‘Did she ever go back to England?’

‘No.’ She took a cigarette from the pack on the table. ‘She ran off with the window cleaner when I was eleven. He was a Pom. Sorry. British, I mean.’

He leaned forward for a light. ‘He was her way of being closer to home, was he?’

She smiled. ‘Except he lived up the road in Pyrmont and drank schooners at the bar with the rest of them.’

‘Well. A man’s got to fit in.’

Mandy hadn’t thought about Mikey Benson in a long time. He’d liked Mandy a bit more than she’d wanted him to like her. Wandering hands. Her mum had noticed and said nothing. Married the dirty bastard and wondered why Mandy never visited.

‘Did your mum take you with her? When she left?’

‘God, no.’ She downed her coffee. ‘No. It was us kids she was running from.’

He visibly swallowed his shock. Disapproval too; just a hint of it. She looked away.

‘My mother had four kids before she was twenty-five. Three boys and then me.’ She heard herself defending her, as she always did. ‘She stuck with it as long as she could.’

‘I’m sure you weren’t that bad.’

‘I was the nail in the coffin.’ She had an edgy feeling from the coffee. Out in the yard the cicadas were off-key. ‘My dad never let her back in the house. He took all her things to the op shop. And he cleaned his own windows after that.’

‘I bet he did.’

There was the disapproval again. ‘None of us is perfect. I don’t blame her really.’

‘Is she still with the window cleaning bloke?’

‘She died a few years ago. Cancer.’

‘God. Sorry.’

‘It’s all right.’ She hadn’t meant to get into this. ‘The whole family’s scattered, since she went. My brothers don’t keep in touch. Last time I tried calling my dad the number had been disconnected.’

Joe sat down across the table from her and tapped his cigarette over the ashtray. ‘Can I ask you something else?’

She nodded. ‘Just so long as it’s not about your wife or my mother.’

‘You don’t have to answer. It’s just.’

She sat forward. ‘Go on.’

‘Have you done this before?’

It took her a moment to get his meaning. She shook her head. ‘Steve’s the only other man I ever went with.’

‘Right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Same here. I mean, I’ve never. Not since I met –’

‘It’s all right.’ She didn’t want him to say her name. ‘I know what you mean.’ She ran her bare foot over the lino, then spoke before she thought better of it. ‘It was never like that. With Steve.’

He looked up at her. ‘No?’

‘No.’

They smiled at each other, and the room filled with light as the sun broke through the tea trees. Mandy wondered if she could ever forget what she’d done with Joe Green on her kitchen floor.

‘You’d better get off home.’

He held his good hand out and she took it, stood up and leaned in against him. She liked the way his chin met the top of her head. The gait of him, loose and upright. She liked that he was not her husband.