Basil was frowning a lot. Eventually he sat back, and breathed hard out of his nose and shook his head. He seemed angry. And then he stood abruptly. ‘Okay. Come on. There’s something else I need to show you. And then we need to talk.’ And he disappeared down the stairs.

Back at the bike he said, ‘Are you ready? We’re gonna do this again, and if you could bloody well sit still this time . . .’ I gave him a look. ‘What?’ he said. ‘How else were you planning on getting home?’

‘Public transport?’

‘Don’t be dull. Come on, it’s all downhill from here. If we go south it’s still on the way home, kind of, and we’ll miss the big hill. It’s totally worth your while. We’ll bunch up my jumper, you can sit on that.’ He opened his hands and his smile towards me. ‘And you had so much fun last time, remember?’ I rolled my eyes at him, but I climbed on and fed my arms around his midriff and he kicked off.

We sailed together down the hill, the eucalyptus smell rising with the late afternoon air, until we hit the town again and it was replaced by the aromas of dust and stone and concrete and oil. Basil got his legs going hard on the pedals, and the faces, all the white faces of the town whooshed and blurred past, and then receded behind us as we passed through to the other side where, instead of sticking to the highway that would take us over the forested hill between here and home, Basil turned onto a road that followed the line of a creek down to the flat. The clouds in the too-near sky scudded low over our heads as Basil cycled the straight roads out of town, cycled and cycled like someone possessed, like he was bent on escape. And then, after we passed the last few sad houses crumbling on the outskirts of town, we were out again in the open paddocks of the flat plateau. Basil seemed to relax. He set up an upright and effortless rhythm, riding further and further south and, by my calculations, well out of our way and away from Bromley.

‘Where are we going?’ I said.

‘Can’t talk,’ he said. ‘Pedalling.’

‘Do you need me to drive for a bit?’

‘Shh.’

The sun seemed to be going down quickly now – a combination of winter daylight hours and life on a high plateau where the sky had a shorter course for the sun to travel. ‘Shouldn’t we be heading home?’ Basil just shook his head and pedalled on. ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Basil!’

He ignored me and kept pedalling. I wiggled backwards and hop-skipped off the back of the bike, which shot forward suddenly with the reduction of weight, and as I ran myself to a stop, Basil skidded and then dropped the bike between his legs and leapt out of the way of its tumble.