A long silence follows. Isla wipes the table, straightens the chairs.

‘Are you sure it’s Mandy?’ he says. ‘I mean. You’re sure it’s her body?’

Isla drops the cloth into the sink. She stares at it, the crumbs clinging to it, the grit around the plughole. She wonders if she should rinse it out. She feels weak, she can’t reach for it.

‘Where was she found?’ Joe says.

She turns and leans back against the sink. She can’t clear her head. Can’t stand.

‘I will,’ he says, and then, ‘No. I’ll come to the station.’

She hears him replace the handset. She crosses the room, lightheaded. The coffee is ready. She needs sugar and teaspoons.

‘Was that the police?’ She sounds scared. She clears her throat, stares into the cutlery drawer.

‘It was that Inspector Perry bloke.’ Joe searches the room for cigarettes, finds them on the windowsill and lights one with desperate impatience, dropping the spent match on the floor. He shoves his trembling hand into his pocket. ‘They think they found Mandy’s remains on file. Whatever that means.’

He paces the room as she pours coffee into two mugs. He sits down and stands up again.

‘They want me to go down the station,’ he says.

She puts the coffee on the table and sits down heavily. She remembers to breathe. ‘Are they sure it’s her?’

He nods. ‘I think so.’

‘You think so?’

‘He sounded sure.’

‘When are you going to the station?’

‘Soon. Later.’ He reaches into the cupboard beneath the sink and pulls out the vodka he keeps there, behind the bottles of detergent. ‘He wants me to go today.’

She looks at her coffee as he drinks. She doesn’t want to see him lift the bottle to his mouth, the urgency as he swallows. He’s breaking a rule. For as long as she can remember her dad has drunk silently behind closed doors, hiding these bottles with red and gold labels, burying the empties in the bin. At family parties he would nurse a single bottle of beer all night; at the dinner table he sipped cola. His privacy protected him from shame. And she had followed his example when the time came, finding hiding places of her own.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist and she thinks, is this it, then? Is this where we stop pretending?

‘She died thirty years ago,’ he says.

Isla stares at him. ‘Did she?’

He nods at the phone in the hallway, his eyes glassy. ‘They found her in ’67 but they couldn’t identify her at the time.’

‘Dad, I think—’

‘The cop said her body was found on the beach, here in Sydney. Near Maroubra.’

‘Maybe she drowned,’ Isla says. ‘She might have—’

‘Strangled,’ he says. ‘She wasn’t in the water when she died.’

She swallows coffee, burning the roof of her mouth. She spills it as she puts it down. ‘I think you should get a lawyer.’

He covers his eyes. ‘There are things I can’t tell you, Isla.’