But then, what is the point of one drink?

In the kitchen, Doug is standing at the table with Carol, recalling the early years living on Bay Street, back when the houses were newly built, when Agnes Bay was still being settled out of bushland and you could get all the way across Sydney by tram. Isla listens as she empties the broken glass into the bin.

‘Joe and Louisa took the last house on the coastal side,’ Doug says, gesturing out at the yard. ‘The rest of the suburb was developed a few years later. They didn’t pave the streets until 1964. I remember the bulldozers.’

Carol drains her glass of wine. ‘I had no idea you’d lived here so long.’

‘First couple to buy a house on Bay Street,’ Doug says. ‘For a few months it was just us, until the Mallories moved in.’ He trails off. ‘Lovely grub, Isla,’ he says, turning red under his sun hat.

Isla returns the dustpan to the cupboard. The kitchen is quiet. Carol clears her throat and presses her thumb against the crumbs on the cake board.

‘Did you say the Mallories?’ Isla steps closer to Doug. She has a familiar feeling, that her heart is too big for her chest. ‘Did I hear you right?’

Carol licks her thumb and shakes her head, looking at Doug for help.

‘The Mallories lived in Carol and Dave’s house before them,’ Doug says, offsetting awkwardness with volume. ‘Nice people. A policeman and his wife.’

‘They lived next door?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What were their names?’ She raises her voice. ‘I might remember them.’

‘I doubt you’d remember,’ Doug says. ‘You were only –’

‘Try me.’

Doug hitches his shorts up. ‘Steve and Mandy,’ he says. ‘The Mallories.’

Carol takes a bottle of wine from the table and tips the dregs into her glass.

‘Mandy. Isn’t that the woman who’s gone missing?’ Isla looks from Carol to Doug.

‘That’s right.’ Doug is perspiring though his shirt. ‘Her brother was asking around, looking for her. She inherited their father’s estate.’

‘No record of her death,’ Isla says. ‘I’m sure I heard that.’

‘That’s right,’ Doug says. ‘No record of her at all. She disappeared.’

‘Sounds suspicious to me.’

Doug is silent. He shrugs and blows air from his cheeks.

‘She might have been killed. Murdered.’ She gets a heady thrill from the word. ‘What do you think?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ She is high on anger, outside of herself at last. ‘I think you would, but you don’t have the guts to say it in front of me.’

‘Isla, look. I don’t want to spoil a nice afternoon.’ Doug nods towards the door. ‘Maybe it’s about time I was off.’

‘What about you, Carol? What’s it like living in the house of a woman who’s missing, presumed dead?’

Carol runs her tongue over her teeth. ‘I didn’t know her, darl.’

‘Do you think my dad might have buried her under your paving stones?’