Mandy threw her hands in the air. ‘Do you think I like being wrapped up in your business? Do you think I like being the one to tell you where your wife and daughter are? I wish I’d never tried to help her.’ She turned on her heel, back towards the chair where she’d left her flowers. She picked them up, held them in her arms: purple, with bright yellow stamens.

‘Mandy.’ He called out to her as she reached the paving stones. ‘Mandy, I’m sorry. I just. I can’t make sense of this.’

She looked down at the flowers, which were wilting in her arms. ‘Drop by if you need to talk, Joe. Any time.’

He crossed the grass and fell into the house, sat down at the kitchen table, beside the stale toast and the coffee and the note. Pink rose petals were pressed into the soles of his shoes; he’d trodden them through the house. Louisa’s beloved roses. He pulled a shoe off and threw it with all his strength across the room.

13

Sydney, 1967

Mandy stubbed her cigarette out and tipped the butt into the bin. Cigarettes were all she could think about since she’d told Steve she was going to pack them in. It would have been easier to put up with him complaining. She pushed the packet back under the serviettes in the drawer and opened the back door to let the smoke out. Another thing to lie about, was all it was.

The front door opened. Steve was singing something to himself, a nameless song that might have begun this morning as something he heard on the radio and had ended up here, hours later, with a whole new set of words and the tune pretty much gone. It was a good sign, but. He’d pulled himself together. She knew where she was with this version of her husband: upbeat, noisy, tone deaf. Long may it last.

She pulled the back door open and shut a few times to let out the last of the smoke.

‘There you are, darl.’ He dropped his lunchbox and flask on the kitchen table. ‘What you cooking?’

‘Made a stew. You hungry?’

‘Bloody starved.’ He opened the fridge and looked inside, shut it again and lifted the lid on the stew. ‘Is that ready?’

She slapped him on the arm. ‘Get out of there.’

‘Just seen Joe out the front.’ He opened the fridge and took out a beer. ‘Poor bastard. Didn’t know what to say.’

‘Nothing you can say, is there?’

Mandy drank the last of the gin from her glass. She had a guilty feeling over Joe; it had been there all afternoon. She kept recalling the sight of him when she’d told him where they were.

‘Still can’t believe it, can you?’ Steve sat down at the table and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Lovely girl like that walking out without a word. I’d never have thought Louisa would do that.’ He let his beer rest against the sloping shelf of his stomach. ‘He says you told him she’d gone back to England.’