Through the Cracks
Author: Honey Brown
Date: 2014-06-15 09:32:50+00:00
Keywords: Crime; Mystery; Thriller; Australia; Mystery Thriller
Description: A leafy street. A quiet neighbour. The darkest of crimes. Adam Vander has grown tall enough and strong enough to escape his abusive and controlling father. Emerging from behind the locked door of their rambling suburban home, Adam steps into a world he's been kept isolated from. In the days that follow, with the charismatic and streetwise Billy as his guide, Adam begins to experience all that he's missed out on. As the bond between the boys grows, questions begin to surface. Who is Adam really? Why did his father keep him so hidden? Was it just luck that Billy found him, or an unsettling kind
Publisher: Penguin Books

Contents

SKY, THE SUN, A RIVER

MIDDLE GROUND

TIGER

A RIVER

NATHAN

About the Author

Honey Brown lives in country Victoria with her husband and two children. She is the author of four previous novels: The Good Daughter, After the Darkness, Red Queen and Dark Horse. Red Queen was published to critical acclaim in 2009 and won an Aurealis Award, and The Good Daughter was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award in 2011. After the Darkness was selected for the Women’s Weekly Great Read and for Get Reading 2012’s 50 Books You Can’t Put Down campaign.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

Red Queen

The Good Daughter

After the Darkness

Dark Horse

Within the space of one week Adam grew strong enough to stop him. Somewhere in those seven days a tipping point was reached. All his life he had been smaller, shorter, weighed less. Now he was taller, older, he weighed more. He stood eye to eye with his father. Adam held up his hand, elbow bent, fingers ready to shield his face.

‘Don’t touch me.’

‘What did you say to me?’

Adam straightened his elbow and shoved his father in the chest.

The push, the hits that followed it, the kicks, how strange it must have felt to his father, how strange it must have looked from his father’s perspective, as though the years were turning around, facing him, all the moves the same, copied. Adam’s knuckles stung with each connection, his shins were on fire from the bony impacts. He shouted as fiercely as he fought. His voice rose above the fighting. He saw in his father’s eyes how his screams were hurting him more than the kicks and punches – his father was cowering from the sound, curled up on the carpet, arms covering his head.

Adam got on top of his father, no longer hitting, no need.

‘Don’t,’ he bawled into his father’s ear, ‘touch me.’

He jammed his father’s face into the carpet, climbed off and walked out through the open door. He was dressed in underpants. His hair hung in his eyes and stuck in long light-brown strands to the back of his neck and cheeks. His mouth was open, pulling in each breath. He closed the door. Slid the bolt.

Adam had locked his father in the backroom.

The fit of rage had made him sweat. The floor pitched beneath him. Salty tears and mucus rested on his top lip. He walked down the long hallway. Overhead the trail of globes was bright. The house had more unused rooms than used ones. Doors to the empty rooms were shut. Adam made his way into the front part of the house. The tiled floor was cool on his feet. He walked through the games room, past the billiards table with the tasselled lightshade above it. Four pool cues were scattered about, on armchairs and leaning on different things, not put away. The coloured balls were bulging in the table’s pockets. Behind the thick green curtains was the decking, leading out to the swimming pool. Adam could hear the pool filter running. He could hear night sounds. A breeze blew in through the open gap in the sliding door; it made the curtains swell.

Monty and Jerry scurried in, bursting from behind the curtain, barking at the sight of Adam, the little dogs running around his feet. Adam walked past the bar, its dusty shelf bare except for a stack of plastic tumblers. A bottle of spirits was on the bench, still in its brown paper bag. Adam checked down his arms and chest and legs. There was no blood on him. It hadn’t been that kind of fight. Bruises and grazes were all he had. He went through the archway into the lived-in section of the house. The dogs ran ahead.

Rooms looked different without his father in them. The lounge room seemed more cramped. The couch sagged lower. The TV looked smaller, and the cabinet it sat on wasn’t anything so special – glass doors, glass shelves, glass ornaments. Monty and Jerry jumped on the couch and ran along it; they hopped down again and darted for their beds underneath the coffee table. They sat quivering on their cushions. Dogs didn’t need to see things to know they had happened. Wet dark worry shone in their eyes.

The dirty plates from dinner were on the kitchen bench. In the sink were the greasy frying pan and a vegetable pot. An open packet of Savoy biscuits lay on the table. Tied around one table leg was a short length of rope. Adam went to the fridge. In the time it had taken him to walk from the backroom to the front rooms, he’d caught his breath. He was shaking less. He wiped his top lip dry. Adam drank from the carton of milk. He stopped and listened, drank again.

Armed with a carving knife from the cutlery drawer, Adam sank down against the kitchen cupboards. He held the blade, pointing out, between his legs. When he felt up to it, less like crying, he’d go in search of his father’s handgun.

The gun wasn’t in the bedside table. It wasn’t under the cushions on the couch, not in any of the clothes drawers, or under the bed, pillows or mattress, or in the bathroom cabinet. It wasn’t stashed anywhere in the hall cupboard.

Adam went back to his father’s bedroom. He took pants and a shirt from the bottom drawer, squashed and crinkled items that smelled unused and forgotten. Although too big around Adam’s waist and baggy on his body, the clothes were at least long enough. They fitted him better than anything in his own bedroom did. He found some old socks. Adam sniffed everything before he put it on, smelling carefully – not one sniff but many, the way Monty and Jerry sniffed at things. The dogs watched him do this, their ears pricked and their heads tipped. Adam didn’t care if he was acting like a dog. He’d rather that than be covered in his father’s smell.

He turned on all the lights and switched on all the lamps. He’d put on brown trousers, white socks and a short-sleeved brown checked shirt. He pushed his hair back from his face. The thought of his father breaking open the backroom door troubled him. It would come down to whether or not his father chose to do that. It would come down to the sort of fear his father felt. If he felt any fear at all.

Holding the carving knife, Adam crouched in the hallway, between the bedrooms and the lounge room. He cleared his mind, was without thoughts for a moment. There were times when it got too hard to think. He stared at the wall and through it, past it. As he focused again it was as though the wall was closer, right in front of his nose; the flower pattern on the wallpaper had merged and became one oatmeal colour, not different shades of it. He blinked and the wall went back to normal, back to where it should be. The pattern was clear again. Adam spoke beneath his breath, words he sometimes said.

‘Sky, the sun, a river.’

A river, in particular, was a good thing to say, it took him away, like a river would. He returned to the kitchen and ate a Savoy biscuit. The knife felt too big in his hand. He put it back and sorted through the drawer, found a bottle opener. One end had a corkscrew and the other end a small blade; they folded away into the handle. He slipped the bottle opener into his pocket.

Monty and Jerry were standing over by the doorway, their bodies stiff and their ears erect. Adam listened too. He heard nothing. He could guess. The dogs were listening to his father’s calls and shouts, the thuds as he banged on the backroom door. It had been about that long. Time enough for new feelings to take over. Adam watched the dogs. Monty whined and turned in a circle, before freezing and listening again.

‘Go to bed.’

They scurried off into the lounge room.

Adam went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth.

Hey Hey It’s Saturday was on TV that night. Ossie Ostrich was wearing a wig and pretending to be a woman. Adam sat on the footstool and watched. Monty and Jerry were curled on their beds. They’d jump up and warn Adam if his father was coming. Adam, anyway, kept glancing behind him at the doorway. When the show was over, he turned the TV off and put the footstool on its side and checked that the gun wasn’t hidden underneath in the loose hessian lining. He pushed down on the top cushioned part, in case the gun was somehow stored inside the foam.

Room to room – lounge room first, kitchen second – Adam searched. It was a bigger job than he’d imagined. It’d be quicker if he weren’t so hung-up on putting everything back the way he found it. His hands were aching, his knuckles were swollen and his fingers hard to use. He had shooting pains in his head. It felt as though the shouting had shredded his throat. Crying had made his eyes puffy and his nose was clogged and thick. His joints were sore. His muscles were weak. He wondered if the fighting had somehow given him a cold.

Cross-legged on the kitchen floor, plastic containers in a stack beside him, Adam shut his eyes. One of the dogs was yelping in its sleep. Adam lay back on the lino and looked up at the kitchen light. Uncomfortable, under the glare of the globe, he thought he’d sleep lightly and would wake quickly. The dogs would bark if his father was coming. Adam could rest a moment.

When he woke it was morning. The rooster was crowing. Sun was coming in through the lace on the kitchen window, dappled on Adam’s chest. He struggled up, his lower back sore, his body stiff from the strange sleeping position. His legs were difficult to straighten. The stack of plastic containers was untouched. Lights remained on.

Monty and Jerry weren’t in the lounge room. Adam felt his pocket for the bottle opener. He switched off the lights and lamps. The kitchen window was the only one without an outside awning. All the other rooms were dim no matter what time of day it was.

The dogs had let themselves out through the open door in the billiards room. Adam pulled the sliding door curtain back and turned to see the room flooded with real light. The ceiling was yellowed and smoke stained. Tassels on the lamp were grey. There was a single cigarette lying on the tiles under the billiard table. He slid the glass door open and walked out onto the decking. Glare made the pool surface painful to look at. Jerry was over by the fence, sniffing and marking his spots. Monty was digging under the tin down by the woodshed, wagging her tail, as though she’d found something. The rumble of the freeway was low and distant. No sounds of cars in the street. From the decking, it was possible to see over the high boundary fence. Up on tiptoe, Adam could see some of the yards further down the street. This grassy, overgrown piece of land was twice, three times the size of those yards. Other people’s lawns were mowed short. They had trimmed and tidy gardens. Their gutters weren’t weed-filled. His father’s house wasn’t like the houses on TV either, inside or out. TV houses didn’t seem to have so many rooms and such long sections to their homes. Adam’s father’s fence was made of tall sheets of tin, running right the way around the block, enclosing the property, only stopping for the gates, which were high, made of timber, and padlocked.

Adam squeezed each knuckle on his right hand. Some knuckles were tender. The middle one was especially painful. It hurt to flex his wrist. Jerry trotted through a path in the long grass on his way back to the deck. Adam went down the steps and peed on a dry patch of dirt. Jerry hung around, and then peed where Adam had.

Adam’s father bred chickens. They were large with tawny-coloured feathers. A friendly breed, compared to some of the other breeds Adam had helped him look after. One of Adam’s jobs was to clean the cages. The bank of cages was long and high, down the back of the yard. Adam went along, opening up the cages. When Monty followed he told her to go away. He pointed to where Jerry was sitting on the decking. She tucked her tail under and left.

Inside their cages the chickens could barely stretch their wings, and when they did their wing tips poked through the mesh. They never got to roam or scratch and peck. They were undercover, dry, clean, well fed, watered, but locked in. They got an hour of morning sun, if it shone, when it angled in through the cage doors, but then the sheds blocked any chance of further light. The chickens never felt the rain, never got to eat insects or worms. Their feet never touched the ground. With all the cages open, Adam stepped back. The rooster had always been a calm, trusting bird. He stuck his head out first. The hens were clucking nervously at the back of their individual pens. Adam opened the feed bin and sprinkled some grain on the ground. The birds didn’t understand. The rooster clung sideways within his open door. Flapped his wings. He was bigger than the hens. It was probably the first time his wings had opened full span. He flew down to the ground, gracefully and easily, as though it was something he did every day, but no sooner had he landed than he flapped back up, not as graceful on the return, crashing into his cage door, almost falling, panicking, feathers flying, scratching and scrambling onto his perch, and frightening the hens.

The birds settled but continued to sit in their cages. The rooster, spooked now, looked as though he wouldn’t try flying down again for a while. It took all Adam’s willpower not to take each bird and place it on the ground, close the cages so they couldn’t go back in. That would be for Adam, though, not for the birds. He sat down in the grass to wait.

Stupid birds. They didn’t know to go, too dumb to know the things they were meant to do and what they were meant to be. But Adam also understood the chickens’ fear of leaving. He just wished they’d take quickly and easily to their freedom. How long would it take them to realise they could spend all day in the sun? Compared to the cages, the yard would feel like the whole world to them. The block had trees and bushes, it had things to get under, go around, climb over, flap down from, nest in, perch on.

Shade fell over their cages but the chickens stayed inside. Monty and Jerry were on the decking. They’d turned to sit facing the long back section of the house. They were listening again. There was nothing loud enough for human ears to detect. Unlike the rest of the weatherboard house, the backroom was double brick. It was windowless. Ivy was growing over it. Plant cover helped keep the sounds in.

Monty and Jerry raced ahead down the hallway. Their barks rang out once they arrived at the backroom door. Adam was carrying a plate of toast.

‘Are you there?’ his father was calling.

His voice was strained. He sounded old. Monty and Jerry yipped and scratched at the gap along the bottom of the door. They’d never behaved like that when it had been Adam on the other side. Or if they had, Adam hadn’t noticed.

‘Adam? Are you there?’

To Adam’s right was an old verandah. It had been built in, turned into a storage room. There was nothing stored in there. It was a dusty, spidery, empty space. It had slatted glass windows. Ivy had begun to creep over the windows and the roots had wriggled between the gaps and cracked some of the glass. Adam went into the verandah and called the dogs. They were disobedient with Adam’s father so close. Adam had to growl and demand that they come. Monty came first. Jerry followed. Hanging on a hook on the wall was a metre-long length of garden hose. The hose had been packed with sand and the ends sealed over with gaffer tape. A piece of thin cord had been threaded through the rubber, for a handle, to loop over your wrist. Adam took the hose and shut the dogs in the verandah.

‘Where do you keep the gun?’ Adam called to his father through the backroom door.

‘It’s going to be different now,’ his father replied. ‘Let me out. I have to come out. I need to go to the toilet.’

‘You have to stay in there until I find the gun.’

‘I haven’t got it anymore.’ His father’s voice was catching. He sounded out of breath. ‘Adam, it’s not going to be like it was. Everything will be different. I promise. Unlock the door.’

In Adam’s mind’s eye he saw a younger version of his father. He was more intimidating in his dreams, or when he came at Adam from out of the shadows. Sometimes Adam wondered if so much happened at night in the dark so that Adam couldn’t see how old his father was.

‘I’m sick. I have to come out.’

‘What do you mean you’re sick?’

‘Open the door.’

Adam was holding the plate of toast and the length of hose. He looked at those two things: care in one hand, hurt in the other. He looked at the door bolt. Adam visualised the backroom. The bed had a steel base. His father could have found something to unscrew the bed legs. He could be holding a short length of steel right now, pretending to be unwell. The taps in the shower could be unscrewed, the showerhead too, the timber chair could be dismantled, the chest of drawers taken apart and the long boards of timber tied together with torn sheets to make one strong, heavy board. At different times, on different days, Adam had noted these things, he’d imagined himself a different type of boy, a boy who would act. He’d also thought about what would happen if his father never returned to unlock the door, if he didn’t come home one day from shopping, or if the house caught on fire and his father didn’t let him out. Adam had feared being found escaping, losing the bed base, the chair, the drawers, the taps, he’d feared losing a way out. And he’d feared the punishment that would come with trying to escape.

‘Go to the shower, stand in it then call to me. Stay there while I come in. I’ve got you some toast. If you look sick, I’ll . . .’ Adam stopped. All he knew was that he didn’t want his father walking around, sick or not. ‘Go and stand in the shower or I can’t bring you anything to eat.’

‘I need my tablets.’ His father thumped the door. He slapped his hand against it. ‘Just open the door.’

‘What tablets?’

‘I’m not well.’

There was a waver. Adam didn’t think his father would pretend to sound that weak. His voice was coming from lower down. One of his father’s hands, or his shoulder, pushed against the door, as though to prop him up.

‘What tablets?’

‘Unlock the door.’

‘What are they for?’

‘Unlock the door.’

‘If I see them I’ll believe you.’

His father swore, breathless, holding out. Then he gasped, ‘Inside the radio beside my bed. Quickly.’

Adam sat the plate of toast on the floor and laid the hose beside it. He turned and jogged down the hallway. One morning, very early, while they were outside cleaning cages and topping up bird feeders, his father had collapsed. He’d clutched his chest and staggered to the side, hit the shed wall and slid onto a pile of rope, his face completely white. He’d been unable to speak, and had stared wildly across the yard, mouth open, barely breathing. Monty and Jerry had run under the lemon tree and lain together, watching him, ears flat, heads down on their paws. Adam had felt a cold sweep of white-faced breathlessness too. His feet had rooted to the spot. His head had spun. The thoughts he’d had weren’t right: he’d looked away, not wanting to see or think about his father on the ground, not wanting to help him. Adam had thought instead about how the sun was coming up, he’d looked at the light seeping into the sky. He’d wanted to finish cleaning the cages so he could have his breakfast. He’d hoped this didn’t mean they wouldn’t get takeaway chips for dinner. He’d wondered if he’d be able to spend the whole day watching TV if his father never got up. Gradually the colour had come back into his father’s face and his chest began to rise and fall. His eyes had started focusing. He’d straightened himself on the ropes. Without a word he’d held out his hand. Adam had helped him to his feet. His father had walked unsteadily inside, leaning on Adam. No talk of it. Not ever. It was like every other strange, bad and painful thing – it wasn’t talked about; it lived inside Adam, in his chest, in his head.

