He was always drunk by nine.

The towel stank. He threw it to the ground and walked naked into the lounge room; stood on the carpet, dripping. He’d shrunk all his shirts in the washing machine the day before and wasn’t about to try it again. The machine must be faulty, or else he didn’t have the setting right. He’d never used it before. He suspected Mandy might know how it worked, but the thought of asking her made the sweat prickle in his hair. It was humiliating, this whole situation. He’d rather drip dry naked than let Mandy come round and see his smalls on the floor and his whisky tumblers in the sink.

He’d have to be careful with Mandy. She was taking the edge off, helping him through a dark time, nothing more. She wasn’t even his type. Maybe that was the attraction. She was an antidote to Louisa: fair-haired, curvy, knowing. She’d been there at the edge of his vision for years, of course she had, and he’d never expected to do more than wonder about her. Knowing she was next door, catching sight of her sometimes, was distracting, a bit of an itch. But she was married. And life was complicated enough.

The stink in the kitchen was horrible. Stale smoke and something rotting somewhere, a blocked drain maybe. He opened the back door and straight away heard a baby crying, loud and close. It still got to him, that sound. Hard to ignore it when a baby was crying like that, the way Isla used to when she was tiny.

Christ. He shut the door and lit a cigarette, unsteady with the lighter, sending it black down the side. He turned the radio on. Another battalion to Vietnam before the end of the year. He reached for the dial, turned it quickly, looking for something to calm his head. He found another news channel; Harold Holt was saying he wanted to drop the word ‘British’ from Australian passports. About time. He found himself half listening. His mind wandered to Mandy on the beach, walking into the water with all her clothes on, wading deeper with her arms up high.

In the bedroom he pulled yesterday’s clothes onto his damp skin and tugged the covers over the sheets. Louisa’s clothes were slung over the chair on her side of the bed. The book she’d been reading was still there where she’d left it, pages splayed open against the bedside table, spine up. The Bell Jar. He picked it up, scanned a few lines and put it down again, losing her place. His head throbbed. He picked the book up again, put it in the drawer and slammed it shut. He lifted her clothes from the chair, opened the wardrobe and threw them into the cluttered space at the bottom where she kept her shoes. The door wouldn’t shut so he knelt down and pushed her clothes further back, aware of her blouses and dresses hanging above him, grazing the back of his head. He leaned against the wardrobe until it closed. He was sweating. His shirt was drenched.