‘See you, then,’ he said, carrying Fi-Fi home.

I’d never trained my spyglass on the Sharpes. But I’d started a file on them.

3/v/82 Ernie and Val Doonican. Walk Tall. He has the lot. Twenty or more records. He showed me, asked if I’d like to listen, or borrow one. Now I can hear them of a night from my window.

I walked the kilometre or so along North East Road: Toyotas, the side entrance to the school, the deli (soft porn and Sterling 25s), Savings Bank, and chicken shop. Camelot Motors, with its yard full of clapped-out Datsuns. Then Holden Hill Music. ‘D-string, please.’

And more of the same as I walked home: four lanes of traffic, arteries pulsing with Sunny four-doors and King Cab utilities. The sky cracked and flashed and it rained and I just walked. Always walked. Light; heavy, a downpour that laid itself thick and syrupy on the hot footpath and road. Steaming under my feet.

12/iii/79 Pop reckons Ernie’s gone mad. He can’t handle the heat. Reckons he saw him running in his undies down Dragon Street. Mental instability? Ida was chasing him, calling for him to come home. But it doesn’t sound like Ernie.

It got heavier. I could feel it on my arms, through my T-shirt and on my legs. I was saturated, but it didn’t matter. Wet sneakers, spongy with every step.

I waited in the kitchen as Mum dissected the cakes, laid them in Tupperware and sprinkled them with cinnamon. ‘Pre-reading,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Pardon. Pre-reading: biology, cells, animal groups—’

‘I know, but what is it, exactly, I should be doing?’

‘Gwen’s son, Ted, he—’

‘Christ.’

‘Pardon?’

She indicated the crucifix above the door, but it was only there for bad language. ‘She says he’s been lookin’ over his books for weeks.’

‘He’s an idiot.’

‘He’s trying.’

‘He failed every test.’

‘He’s trying.’ And she glanced at Jesus, obviously more pleased with Ted. She sealed one of the containers. ‘Take that in to Val, will you?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘And then help Pop. He’s having problems.’

‘He took the whole thing apart.’

‘Well, help him put it back together.’

Mum had reached a crisis point. Long ago, she’d decided all men were unreliable. There was Dad, of course, scissored from the pages of family history, but (as she pointed out) you didn’t have to look far to see who was running the world. Ida Sharpe, tipping Ernie’s whiskey down the sink; Val, with one in a wheelchair and the other too lazy to scratch his arse; Anne Burrell, with a pair of little crims and a light-fingered husband; even Wendy Champness. See, she’d say, it’s us women holding the world together. The world being Lanark Avenue. What about Hester Glasson? I’d ask. Well, who knows about her? But I’m sure if you could see over that fence you’d find her cutting and sewing while he counted the money.