The radio had a large battery compartment. There were no batteries in it. Instead there was a brown glass bottle of tablets and a long white box of tablets. There was also a fat brass key with chunky square teeth and a cloverleaf design on the end. Adam left the key there. He ran with the bottle and the box, down through the house.

‘Go over into the shower,’ Adam said when he arrived at the backroom door.

‘I can’t.’

‘I have the hose.’ Adam picked it up. He slid the latch and stepped back, wary that his father would push the door into him. ‘I have the hose,’ he repeated.

Adam opened the door. His father was lying on the floor. He wasn’t about to hurt Adam. It looked as though he was about to die. Adam shook his wrist to free the loop, and he let the hose drop. Behind the bruises, his father’s white face was back, the same face from that day in the yard. His mouth was puffed up and purple and one eye was swollen, half-closed. The crepe-like skin on his arms was battered, dark-red in places. Adam wasn’t sure when his father had got so thin, or when his shoulders had stopped being broad, and his fingers had stopped being thick and strong. The change had been slow. If it had happened overnight, or as quickly as Adam had gone from being a boy to a teen, Adam would have noticed and cottoned on quicker.

‘Give me a tablet, from the box.’

Why was Adam’s vision blurry? Stupid tears. Why was he shaking? He brushed the hot tears away. His father put the tablet under his tongue and closed his eyes, slumped, held his forehead. Spit glistened in the corners of his mouth. Adam crouched. His father hadn’t washed. His shorts and shirt were creased from having been slept in. He had his sandals on. Beneath the grey hair his scalp was pink and shiny. If there was a family likeness it was lost under his father’s wrinkles and folding skin. Adam couldn’t say if their hair was the same colour. His father had been grey all Adam’s life. His father had blue eyes. Adam had blue eyes. A while ago, a man in a green cap had come to buy some chickens. He’d seen Adam and said, Joe, is that your grandson? He’s a handsome lad. After that Adam had looked closely at the boys on TV. He liked to think he looked most like the boy from Skippy. Adam would stare at the boy’s face on the screen, try to memorise it, and then later, in his bedroom, he would look in the mirror. He’d say some lines from the show and strike a pose. Recalling the details of the boy’s face was hard, though. He’d weighed up the idea of asking his father if he looked like the boy on screen. But if his father knew how much Adam wanted to look like other boys, and how much he liked watching Skippy, he’d use it. Adam’s face had changed since then anyway, along with his body. His nose had got longer, his eyebrows thicker. His jaw was wider. There were lumps under his skin across his forehead. His mouth had stretched.

Colour was returning to his father’s face. He was breathing easier.

‘Pass me those.’

He was motioning for the bottle. Adam misunderstood; he unscrewed the lid to pass him one.

‘No, give it here. Give me the box as well.’

The sound of the rattle of the tablets in the glass, the smell of the tin lid, and the powdery coating sticking to it, those things seemed familiar to Adam, but he’d never seen the bottle of tablets before. Had he? He smelled the lid. A chill swept over him. He knew that smell. He knew the rattling sound.

‘What are these?’

‘Just give them here.’

Adam stood up. ‘You gave me these when I was little.’

‘No.’

‘You did.’

‘You’re not remembering right.’

‘These are what I told you made me feel sick and tired.’

‘They’re not the same. They’re for me.’

Adam looked up at the ceiling and over his shoulder at the open door. All morning he’d been feeling different. He’d been feeling lighter somehow, quicker. He’d thought it had been about hitting his father, the change that came with that, but looking now . . . were things closer, clearer? Was he thinking faster? Moving faster?

‘Why have you still got them?’

‘I told you, they’re mine.’

‘Take one,’ Adam said. He shook a tablet onto his palm and held it out for his father. ‘Take it.’

His father closed his eyes and breathed out heavily. He wasn’t going to take it. They weren’t for him. What Adam felt then was pure and bright and it arced inwards, a clean sharp feeling that wrinkled his nose and travelled backwards through his skull, into his brain, down his spine, through his ribs and chest, right down through his hips, down his legs and into his feet. It was a white-hot feeling that emptied him of fear. Pushed all the fear out.

‘You’ve still been giving these to me.’

‘Because you need them.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I do.’

Adam capped the bottle and put it in his pocket. He kept the box of tablets too. He picked up the plate and threw the slices of toast towards the bed, letting them land and fall whatever way they did, buttered side down on the blankets, one piece skating off onto the floor. Adam picked up the hose.

‘Use the shower for the toilet. Do what you made me do.’

He shut the door. Bolted it.

Every now and then Adam stopped searching for the gun and went out to check if the chickens had left their cages. At last they had. They were huddled by the feed bins. Adam didn’t go down in case he frightened them. He kept Monty and Jerry by his side. One chicken flapped its wings, shook its body and fluffed its feathers. Adam could tell by watching them that they wouldn’t go back inside the cages. Now that they were together, they’d want to stay that way. After collecting the key from the radio, he kept on searching for the gun. The key had to unlock something. The gun would be in whatever it unlocked.

At the bar, Adam looked in the cupboards. He removed the bags of chips and cartons of cigarettes. He pressed the cupboard sides and floors. His father was good at hiding things. Adam had to check for spaces and gaps in walls, he had to move furniture. Once, hiding from his father, Adam had squeezed in behind the wardrobe in the spare room. He’d found a small section of plasterboard was missing from the wall. Through the gap was a space big enough to kneel in. Adam had climbed in and knelt inside the wall, head down over his knees, tense and small, like a mouse hiding from Monty, thinking he couldn’t be sniffed out and found, when, of course, he could be. The longer Adam had stayed there the more his eyes had adjusted to the dark. Beneath his knees had been magazines, stacks of them. They weren’t what were hidden, though. Jammed in behind the stack had been a shoebox filled with photos. He’d held one photo up to the crack of light. The picture had been of a boy, dark-haired, brown-skinned and naked, standing in the billiards room. The boy had been holding a pair of small white puppies. Monty and Jerry. Something had budded in Adam’s mind then, an idea or a memory had seemed about to burst, into full recollection. But he’d heard his father coming and dropped the photograph. The wardrobe had been pulled away from the wall, Adam had been hauled out, kicking, squealing, like a mouse. Later his father had come into the lounge room holding the photo, waving it and snarling. Did you get a good look? Did you? Did you look at all the pictures? I hope you did. He’d put the photo in front of Adam’s face, stuck it on Adam’s sweaty forehead, drilled his knuckle against it. Look. That close it had been impossible to see. You’re not looking. He’d smacked Adam in the head. His father had thrown the photo in the fireplace, and with it any chance of Adam remembering the boy had also seemed to go up in flames. His father had brought out the shoebox and burned all the photographs. His face had grown red doing it. He’d begun to tremble and shout. During moments of hating and blaming, his father often lost all sense. He probably hadn’t wanted to burn the photographs, but his temper made him do it, the craziness had taken over. Adam’s father was worst when he lost control. Not even the rules were in play then. He’d removed his belt.

Think you’re clever finding those? Think you know things, do you? This is what your sneaking gets you. Your snivelling behaviour is why no one can look at your filthy fucking face. I should burn you. I should throw you in the fire.

Adam had to check the hiding spot behind the wardrobe for the gun. Even though to do so brought back memories of that day. There were no magazines, not anymore, and no gun.

In one of the unused rooms, Adam noticed a filmy covering of oil lubricated the door hinges. There was a lock near the handle, but the bolt was on the inside. Adam had been pulling up the blinds in each room as he searched, opening the windows to let the air in. Something made him leave this room’s blind down. There was a worn path in the floor across to the far corner of the room. The carpet edge was frayed and unravelling. Adam peeled the carpet back. The floorboards below it weren’t nailed down. Each plank was resting on the supporting beams. The sides of the boards were smooth and dark from being handled. Monty and Jerry sat outside the room. They wouldn’t come in, not even when Adam called them. He lifted the loose boards, laying them in order in the centre of the room. Dry dirt smells lifted through the open floor. The drop down to the ground wasn’t much. A few rooms on and the backroom concrete pad began. The backroom was built on a slab. The rest of the house was raised on stumps.

Not a lot of light found its way under there. At first he couldn’t make out what he’d found. Even when he could see, he couldn’t make sense of it. Then it became clear.

Lying on the dirt was a big black safe. It was on its back, the door and lock facing up. The safe was as long as a person and twice as wide. Adam took the brass key from his pocket. He climbed down, knelt beside the safe. The key fitted the lock. Adam turned it. And he turned the metal handle. He had to use both hands to lift the heavy door. Green velvet lined the inside of the safe. Adam’s nose flared with the unusual smell of the interior. His eyes were wide and dry. In one corner of the safe was a bundle of money. He ran his fingers over the velvet and picked up the stack of notes. Two elastic bands held the bundle together, one at each end. He smelled the money. It was cold and crisp from being kept in the dark.

The gun wasn’t in the safe.

Adam put the money back and shut the heavy door, relocked it, climbed back up into the room, put the boards in place, and then the carpet.

He finished searching the other rooms.

*

Adam opened a tin of spaghetti and made some toast. He stood in front of the oven, tossing up whether or not to heat his can of food. He’d only ever watched his father cook and use the stove. The small pot used for spaghetti was in the cupboard. Adam decided against it, poured his spaghetti cold over his toast. He sat on the couch to eat. When the Colgate ad came on he got up and brushed his teeth. That night Adam slept in his old bedroom. It was a narrow room beside the laundry. Before getting into bed he cleared away the downy white spider nests from the creases in the pillow and from the crinkles in the sheets. Mouse droppings littered the quilt. Adam found, tucked away between the wall and mattress, the little plastic tiger he’d put there as a child and forgotten about . . . or not forgotten about. Something he’d trained himself not to think of.

He looked at the toy now, warily, with his chin lifted. He rubbed the moulded flank, belly, legs and the pointy ears. The tiger had once been his daring friend, unafraid in every situation. At night, it had come to life, prowled the rooms, stalked the hallway, padded down the steps out into the yard, strong enough to leap the fence and bound back over if he didn’t like what he found on the other side. He’d growled hushed stories to Adam, told of his adventures, of the people he’d scared beyond the fence. The fierceness of the toy had never changed and the whispered message had always stayed the same – he can’t hurt me, let him try. Adam put the toy back. By wedging it between the wall and mattress he was returning it to the time when being outside the backroom had been common, a time better suited to toys and make-believe. Adam had put too much effort into not pining for the tiger to let his guard down now. It was too late to love it.

Monty and Jerry were at the open doorway, waiting to be called in. It took some coaxing to make them jump up onto the bed. They curled beside him on the mattress. The safe, its weight and size, played on Adam’s mind. It was such a big and heavy thing to have been there all this time, lying under the house. The smell of money lingered in Adam’s nostrils. The texture of the notes stayed on his fingertips. There was something real about the safe and those notes. All Adam knew was that the money didn’t exist solely inside the yard. It had a place outside as well. The money could jump the fence. It held the promise that it could help him jump it too.

A chicken was squawking. Adam opened his eyes and sat up in bed. The dogs were gone. He scrambled from beneath the blankets. Half awake, he ran through the house. The billiards room door was open. Monty and Jerry were out, down in the yard; they had a chicken pinned to the ground. Adam leapt from the decking. He stumbled, sprinted across the yard.

‘No! No!’

His voice wasn’t strong. It had been broken and husky since screaming at his father. The dogs were tearing at the bird. Adam grabbed Jerry by the scruff of the neck and threw him. The little dog yelped and landed off in the grass. Monty slunk back and cowered. The chicken was alive, flapping, but it couldn’t stand up. There were feathers scattered all around it and spots of blood on the dirt. It stopped flapping and lay there, blinking, one wing tucked under it. Monty and Jerry skulked off, up the steps and inside. Adam saw that the dogs had attacked another chicken. He walked over to it. Then he saw the next injured bird, and the next. Monty and Jerry had attacked all the chickens. Half were dead, half were mauled. Not one chicken had been left standing. Had Adam been wrong to let the birds out? Was it wrong to set a thing free? See what happens when you think too hard. It hurts. He turned and saw Monty and Jerry with their noses poking out from behind the billiards room curtain.

‘Filthy fucking dirty dogs!’ Adam screamed.

The words sprung from him, unexpected. They boiled up from a place Adam didn’t like. The dogs ducked back inside. Adam was silent, recovering from what he’d said and the way he’d said it.

With a shovel he stood over the line of injured birds. He willed the courage to do what he knew he had to. He lifted the spade, over the neck of the rooster. He braced, squeezed his eyes shut, told his arms to stab down, to do it quick. He couldn’t. He lowered the shovel, rested it in the grass, slumped his shoulders and fought the tears.

Adam walked around to the front of the house and stood on the concrete, listening to the sounds beyond the gate, cars passing in the street. The gate remained chained and padlocked. Adam remembered shutting the billiards room door the night before. He clearly remembered doing that. Monty and Jerry wouldn’t have run around killing chickens if his father were out of the backroom. His father wouldn’t have let the dogs kill the chickens, not even to hurt Adam or teach him a lesson. Someone had been. Someone had climbed the fence into the yard, been in the house.

Monty and Jerry scurried over the tiles. They disappeared into the front rooms. Adam turned and walked down the hallway towards the backroom.

He went into the closed-in verandah, got the length of hose. He pulled his arm back, ready, and unlocked the backroom door.

His father didn’t have the light on, not like Adam would have had. Blackness rushed at Adam. It halted him a moment. He rocked with a wave of fear. Springs on the bed creaked. Adam reached in and turned on the light. His father was in the bed. He was pale and blinking, his legs under the blankets.

‘You have to come out and kill the chickens.’

Adam hardly recognised his own voice. It was like someone else had spoken, a new person in the house, with a hoarse, deep way of talking.

‘Monty and Jerry have attacked the chickens.’

‘Stay there, wait, don’t close the door.’

Adam turned and walked down the hallway. He left the backroom door open behind him. He kept the hose. The backroom smell had been enough to take Adam’s air. The bed, a glimpse of the shower, had been enough to lighten his head. If his father found a way to put him back in there, Adam would fight this time, he wouldn’t drink the drinks and he wouldn’t eat the food, he’d dismantle the bed, tear apart the drawers, do whatever it took to smash the door to pieces, he’d arm himself with whatever sharp or heavy thing that he could get his hands on, and if his father touched him, Adam would kill him.

But Adam couldn’t kill the chickens.

He stood on the deck as his father came out, bruised and stooped. Monty and Jerry were down on their bellies near the door, wagging their tails and gazing up at Adam’s father. They rolled onto their backs when he looked down at them. For a few moments Adam’s father stood there taking in the changes – the empty cages, the dead chickens scattered around the yard, and then he looked at Adam, down Adam’s body, at the clothes, the socks. Adam stared back. He was holding the hose, ready, almost hoping for a bad reaction.

‘Where’s the spade?’

His father was unsteady going down the steps. He took a deep breath before raising the spade. He wasn’t steeling himself for the job of killing. He was steeling himself for the effort in it. Adam felt relief with each dull chop. He wasn’t sad, not anymore, he just wished the chickens had more time out of the cages, more time being chickens.

Done killing them, his father let the spade drop and walked back towards the house. His eyes were glassy. His lips were white. Adam let him pass. He let his father return to the front rooms.

Adam felt that he didn’t need a weapon. He could stop his father with his bare hands if he wanted. A kick would send him sprawling. A push would topple him. His father didn’t sit in the armchair. He sat on the couch. He didn’t turn on the TV; Adam did. His father went, without speaking, into the kitchen and ate while standing at the fridge. His hands were trembling. He chewed weakly.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘What do you think – you hardly brought me anything to eat.’

‘No, what’s wrong with you?’

‘I told you, I’m sick.’

‘What have you got?’

He didn’t answer. The smell of him had changed. It was old sweat. He went back into the lounge room and sank down on the couch, breathed shallow and short. Adam left him and went out to pick up the dead chickens. He held them by the feet, bundled them in his hands. They weren’t as heavy as they looked. Beneath the feathers they were bony. Sun seared hot. The chopped-off heads of the chickens, the ones his father had killed, Adam left in the grass. He took the bodies and threw them in the rubbish trailer. Monty and Jerry hung around the decking steps, sniffing the air, not coming any closer.

‘Where’s the key from the radio?’ his father said when Adam went back inside. He was standing in the hallway outside his bedroom door.

‘I’ve got it. I’m keeping it.’

‘Where are my tablets?’

‘I’m keeping them too.’

