‘Where d’you get this stuff, Isla?’

‘From the telly,’ she said, sitting back down beside him. ‘Mandy lets me watch her programmes with her when it’s raining.’

‘Does she now?’ He smoothed her hair, which was stiff with seawater, and full of sand.

‘Why don’t you talk funny?’ She yawned. ‘Daddy?’

Because I’ve lived here six years, he thought, and I made the effort to fit in. And I never had a plum in my mouth to start with.

‘I don’t know, Isla,’ he said. ‘I think it must be bedtime.’

‘You said I could watch the film till Mummy got home.’

He laughed and she laughed back, pleased with herself. ‘Did I say that?’ He wrestled her a little bit, going easy so he didn’t make her cry. ‘You look sleepy,’ he said, and she didn’t deny it. ‘Why don’t I put you to bed?’

‘I can sleep here with you.’ She lay down with her head in his lap and pressed her face into his shirt.

‘As long as you do sleep,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you chatting to me all night, you hear?’

‘I won’t.’

He reached for his drink.

‘What’s a candelabra, Daddy?’

‘I’ll give you a candelabra if you don’t go to sleep.’

She started laughing again. He was useless at this stuff. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Don’t play me up, love.’

He managed a sip of whisky while she stretched out and got herself comfortable. After a minute she went still and he tried to watch the film. He’d lost the thread of it a while back, but it was helping to numb his brain after working all day. That and the whisky. He was leaning on the grog a bit heavy, these past few weeks. He’d expected the promotion to be hard going, but there were days lately when he felt like he was in over his head. Nobody knew what they were doing and they were looking to him for decisions. Sometimes he wondered if he should have stayed where he was, supervising the site and the men, taking his tea breaks with the rest of them and knocking off early on a Friday. They’d all changed towards him the minute he’d turned up in a suit and tie. He’d expected it, of course, but it didn’t make it any easier when they headed off to the bar without him, leaving him up to his neck in plans and drawings and problems. More problems than he could have imagined. Every day the newspapers were asking why Sydney needed an Opera House on Bennelong Point, and he was halfway inclined to think they were right.

But he’d decided to buy the Holden. The latest model. They had more than enough in the bank. It was a lot of money, and they’d have to step up the savings plan afterwards, but he needed something to make it all worthwhile, to balance out the long days and the stress. The thought of the car was keeping him going when he was dead on his feet at the end of the day. They’d be able to get out of town at weekends, see the places they’d read about when they were planning to move out here. Lou had liked the look of those spots up the coast – Byron Bay, Noosa – but they’d never got there. He wanted to take her out of Sydney, show her this country, make her see it the way he did.