As he’d grown older, he’d seen the industry change. Mills had become few and far between. It was hard to get sawlog because most trees were downgraded to woodchip. Leon had started looking more closely at the process, trying to understand what was happening. His dad hadn’t liked it—the Walkers had always been loggers or sawyers, so he was furious when his son turned greenie. It was a betrayal.

But betrayal was a double-edged sword where Reg was concerned. When the accident had ruined his hand, and Reg could no longer work at the mill, his self-esteem had plummeted and he’d slid into drink. Alcohol had been a problem back when he was young, and he’d become a teetotaller to control it. After he’d lost his job, depression had struck, or something very much like it—the drink had been the simplest solution. But it brought out the buried aggression in Reg, and Leon’s mum was an easy target. Right now, people might say Reg had run out of luck, but Leon believed you made your own luck. There were many things his dad could have done other than surrendering to violence. Losing his job might have challenged his manhood, but beating his wife was no way to reclaim it.

At the hospital in Hobart, Leon and Grandpa followed the receptionist’s directions to the critical-care ward. Reg was strung up on a drip and had oxygen buds looping into his nose. He looked yellow, and for a moment Leon felt a flash of sympathy. His father’s eyes were hollow and sad, as if perhaps he might have taken a different path had he realised it would come to this. Under the covers, his belly domed like a pregnancy, and the foot that was hanging out was pallid and swollen.

Mum was sitting by the bed, and she rose quickly to hug them, Grandpa first, Leon second. Her face was puffy and she had tears in her eyes. Her embrace made Leon feel like a bollard with a rope wrapped around it, but he let her cling to him. He sensed the shifting of responsibility as she foisted onto him a burden he didn’t want to bear. Grandpa, meanwhile, had taken a seat by the bed and was talking to Dad, so Leon followed Mum out into the corridor.

‘He has peritonitis,’ she said, ‘an infection in his belly. He could die. They’re going to suck out all the fluid in his abdomen and put him on antibiotics.’ Her face crumpled, and she leaned against Leon’s shoulder.