For a few moments his father stood there, the same place Adam had crouched with the carving knife. His father swayed on his feet. He went past Adam, into the lounge room, staggered the last few steps and collapsed onto the couch. He lay there, silent.

Adam made his father breakfast. Vegemite toast. He made him a cup of tea. Into the drink Adam dropped a tablet from the brown bottle. He stirred. One tablet didn’t seem much, so Adam dropped in two more and stirred again. He was careful not to let the teaspoon hit the sides or bottom. He capped the bottle soundlessly. His father didn’t eat all the toast. But he did drink all the tea. Adam ate five pieces of toast and drank milk from the carton. They watched The Midday Show, Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless. Monty and Jerry started following Adam around. His father stayed lying on the couch. His lips were parted and his eyes half-closed. He wasn’t sleeping, though. Whenever Adam went in or out of the room, or whenever something sudden happened on TV, his father’s eyes would open wider and stare, unseeing but looking. He tried to move but it was as though it was too much effort and he would lie back down. The white-hot feeling returned as Adam stood, watching the effect the tablets had on his father.

Dr Who was on that night. Adam sat on the footstool, close to the TV. When the show was over, hungry again, he went into the kitchen and stood by the table thinking of what to eat. The ability to choose was new. He wanted meat. He turned the dial on the stove. The pan was on the draining rack from when he’d washed it. He waited until the black rings of the hotplate turned red.

‘Does the meat go straight in the pan?’ he called.

His father didn’t answer.

Adam put the pan on the element. He opened the fridge. There was no meat. He turned the stove off and made a bowl of cornflakes instead.

Adam brushed his teeth. It was unsettling to be at the basin, head over the sink, scrubbing, rinsing well, using dental floss, opening his mouth and checking his back molars in the mirror. Everything else had changed, but this hadn’t. All Adam knew was that he didn’t want a cavity. Of all the rules, this one stuck. Each loose tooth he’d had as a child his father had removed with pliers. Before the tooth was properly loose. He’d used the heavy tool and ripped the tooth out, explaining, as he did it, that it was what he’d do to Adam’s adult teeth if he ever got a cavity or didn’t brush enough. Adult teeth weren’t meant to come out. He’d said he’d strap Adam down, tie his hands, tie his head back, jam open his mouth. If Adam thought it hurt to have his baby teeth removed, wait until he felt the pain of adult teeth, rooted down into his jaw, being ripped out. Adam had never felt that pain. He brushed enough and flossed enough to stop it happening. To make sure Adam understood, his father had dropped each baby tooth he’d pulled into a glass of Coke and left it on the kitchen windowsill until it had turned black and began to rot. He’d then made Adam drink the Coke, tooth still in it. Sweet things will rot your teeth. Fizzy drinks still made Adam gag.

He went to bed. He heard his father get up and go into the bathroom. Adam listened to him stumble into things, try to wash. He listened to him stagger into his bedroom. It sounded like he changed into pyjamas. Monty and Jerry didn’t sleep with Adam. He could hear one of them yipping softly in its sleep in the lounge room. Probably dreaming of killing chickens.

The thing that lived inside Adam’s father never stayed down long. It came to the surface the same way the sun went up and down each day. The following morning it was up. Meanness was showing in his mouth. It was rippling through his expression. It coated his words.

‘Is this all that’s left?’

He was in the kitchen, shaking the bread bag. There were a few pieces in the bottom. He’d showered, dressed in long pants and a T-shirt. Adam saw that the rope from the table leg was missing. Whatever it was that lived inside Adam’s father evaporated his age. Adam understood that now. His father looked and sounded younger. His body was old, but the things in him weren’t, his mind wasn’t; it was tough and durable like leather. Looking at him it would have been easy for Adam to let the fear take hold, to be like Monty and Jerry, dropping to their bellies at the sound of the sneering voice, rolling onto their backs to see Adam’s father standing straight and well again. But, instead, Adam raised his fist and rushed his father. Adam knew the moves. He gave no warning. He pulled up short before hitting him, snarling in his father’s face, fist shaking in the air. His father dropped the bread bag and crouched by the sink.

‘Give it to me.’

His father took the rope from his pocket. He passed it to Adam and then cringed, waiting for the blows. Adam looped the rope as though about to strike him. But didn’t. Just let his father stay like that, cowering, a moment longer, before slowly pulling away.

Adam walked out and hurled the rope into the centre of the pool, watched it sink.

His chin trembled, but he refused to cry.

They needed bread and they needed meat. The milk carton was almost empty. Adam went into his father’s bedroom and looked at the pairs of shoes against the wall. He chose the brown leather ones without laces. Adam practised walking in them, up and down the hallway. The day was hot. He put on shorts. He kept on the brown checked shirt. He looked at himself in his father’s wardrobe mirror. Adam’s fringe was hanging in his eyes. His arms and legs were long, ghostly white and skinny. Boys on the TV had similar hair to Adam’s but none of them dressed the way he was dressed. His father had jeans, but he wore them often and they reminded Adam of his father; he couldn’t bring himself to put them on.

‘Take me to the shops.’

His father was sitting on the couch. ‘I’m too unwell.’

‘I don’t care, take me anyway.’

‘I’ve got no money.’

‘That’s not true. I found the money. If you don’t take me I’ll take it next door and ask them to take me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The money under the house. Are you going to take me or do I have to go next door with it?’

When his father did nothing Adam moved as though to leave. His father shifted on the cushions.

As his father got ready, Adam didn’t let him out of his sight. He followed him into the bedroom and then into the bathroom. He watched while his father washed his hands and face. It felt to Adam that if at any time the gun was going to reappear it was going to be right then. His father dried his hands for a long time. His head was down. He was thinking.

‘What do you want?’ he said, turning suddenly. ‘I didn’t mean anything before. I was getting rid of the rope. I meant what I said down in the room. I am going to change. Do you want me to say I’m sorry?’

‘I don’t want you to say anything, I want you to take me to the shops.’

‘They’re closed.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘People will see you’ve hit me. You’ll get in trouble.’

‘I don’t think I will.’

‘Where have you put the safe key?’

‘I’m not telling you.’

‘What food do you want? I’ll get anything you want. I can get new things this time.’

‘I’m coming. You can’t stop me.’

They went out through the billiards room, across the decking and down the steps. They walked around to the gate. The sun was high. Concrete shimmered and rippled in the heat. His father had hidden the key for the gate padlock inside a length of hollow metal pipe. It was lying on top of a pile of bigger pipes. His father’s hand rested on the bar as he withdrew the key, his fingers closed a little way around the steel. Adam took a few paces back. He’d left the hose inside, but he had the bottle opener with him. It no longer felt big enough. Adam looked at the things around him – blocks of timber, beams of rusted iron, a metal fencing stake. Adam crouched and picked up the stake. He stayed crouched, watched his father. A car passed in the street. A ball bounced. Two voices drifted up from the other side of the fence. The conversation was fast and jumbled. The voices grew louder. They were right there, on the other side of the gate. Adam lifted his head, opened his mouth as though about to shout, eyed his father.

His father let go of the bar. He unlocked the gate.

Adam let go of the stake.

Monty and Jerry howled the moment the gates were closed. Adam guessed they usually got to go shopping. He’d never heard them howl like that before. Or maybe, locked in the backroom, the sound hadn’t reached him. Adam’s father’s car was parked in the street. It was a blue station wagon that could fit birdcages in the back and carry bags of seed. Once or twice, when very young, Adam had been allowed to play inside the vehicle. Now and then his father drove the car into the yard, unloaded seed, took caged birds away or brought new birds home. There were chicken feathers on the seats and scattered on the floor. The temperature in the car made the air hard to breathe. Adam closed the door and burned the backs of his legs on the vinyl seat. He perched on the edge with his knees against the dash. His father wound down the window. Adam watched and then did the same on his side. The boys bouncing the ball were on the footpath up ahead. They looked over their shoulders. One of them made the sound of a chicken. Both boys laughed. They were near enough to call out to, but it didn’t make them seem any closer. To Adam it felt as though there might as well have still been a fence between him and the boys. Everything remained far away. Adam’s gaze skimmed the fronts of the houses, the wide driveways, the short green lawns and colourful gardens. Tree branches arched over the road. Huge stretch of sky above that. Adam gripped his knees. The car sped up. Air blew in through the window. Things passed fast. He forced himself to look. The picture didn’t change. The world was tall, it was spread out, long and deep, filled to the brim, there were people in it, colour sprang forward, sun glinted off leaves and windows and off the moving cars, yet the world was a single thing, one big place. And Adam didn’t feel like he was in it. Was it just like his father had always said? There was no place for Adam. He didn’t belong.

‘Mr Vander, you’ve taken a fall or something?’

The butcher came out from behind the counter. He was wearing a white apron stained with blood. He wiped his hands on a tea towel tucked into his apron strings.

‘Are you okay?’

‘A bit of heart trouble, I took a tumble.’

‘That’s no good, sorry to hear it. Is that why you’ve got a helper with you today? G’day, young fella, you’re a good lad to help out.’

The man’s eyes were so brown they looked black. There was a steel rod hanging from his belt, resting down his thigh. The other man behind the counter was dark-eyed too. He was whistling along to a song on the radio.

‘Come and sit down, Mr Vander.’

The butcher brought forward one of the chairs lined up against the wall. He placed it in the middle of the long section of the shop where other people were waiting.

‘Hot day to be out if you’re not feeling well. What would you like? We’ll get your order quickly, let you get back home.’

Both men wrapped the meat. There were mirrors on the walls. Adam could see himself from different angles. He looked at the other customers. They didn’t look at him – not even when he tried to catch their eye – they looked into the cabinet at the meats.

In the next shop they knew Adam’s father too. They also saw that he was sick. He told them the same story.

There were trolleys and wire baskets. His father took a basket and passed it to Adam. Foods advertised on TV were on the shelves. The store was a strange temperature, not warm, not cool. No smell. Adam’s shoes were rubbing on his heels. His father filled the basket. A woman with a baby walked along the same part of the shop as them. She jiggled the boy on her hip and talked to him as she put things in her trolley. She wheeled the trolley one-handed and asked the boy to point at things.

‘Where’s purple?’

The child pointed to a packet on the shelf. ‘There.’

‘That’s green.’

‘There.’

‘No, that’s pink.’

‘There!’

The woman stopped and took a packet from the shelf. Her face was flushed and her hair was blonde and curly.

‘That’s purple,’ Adam said, pointing at a packet.

The woman pulled a wide-eyed face. She smiled at Adam. He smiled back. The skin on his bottom lip split. Adam’s father turned to face them. He exchanged a look with the woman. His eyes softened in a message – Take no notice of him.

‘There!’ the boy kept singing out, able to be heard even when Adam and his father were at the front buying their food.

A motorbike had parked beside Adam’s father’s car. There weren’t many other cars about, not many shops. There were lots of houses, in every direction. The yards were small, no high fences. In the car on the way home Adam went over in his mind what had happened. He didn’t look out the windows as he had on the way to the shops. He looked down at his knees. Adam could feel each breath he took. He was aware of every time he blinked. Could feel every heartbeat.

They turned into their street. His father parked the car. Adam felt cold despite the sun burning down. He took the bags of food from the back seat and stood waiting while his father opened the gate. Monty and Jerry darted out and raced around their feet. Adam followed his father through into the yard. His father was talking.

‘It’s only ever been that I’ve worried about you. I’ve looked after you the best way I could. We’ll make lots of changes now that you’re older . . .’

The moment the gate was shut, before his father had time to thread the chain and close the padlock, Adam put down the bags and picked up the steel pipe. As he turned with it his father stopped talking and crouched, covered his head. Adam stood over him, the bar raised, trembling and gripping the steel so tightly it hurt his hand. Down on the ground his father huddled against the gate. After a moment Adam started to cry. Tears began to roll down his father’s cheeks. Adam threw the pipe towards the house. It landed with a clank on the concrete. Adam gasped, catching his breath, tasting blood on his bottom lip, where the smile to the woman had cracked it.

Tears spilled from Adam’s eyes. His chest was tight. He had to drag in each breath. His father stretched out on the hot concrete, put his cheek against the rough surface and lay there like he wasn’t going to get up.

‘I’m normal, aren’t I?’ Adam cried.

His father nodded.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

His father shook his head.

‘You didn’t have to hurt me. You could have loved me.’ Adam’s voice caught in his throat.

‘I do love you.’

‘Don’t say it! I could have been like other children. You made me —’ A sob stopped Adam talking.

‘We can make it all right. I promise you we can. I want things to change as much as you do. I’m going to make it up to you. I will. From now on it can be everything you want. Anything you want.’ His father’s body began to tense up. Adam watched his hands curl against his chest, watched his father’s face grow grey and his lips turn pale. ‘I need a tablet . . .’

He left his father there. Adam went inside. He lay down on the lounge room floor. The tears wouldn’t stop. Adam curled on his side, pulled his legs into his chest. If he closed his eyes he saw everything too clearly, he had to keep his eyes open, but if he looked at things, like the carpet, or under the coffee table, or at the dogs’ cushions, he saw those things too clearly too. He had to blur his vision and stare at nothing. Monty and Jerry came in and licked his face. They jumped on top of him.

When Adam woke it was dark. The house was quiet. He’d fallen asleep on the floor. His body felt light and empty. He got up and turned on the lamp.

The dogs were outside. They’d found the meat in the bags by the gate. Adam shone the torch. Flies were buzzing, trapped, within the plastic bag. Stars were out. The moon was bright. His father muttered something as Adam squatted down beside him. There was vomit on the concrete and dried sick on his chin.

‘Can you get up?’

He couldn’t. Adam had to help him. His father groaned and swayed. Adam’s stomach rumbled. He grew hungry in the time it took to get his father inside. He laid him on the bed, put a blanket over him.

Back outside, Jerry had run off with a steak and Monty had torn the paper around the sausages. Adam let Monty have a sausage. He shook the bag free of flies and carried the shopping into the kitchen.

Adam unpacked the groceries. He cooked a steak. It took him a couple of goes to get it right. He kept taking it off too soon and cutting into it only to find that it was raw. Blood pooled on the plate. Blood dripped on the floor. Adam buttered bread and ate it one slice after another, folding it and taking big bites. After the bread, and then the steak, Adam was so full it was difficult to move. Monty and Jerry had overeaten too. They ambled in, round bellies and slow steps. Jerry lay on the kitchen floor, panting. The little dog’s mouth stretched back like he was smiling. Adam began clearing away the cooking mess, but stopped himself. He left it. He went into the lounge room, flopped into the armchair. Monty was on her cushion, licking her paws.

That night there was a show about the police on the TV. The uniformed officers broke into a house, chased the man through it, shot him as he tried to leave through the window. The four policemen knelt around a bag of money, checking the bundles. One policeman picked up the dead man’s gun. He shot one of the other policemen. The music started up, the policemen began looking at one another. All together they reached for their guns. Another policeman was shot. Only two were left, staring at one another. Adam moved closer to the screen. The last two officers both reached for the bag. In the struggle they shot each other. One died, the other didn’t. Bleeding, the last one zipped up the bag and began to leave. He got blood all over everything. He slumped in the hallway and died. The show ended.

Adam switched off the TV.

He went down to the room above the safe, pulled back the carpet, removed the boards, climbed down, unlocked the safe and sat beside it.

For a few long moments he looked at the stack of cash.

It was, he realised, a lot of money.

Adam locked the safe again. He made a tight fist around the key. His pocket wasn’t any sort of good hiding spot.

In the lounge room, at the back of the TV, was a broken piece of casing where the cord came out. Adam slid the key in there, into the back of the TV unit. It relaxed him to think that when watching shows he’d be looking at the very place where the key was kept.

Adam made a cup of tea for his father and took it into the bedroom. His father didn’t move. Each breath wheezed in his chest. His mouth was open. Adam sat the drink on the bedside table. He put the box of tablets beside it.

‘The tablets are there.’

When Adam shook his father, he didn’t stir.

By the boarded-up front door was a telephone. Adam lifted the receiver. No sound. He looked at the dial, turned it. Nothing. No voice down the line. The phone made a soft ding when he put the receiver on and off, but that was all. Adam left it.

He slept in. The sun was high when he got up. He made toast and a cup of tea, took it in to his father. The bedroom smelled of urine. His father didn’t wake. He’d closed his mouth and stopped wheezing, though.

By evening his father still hadn’t woken. His breaths were so light Adam had to lean close to hear them. Adam went out and opened the front gate. It was evening. He stood on the footpath. Cars drove by. A man and a woman ran side by side down the road. Adam raised his hand to them.

‘Hello,’ they called and kept on running.

Jerry and Monty had come out too. They were sitting by the station wagon. Adam stepped up to the edge of the road. He watched the people in the cars as they passed. He knew that they could see him but they didn’t want to stop. A child in a back seat poked his tongue out. It was getting dark. Adam stopped trying to wave down vehicles and walked along the footpath. He stood in the front of the neighbour’s house. Monty and Jerry had come too. The house was double-storeyed and square like a castle. It had a footbridge to the front door. The owners had built a high brick fence to block out Adam’s father’s house. Because no one in this street wants to know anyone else’s business, no one in this street cares about anybody else, least of all a boy like you. Do you know that, Adam? No one wants you. There’s no place in the world for you.

