He asked me about work and about people we both knew—whether I’d seen Ellis at all—and I said I had, though I didn’t tell him that Ellis and Roy got in a fight. He wiped his hands, leaned back against the bench beside the sink and crossed his arms.

‘Why a Yank, sis? Why’d you have to date one of them?’

‘Stop calling him a Yank, Fred. His name’s Roy, and he’s a good fella.’

‘He spends a lot of money on you.’

‘No. It’s not that. It’s nice that he has money to spend, but I’d like him if he didn’t have a penny. He’s different. He’s not here because I look pretty on his arm. He’s smart and funny and he seems to think I am too—he doesn’t just run off to the pub every time he wants to have a conversation.’

‘Scared of talking to blokes, is he? A poofter.’

‘Good grief, is that what I said? He just knows how to talk to women.’

Fred turned back to the sink and scrubbed the roast pan viciously.

‘It’s no good to come home to. We’ve been over there, getting paid nearly nothing, some of us dying to protect our country, and we come home to see our girls with these fast-talking, easy-living fellas. It drives me spare.’

I didn’t have any reply to that, so I just watched him bent over the sink, his face and neck still sporting an angry rash from the tropical heat, a bandage on his leg and his shorts loose around his hips he’d lost so much weight. It wasn’t fair, was it? I got that—I really did. I reached out and touched my brother on the arm.

He looked at me, still scowling.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘I’ve missed you.’ It wasn’t enough, but he still cracked a little corner of a smile.

‘You just going to stand there or are you going to dry this thing?’ he said, thrusting the dripping roast pan towards me.

‘You call this clean? Move aside. They might have taught you something in the army but they certainly haven’t taught you how to wash up.’

•