Steve shut the door of the truck behind him. The pane squeaked as he lowered it and then she heard him calling her name. He held his arm outstretched through the window as she approached, his palm turned upwards. She took his hand and he gripped it.

‘I tried to write this down for you but it wouldn’t come out right.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘I love you, Amanda. You’re all I ever wanted in a woman.’

She crouched down beside the truck and pressed his hand against her face. ‘Stay, then.’

‘I can’t forgive you.’ He still wouldn’t look at her.

‘Take me with you. We’ll start again together.’

‘The sight of you kills me.’ He took his hand away and turned the ignition. She caught a burst of William’s throaty babble through the opened window; his legs kicking rapidly against the box.

‘Take me with you!’

He didn’t look back. Her body buckled as the truck reached the corner of Bay Street. She couldn’t watch it turn out of sight. She sat in the street with her arms wrapped around her knees, her shoes sinking into the hot bitumen, the sun burning the back of her neck.

37

Sydney, 1997

‘This house is a mess,’ Joe says.

Isla keeps her back to him, busying herself at the sink until she hears him leave the room. She sweeps crumbs from the counter into the palm of her hand and she thinks of her grandmother, the way she would saw through a loaf of bread and lie the slices beside each other under the grill. She thinks of buttered toast and milk that has frozen in the bottle. In the bedroom her dad opens drawers and cupboards and slams them shut again, cursing. She scrapes plates into the bin and thinks of the cold English house where they were hiding from him, huddled together on the other side of the planet in a place where he couldn’t reach them.

‘How am I supposed to find anything?’ he says from the bedroom.

She stares out at the yard and sees the long grass, the fallen leaves. From the bedroom down the hall her dad starts to cough, swearing louder than before as the fit passes. She wraps her arms around herself and waits.

Joe reappears, half dressed, at the kitchen door. ‘I’m missing something,’ he says.

‘What is it?’

‘Something important.’

She feels him watching her as she pours water into the percolator. ‘What did you lose?’ She looks up at him. He is an old man, thin as a bean in his work pants and singlet.

‘A watch,’ he says. ‘I kept it in a drawer.’

‘I didn’t know you kept a spare one.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘No.’ She stares back at him. Beside her, coffee drips into the jug.

‘Now who’s lying?’ he says.

The telephone rings in the hallway. He lets it ring twice before he turns to answer it.

‘This is Joe Green,’ he says. ‘Can I help you?’