Adam walked over the footbridge to the castle house. Sweat trickled down his back. The front door of the house swung open and a woman in a long white dress and dark glasses stormed out. Adam stopped on the bridge.

‘Get those dogs off my lawn!’

Jerry was cocking his leg on a row of bushes by the path. Monty wasn’t doing anything. She was just standing on the grass.

‘Get them off! Off!’

‘Go,’ Adam said to the dogs.

‘Take them away!’ The woman’s lips were pressed into a thin line. Her hands fluttered each time she spoke. Behind her glasses Adam could see her gaze drilling into him. ‘I will not have that man’s dogs on my lawn.’

Adam pointed to make them leave. Monty and Jerry ran as far as the footpath. They stopped there.

‘What do you want?’ the woman said.

‘Can you please come and see my father?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Will you come and see him? He’s not waking up.’

‘What are you talking about? Who are you?’

‘Adam.’

‘Your father?’ She pointed towards the house. ‘There?’

‘Yes.’

She lifted up her sunglasses and stared out from beneath them. Her eyes were small and hard, her nose wrinkled. ‘Why on earth are you on my path, in my yard, near my door? Go away. If I see those dogs anywhere on the street I’ll call the pound. If you come here again I’ll call the police. Don’t think I won’t. I’ve called them before on you boys.’ She peered up and down the street, at the parked cars, at the trees along the footpath. After a moment she said, ‘If you’re walking his dogs, they should be on a lead.’ She lowered her sunglasses, went inside and closed the door.

The curtain in the window moved.

Adam could feel her watching him as he turned and walked away.

If not for Monty and Jerry getting out, Adam would have left the front gates open, in case the woman changed her mind. He sat out on the decking. He gave it time, time enough for the woman’s anger to switch to something else. Adam took off his socks and shirt and sat with his feet dangling in the pool. It got darker. The woman didn’t come. It seemed too late then to try other houses. The ripples his feet made in the water had Adam thinking of waves on the beach, like on TV. It made him think of rivers. He picked up his shirt and left wet footprints through the billiards room and down the short hallway into the lounge room.

The moment Adam heard laughter, he knew. It was on hot afternoons that they came. Monty and Jerry lifted their heads. They didn’t shift from their cushions. Adam sat up on the couch. The laughter got louder. Those times they’d come and Adam hadn’t been locked in the backroom – with no time to put him there – his father had hidden him in the bedroom beside the laundry. Ear pressed to the gap at the bottom of the door, Adam had heard the boys laughing and swimming. He’d heard the stumble of their footsteps after they’d drunk too much and the slur of their voices when they’d wandered from the billiards room into the front rooms. Slurred voices only, never clear, not like the voice calling now . . .

‘Joe! Up, up, up, old rooster!’

It came with a heavy heel-toe stride. Adam moved to hide; too late. He pressed back into the couch as a tall shape appeared in the doorway. The boy was big, not a boy at all. He was wearing tight red shorts and a blue tank top. Between his fingers was a lit cigarette. His hair was dark. His skin was brown. He took a drag of the cigarette. As he spoke he sucked the smoke deeper into him.

‘Who are you?’

When Adam said nothing, the man walked in. Monty and Jerry didn’t move. They eyed the man and, for a moment, the man eyed them back. He walked past them into the kitchen.

‘This year would be good,’ he said, walking back out. ‘Name? Got one? Where’s Joe? Stand up.’

The man sucked on his cigarette and stood in the centre of the room with his feet wide apart. Adam wouldn’t have been able to get up even if he wanted to. The man’s chest was wide and the muscles in his legs bulged. He had thick wrists and forearms. His eyelashes were short and black. His eyes were brown. As weak as Adam’s father had become was as weak as Adam was going to be against this man. If he pushed, Adam would topple; if he kicked, Adam would be sent sprawling; if he hit, Adam would be knocked out. If this man moved, took another step, put out his cigarette, reached for Adam, Adam would wet himself. The pressure was there, in his groin, about to give. Adam’s mouth grew heavy. His eyes stung with building tears.

A smile broke across the man’s face. He smacked his chest. ‘I’m scaring the crap outta you, aren’t I?’

Adam brushed away a tear.

The man stopped smiling and narrowed his eyes. Between puffs on his smoke he opened his mouth, the tip of his tongue touched his top lip and then ran back and forth along his bottom lip.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Adam.’

He closed one eye and rubbed it. ‘What’re you doing here?’

‘I live here.’

‘Live here?’

‘It’s my father’s house.’

‘Joe? Don’t be calling him your father, kiddo, no one’s gonna believe that crap. Why haven’t I seen you round before?’

‘I’ve been here.’

‘Oh really. Have you just?’

Adam looked at his shirt on the coffee table. It felt like a terrible mistake to have left it off. If he could somehow reach across, get it, put it on, that might make all the difference. The man looked at the shirt too, and then at Adam. He leaned down, picked the shirt up and tossed it to him. He sucked on the cigarette while Adam put it on.

‘I came the other day and he weren’t here then, neither. You squatting?’

Confused, Adam looked down at his lap, concerned he had wet himself.

‘Kid.’

Adam jerked his head back up.

‘Tell me who you are and where the fuck Joe is.’

‘He’s . . .’

‘Is he dead? He been abducted by aliens? What’s going on?’

‘He has heart problems.’

The man reached over his shoulder and scratched between his shoulder blades. ‘Really? He’s in hospital? He’s sick?’

‘Yes.’

He leaned into one hip and smoked. For a few moments he watched the TV. Ash from his smoke dropped onto the carpet.

‘So where’d he find you?’

‘He’s my father.’

‘Just ’cause they tell you to call them daddy doesn’t mean they’re your father, kiddo. We’re swimming for a bit, you wanna come?’

Adam shook his head.

The man sniffed. ‘You’ve got to put those ferrets outside. It stinks like piss in here.’

Fear drained away once the man was gone. Adam got up and walked down the hallway. Monty and Jerry didn’t follow. Lights in the billiards room were on. The outside lights were shining on the pool and the decking. One man was in the pool and another one was playing billiards. Adam couldn’t see the one that had come up into the lounge room. A smoke haze hung below the tasselled lampshade. No breeze to move it. Adam’s skin itched beneath his clothes. Sticky sweat covered him. Out by the pool, the man swimming was leaping into the air, curling into a tight ball, crashing into the water. He climbed out and threw himself in again and again. The first man, who’d come into the lounge room, walked out from the backroom hallway. Adam crouched lower at the sight of him, hiding in the shadows. The man was frowning, looking down, not looking up, even when one of billiard balls bounced off the table and landed with a loud crack on the tiled floor. He didn’t answer when the others asked him questions.

‘He here? What’s going on?’

‘What’s happening?’ The man from the pool walked in, wet. He stood dripping on the tiles. ‘We hanging round or what?’

‘Billy, what’re we doing?’

He remained silent. He kept glancing in the direction of the backroom. Adam began to shuffle away, returning to the lounge room. The man must have seen the movement; he turned his head and looked right at Adam, stared at him. He then snapped his gaze away, clapped his hands and walked towards the sliding doors.

‘Nup, we’ll pack it in. We’ll grab some food, smokes, and fuck off.’

The wet man grabbed a towel and began to dry himself. ‘Maybe we should do the place over? If he’s not here? Didn’t get much outta him last time.’

‘Nup, we’re going.’

Adam turned and walked quickly down the hallway. He went back into the lounge room and sat. Monty and Jerry hadn’t moved. That was the problem. It was hard to know what to do. Running and hiding didn’t feel right. Asking for help didn’t feel right. On the TV was an ad for shampoo. Adam stared at it. He wanted the men to leave but it also tightened his throat to know that they would.

Don’t go, Adam thought.

Outside the window he could hear their voices as they left, too muffled to understand, only the swearwords standing out.

Don’t go.

The words were on his tongue, so close to being spoken.

Help me.

‘Kid.’

Adam twitched in fright, looked up.

The first man, Billy, was standing in the doorway. ‘Just a hunch, but do you reckon you’d be better off outta here? Splitting might be the best thing for you to do.’

‘I don’t know where to go.’

‘Fair enough, but you might want to go all the same. I think you’re in more shit than you know. Does Joe put you down in that room?’

Adam nodded. Tears blurred his vision. Ringing sounded in his ears. There was softness in Billy’s voice and it only made Adam’s chest burn hotter and his throat close tighter.

‘Yeah, you gotta get out of here.’

‘But I don’t know where to go.’

‘Out the door would be a start.’ He tipped his head towards the window. ‘Just wait till we’re gone. Those two aren’t any good. Might see you round, hey? Catch ya.’ He turned to leave.

‘He’s in the bedroom.’

Billy stopped. ‘Hey?’

‘He’s in the bedroom.’

‘Joe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

Billy looked over his shoulder. He stepped backwards into the hallway, out of Adam’s sight. Adam listened to him opening the bedroom door. He listened to the silence.

Billy reappeared. His lips were rolled in.

‘Ah . . . you should’ve said he was dead.’

‘He’s not.’

‘Well, yeah, he is.’

‘He wasn’t.’

‘Who beat him up?’

‘I did.’

Billy scratched his forehead, frowning. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Did you kill him?’

‘I . . . I don’t know?’

‘Who put him in the bed?’

‘I . . . I . . .’

‘Stop crying.’

‘I didn’t mean to kill him. He was alive before. I went next door, the woman wouldn’t come. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know he’d die?’

‘Are you saying he’s died while we’ve been here?’

‘He was breathing before.’

‘Well, he’s not breathing now.’

There was a sudden rap on the window. ‘Billy!’ It was one of the other men. His hand slapped the glass. ‘Bitch from next door called the cops. They’re pulling up!’

Billy turned one way and then the other. His hands opened wide in front of him.

‘They’re here!’ the man outside called.

Branches scratched against the side of the house and squeaked on the windowpane as he left. Billy ran a short way down the hall. He stopped, returned.

‘You can’t say I was here. Don’t tell them, will you? Don’t say anything about me.’ He spoke so fast it was hard to understand him.

‘Please don’t leave me.’

‘No, listen – don’t tell them I was here. If you have to, tell them some boys swam but you didn’t see none of them or what they looked like. They swam and they went. Okay?’

‘I’ll get in trouble.’

‘Don’t describe me or nothing, will you?’

‘They’ll put me away.’

‘What?’

‘He said they would put me away.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Shit. Fuck!’

Billy rushed forwards, grabbed Adam by the arm and yanked him to his feet. Not until Adam was halfway down the hallway did he realise he was being taken. Billy pulled him along, his hand clamped tight above Adam’s elbow.

‘Run!’

They went out through the billiards room, down the steps, across the lawn. Dry ground thudded beneath the soles of Adam’s feet. A low branch skimmed the top of his head. Leaves brushed against his arms. Billy’s grip eased as they approached the back fence. He crouched and tugged Adam down beside him.

‘Shh . . .’

They were under the lemon tree in the far corner of the yard. The sheds were nearby. Between the tree trunks the house was lit up. Two policemen were walking up the decking steps. They had flashlights and had come in through the unlocked gate. Monty and Jerry came out, barking and growling. The police ignored them.

‘Rat dogs,’ Billy muttered as he watched. ‘If they come over here, I’ll strangle them.’

Billy wasn’t out of breath like Adam was. His shoulder was pressed up against Adam’s. It felt solid and warm. His coarse leg hairs brushed against Adam’s skin. Adam continued to gasp for breath.

‘We’ll sneak out in a tick.’

One of the policemen knocked on the sliding door and called into the house.

‘Mr Vander? Joe Vander – it’s the police.’

The other policeman was at the pool edge, looking down at the wet footprints and the towel dropped on the decking.

‘Have a wank over that, why don’t you?’ Billy murmured. ‘Aw, look,’ he said in a slower, different voice, ‘I detect there’s been some poolside activity here. If I didn’t know better, I’d say there’ve been people swimming here. Fuck me, really, constable? Jeez, how do you work this shit out?’ He spoke normally again, ‘Such losers.’

The policeman picked up the wet towel with the toe of his boot and kicked it away. He said something over his shoulder. Both policemen laughed.

‘They’ll go down and see that room.’ Billy spoke in the other voice again, ‘Hmm, here’s an interesting thing, a funny place for a bedroom, no windows, but peaceful, and nice how it’s got a shower.’ Billy snorted. ‘Better off steering clear of them altogether. Cops aren’t gonna wanna out a perv in this street.’

The police went inside. Billy rose.

‘When will we come back?’

‘What are you – fourteen? Fifteen? They’ll place you somewhere. If they don’t try and swing it around on you. Come on, we’ve gotta move.’

A policeman walked back out and stood on the deck. He shone a torch into the trees and around the yard.

Billy crouched again. ‘Shit!’

Mosquito bites tingled and itched on Adam’s arms and legs. His eyes were burning. After every couple of blinks he kept them closed a second. He swayed. Billy didn’t seem tired at all. Beneath the smell of sweat there was something else, not shampoo or soap, something nice like that, though. His tongue was always moving – licking his teeth, wetting his lips. Like his body, his face was never still. Monty and Jerry had caught their scent. Billy hissed at them to get back. Another police car had arrived, and an ambulance. Both gates had been opened and the vehicles had driven in and parked around near the decking steps. Headlights shone across the grass and down towards the empty chicken cages. Adam sat with his knees up against his chest. Billy was squatting, bouncing on his haunches. He seemed unable to stop moving. He also seemed unable to stop talking.

‘I said to him once – what have you got stashed down there? And you know what he said to me, you wanna know? He said some joke about having a little something put aside for later. He said that. See? It’s always right in front of your face. It’s always looking you right in the eye.’ Billy knocked his knuckles on his chest. ‘In there too, a feeling. You feel like shit when shit comes out, because you knew it was always going to be shit.’ Billy put his hand on Adam’s head, gave Adam’s skull a squeeze. ‘So what’s your name?’

‘Adam.’

‘Billy. I’ll look after you, don’t worry. It’s good I found you.’

Jerry barked, once, high and piercing. Billy began feeling around in the grass. He picked up a stick and snapped it into smaller pieces. He threw the bits at Jerry.

‘Fuck off, ferret.’

Jerry dodged the bits of stick and barked again. Billy gave up throwing things at him.

‘We gotta go.’

He took hold of Adam’s arm above the elbow again, pulled him close to his side. His grip was strong, but there was no curl to his fingers, no biting pressure that might have made Adam’s heart stall. They began to edge along beneath the trees, the fence at their backs. They passed by the rubbish trailer. The smell of rotting chickens had Billy groaning.

‘Why are sickos always grots? I mean, fuck me, ever think of taking your rubbish to the tip, arsehole? It’s pretty weird to think he’s dead, yeah? It was like that fucker was never gonna die.’

Monty and Jerry followed. Near the gates, with the stretch of concrete to cross, Billy and Adam squatted behind a mound of gravel. Monty and Jerry stopped too. The dogs sat in the grass.

‘How will we stop these rats following us out the gates? They can’t trot along behind us. I suppose we could leg it and outrun them?’

Billy let go of Adam. He looked at his watch, pushed a button on the side of it. The watch face glowed green. Over at the house one of the ambulance officers walked out. Billy grabbed Adam and yanked him lower. The man came down the steps and opened the driver’s side door of the ambulance. He coughed, took out a hanky and blew his nose. He fiddled around, unwrapping a packet of lollies. He popped a lolly in his mouth then put the packet on the dash. He stood there, sucking and rolling the sweet on his tongue, staring up at the stars.

Billy sighed. ‘Have a fucking moment, why don’t you? Don’t mind us.’

Monty came closer and wagged her tail. She lowered her chest to the ground.

‘Monty’s about to bark,’ Adam whispered.

‘Hey?’

‘Monty’s about to bark.’

‘Well, stop her.’

‘Can you let go of me?’

Billy thought about it a moment. He released Adam’s arm.

‘Monty, here.’ Adam spoke as quietly as he could. He patted his leg. ‘Here.’

Both dogs rushed up. They licked his face, excited about not being growled at anymore. Adam picked them up, one under each arm. Monty didn’t mind being held. Jerry didn’t like it as much. He didn’t fight it, though.

‘They won’t bark now.’

‘You better bloody hope not.’

Billy peered over the top of the gravel. The ambulance driver had gone inside. Billy straightened and listened for sounds in the street. He beckoned Adam with his hand.

‘Walk, don’t run, keep it cool.’

