She misses him like he’d just left.

The clock beside the bed shows it’s still early, not quite eleven. She changes into a dry T-shirt. She needs water and fresh air, her new clean-living staples. A light is on in the lounge room and the door is ajar, the television turned down low: British accents, canned laughter.

Isla makes for the kitchen, treading lightly. She stops, hearing her mother’s voice.

‘Get rid of it, then,’ Louisa says. ‘If it means nothing.’

Her dad’s reply is inaudible. A grunt. A shifting of weight on the couch.

‘Why not, Joe? Why keep something like that?’

‘Will you shut up about it?’

‘Can’t you see how it would look?’

‘Can’t you shut up for God’s sake? What do I have to do to make you drop it?’

Isla pulls her bedroom door shut with deliberate force. Her parents fall quiet. She waits in the hallway, listening, aware they know she’s there. If there’s a scuffle or a cry she’ll go in, if there isn’t she’ll go back to bed and listen out for noises, sleeping lightly, scared for them both. How many times has she done this? Her dad says something and she tenses, ready to go in and hold him by the arms, stand between them, make them stop. She will scream if she has to. She will prise them apart. She remembers beating her fists against her father’s back, the solidity of him. Her mother crying. His remorse, his regret and the calm it brought with it. Scott crying.

It’s not one memory. She knows there must be more, packaged inside. Like boxes in boxes in boxes.

‘It’s getting late,’ her dad says, and his voice is warm, reasonable.

‘I’m going to read a while,’ Louisa says. ‘Don’t wait for me.’

Isla turns back down the hall towards the kitchen. Her dad glances up at her as he pushes open the bathroom door, pulls the cord for the light. A potent stare, brief but malign. She steps away from him, into the dark of the kitchen.

20

Sydney, 1967

The heat showed no sign of breaking. Mandy stood at the top of the coastal path and looked out to the horizon. The sky was a rich blue. The ocean was still; just the odd fleck of foam on its surface, a small fringe of white at the water’s edge. This weather would hold a while yet, she thought. Weeks of this ahead of us. Months, even.

Isla would have wanted to swim today. She’d have taken her snorkel out to look at the fish. Might have collected some shells too, in her bucket; had a poke around in the rock pools to see what she could find among the coral and seaweed. Always in hope of an octopus, that girl. Or a shark. Down on the beach, a small boy and his mum were kicking around a slightly deflated beach ball. An older man came striding out of the water, shaking himself off like a dog: Mr Harper from the chemist on Bridge Street, it looked like, taking his regular lunch-hour swim. A few older kids were climbing around on the flat boulders at the edge of the bay, jumping in and out of the shallow pools. They were laughing but she could barely hear them from up here. She hadn’t been down to the beach at all in the fortnight since Isla left. Hadn’t felt like it. It did look good down there, but.