The Jeep was too heavy for me. The piece of wood I tried to use as a lever broke. Finally, I found an iron pipe, managed to lever up the Jeep, and Irene slid a stone underneath. The rest was easy, even if I couldn’t remember the last time I had changed a tyre.

On the way, I asked Irene about the boy who had squatted on the balcony in the night. Kari used to live with her and came from time to time to make sure everything was okay. She could tell that I wanted to know more.

“I used to take in children – abandoned kids, strays, drug addicts, alcoholics. Not officially, not through social services or child services, I’m not here officially myself, but word got around among the children. Some came for a few days or weeks, to rest awhile, some stayed for a year or two. A couple of them managed to get back into school or into work. Others returned in a worse state than when they’d left. If they were still under eighteen, I took them back in. No one over eighteen, that was the iron rule.”

“How many children did you have?”

“The house has seven rooms, and there was a child in each, occasionally two. I lived downstairs.”

“What did you all live on?”

“We had chickens and goats, grew all sorts of produce, the farms helped us, and sometimes the children brought stuff they had stolen. They learned that you have to share and that you can’t steal for yourself, only for the group.”

It was a bumpy conversation. Irene drove quickly and confidently, steering the Jeep steadily over every bump in the road, through washed-out riverbeds and dried-out ponds, sometimes straight through the underbrush; the trail kept disappearing and appearing again. I was thrown up, and from side to side; I wedged my foot against the chassis and held fast to the seat, wishing the Jeep had a roof or at least a door that closed. But it was open, an old Jeep straight from a war film.

“Where did you get the Jeep?”

She laughed. “Stolen. In the beginning we had to lug everything around. One day Arunta and Arthur turned up with the Jeep. A collector had had it in his garage. They had been with me a year and had turned eighteen, and knew they couldn’t stay. But they wanted to make life easier for the rest of us.” She laughed again. “I don’t think much of collecting. Do you?”