They crossed the concrete. Billy strolled as though there was no problem, nothing at all to be afraid of. The lights in the front rooms of the house were on – lounge room, kitchen, short hallway, Adam’s father’s bedroom. Lace dimmed the brightness. The awnings blocked it further. It was possible to see the shapes of the men inside, though. They were standing in the lounge room. One stretched his arms above his head, yawned. Adam realised that anyone walking past the open gates would be able to see the men’s outlines. Adam came to a standstill. Looking at the men made him wonder what people would have thought had they ever been able to see Adam’s outline in the lounge room. Would he have looked like he belonged? Did he belong there?

Billy’s hand swiped in front of Adam’s face. ‘In a bit of a hurry? Remember?’

The balls of Adam’s feet were raw and the bones in his heels felt bruised. When he could, he walked on the grass beside the footpath. Road surfaces were the worst. Adam hobbled across them. Dizzy spells swept over him. His arms ached from holding the dogs. He worried they’d run away if he put them down. Billy’s stride had not changed. When walking he didn’t talk as much. They passed darkened houses and went down dark roads. Whenever there was a car up ahead or coming from behind, Billy turned down a smaller street or stepped into a yard. Adam followed, and they waited until the car passed.

Before each corner Adam glanced over his shoulder, back the way they’d come. How would he ever find his way back to his father’s house? He knew he wouldn’t, not without Billy guiding him. The world might not seem as big or overwhelming at night, but it was no less maze-like.

Billy lit a cigarette. A cat darted across the road and Monty and Jerry pricked their ears and wriggled in Adam’s arms. The pain of holding them spiked, before fading again into an overall discomfort. They came to the edge of a large grassy area and started across it. No trees. The grass was short. Billy walked ahead and stopped by a long building. In the shadows was a large steel container. It was as tall as Billy’s shoulder. He put out his cigarette on the side of it and let the butt drop to the ground.

‘Those rat dogs have come as far as they’re going to come. I can either kill them and drop them in the bin, or you can chuck them over someone’s fence.’ He opened the top of the metal container. ‘Dead is the best pick, if you ask me, not that I’m trying to sway you or nothing, but I am. Joe’s death could be made into a big deal. If the cops do crack a fat over it, then these dogs, alive and kicking, might be a hassle. If they’re a pair of stinking carcasses in the bottom of a bin, good chance no one will fish them out and find them. No dogs, nothing to go on. Yeah?’

The dogs were quiet in Adam’s arms.

‘I’ll do it quick. I’ll snap their necks and they’ll be in doggie heaven before they can say bow-wow.’

Adam tucked the dogs tighter into him. ‘We’ll put them over a fence.’

Billy kept on walking. ‘Your choice. Stupid one, but your choice.’

Adam followed him off the grass and back onto the footpath. They stopped in front of a long weatherboard fence. Billy looked up and down the street.

‘All right, chuck them over.’

Adam stepped around Billy and continued further up the footpath. He heard Billy scoff and mutter.

‘What about this one?’ Adam said.

He’d stopped in front of a low picket fence lined by a garden with flowers. The house was hard to see in the dark. It was small, though. The lawn was mowed. He felt the gate latch. No chain or lock. Adam went inside the yard and shut the gate behind him.

‘Don’t go in,’ Billy hissed.

Adam crouched on the path and put Monty and Jerry down. They shook their bodies and stretched their legs. Monty wagged her tail. Jerry wasn’t as easily fooled; his tail was still and his eyes were shining. It was as though one dog held on to the hope things would always be okay, and the other didn’t. An invisible weight pressed on Adam’s chest. His heart wavered. He’d never played with the dogs, had never been allowed, and they cowered now when he stroked them. For Adam, though, the dogs had been a constant. They’d never pretended to be something they were not, they never lured, never tricked or lied, never said one thing and done another. Even when it came down to bad things, the dogs were honest: Monty and Jerry had never promised not to kill the chickens. If anything they’d glanced guiltily at the birds every chance they’d had, warning that they were capable of it. Adam could trust them because of that.

‘I have to leave you,’ he said. ‘I think these people will be nice to you.’

Adam had to go before he cried. Billy was waiting on the footpath. It wasn’t until Adam reached the street corner that Jerry began to bark. Monty too. Adam could hear the dogs’ confusion. As much as they knew, they also didn’t know. That was how it was. If the things you were meant to understand were bad, it was hard to understand them.

‘Haven’t you ever been to a van park before?’

Adam hadn’t.

They’d walked a long time. To keep on going took concentration. It had caused a dull ache in Adam’s head. The sky was getting light. Magpies warbled from the tops of trees. Caravans were parked under the lower branches.

Billy began pointing to each van.

‘Bitch . . . okay sheila . . . loser . . . scumbag . . . don’t know . . . drugbag.’

The track between the vans was gravel. Adam stepped gingerly across it. He’d come to envy Billy’s sneakers. He envied Billy’s body. Billy skipped along the grass and danced from foot to foot while waiting for Adam to catch up. He threw punches in the half-light.

‘The important thing is keeping low. Down like this.’ He ducked and jabbed the air. ‘Seen Rocky? Seen Taxi Driver?’

‘No.’

‘You keep low, you keep it in, until you need it, then you explode.’

Billy peppered the air with hits and wheeled around, landed one final pretend punch. Watching him, Adam wasn’t so sure anymore that Billy was as old as he’d first thought.

They went to the only weatherboard building in the caravan park. It was beside a boundary fence. Billy pulled Adam into the carport next to the house. As the sun rose, the day came alive with colours, sounds and smells. Adam’s nostrils filled with the scent of dry gum leaves and engine oil. Under the carport were two cars, up on bricks. The tyres were missing and the bonnets were open. Kookaburras started laughing. Their noise drowned out the magpies.

‘Okay, here’s the thing, Scotty’s a good guy. I’ve got to go for a bit. I’ve brought you here because Scotty isn’t going to say nothing and he’s not going to do nothing, you know? I won’t be long. I’ve got to make sure the other two got away okay and aren’t mouthing off like a pair of dickheads. I’ll come straight back.’

‘Can’t I come with you?’

‘You can hardly walk, kid. Your eyes are hanging outta your head.’ Billy messed up Adam’s hair. ‘It’s okay. You’re with me now. When I say Scotty is okay, he’s okay. I’ll always tell you the truth about a guy. What’s the time now . . .?’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s six now. I’ll be back about eleven.’ A car drove past on the track. Billy lowered his head and his voice. ‘Until we work out what’s going on, we’ll need to keep it low. You understand? You’ve gotta say nothing. Gotta do nothing. You can do that – say nothing – can’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s all you gotta do.’

‘Will we go back to my father’s place after that?’

‘Stop calling him your father, it’s fucking creepy. Anyway, he’s dead.’ Billy put his hand on Adam’s shoulder and gently pushed him around the bonnets of the cars. ‘Remember, Scotty’s good. I won’t be gone long. Then we’ll get you some clothes, get you some shoes, get you a haircut – you’re not going to know yourself.’

‘Billy . . . ’

He paused on the steps. ‘Yeah?’

‘I need to go to the toilet.’

He leaned close, said in Adam’s ear, ‘You’ll never guess what, Scotty’s got a dunny. Fucking amazing, I know.’

On the back of Scotty’s toilet door was a picture of a naked woman. She was lying on the bonnet of a car, resting a grease-smeared spanner between her breasts. There were grease marks down her thighs and her hair fanned over the windscreen. Adam frowned at the picture. Without the head pain his gaze might not have been as locked. Beneath the headache his curiosity was perhaps gentler. On the floor beneath the toilet roll was a stack of car magazines. Spots of mould dotted the ceiling. Yellowed newspaper pages were on the windowsill. Adam could hear the murmur of Billy talking in the hallway. The voice of the other man was louder. He had a high, shrill voice.

‘How do you know he’s not going to pinch something. If he does, you’re paying for it. I got no idea why you think it’s all right to bring some loser kid into my house. I don’t want him wandering around. What am I meant to do with him? I got shit to do today. I don’t need this bullshit.’

A door across the hallway slammed.

The floor outside the toilet squeaked. There was a knock.

‘Scotty’s all good,’ Billy said from the other side of the door. ‘I’m heading off.’

It wasn’t the other man’s angry words or the slammed door that made Adam’s heart pound; it had been pounding before that. His skin had already felt slimy. He’d felt ill before sitting down, like he might be sick. He leaned forward on his knees.

‘Kid? You right? Don’t worry about Scotty. He gets overexcited.’

There was a pause and the soft sound of Billy inhaling. He was smoking again. He breathed out smoothly.

‘Hang tight. Be good. Don’t shit yourself.’

Laughing, Billy left.

Beside the toilet was a bathroom. Adam washed his hands. He dried them on his shorts. A black spider was in the tub. The shower curtain had pictures of umbrellas on it. Adam went into the hallway. The floor creaked with every step. He walked through the kitchen. On a board on the wall were rows of hooks with keys on them. Above each set of keys was a number. On the kitchen bench was a bowl of green apples. Adam went through into the lounge room and eased down in the only armchair, sank low into it. Instead of a curtain, a stripy bedsheet was strung up over the window. From down the hallway came the sound of a door opening, and then the shower being turned on. Adam leaned back and closed his eyes.

What were the chances of him falling asleep? Was he more afraid now than he had been with his father? It was a different kind of fear. His father wasn’t here. Adam rested his eyes and listened. It took a few seconds for him to realise he was checking for his father all the same. A further few seconds for Adam to remember that his father was dead. Adam’s eyes reopened. How could he be dead? Could a person like his father even die, when the fear he caused had been so much a part of who he’d been? He was a smell, a feeling, a taste, a sound, a chill, a sweat; he was any footstep, any creaky floor, the rattle of any door handle, the slide of any latch. He was there now in Adam’s own shaky breathing. The things he’d been didn’t disappear just because his body had.

Adam said, beneath his breath, ‘He’s dead.’

It wasn’t until he’d chanted it in a whisper that he was able to close his eyes again. Repeating the words didn’t block all the new fears, though. Adam calculated: the walls in Scotty’s house were thin, cars passed so close he could hear the crunch of the tyres on the gravel, someone had turned on a radio a few vans down, he could hear the drumbeat of the song playing. If Adam could hear all that, people would be able to hear him if he had to scream.

When Adam woke, Scotty was standing in the doorway, eating an apple. He was dressed in tight jeans and a T-shirt. His hair was slicked back. His face was small and pale and he was wearing wire-framed glasses. Adam knew it was Scotty because it was the same wound-up voice he’d heard talking to Billy.

‘Thought you were never gonna wake up. I have to go down to a van. If you pinch something, I’ll know. I don’t care if you shoot through, just don’t take none of my stuff when you do. By that I mean clothes too.’

He glanced at Adam’s feet. He took another bite of the apple, chewed open-mouthed. Frowning, he moved his gaze up Adam’s body.

‘How long you been sleeping rough?’

When Adam didn’t answer, Scotty took another bite and turned away.

‘You can have an apple,’ he said over his shoulder, his mouth full, ‘and you can turn the TV on, but that’s it.’

Scotty went out through the kitchen. There was the rattle of keys being taken from the board of hooks and the click of thongs, the squeak and slam of the back door. Adam listened to him walking away. It was amazing how much he could hear. He pulled up the bedsheet curtain. The window was wide open. Warm air floated in. Adam walked tenderly on his sore feet into the kitchen. He hadn’t noticed the tall red toolbox by the fridge before. It was on wheels. Each drawer had a lock. Adam took an apple and sat at the kitchen table. He thought about Monty and Jerry, tried to picture their new home in the daytime. Adam touched his fingers to his lips as he chewed. Green apples were so tart they made his eyes water.

Adam compared the situation now to that of being in the backroom. Aside from the sights, sounds, smells and colours, things weren’t so different. He couldn’t get up and leave. He had nowhere to go. He couldn’t guess what was going to happen next. All he had was the chair under him, the table surface, the lino against his feet, his body and his thoughts. There was safety and familiarity in that. Comfort in that. At most, Adam could give a little something of himself over to the inanimate things. He touched and rubbed the table edge, grazed his knuckles on the clean, shiny surface, brushed the pad of his thumb on the discoloured foam poking through a split in the cushioned seat. It felt good doing that. Even if he was only trusting things, not people or situations. It was better that than trusting nothing. Adam was able to sink into the realness of his nail scratching the brown apple stalk. It became everything for a moment. Uncomplicated. A world of sorts. Where very little happened and there were so few elements that it was impossible to get hurt. No matter where he was, in the backroom or outside of it, he could focus in and settle down, concentrate on small things, block out the rest. Until everything was simple and it all made perfect sense.

Scotty came back with a meat pie in a white paper bag. He made Adam a glass of orange cordial. The drink and pie were new to Adam. He could tell Scotty realised this. The man’s frown deepened. He was over at the sink and kept glancing across. The phone rang. Scotty dried his hands and answered it. He leaned against the wall.

‘Oh yeah. I know. Oh right. Okay. Oh yeah. Not like that one we saw the other day? Nah. Yeah. Gotta tighten them bolts after a bit. I reckon too.’

There was a knock at the door. Scotty clicked his fingers and pointed down the hallway. Fuck off, he mouthed.

Adam took what remained of his pie and went down to wait in the bathroom. He sat on the edge of the bath. The spider hadn’t moved. Adam finished the pie and placed the white paper bag on the ground. He rubbed his tongue along his teeth, eyed the toothbrush and toothpaste on the shelf. In the kitchen Scotty was talking to a woman. She had a husky, laughing voice. Adam wiped the flaky bits of pastry off his face. The back door banged shut. It was quiet.

Adam stayed in the bathroom. He sat against the wall, knees up, facing the bath. He thought of ways to save the spider without touching it. He used the white paper bag to sweep the spider up the side of the bath. He sat back down and watched it crawl off behind a piece of lifted and rotted skirting board.

Billy came back dressed in a new set of clothes, tight black shorts and a white tank top with a wide blue stripe across the chest. The sneakers he had on were the same as before. Adam didn’t mean to, but he stared. It was as though Billy wasn’t the same boy who’d walked into Adam’s father’s lounge room. He wasn’t that much taller than Adam. The bristles on the sides of his face were gone. His lips were large and soft. A curly lock of hair cupped his earlobe.

‘Kid, you’re staring.’

Adam looked away.

Scotty was standing in the hallway. He jerked his thumb towards the lounge room. ‘A word?’

Billy winked at Adam.

Although they spoke in lowered voices Adam could hear them from the kitchen.

‘That kid’s not normal,’ Scotty said.

‘He’s all right.’

‘No, he’s not. What’s the story with him?’

‘He was hanging around.’

‘Something’s not right. He’s not a street kid. He’s not a runaway.’ Scotty’s voice dropped further. Adam strained to hear. ‘You can see he’s not right.’

‘That’s not very nice.’

‘Don’t be a dickhead.’

‘We need to hang out here until tomorrow.’

‘No way.’

‘You won’t even know we’re here. We’ll watch TV, we won’t eat.’

‘Stop fucking around.’

‘I need a pair of shoes then.’

‘No.’

‘You reckon you feel sorry for him, give him a pair of shoes.’

‘Why are you turning into such an arse?’

‘I walked him all the way here, right? I could have left him where I found him, and, let me tell you, where I found him wasn’t great.’

‘I’ll give you a pair of shoes if you swear you’ll take him somewhere. Take him to that joint down near the old pool. Do that and then come back here.’

‘Yeah, all right.’

‘Come on, Billy, that kid needs help, don’t fuck around.’

‘I said all right.’

‘All right then.’

As well as Scotty’s sneakers, Adam got a pair of socks, a pair of tracksuit pants and a faded black T-shirt. The sneakers fitted okay. The clothes were baggy. Billy crouched and pushed Adam’s fingers away when he saw that he couldn’t tie the laces.

Billy and Adam walked out through the front gates of the caravan park. Adam realised how close they were to bushland. Streets and roads, shops and houses extended all the way up to the base of a tree-filled hill. They began down the sloping pavement, away from the bush. Billy lit a smoke.

‘It’s all around that Joe died of a heart attack. Cops can spread something like that, though, so everyone relaxes and starts to talk. It’s gotta be like we weren’t there, that’s the best way. Yeah?’

‘Will someone move in there?’

‘Hey?’

‘Will someone move into the house?’

‘I dunno. What sort of question is that? Some relo will get it, I guess. Whoever moves in isn’t going to be your long-lost aunt or uncle, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘Will they bury him?’

‘Of course they’ll bury him. Are you upset he’s dead or something? Don’t give them nothing, kid, not even when they’re dead. Every word out of their mouths is shit. They lie so you don’t know up from down. Whatever bullshit he told you, you’ve gotta forget it. Do you want a smoke?’

Adam shook his head.

Billy stole a car. It was parked in a quiet street. They hung back a moment before walking up to it. It was old and yellow. The seats were covered in grey fabric. He reached in through a small side window to unlock it, fiddled under the dash to start it.

‘Zippy little thing,’ he said as they drove off.

