‘Did you try?’

‘I did,’ he says. ‘It didn’t go anywhere. I should have pushed it harder, in hindsight.’

Isla slides her omelette onto a plate and sits down. Steve Mallory is a throb behind her eyes, threatening to surface. She can see the clean, orderly rooms that he lived in next door. The smell of ironing and carbolic soap. Mandy standing at the window, watching him park his truck, her shoulders tense.

She picks up her fork. ‘So nobody did anything. You let it go on right under your noses, for years.’

‘Steve was a copper, love. He was on the right side of the law.’

‘All those families lost their kids.’

He is staring intently at his cigarette. ‘I didn’t know how bad it was at the time.’

‘What did Mandy think of it?’

‘I don’t know.’ He turns from her and looks out at the yard. ‘If she talked about it I don’t remember. Long time ago.’

Isla pushes her plate aside and stands beside him at the back door. The sun has risen over the tips of the tea trees, brightening the grass.

‘How can someone be missing for thirty years and no one notice?’

‘We thought she’d moved away,’ he says, after a pause. ‘Her and Steve. They sold the house and moved away, down to Victoria, as I recall. Didn’t see any reason to question it.’

She can’t catch his eye. ‘Wouldn’t that mean Steve was the last one to see her?’

‘I’d have thought so.’

‘Why do the police think it was you, then?’

He is perfectly still beside her, holding smoke in his mouth. ‘I guess Steve has a different take on it,’ he says, eventually. He puts his cigarette out. The radio is playing music now, something upbeat, and he crosses the room to turn it off.

‘Why did nobody report her missing?’ Isla stands in the door frame with the sun at her back. ‘What about Steve? He was a cop. Why didn’t he organise a search?’

‘I don’t know, love. You’d need to ask Steve that question.’

‘What about her family?’

‘I think she’d lost touch with them.’

‘Her dad left her his estate. He must have loved her.’

‘I’m sure he did.’ Joe’s hands tremble as he pours more coffee from the jug. ‘Families are complicated, Isla.’

‘That’s true.’

Isla turns away so she doesn’t have to watch him mop up the spilled coffee from the counter. The sun has gone in. The wind lifts the bunting around the trestle table.

‘You must be counting the days till you can get out of here.’

‘No.’ She turns back to face him. ‘I’m glad I’m here, Dad.’

‘I’ll be all right, you know.’ He rubs at a spot on his singlet where he has dripped coffee. ‘This will all blow over.’

He finds his cigarettes and puts them in his pocket. Isla hears him move around the house, from the bathroom to the bedroom, and then the room that was Scott’s when he lived at home. Her dad keeps his vodka in there; she found it on her second morning, looking for Scott’s CDs. Three large bottles at the back of a filing cabinet. There will be more, dotted around the house. It’s always been this way, but she is stupidly surprised at how it’s taken its toll on him. She’s only just cottoned on that this is why he looks unwell, why he trembles and stumbles; why he no longer drives the car. Why he seems defeated.