‘It’ll be fine, Mum.’

‘And now—’ She kicks the sandwich carton away from the clutch. ‘And now there’s all this business with the police.’

‘Couldn’t we forget about that for the day?’

‘Everyone knows, Isla.’

She swallows. ‘Knows what?’

‘The whole street knows the police have been to see us.’ The car stalls as the traffic moves on. Louisa turns the key in the ignition, cursing. ‘They know your father’s a suspect.’

‘Suspect?’ Isla laughs, and it makes her throat hurt. ‘I think that’s taking it a bit far.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

Isla stares at her mum as she checks the mirror, pushes her sunglasses onto her head. ‘Do the police really think Dad’s behind her disappearance? This Mandy woman?’

‘Yes,’ Louisa says. ‘They really do.’

‘That’s insane.’

Louisa tries to start the car and pointedly does not reply. The sun beats hard against the windscreen. A car behind them sounds its horn. Isla thinks she might put her fist through the window in response to her mother’s disloyalty, her coldness, which is at once staggering and entirely familiar. She shuts her eyes and sees her blood pulsing.

‘Mum.’ Isla digs her fingernails into her palm. ‘Surely you don’t think—?’

Cars pull out behind them and overtake as Louisa turns the ignition, stalls again and hits the steering wheel with the flat of her hand. A man in a red ute shouts at them through his opened window. Louisa starts the engine and accelerates, gripping the steering wheel, rigidly upright. Isla adjusts the air conditioning on the dashboard and lifts her T-shirt away from her skin.

‘That would be a big help,’ Louisa says, her voice tight. ‘If you could take care of the party.’ She changes gear. ‘You’re so good at that sort of thing.’

Isla drags her hand over her face, fighting the tired, grimy feeling and the lingering rage. ‘Leave it to me. I love a good party.’ It’s true; she is good at bringing people together. It’s also true that she hasn’t been sober at a party since she was fifteen. She turns to the window, where the quiet suburban streets of Agnes Bay have replaced the city landscape. There is not a soul in sight. Roller blinds are drawn at the windows; doors are shut. It could be a movie set: row after row of neat, empty shells.

‘Things are still the same around here,’ Louisa says, turning onto Bay Street.

Isla looks out at the street where she grew up. The houses crouch low under a huge sky, each with a tidy lawn at the front, manicured hedges; wide passages between one building and the next. The small, identical bungalows on the ocean side of Bay Street were built in the early sixties when her parents were newlyweds and property along the coast was affordable. Across the street the houses are newer, bigger and wider, with smart fences, red brick instead of weatherboard. Some even have a second storey over a garage. But the yards at the back of the newer houses are small squares of grass, fenced off on all sides. Isla must have been three years old the first time she visited the Walkers’ house and encountered the fence that stood between their property and the people behind. She had believed until then that everyone had a beach at the end of their yard.