Adam wound his window down and looked at the houses and the shops. He looked at the yards. They went past a school. The buildings were narrow and low. It had a cricket ground and a playground. Children were outside. It was a hot day. Above the sound of the traffic were the sounds of the children’s squeals and shouts. Billy was talking, names and places, words, explanations, things Adam didn’t understand, said too fast to try to grasp. As Billy spoke he kept glancing across, frowning at Adam the same way Scotty had. He knew. Anyone who really looked could spot it, couldn’t they? The way Adam didn’t belong. But what could Adam say to change that? He doubted his lips would make the shapes or that his tongue could form the words; if his head could barely think of the things his father had done, how could he find a way to speak them? And how would saying them help? Adam was pretty sure an explanation would only push Billy away.

Billy fell quiet. He pulled the car into a narrow street.

They got out and shut the doors.

‘Those shoes all right, kid? Need me to tighten the laces? We’ll get you some better gear, hey? You’re real pale. You feeling all right? You need food. You need some sun. We’ll get you sorted. Watch your step.’

A gust of wind met them as they rounded a corner. The pavement was uneven and littered with empty bottles and cigarette packets. Houses here were joined together, with no front yards. They came to a busy road and waited before crossing it. Adam watched the traffic. He looked at the people who came to stand beside them. One woman had a towel over her shoulder and thongs on her feet, wearing nothing but a bikini and an open shirt. Once over the road Adam saw the reason for the woman’s way of dressing. They were at the beach. It was down some steps and across a strip of grass. The ocean was louder in real life than on TV. Windy. They didn’t go to the water. They stayed beside the road. Adam moved across and walked near the railing, keeping sight of the sand and the sea. Beach air smelled of fried food and traffic. Birds drifted and floated above the waves. Billy tapped Adam’s shoulder. He pointed behind them.

‘That’s the city.’ In the distance were the tops of tall buildings. ‘You seen that before?’

‘No.’

‘What about this?’

Billy stopped by the railing and leaned out over it. Adam held the rail and peered down. Below was a sandy pocket tucked away from the rest of the beach. Music drifted up. Naked people were lying on towels. Being nude clearly didn’t bother them. They were stretched out and relaxed. There weren’t many naked bathers, not compared with the people along the water’s edge. Adam’s mouth grew dry. Blood pulsed behind his eyes. He blinked a dizzy spell away. Billy nudged him.

‘You haven’t seen that before either, I bet.’

‘No.’

‘Watch this.’

He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled down. ‘Cops,’ he called through cupped hands.

The sunbakers sat up and reached for their tops, they wriggled into their shorts and bikini bottoms. They shaded their eyes and looked up. Billy pulled away. Adam quickly straightened. Billy laughed and swiped Adam’s head.

‘Come on.’

They walked along a street lined with shops, chairs and tables on the footpath. Billy and Adam then turned down a side street, and into an alleyway. It smelled of rubbish. Flies buzzed around the tops of bins. Seagulls sat in a row along the fence.

‘I told you Scotty’s a good guy, and now I’m telling you this guy isn’t. Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you alone with him. Don’t say nothing, don’t get nervous, don’t fuck it up. We can stay here until we’re sure everything’s all right.’ Billy shrugged. ‘It’s worth keeping low for a day or two. I hate this prick, but what can you do, yeah?’

Adam hoped keeping low involved getting a drink. He knew he should be concentrating more on the things Billy said, but with so much information it was difficult. Whole sentences melted the moment they entered Adam’s overheated head.

They started up a staircase made of mesh and iron. Adam used the handrail for support. The ache in his lower back had returned.

The bottom floors of the shops were busy, the top floors weren’t. The steps finished at a glossy black door. It opened into what Adam first thought was a large storage area. Framed pictures leaned against the walls. Paint-splattered sheets were spread out on the floor. Then he saw, over by the windows, a long table with paint pots and brushes on it. An easel. Fans spun overhead. Billy closed the door.

A man came out from a room down the back. He had a thick beard and woolly hair. His shorts were baggy and his shirt was loose. He was fat. There was a spray of green paint across his shirt and dots of green on his legs. The man opened his arms.

‘Watch this,’ Billy murmured out of the corner of his mouth. He grinned and said, ‘Vern, you big fucking bear, how’s it going?’

They embraced. Billy whispered something in the man’s ear. He turned his back on the man, winked at Adam.

‘I’ve missed you, William.’

‘Well, I fucking hope so. What’s not to miss?’

For a while it was as though Vern didn’t see Adam. His eyes were fixed on Billy. William. When Billy walked to the windows, Vern went too, passing right by Adam, not looking at him, not even a glance. Billy crossed his ankles and leaned against the window frame. He watched the cars and people down on the street. Some of the paintings in the room were of boys in poses very much like Billy’s, at that same window, perhaps. Only when Billy pointed at Adam did Vern switch his attention.

‘That’s Adam. He’s quiet. He needs a haircut.’

Vern smiled gently. There was nothing to read in his eyes. It was Billy he wanted to be looking at.

Vern led them down to the room he’d first come from. It was a kitchen, with a couch squeezed in against one wall and a narrow bed against the other. Takeaway containers covered the table and were scattered on the floor. Vern began clearing away the mess. He kept apologising for it. Billy sank down onto the couch and tipped his head back. He closed his eyes. Vern continued to clean up. Adam perched on the couch beside Billy. Soon the bin was full and Vern had to squash the rubbish down to fit more in.

‘Hey,’ Billy said, without opening his eyes, ‘enough already. Leave it.’

Vern stopped and left the kitchen. He shut the door behind him.

Billy sighed. ‘You’re right, aren’t you, kid, if I have a sleep? You’re good?’

‘Is there a way I can get a drink?’

He answered with his eyes closed. ‘Turning on the tap has always worked for me.’

It was a long couch. Adam had a seat cushion to himself. Billy was fast asleep, lying on his side, with his knees bent. His feet were right by Adam’s leg. Billy had kicked off his shoes. The bottoms of his feet were pale but dirty. The window was open a crack. Warm sea wind gusted in. Adam drank the tap water from a mug.

He got up, dried the mug, put it back in the cupboard where he’d found it. Billy continued to sleep. The sun got lower. Every so often the door handle would turn and the door would open. Vern would peer in, look at Billy sleeping, and close the door again. As tired as Adam was, it was the wrong time to rest. The situation didn’t feel safe. There was no easy way out of this upstairs room. A shout for help could be lost to all the noise in the street below.

In the fridge, Adam found a packet of chocolate biscuits. He eased three biscuits out, at pains not to make the packet crackle. He stood by the window and ate them. Billy’s face in sleep was round and boyish. He lay there like a child, a very big one. The shorts he was wearing rode higher up his thighs. The tops of his legs were covered in round scars, shiny and slightly risen, not burns, but healed puncture wounds. His fingers sometimes curled in and then gradually reopened. His palms were pale, like the soles of his feet. From the window Adam could see over the rooftops to the ocean. Ocean water changed colour. It was now dark blue. Adam thought for a moment about the house, the safe and the hidden key; he thought about his father. Billy had said with new clothes and a haircut Adam wouldn’t know himself, and it felt like that could happen. Adam rubbed his tongue along his teeth, fretted that they were furry.

The day darkened. The ache in Adam’s lower back wasn’t letting up. Chocolate-flavoured bile rose in his throat. He stepped nearer to the wall, slid down against it, crouched and pulled in small. Was he feverish because he was thinking too hard and too much? If he let himself, he could cry. If he let himself, he could vomit.

Billy stirred. Adam rose as silently as he’d lowered himself. He stood by the window. A pale glow from the alleyway lights shone through. The rest of the room had grown dark. Billy woke and cleared his throat, continued lying on his side, dozing, then he struggled up, reached for his smokes.

‘I don’t sleep like that round any old social outcast, let me tell you.’

The burning tip of Billy’s cigarette glowed and crackled as he inhaled. His fingers rasped against the paper sides and his lips stuck to the filter.

‘No school, hey?’

Adam shook his head.

‘You read and write?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t worry, even when you learn, all you’re really learning is that you’re no good at it. You know what people will say to you? I came from dirt and I succeeded.’ Billy snorted. ‘Really? Is that fucking so? And you reckon dirt is a bad start, do you, dickhead? What did they want? To float down from the clouds, God’s gift to the fucking planet?’ He scoffed and smoked. ‘It’s when you come from someplace lower . . . Look, I’m not saying I came from the same place you did. All I’m saying is I know it ain’t no level playing field.’ He stood, took a deep and final drag of his cigarette and went across to put it out in the sink. He washed the butt away. ‘Hang tight for a bit. I’ll be back in five.’

He left the kitchen before Adam could say he needed to go to the toilet. The urge had come on suddenly. Adam squeezed his legs together. He cupped his groin. The pain in his back speared lower. He waited.

Until he couldn’t wait any longer.

There were no hallways at Vern’s place. The kitchen door opened into the studio. Fans were spinning. The smell of fresh paint and a sharper chemical smell filled the air. A light was on over by the easel. It bounced off the darkened windows. Adam didn’t see Billy at first, because he was standing in the shadows. Then Adam spotted him and began to move towards him. He stopped. Vern was kneeling in front of Billy. Adam waited out the rush of fear and dizziness. The air exited his lungs. The man’s head and shoulders blocked most of the act. It was no mystery to Adam what they were doing. He stepped backwards, returning to the kitchen. Billy had a clear view across to him. His expression was hard to read in the dim light. Judging by the way he inclined his head he wasn’t upset or afraid. He calmly indicated for Adam to go back into the kitchen.

Adam closed the door. He was gripped by the need to run. It increased his need to pee. Adam fumbled in the dark for the sink. He put one knee up on the edge. He pulled down the elastic waistband of his trackpants and urinated where he believed the plughole to be. It sounded like he aimed right. His hands were shaking. The urine burned as it left him. Adam pulled up his pants and went to the window. From memory it was a long drop, but not so long that he wouldn’t attempt it. The bottle opener was still in his pocket. He’d swapped it over when he’d changed clothes.

Billy came in. He turned on the light. His gaze was both dull and glistening. He took a folded note of money from his pocket and showed it to Adam before slipping it away again.

‘Let’s eat.’

The money paid for their food downstairs in the café. It paid for a better fitting T-shirt, a packet of smokes, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a bag of jellybeans. Adam saw it was the same kind of note as the bundle of cash in the safe, one of them, a single one.

Billy had shaken off his quietness at the bottom of the steps, wriggled his shoulders, jumped up and down on the spot, thrown a couple of punches in the dark, swiped his hand over the top of Adam’s head.

‘What do you feel like? Pizza? Want a steak and chips? I reckon you need some decent stuff – a burger with the lot. If you tell me you’ve never eaten a burger before, I’ll know you’ve been on another planet.’

Adam had eaten a burger before. Hamburgers, like fish and chips, had been a treat, and a thing to use. Sulk and you’ll get nothing.

The night came in waves of movement and noise. There were times Billy’s arm was draped around Adam’s shoulders and his chatter spoken directly into Adam’s ear. Adam dulled his hearing and he backed up, inside himself. He stopped looking through his eyes and looked out from them instead. It wasn’t the same way he’d retreated when being beaten or hurt. He was withdrawing for the opposite reason. He needed to see and feel everything, but without distance it was too much. Standing back, inside himself, he was able to get a better view of things. Money mattered. It was in everyone’s pockets and being passed over every counter. Meanness didn’t only take place indoors and behind high fences. People swore and threatened one another out in the open, in the street. Fights broke out. One man threw a punch and Billy had to step back to avoid it, laughing as he did.

‘Dopey white cunt, have another go.’

The man tried but stumbled and tripped over a woman sitting in the gutter. The man then had to shield himself from her blows. She hit him with her handbag. Billy giggled for a long time after that.

Everyone drank. Billy didn’t.

‘Grog is toxic. If you’re smart you won’t touch it.’

People smoked, almost as much as Billy did.

At an all-night barber the air was so thick and hazy with cigarette, pipe and cigar smoke that it made Adam’s heart race and his eyes sting. Billy lounged on the counter with his back to the mirrors. Not all the men were getting haircuts. They’d come in just to talk, to smoke. Adam chose not to look at his own reflection. For the most part his head was angled down anyway. Damp lengths of Adam’s hair dropped to the floor. No sawing, no dry cutting, not like when Adam’s father had brought out the scissors. These were fast little snips and clean slices. Only when it was done did Adam look. His hair was short, except for his fringe, which was heavy over one eye. Billy spent longer looking at the new style. He pouted, clucked his tongue, made Adam turn in a circle. He smacked his lips and winked.

‘Now if you could stop hobbling like an old man, we might just be getting somewhere.’

Pubs and clubs were full of people. Music thudded from deep inside the buildings. Adam and Billy walked past queues and stood around near crowds. Women smiled and were friendly when they were drunk. Not so friendly when they were sober.

People kissed and touched out in the open.

Adam’s feet sank in the soft sand as they walked down near the water. A man and woman were lying together in the darkness. Cold sea air blew. Waves rolled in and out and glistened in the moonlight.

Up from the beach, Billy had a shower. There was a showerhead outside the toilet block. Adam watched for anyone coming. He stood beneath an orange streetlamp, at the edge of the empty parking lot. Billy bundled and balanced his clothes on top of a post. Naked, under the shower, he gasped and swore. He leaned down and scooped up small piles of wet sand and rubbed them over his body, under his arms, down his legs, up his neck, on his face, before rinsing it all off again. To dry himself he used his tank top, and then left it off, tucking it into the waistband of his shorts to flap about beside his leg.

‘Wanna wash?’

‘No. Can I brush my teeth?’

Billy showed Adam to a tap above a grate. The cool air felt strange against the nape of Adam’s neck. All the hair there had been shaved off. He splashed his face.

Finished brushing, feeling better for it, Adam put the toothbrush and small tube of toothpaste in his trackpant pocket and walked back to Billy. He was leaning against a post, staring towards the beach, bare-chested, the tank top flapping against his leg. He smiled as Adam approached. Right then, Billy looked like something out of a TV show. He seemed bigger than his surroundings, bigger than the picture he was in.

‘All good?’

As they climbed the steps up to the street Billy put his tank top on. He combed his fingers through his hair. Up on the street he lit a smoke, cupping his hand around the flame, puffing fast in the gusting wind to keep it lit. A car on the road slowed and pulled over to the kerb. Billy watched it. There were no other cars about, only a few people on the sidewalk. Drifting up was the sound of waves softly tumbling in and flowing out. Flags flapped on the tops of tall poles. The driver of the car wound down his window.

He called across, ‘Hey boys, need a lift?’

‘Maybe not,’ Billy murmured.

He turned and they headed back down the steps again.

‘Not tonight, hey,’ Billy said.

Drunks were passed out in the playground along from the steps. Some were huddled in groups talking. They smelled of alcohol and unwashed clothes. Billy was asked for smokes. He gave out a few.

They wandered off to where the streets were quieter, sheltered from the sea breeze.

‘What’s your last name?’

‘Vander.’

‘Man, you got to drop that shit. You’re like a broken record. Do you know your real last name?’

‘No.’

‘How old are you?’

Adam shook his head.

‘You don’t know? You don’t know how old you are? You’re kidding me? What’s the story with your mum?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘She died when I was a baby.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘My fath— Joe,’ Adam said.

‘That’s likely to be a load of shit then. How old do you reckon I am?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, give it a go. Have a try.’ Billy skipped out in front and held his arms out. He danced along, facing Adam. ‘You’ll never guess.’

‘You’re eighteen.’

He stopped skipping. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘That’s how old you seem.’

‘I seem? What sort of stupid thing is that to say? I don’t look eighteen – I look fucking older. Everyone says I look older. What would you know anyway? . . . Fool.’

After crossing an empty parking lot they went down wooden steps to a new part of the beach. No sand. The swell splashed against a bank of jagged rocks. They walked out onto a jetty and sat with their legs over the side, listened to the waves slap against the boats.

Adam watched the black water move beneath them. Billy talked about the different fish to catch – flathead, mullet, bream and whiting. He talked about what baits to use. Adam rested his forehead on the rail and dozed in bouts.

His hearing fuzzed in and out. His awareness faded.

Wind died away and mozzies swarmed.

Billy nudged him. They got up and climbed the steps, headed back the way they’d come.

Whenever they saw the police, Billy spun on his heel and Adam followed. They’d disappear, let the crowd hide them.

At first light they were out front of a bakery. The shop had not long opened. Adam was scratching his itchy bites. The lumps and welts were on his hands, up and down his arms, some were on his nape and scalp.

‘That isn’t any old haircut, by the way,’ Billy was saying, ‘that’s a cut. You look fucking cool. Like David Bowie’s love child.’

He slid two sausage rolls from the paper bag and passed one to Adam.

‘That’s us skint.’

They climbed the stairs to Vern’s place. Adam was weak with fatigue. He stopped halfway up to muster the last bit of effort left inside him.

‘Want a jellybean?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Don’t like them?’

