And so, grimy and grumbly, I drove the fifteen minutes out of my way, past that house where Martin Bryant killed his first victims and then was later held up by the police, and on to the little town of asbestos shacks that cluster by the crumbly old sandstone penal settlement.

I couldn’t avoid Terry Jones. He materialised—all belly, tufty moustache and Yamaha cap—in the shop doorway, blocking my path. I took a step back to make way for him as he pushed through the yellowing plastic strips that hung from the doorframe to guard the shop from flies. Somewhere inside, the doorbell chimed.

‘G’day, Terry,’ I said and made to move past him.

‘Lucy, ’ow are ya?’ He ripped the words from the back of his throat in one nasally go and shifted his weight, lurching to block my path. His gaze slid from my face to my chest.

‘Owareya?’ he strained again as he craned towards me. He pushed his face so close I could make out the broken crosshatch of veins on his cheeks and was engulfed by his stale, boozy tang. I stopped breathing. The way he was leering over me—for a bizarre moment, I thought maybe he was going to try to kiss me, but then I realised that, actually, he was trying his utmost to peer down my top. I could almost hear him think: This is them, then.