‘I was waiting to tell you. I gave Jack some tea and told him to wait while I went and fetched Dad, because I knew your father would want to see him. So I walked to the harness racing, but he wasn’t there. I asked this fellow at the gate whether he’d seen him and he said he’d left with a lady an hour earlier. So I came home, upset of course, and told Jack what the man said, and Jack went out to find him. When Jack came home he had Dad, but he had a split lip as well. Jack said he found him at the pub and Dad says of course there was no lady, the ticket collector was daft. But I can’t stop thinking on it. I want you to watch him, Sarah. See if you can find out who this woman is.’ ‘Really, Mum? Don’t you think the ticket collector just mistook him for someone else? Jack would have told you if things were wrong.’

‘Do you think? He’s just another man, Sar, I know where his sympathies lie. Besides, there was something off between him and Dad, I could tell. Jack wouldn’t tell me how he got the split lip, either; he told me some nonsense about running into a door.’

It was mad to imagine I would somehow find this woman who surely didn’t exist. The only way was to wait outside the pub and see if he left alone or in company. But to sit on my own and then slink through the shadows after dark was not only crazy, it was unsafe. Mum had worked herself into a state, though, and she was already on edge over Fred. How could I say no?

•

The following Sunday I had plans to see Rebecca at the Lyceum on Pitt Street with Dot. I decided to leave straight after the film rather than going on to a coffee house to chatter away about Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. That way I could catch Dad in time for the six o’clock closing. He was always at his worst on a Sunday evening. He always washed his truck in the morning while Mum went to church, and then disappeared not long after Sunday lunch to one of the locals, which meant he would have been drinking all afternoon.

The film left me in an odd state—the Gothic setting and the delicacy and grace of Joan Fontaine; the strength she found to deal with that awful housekeeper. I would have loved to talk it over with Dot afterwards, but instead I made my apologies, telling her my mum was expecting me home before six.