Isla nods and smiles, lost for words. She thinks of her dad in the kitchen, listening to the radio: that bastard next door was up to his neck in it. Beside her, Scott fidgets uncomfortably.

‘I can fix you a time in a couple of weeks,’ the receptionist says. ‘If it’s the Connect service you need.’

‘That’s not why I’m here,’ Isla says.

‘No.’ The woman glances at the window, where Scott’s gunmetal grey Honda is visible out on the street. ‘I didn’t think so.’

‘Could you pass my details on? I’m a family friend.’ Isla takes a leaflet from a stack on the desk and writes down her name in the top corner. She adds her parents’ address on Bay Street and underlines it. ‘I’ve come from London to see him,’ she says. ‘I have to go back next week.’

The woman snatches at the leaflet and leaves through the double doors at the back of the room, letting them slam behind her. A fly circles the room, passing close to Isla’s face. She swats it and it falls silent. In the waiting area behind them, a baby screams.

‘I think we’re the only white people in this place,’ Scott says, in her ear.

‘So what?’

‘It’s a service for Aboriginal people. We just charged in like we own the joint.’

She leans against the reception desk. ‘I thought I’d catch him off guard,’ she says, weakly.

‘All he has to do is say no.’

‘I think he’ll come out,’ she says. ‘You wait.’ She watches the double doors with a childish fear in her chest. The fly sets off again, louder than before, its circuit tightened.

‘He’s with someone,’ the receptionist says, cheerfully efficient. She slaps her palms down on the desk. ‘Sorry. Who’s next?’

Scott steers Isla back through the glass doors and onto the street. He points his keyring at the Honda, unlocking it with a small, electronic bleep. ‘That was a waste of time,’ he says.

Isla slumps into the passenger seat. ‘I know. Sorry.’ She looks up at the building. The glass doors open and a man in a blue checked shirt stands behind them, his face hidden.

‘He’s doing some good work, this Steve Mallory.’ Scott fastens his seat belt and turns the ignition. ‘Doesn’t sound to me like the bogeyman you had in mind.’

‘Guilty conscience,’ she says. ‘He was the one who removed half those kids in the first place.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Dad told me.’

‘Right.’ Scott nods.

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Just because Dad said it you think it’s not true.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

She turns from him as he swings the car around. The man in the blue shirt walks out onto the footpath and watches them. He is short in the legs, broad in the chest, and Isla knows him as if thirty years had not passed, as if she were four years old and he had just walked through the door of the house on Bay Street.