‘You’re a really great storyteller, Basil,’ I said. And when he didn’t answer I looked over to see his green eyes staring into the fire too. I reached out my hand and took his. ‘You’re going to be an amazing actor one day. You’re going to change the world.’

Briefly he gripped my hand and said, ‘Yeah, I know, I’ve got mad skills,’ and then, still holding hands, we both closed our eyes until the crackle of the fire took all our thoughts and thinking and talking like smoke and swept it up and out of the old chimney and away to join the clouds.

38

Leonie’s car pulled up in the morning with Mum in the passenger seat. Basil and I stepped out blinking into the bright white of the morning to meet them. The minute Mum got out of the car, she folded me into a hug. She pressed her face into my neck, and then she stood back and looked at me and the others.

‘What do you say we all go get some breakfast?’ she said. ‘My shout.’

Mum unlocked the silver hire car where it was still parked by the gate and threw her bag into the back seat. Basil and I opened the back of Leonie’s car and loaded our rolled-up mats and sleeping bags into the boot.

But then, as we were standing around between the two cars, discussing where we would go and which cafe had the best coffee, the call came through.

Bette had put Mum down as one of the next of kin at the hospital in Melbourne, so her mobile number was the first they tried. She answered and we watched her face, trying to read the words she might be hearing there. She listened. Her face froze. And then she put on her ‘Cathy Krause’ professional voice. ‘Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you. Someone will come straight away. Okay. Bye.’

She hung up and leaned back against the silver car and dropped her arm, the phone still in her hand, down by her side.

‘He died,’ she said. ‘Hessel died.’

None of us could speak for a moment. And then Basil said, ‘No!’ and then louder, ‘No! Mum, what will happen to Dad?’ But Leonie didn’t answer. She had her hand over her mouth. I reached out and grabbed Basil’s arm.

‘Remember,’ I told him. ‘Remember what I said,’ but I don’t think he was hearing me, and I was so thrown into confusion myself that I couldn’t even begin to think about what would happen now. I couldn’t begin to work out how to feel about Hessel, now that he was dead, really dead, the grandpa I had only just met, who had been so lovely, and then so awful, and who now was just dead and gone.

‘They said someone has to come and pick up Bette,’ Mum said. ‘She’s there on her own.’

‘I can go,’ said Leonie, without hesitation, and then, after pausing, she said, ‘Although, I kind of wanted to stay close for Danny . . .’