‘There’s no bloody reef, and no bloody trip. There’s nothin’. And if there was, I wouldn’t go with you lot.’ Pop glared at them, then me. ‘Got it? It’s my map, and my gold.’

‘I’ll drive, cook, navigate, anything,’ Peter said. ‘And I don’t want an ounce of your gold. I just wanna come along. With my mate, Clem. Exams coming up. We gotta lotta work to do, eh, Clem?’

I dared not speak.

‘I’m very useful, Doug.’

Ernie continued smoking. He didn’t care. Someone in the back was company, even if it was the cat woman’s son. He said to him, ‘She’s got another one, hasn’t she?’

Peter didn’t want to start on cats. ‘Doug?’

Pop was fuming. ‘I don’t even wanna go,’ he said, turning, storming from the shed and going inside.

Ernie finished his smoke, put it out on the shed frame and said, ‘What’s she call it, Providence?’

Peter didn’t care. ‘Keeps it inside.’

‘Figure it’ll take her another ten years to breed a colony. By then I’ll be dead.’ He stood.

‘So?’ Peter said.

‘Don’t ask me.’

I found Providence in our garden, and headed next door to return him. Jen was sitting in the garden, tanning herself, ‘Too shy’ coming through the window. She said, ‘Whose is that?’

‘Val’s.’

‘I thought they took ’em all?’

‘Missed one.’

She slipped on her sunglasses and reclined. She’d tried Ida’s Figurama, set up in the lounge room in her old leotards, jumped about for half an hour before retiring to the fridge, and low-fat yoghurt. Tried.

I knocked and went in; down the hall of many photos.

‘In here,’ Val called.

I went in, and Wendy sat at the table, nursing tea, smiling. ‘Hey, Clem.’

‘Mrs Champness.’

Unusual. There was an interchangeability of parts in Lanark II. Things fit where they fit, depending on what was needed. But Val and Wendy were a couple of positives, giving off too similar a charge.

I handed Providence to Val and said, ‘He was in our yard.’

‘Let him go,’ she said, already fixing my tea.

‘I thought you were going to keep him inside?’

‘Why bother? Ernie knows.’

I sat down and noticed an official-looking form on the table. Wendy said, ‘I got it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The form they said I’d need to fill out. To find out … Name, address, contact, year of birth, place of birth, sex of child. And that’s about as far as we got, Clem.’

‘You gonna send it in?’

‘Oath. Val’s been helping me, haven’t you?’

Busy with tea.

‘Then there’s this bit about … circumstances, but I know what I’m gonna say.’

Val gave me my tea. ‘That’s easy enough. Mother needs her kiddy.’

Wendy said, ‘I’m gonna write about the nuns.’

‘Seems fair,’ I ventured.