Mandy would know what to do. She’d know how to keep his fever down, how to nurse him. She’d know whether they should take the risk and get him to a doctor. He could see her now, giving him one of her scathing looks and picking the boy up, sorting him out with her calm confidence. And he despised himself for missing her, for the part of himself that wanted to forgive her, even now, after this betrayal on top of all the rest.

It was getting light. He lifted the jacket off of William, threw it on top of the other things in the box and stood there looking at him. A thought formed in his head, a terrible thought that made the cabin shrink around him. The boy was too still. Oh sweet Lord, he was too still. He dropped to his knees, lifted the sheets away with fumbling, slow hands, and picked him up.

William’s head fell back. His arms were slack at his sides. Steve patted his face, lifted an eyelid to find a blank, sightless eye. He held the boy in his arms and shouted terrified, wordless sounds at the mottled rash across his skin, the floppy, unresponsive limbs; the resting beauty of his face. He was warm, still warm, but his body was limp and he had no strength in him, no muscle, no life.

He must have screamed. He heard a scream that must have come from himself, from his body. He laid the baby down flat, tried to bring him round, breathing into his mouth, pumping at his little chest, stopping only when he could not breathe himself, when his hope had gone and he needed only to hold him. He rocked him side to side, propped his head against his shoulder, but William’s arms did not lift and his body was heavy and he was gone.

At some point Steve heard a sound against the door: a knocking that paused and repeated. He didn’t know what it meant. Nothing held meaning beyond the four walls of the cabin. There was no future now. There was nobody else. He walked up and down with William, holding him close, shushing him, making soothing sounds in his ear. He knew the boy was gone but he could not bear it.

Sun streamed in through the gaps in the timber. The knocking at the door was louder now. Carefully, gently, he laid the child’s body down on the bed and moved towards the sound.

46

Sydney, 1967

Joe let himself into Mandy’s house through the back door. He locked it behind him, put the keys in his pocket and stood a while on the mat, taking in the room that still had her presence, her things left the way she liked them. Her open-toed gardening shoes by the door, angled the way she stood, with one foot in front of the other. Her apron on the hook; her pots and pans on the drying rack. One cigarette butt in the ashtray, smoked right down to the filter. You could almost convince yourself, standing here, that she’d just gone out to the shops.