‘They’re too sweet.’

‘Too sweet? Jeez, kid, you crack me up.’

Vern’s door was locked. They sat down with their backs against it. From the mesh platform they were able to see the sun lift higher and the coloured clouds turn white. Adam’s eyes kept closing. The bites nagged and niggled. Adam clawed at them. Billy chewed his jellybeans. Vern arrived in a brown van and parked in the alleyway. His hair and beard were damp. He had on a baggy singlet top and shorts. He came up the steps. Adam felt Billy’s body grow tense. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Billy’s forced smile flicker and tremble.

‘Bet you didn’t think you’d see me again this soon.’

‘Oh, I thought I might,’ Vern said.

Sun streamed in through the window. No blinds to block it. Below, from the café, were clatters and the occasional smash of a plate or cup being dropped; trucks came and went from the alleyway; seagulls squabbled. Adam could hear the bird’s claws scratching and scrambling on the roof. Cars tooted. A woman came to visit Vern and she talked in a loud, demanding voice, walked around in noisy shoes. It was hard to sleep.

Billy was on the couch. He was only wearing shorts, sleeping on his back, one leg propped on the cushions, the other leg hanging over the side, his arms draped above his head. His chest rose and fell. Sometimes his limbs twitched. Sweat beaded on Adam’s top lip. His lashes were wet with it. Sweat trickled down his neck. He didn’t dare take his trackpants off, or his T-shirt. Not even his sneakers. He sweltered. The mosquito bites had swelled into tight hot lumps. Thoughts of the night turned in his mind, unsettling images, combinations of faces and events, jumbled up and switched about – the barber at the playground, nightclub people queuing in the waves, Scotty and the faceless husky-voiced woman down on the sand. Adam thought about Billy and Vern, what he’d seen them do. At least that slowed the wheeling images – increased Adam’s heartbeats, though, made his blood cold and his sweat turn icy. He shivered.

‘He’ll want to paint you.’

Adam didn’t react. For a moment he wondered if he’d imagined Billy’s voice. He hadn’t realised Billy had woken. He was in the same position but with his head turned Adam’s way, eyes open, watching him.

‘You don’t have to. I’m just saying, he’ll ask you. Pay you. He’ll keep offering till you say yes. It’ll be a lot of money for a small thing, just you sitting there. First time it’s a small thing, for a lot of money. Then the things you have to do get bigger and the money gets less.’

‘I don’t want to.’

Billy sniffed and sat up. ‘Fair enough.’ He reached for his smokes. ‘Fuck it’s hot in here.’ After lighting his smoke he got up, took a bottle of Coke from the fridge and sat down with it, swigging between puffs. ‘Want some?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘It’s just that . . . well, because it’s the first time, we could get it so you could stay dressed, sitting and doing nothing. And for that we could get maybe as much as two hundred bucks.’ Billy squinted and looked towards the window. ‘If you don’t come back again that’s it and that’s as bad as it’s going to get. I’m here so it ain’t gonna go no further.’ Billy wet his lips and dried them with the back of his hand. He sucked hard on the smoke. ‘There are easy ways of getting two hundred bucks and hard ways. I’m saying this would be an easy way. We’d go after that. We don’t have to come back.’

Adam wiped his face on the shoulder of his T-shirt. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘I’m not going to get two hundred bucks for sitting down fully dressed in front of him, I’ll tell you that much. Might be all we need to sort out what it is with you. What your real name is and where you come from.’

‘Can’t we just leave?’

‘And get that kind of money where? I’m here, he can’t hurt you.’

‘Can you take me back to my father’s house?’

Billy sighed. He capped the Coke and put it back in the fridge. For a while he stood with the door open, smoking and staring across the room. He closed the fridge. ‘Sit tight. Don’t jump out the window or anything. I’ll be five, ten minutes.’

‘You’ll take me back after that?’

Billy stopped at the door. His gaze grew stony. ‘You reckon anyone else would do what I’m about to do and then go shout you a salad roll and a milkshake? You go get some money, be nice enough to share it with me, and then I’m all fucking ears about what you wanna do.’

‘I want to go back.’

‘Of course you do, kid. You don’t know no different. You’re acting just the way they like. But hey, you reckon crawling back and sitting around a dead man’s house is gonna work for you . . . off you go. See where that gets you.’

‘There’s money there.’

Billy had opened the door. He stopped, closed it again. ‘Hey?’

‘There’s money at the house.’

‘Joe’s house?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘It’s under the floor.’

‘What’re you talking about?’

‘It’s in a safe under the floor.’

‘A safe?’

‘I hid the key.’

‘Money, or just a few notes?’

‘A bundle of money.’

Billy scratched his cheek. ‘A bundle? A fair bit?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve got the key to this safe?’

‘I hid it, yes.’

Billy said nothing for a moment. His gaze wandered as he thought. ‘And it opens the safe and you’ve seen the money and you reckon it’s a lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re not bullshitting me?’

‘No.’

Billy pulled up straighter, lobbed his lit cigarette towards the bin. It fell down in amongst the greasy takeaway wrappers and containers.

‘Well, why the fuck didn’t you say something earlier?’

The car wasn’t where he’d left it.

‘A long shot,’ Billy said.

Storm clouds were gathering. Fat raindrops began to fall. The air smelled tinny. Thunder rumbled. Rain held off. Sun kept breaking through and the day became stickier and hotter.

They walked.

At a small park with trees, a slide, a swing, Billy sat down on the grass. Across the road was a large grey shed. Billy watched the cars pulling into the parking lot. A station wagon turned in. It parked down the side, away from the other cars.

Billy jumped up.

‘Stay here.’

A man got out of the car and locked it. He carried a small towel and used it to swipe flies from his face. He went into the shed. Billy crossed the road and followed him in. Within a few moments Billy reappeared, returned to the park, flopped down on the grass beside Adam.

‘Bastard didn’t use a locker.’

Billy stretched out his legs and leaned on one elbow.

‘So . . . this money . . . I think I’m going to have to see it to believe it. You said a bundle.’ He held his thumb and finger a little way apart. ‘Like that? Folded or flat?’

‘Not folded.’

‘A solid bundle like that? Really?’

‘A bit bigger.’

‘Show me.’

Adam indicated the depth of the stack he’d seen.

‘Fifties?’

‘The yellow ones.’

‘You reckon the cops would have found it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Whereabouts did you hide the key?’

Adam shook his head.

‘Ah, not telling.’ Billy took the squashed cigarette packet from the band of his shorts. He withdrew a smoke with his lips. Squeezed the lighter out from the small pocket in his shorts. ‘Don’t trust me, hey?’

A car pulling in across the road caught his eye. It was a grey sedan. Billy snuffed out the freshly lit cigarette and put it back into the packet. He got to his feet and brushed the dry grass off his bum.

‘Second time lucky.’

The driver was a woman. She carried a sports bag, slung over her shoulder. Her ponytail swayed as she walked. Billy jogged across the road and went through the doors after her.

While he was gone another car arrived. Some people left the shed, smiling and chatting in a group, flushed red faces, sipping from drink bottles. Adam moved across and sat where Billy had been sitting. He stretched out the same way Billy had, lounging on one elbow. Adam pretended for a moment – pretending to smoke, wriggling and moving his face the way Billy did, wetting his lips, touching his tongue to his teeth, narrowing his eyes and peering at things in the distance. He practised winking. Adam imagined his skin as brown and his body as strong and heavy as Billy’s, his mind as sharp.

More people left the shed. Adam stopped pretending and drew up his legs, hugged his knees. The car park emptied. A van, a red hatchback, the station wagon and the grey car were all that was left.

It began to rain.

There was a limit. A couple of times Adam had felt close to it. Inside him was a scream. It had always been there, he had lived with it and it lived with him. It was wordless, constant, straining. No sound. To put sound to it would be the end, the limit reached. Adam made a fist and pressed his knuckles to his lips. Rain fell harder. Adam pushed his knuckles so that his lips were mashed against his teeth, and he drilled harder still, pushed the scream back in, until he tasted blood.

Billy re-emerged, strolling across to the grey sedan. He had the keys, unlocked the car. Adam licked the blood from his teeth and lips, wiped the back of his hand on the wet grass and pushed his dripping fringe off his forehead.

Billy drove up, stopped by the kerb. Soaked through, Adam got in the car.

‘Sorry about that. A class had finished. I had to wait until they all left. Place has got these new lockers too, real hard to jimmy. Probably put them in because of the last time I used this joint. Try harder next time, fuckers!’

He spun the wheels as they left.

They were a few streets away before Billy noticed.

‘What happened to your mouth?’

‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’

Billy glanced across, didn’t say anything.

Maybe there’d been times Billy had done a similar thing to himself, if not his face, then to his arms, perhaps, or to his legs, the scarred tops of them.

Billy lifted his hips and pulled some notes from his pocket. He tossed them over. ‘That was in her wallet. We can split it.’

The crumpled notes settled on Adam’s lap. He collected up the money and handed it back to Billy. ‘I don’t know how to use it. I don’t know anything.’

‘Hey, come on, kid, don’t be like that.’

‘He didn’t teach me anything.’

‘And that’s a good thing, don’t you reckon? Who’d want him as your teacher?’ Billy reached across and gave Adam’s shoulder a gentle shove. ‘We’re gonna sort it out, hey? Get this money and sort it out?’

They were going the long way around, doing their best to avoid the police. Billy explained that the gym woman could’ve already reported her car stolen. She had a string of Smurfs hanging from the rear-view mirror. They swayed at every turn.

The day had turned steamy. The car windows fogged up. Billy wound down his window to let some air in.

Waiting at a set of traffic lights, gazing at the wet roads, thinking about the things Billy had spoken of, not least of all that Joe might not have been Adam’s father and that his mother might not be dead, a bang exploded in Adam’s ears and a jolt ripped through his body. He was hurled forward, his head smacked into the dash. A car horn sounded.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

Billy pushed his chest off the steering wheel. The horn stopped. He looked behind them.

‘Brilliant.’

He winced and pressed a hand to his chest, felt and prodded his chin.

Adam touched his head and moved back in his seat. The car was now on an angle, shoved across the white line, the bonnet sticking into the lane of passing traffic. Cars were stopping and banking up, unable to get past. Rain fell steadily.

‘This is too handy, ain’t it?’

A van had smashed into the back of them. It was trying to start its engine. Its motor kept stalling. Cars tooted. In front, the lights changed but no one could move. They were blocking all the traffic, front and back. A man came up and knocked on Billy’s window and spoke through the gap.

‘You okay?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re not hurt?’

‘We’re all right.’

‘I saw it happen. My wife is taking down the van’s numberplate if you need it.’

‘Thanks. You couldn’t look and tell us what sort of damage has been done, could you? Winded a bit.’

‘Sure.’

The man left.

Billy checked he had his smokes. ‘We’re getting out. Don’t run. I’ll come round your side. We’ll go that way.’ He pointed to the closest footpath. ‘Don’t look at no one, don’t say nothing, don’t stop if someone tries to stop you. Let’s go.’

They stepped out into the rain and shut the car doors. The man who’d come to the window was talking to the van driver. Billy left the motor running and the windscreen wipers on. The van driver began shouting at them as they left. Billy didn’t look back. He skipped up the gutter onto the sidewalk. They turned down the first street they came to and picked up pace. Billy rubbed his chest and opened his mouth to take a breath.

‘I don’t know if we were real lucky or real unlucky there. Another centimetre and we would’ve been front-ended too.’

Sounds of traffic and tooting grew dimmer with each step. Rain hid them. A few streets over Billy slowed and leaned against a tree trunk. He slid down and rested on his haunches. He took deep, testing breaths, massaging below his collarbones. He kept touching his chin and pulling his hand away, looking at his fingertips.

‘You’re bleeding, by the way.’

It had seemed strange to Adam that slamming headfirst into the dash hadn’t hurt that much, not even smarted. Nothing about it had felt particularly bad or surprising. It was only now that his eye began blinking rapidly. Muscles flickered in his neck. A trickle of something thicker than rain ran down his cheek. Pain shattered like glass breaking through the top of his head.

He saw a river, glistening water sliding over rocks, felt the sun warm on his back, heard water burbling and people calling, and heavy, sloshing footsteps behind him, blue sky as he was lifted up.

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ he heard Billy say.

Adam came to in a hospital bed. He felt strapped down. The sheet was tight across him. He lifted his knees and took his arms out from beneath the bedding. In the ceiling above him was a square vent with paper cut-outs of small rabbits hanging from it. The rabbits fluttered in the cool moving air. Caterpillars were painted on the walls. He turned his head. In the bed beside him was a girl with a neck brace on. She was asleep. Soft toys on her pillow. On the other side was a boy lying on his belly on top of his sheets, in a dressing-gown and slippers, his feet resting on the pillows, watching the TV mounted on the ceiling in the centre of the room. A cartoon was playing. Road Runner.

Adam pulled himself up. Other beds in the room were empty. A nurse walked past the doorway, glanced in, kept going, and then backed up.

‘How long have you been awake?’

She unhooked a chart from the foot of Adam’s bed and lifted the pages. She marked something on the chart, put it away.

‘How are you feeling?’ She sat on the bed near his knees. The sheet pulled tight again. ‘I’ll get the doctor to come and check on you.’

She didn’t leave. Her arms were folded and her breasts were large. There were blotchy red marks on her neck and cheeks, one or two grey hairs in her eyebrows and long coarse streaks of grey in her hair.

‘We’ve got you down as Adam. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know you’re in the McCarthy hospital? Do you remember what happened and how you got here?’

‘No.’

She looked at him a moment, tilting her head and softening her eyes. She patted his knees through the blankets and got up.

‘I’ll leave you to properly wake up, and I’ll come back with the doctor. If you need to go to the toilet it’s down the hall. I’ll get some sandwiches sent in.’

He must have fallen asleep again. When he opened his eyes there was a plate of sandwiches covered in cling wrap, and a cup of orange juice with a paper lid on the table beside his bed. Each triangle sandwich had a different filling. Under the blankets Adam discovered he was dressed in pyjamas. When he got out of bed he found that the pyjamas didn’t fit. They finished halfway up his calves and midway up his arms. Adam’s skin was soft and sore to touch. A band of blue plastic was around his wrist and there was a bandaid across the back of his hand and one in the crook of his arm. The pain in his lower back was gone and his head was free of any kind of ache. Hospitals weren’t something he’d thought to put together with feeling well.

His limbs were tired, but in a good way. Moving and stretching, he could feel the walking he had done with Billy, but the twinges and tight pulls were pleasant reminders. The itchy bites had faded.

In the bathroom mirror Adam saw the square piece of gauze taped to his temple. His hair was greasy. Rubbing his scalp he could feel grains of sand from the beach. His skin smelled clean, but the long lock of his fringe smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the hair gel the barber had palmed through it. Beneath his nails was a line of grime. His teeth had never before felt so unbrushed.

The hospital toilets were low and small.

Adam sat there, knees high, feet bare in the narrow cubicle. He wasn’t sure who’d decided he should be in the hospital and be cared for. The only person he could think of with the power to do that was his father. Did his father have that kind of reach despite being dead? None of the doors in the hospital were locked. People were allowed to come and go. If Adam didn’t feel so well, he’d probably be a lot more anxious.

Up and down the corridor were sounds of cartoons playing and children coughing, soft crying and lowered adult voices. Nurses’ shoes squeaked on the floor. Adam climbed into his bed. He drank a glass of water, noticed that his clothes were folded on a shelf beside him. His sneakers were in a plastic bag. The toothpaste and toothbrush were neatly placed on the shelf above, along with a tightly folded piece of coloured paper. Adam searched his things for the bottle opener. It was gone. He took the squashed bullet of paper, smelled it. Cigarettes. Not the scent of smoke, though, the much nicer smell of the box the cigarettes came in, unlit tobacco, foiled paper.

Adam unfolded the coloured page. It had a picture of a pair of boxing gloves and a pair of running shoes on it. Adam pressed the unfolded paper to his nose again. Billy. Billy was the reason he was being cared for. Raindrops had dried as raised little splats on the notice. A name had been written in blue pen in the bottom corner of the page. Adam knew enough to understand the first and third letter: A.

Adam was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. The young nurse came and found him. She would have been pretty if she didn’t stare so flatly and speak in such a lifeless voice.

‘That’s the second time you’ve missed seeing the doctor. He won’t see you until tomorrow now.’

She showed Adam to the showers. With her back turned, walking away, she told him where the towels were. He didn’t catch what she said. Adam waited for someone else to come along to ask about the towels. No one came. Baffling to him, the times he was expected to do things for himself and the times he was meant to let other people do them for him. He washed without a towel, using the pyjama top to dry himself and dry his hair, putting it back on damp.

