He’d told me this a few times, but I suppose he’d forgotten that too. ‘If I forget things, you can remind me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Don’t make a big fuss but, you know, tell me where I put things.’

His wedding ring, in the nail jar. I’d only found it by accident.

‘Everyone forgets stuff,’ I said.

He knew he could trust me. As we continued up Holden Hill he said, ‘You can help me out with … remembering things?’

‘Course I will, Pop.’

‘But you gotta get back to school.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Keep the grey cells workin’, eh?’

I parked at Repco, locked the door (that you could open without a key) and we went in. The smell of fresh rubber, everything old, worn or cracked resurrected in a plastic wrapper. A nursery of gasket seals and rims. Although Pop didn’t see it this way. He picked up a fan belt and said, ‘Can’t see how they can charge six dollars for a strip of rubber.’

‘They charge what people’ll pay.’

‘Well, then people are stupid.’

He wasn’t a Repco man. He knew people in the trade and could get everything at cost. But not today. It was too far to drive to Barron for a few plugs and leads. ‘Suppose we’re just gonna have to pay it.’

Jacks with none of the paint scratched off; lengths of carpet to put on your dash; artificial lemons to hang from your rear-view; manuals, hundreds of them; but again, according to Pop, you wouldn’t buy them here.

‘Carn.’ He approached the counter and deposited his bits and pieces. A middle-aged man smiled and said, ‘How are you, Doug?’

‘Good. You?’

The man sorted the items. I suppose he wanted to say, Jack, my name’s Jack, but he couldn’t.

Pop noticed his badge. ‘Just these few, Jack.’

Jack had his shirt half-open and there was a cauliflower chest with a gold chain, and you could see his big nipples through his Repco shirt. ‘Clem, isn’t it?’ he asked me.

‘Yes.’

‘You still driving that 120Y?’

Pop piped in. ‘Goes like a charm, eh, Clem?’

‘It does, Pop.’

‘Drive it into the ground, I reckon.’

Then Jack said, ‘How’s Fay?’

Pop knew what he didn’t know. ‘She hates the heat.’ An attempt to disguise whatever it was that connected Jack to Fay. ‘Always complaining, isn’t she, Clem?’ As he looked at me, half-desperate.

I smiled at Jack. ‘Does Mum still see Raelene?’

‘Not so much.’ He rang up the items and started placing them in a bag.

I could see the look on Pop’s face. Fay, his daughter, was some how connected to Raelene. But who was she? Jack’s wife? His daughter? Or did she work here?

Jack pushed the bag across the counter and waited. ‘Let’s call it twenty-five dollars.’