He pushed the bedroom door open and stood over her. ‘I know you’re not asleep,’ he said.

She didn’t respond. He reached down and pulled the covers away from her body. She opened her eyes then and stared back at him. ‘Leave me alone, Joe.’

He held the headboard and leaned over her, his face close to hers. ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’ No reply. ‘Do you?’

She rolled onto her back and pushed him, hitting his shoulders with the flats of her hands. ‘Go and sleep on the couch.’

He grabbed her by the wrists. She shouted and struggled and he knew he would regret this, but it was too late and he had already gone too far. This rage between them, it was stronger than him. ‘I’ve tried to make you happy,’ he said. ‘You’re never happy, are you?’

She must have positioned her feet against his chest. The last thing he saw, before he flew backwards, was the look of fear in her face. She kicked him with all her strength and he landed flat on his back. He was out cold before his head hit the floor.

‘Daddy?’

He didn’t see Isla at the door, scared by the noise. He didn’t hear her voice.

‘Isla,’ Louisa said. ‘Did you wake up, darling?’

Isla looked up at her mother on the bed. She had seen her dad fly backwards. The force of the kick. Its energy was locked inside her, tightly.

‘It’s all right,’ Louisa said, joining Isla at his side.

‘Is he dead?’

‘No!’

‘Is he going to wake up?’ Isla’s voice was high-pitched, close to a scream.

Louisa looked guilty and afraid, an expression Isla hadn’t seen before, that she would try to forget. Isla stifled a wail. Louisa knelt down and slapped at Joe’s face.

9

Sydney, 1967

Isla stood on the verandah to eat her toast. It was shady out there and the street was quiet. The cement mixer was turning in the empty lot near the Walkers’ place, next to a pile of bricks and sand which was going to be a new house. Mr Walker had already left in his car and Andrea was out on her bike, cycling up and down the street, ringing her bell each time she passed and lifting her arm to wave in that show-off way she had. She’d recently told Isla she was getting a kitten on her next birthday, when she turned ten. Isla had been trying ever since to be nicer to Andrea, who said she was too big to be Isla’s friend, and who had so far refused to let Isla have a ride of her bike. Isla figured if she didn’t get to hold the kitten she would give up being nice to her. There were a few months to go till Andrea’s birthday and already she was wondering if she could keep it up.

She ate her toast and watched the windows opening in the houses across the street; curtains being pulled back. Behind her, through the open front door, she could hear Daddy getting ready for work. Finding his wallet, his cigarettes; the papers for his briefcase. He was cranky because Mummy was not talking to him. She’d been ignoring him over the weekend. They hadn’t made up since the bad thing that happened on Friday night, after Mummy went to Mandy’s. Isla did not like thinking about the bad thing: Daddy on the floor, not asleep and not dead but something else. She’d found him asleep on the couch the next morning, his body cramped like a toy in a box, his head at the wrong angle.