When a man dressed in a dark suit came into the room the following day, Adam thought at first it was the doctor. He was carrying a leather satchel. He went to the boy and asked him how he was feeling. They spoke about what the boy had been watching on TV and the man took a comic book from his bag. He fanned out an array of chocolate bars and the boy was allowed to pick the one he wanted. During this the man looked up, held Adam’s gaze, and Adam knew then he wasn’t a doctor.

‘Hello, Adam, I’m Brother Hayden from the True Life Mission. How are you? It’s always struck me that they need some sort of older room, a teen room, in this ward. I’ll have to mention it. I know in other hospitals they have a room set aside, without Peter Rabbit and the Very Hungry Caterpillar everywhere. I wonder if it would be too much to ask for a Walkman, a cassette, and some Saturday morning music videos.’

He smiled without showing any teeth. Adam didn’t smile back. Flowing words and velvety voices didn’t make any difference. Dark hair, a handsome face, small hands, bony wrists, gentle movements, none of it changed what lay underneath. Adam’s heart sank and his mind lurched awake. Danger came like this. In a snap. He’d been wrong to relax and think it wouldn’t. A nurse walked in and Adam watched her, puzzled that she couldn’t see it, sense it – the air had changed. Those people from the playground, down near the beach, the drunks, one of them might as well have staggered in, reeking of the thing they couldn’t control. This man stunk.

The nurse smiled, tucked in her chin, lifted her shoulder to her ear. ‘Brother Hayden.’

‘Looking lovely as always, Nurse Judith.’

When she left, Adam continued staring at the doorway. Nurse Judith would have to return. She’d walk down the corridor and begin to feel something wasn’t right. Brother Hayden wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be allowed to offer chocolates to boys or be left alone to do what he was doing now, sitting down on the bed, touching the back of Adam’s hand, brushing Adam’s fringe away from his eyes, moving so that his bum was firm up against Adam’s hip and talking about the colour of Adam’s eyes.

‘Quite entrancing.’

Brother Hayden’s eyes weren’t entrancing. Adam couldn’t look at them.

‘A young man named Billy passed on to me that you were here. It seems the hospital contacted the Boytime Co-op. Yes? Billy likes to train there. He’s well known at the Mission. He told me to look out for you. How’s that sounding, Adam? Agreeable? Do you think?’

‘Don’t touch me.’

The boy eating his chocolate looked across. Brother Hayden reached into his satchel and took out the same piece of paper Adam had found with his clothes. His sheet was flat, without a crease. He held it up. He must have looked at Adam’s clothes at some point while talking, and seen the folded page, he reached for it, unfolded it, and held up the matching notices side by side.

‘Boytime Co-op. Will I tell Billy you don’t remember him? He seems very concerned about you. My understanding is he has helped you quite a bit.’

‘If you don’t get away from me I’ll scream.’

Brother Hayden got up. He slipped his copy of the notice back in his bag.

‘The generous spirit of the True Life Mission extends even to young men who shun it. Our doors are always open. We welcome teenagers, like yourself; we need mature role models for the younger ones to follow and look up to. We like to see young men thrive in the right conditions, off the streets, in positions of leadership. I’ll let you think about the alternatives and I’ll visit again soon. God bless.’

Brother Hayden left without visiting the girl in the neck brace. She didn’t get to choose a chocolate bar. She didn’t get a comic book. She burst into tears. She’d coloured in a picture of Jesus to give Brother Hayden. Nurse Judith soothed her.

‘Sometimes he runs out of time.’

The nurse gave the girl a lollipop. She sucked on it and looked with tear-filled eyes at Adam. The nurse glared at Adam as she walked past the foot of his bed. Adam waited until the nurse was gone. He pushed his bed covers back. At the very least he’d have his clothes and shoes on, ready to run.

The doctor strode in.

Adam’s foot was over the edge of the mattress. He drew it back, perched high on the bed, up against the pillows. The doctor closed the curtain around Adam’s bed and unhooked the chart. Nurse Judith stood beside him. He handed her the chart to put away.

‘Good to see you with some colour in your face.’ The doctor leaned in and placed his thumb beneath Adam’s eye. The skin on the doctor’s cheeks and chin was pitted. He had crooked teeth. He pulled Adam’s bottom eyelid down, looked, let go. ‘How are you feeling? Not experiencing any headaches? Blurry vision?’

Adam shook his head.

‘You’re remembering things okay?’

He nodded.

‘That knock, although giving you mild concussion, was more the final straw than anything else.’

A buzzer sounded out in the corridor and the nurse gestured in that direction. The doctor lifted two fingers and she left.

The doctor widened his stance and put his hands behind his back. ‘I can see you’ve been through quite a bit, young man. I suspect you haven’t felt well for a long time. You had an untreated kidney infection and a high fever due to that. We’ve dealt with the infection intravenously. Doing it that way we were able to get on top of it quickly. You would be feeling quite a lot better, I would suspect. Your general health will take more time sorting out. You’ve had some setbacks, and we need to work on turning that around. Your stay here will depend on the results of your blood tests, and the results on some other tests I’m going to get done, and getting your weight up to a healthy level. You’ll be here with us for awhile.’

The nursed returned, took up her position next to the doctor.

‘I’m organising a kidney function test,’ he said to her, ‘and X-rays, head to toe. We’ll go from there. Light exercise in the meantime, a high-calorie diet – full menu, no holding back. We need to organise a time I can sit down and talk with the parents. That will need to be co-ordinated with the relevant authorities, I imagine, I’m pretty sure the tests are going to confirm some things.’

The nurse touched the doctor’s arm, she whispered in his ear. The doctor looked at Adam while she spoke. The nurse stopped whispering and stood back.

‘They can’t speak to him without a guardian present, can they?’ the doctor asked.

‘I think they’d like to.’

‘Give me his chart again.’

Nurse Judith handed it to him.

‘Why haven’t we got his full details yet? I thought this was sorted out. Has someone been assigned? What’s the hold-up in reporting him?’ He checked his watch. ‘Where’s the head nurse?’

‘She’s with the police now.’

‘Well, they can’t talk to him in the children’s ward, and not without an adult or guardian present.’ The doctor turned to the first page of the chart. ‘Adam,’ he read, and looked up, ‘the police are here and would like to talk to you about a stolen car. It seems there was a traffic accident and the ambulance picked you up a few streets from it. As far as I know you need a guardian present for that kind of questioning . . . A stolen car is of no interest to me.’ He looked at Adam’s few belongings, only then seemed to notice the way Adam was sitting so high on the bed. ‘I’m happy to go and explain to the police that you’re not well enough to talk to them, but do I need to explain it to you too?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Away from here, I imagine they can question you. We don’t have to worry about you going, do we?’

Beside the doctor, the nurse’s expression was mild, but below that Adam sensed that she was scowling.

‘The man before . . .’ Adam ventured carefully, ‘he came and he —’

‘It’s a misunderstanding,’ Nurse Judith interrupted. ‘The pastoral visits. Teenage patients often don’t like them.’

The doctor stared blankly at her. It was as though he hadn’t taken in what she’d said. Then he snapped, ‘The obvious solution would be for the teenage patients not to be visited by the clergy. Is that really only glaringly apparent to me? You might be feeling better,’ he said to Adam, ‘but you are not well. Use your time in here as an opportunity. There are resources available to you. This nurse,’ he shot her a sideways glance, ‘is going to sit down with you and explain those resources, and get some details.’ He dropped the chart on the bed. Checked his watch again. ‘I’ll go and talk to the police. I expect a surname, parents and some clarity when I return. If a family member does turn up, I’d like to be informed.’

Nurse Judith bobbed her head. The doctor left. The nurse yanked the curtain back. Out in the corridor the younger nurse was over by the desk, looking across.

The two women met in the doorway and discussed Adam. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was clear he was the topic. The young nurse walked to the desk and then over to Adam. She had some stapled pages and a pen. She used Adam’s bedside table to lean on.

The tip of her pen rested on the top of the first page.

‘Full name, please.’

She waited, not looking up. The part in her hair was straight. There was a little bluebird on the thin silver chain around her neck.

‘Unknown,’ she said as she wrote. ‘Address?’ She looked off towards the door, over to the nurses’ station. She blinked as though bored and gave a small shake of her head. ‘Address unknown. Date of birth?’ she asked. After waiting a moment, she collected up the papers. ‘Someone from child protection will come and see you.’

‘Excuse me.’

She stopped, kept her back to Adam. ‘Yes?’

‘Can I please talk to the other nurse? She was here yesterday when I woke up. She was big and had grey in her hair.’

‘Are you being rude?’

‘He means Nurse Rosie,’ the boy in the bed next to Adam’s said.

‘She isn’t on today.’ The nurse went and straightened the sheets on the boy’s bed. She gave him a sparkling smile and a tweak on his chin. ‘If this young man upsets you in any way or makes you feel uncomfortable, you buzz and don’t be afraid to say. Tell us if he bothers you, won’t you, Michael?’

She strode off and deposited the forms on the desktop with a slap.

‘I tried,’ she said.

Michael was half Adam’s height. He walked with a limp. His bones broke easily, he said. They went together down the corridor. Michael pointed to where the pyjamas were folded on the top shelf of the cupboard. It was the same cupboard where the towels were kept. Adam reached up and sorted through the sleepwear.

‘If you pretend not to be awake they leave a chocolate on your table,’ Michael explained. ‘I do that when I don’t want to talk to them.’

Michael and Adam returned to their beds.

Beneath the covers, Adam wriggled out of the small pyjamas and pulled on the bigger ones. The fabric was warmer, made of a thicker material.

‘I’ve had six operations,’ Michael was saying. ‘Do you know that when your bone breaks it heals stronger in that spot? The glue your body makes to fix bones is like superglue.’ Michael began flicking through his comic. He said, while reading, ‘My mum says that by the time I grow up my bones will be like steel. Like Superman’s.’

Visiting hours were during dinnertime. Michael’s family came and surrounded his bed. The girl’s family also came. She was put into a wheelchair and taken somewhere else. Michael’s family looked over when Adam’s meals arrived. Laid out on his table were three big dinners, a bowl of soup, sandwiches, two desserts, biscuits, an orange, and a cup of tea and a glass of milk. Michael’s family were happy people. They made jokes about moving their chairs over to Adam’s bed, to share in his feast. The mother was talkative. The father told knock knock jokes.

Adam worked through the food, eating in bursts, leaning back, full; then after a period of watching TV and listening to Michael’s family he’d sit forward and have another go.

Michael’s mother went to the windows and pulled back the curtains. Adam got out of bed. He realised he was high up. The hospital was in a tall building, in the city. Adam looked down at the street, at the people and cars far below. It was getting late. The setting sun shone between the buildings and down the lanes. Lights came on in the offices across the road. He watched the people inside, packing up their things and leaving, pushing their chairs in beneath their desks. He watched a cleaner vacuum a room on the next floor up. Tube lights came on inside the hospital room. It became hard to see out the window. Clean glass was like a mirror, reflecting Adam’s face and the room behind him.

Adam returned to bed but continued looking at the glass, switching between watching the reflection and looking beyond it at the city lights. After a moment, he noticed a boy’s shape in the window. The boy was wearing shorts and a tank top. He had a bushy head of hair, broad shoulders, lean, strong legs, sneakers and no socks. What Adam felt then was as unexpected as the food he had tried, as unpredicted as the things that had happened. His chest felt full and bursting, booming, he was teary too, scared to turn, in case it wasn’t his friend.

It was.

Billy was there, walking in, coming up to stand beside Adam’s bed – his pale tongue licking his teeth, his tanned skin and the bright whites of his eyes, his short dark lashes, the round shape of his face.

‘Kid, you’re doing it again – you’re staring.’

*

Anything Adam hadn’t eaten Billy polished off. Fine spray from the orange peel lifted as he dug his nail in under it. He put the peel in a pile on the dirty plates.

‘There’s only one thing worse than one of them, and that’s a dirty dog-collared pack of them. Fiddlers Mission, that’s what we call it.’

Michael’s family had fallen silent since Billy had arrived. The mother shuddered each time he spoke.

‘But I needed some way of knowing you were up and back with the living. Brother Hell-and-Brimfire has gotta be good for something. Right?’

Billy tore the peeled orange in two, offered half of it to Adam. Adam took it.

‘Man, you went down like a sack of potatoes. You were out cold before you even hit the dirt. I tried to wake you. KO’ed, though. I didn’t even think you’d hit your head that hard. It was a fair ram up the arse we got, though. Nice old duck came out to help when you hit the deck. She wrote your name on that for me.’ Billy tipped his head in the direction of Adam’s clothes and the notice. ‘I couldn’t stick around. Did you think I’d left you for dead?’

‘No.’

Billy popped a segment of orange in his mouth, chewed. ‘I figured they’d contact the co-op if you had that notice on you. If it weren’t for that, I’d have no clue where they took you. Clever, hey, me coming up with that? The old duck was onto me, cottoning on something was up, nice as she was, I was half thinking she might call the cops.’

Adam ate a segment of orange. ‘They were here.’

‘Hey?

‘The cops.’

‘In the hospital?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Today.’

‘What for?’

‘To talk about the car.’

Billy tossed the rest of his orange down. ‘Well, that fucks that.’

‘The doctor said he won’t let them in.’

‘Oh, he said that, did he?’

‘Will they come back?’

‘They’ll come back, all right. They’ll chase up a stolen car.’ Billy waved his hand, picked up his orange again, ate another piece. ‘They go mental over stolen cars. You really do have to wonder. I mean – so what if some bird can’t drive home from her jazzercise class? Priorities? Fucked.’ He crammed the last segments into his mouth. Chewed fast. ‘We gotta move.’

‘The doctor said I’m getting tests done.’

‘Have them done another day.’ Billy took out his smokes and flipped the lid, drew out a cigarette. He lit it, lowered his voice. ‘You can’t stay here.’

Michael’s father put down his paper and sat straighter in his chair. ‘Excuse me, there’s no smoking in the children’s ward.’

Billy pointed to an ashtray by the door. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s an ashtray, to put it out in.’

Billy drew on the cigarette and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. ‘And I will do that . . . when I’m good and ready.’

‘If you don’t put it out I’ll call the nurses.’

‘The nurses? The nurses? Whoa, better batten down the hatches.’ Billy glanced around and took up his boxing stance, as though ready for an attack. ‘Those chicks are fucking ninjas.’

Michael, sitting in his bed, giggled. Billy winked at him.

Michael’s father got to his feet. ‘I think you should leave.’

‘What’s your problem?’

‘My problem is that you’re smoking and swearing in a children’s ward.’

‘Well, don’t have a fucking cardiac arrest.’ Billy grinned at Adam. ‘Although you’re in the right place for it.’

He went over and crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, stuck a finger up at Michael’s dad as he returned. Billy pulled the curtain across.

Adam put down what remained of his half of the orange. ‘Do we have to go?’

‘Yep.’

‘They were saying about helping me . . .’

Billy laughed. ‘You’re set then, aren’t you? Fucking hell. They would have been talking about putting you in the system, kid. Once they do that you’ll have no say where you go. There’ll be nothing stopping them packing you off wherever they like. Fiddlers, probably. Especially now the cops have been. They’ll have you down as a juvie quicker than you can blink. Or are you saying you remember your family now? Are you gonna rat on me?’

‘No.’

‘What are you saying? You really gotta work out who you’re gonna trust. Look, I won’t piss in your pocket – I am pretty keen on checking out that thing we talked about. I knew they’d do this, try to stick you somewhere. I tell you what, if that’s what you want to do, if you reckon foster care or a home is the way to go, you can do it, no problem, but you can’t do it from here, not now.’ He leaned in, whispered, ‘Can’t we just see if the money is there first? Don’t you reckon? If it’s there, it’s pretty fucking dumb to leave it there, right? There are places all over the city where they’d help you, places that are less likely to send you to Fiddlers than here.’

‘Will they really send me there?’

‘They won’t say they’re packing you off, because they know you’ll do a runner. But don’t worry, they’ll sign you over as Brother Hayden’s new toy and not give two shits what you say about it.’

Adam put his clothes, toothpaste and toothbrush into the plastic bag with his shoes. He gave the bag to Billy, and Billy left. A few moments later, Adam got up.

Michael’s family watched him go. The mother shook her head as though disappointed. Billy was waiting out in the hallway. He saw Adam and kept on walking.

They went into a toilet. Billy put down the toilet seat and sat on it. It was a disabled bathroom, no cubicles, nowhere for privacy, with one loo and a basin, a steel rail on the wall.

Adam began to undress.

‘You look heaps better, by the way. You got more colour. Did they say anything about those marks on your legs and bum?’

Adam didn’t know he had marks on his legs and bum. In the tall mirror on the wall, he turned to see his reflection. The marks were faint, but they were there, from the beatings.

‘They’ll fade. Don’t sweat it. I’ve seen plenty like it. You know, you also got this thing on the back of your neck.’

Billy got up and came across. Adam was naked, shy because of it, but he didn’t feel afraid. Not even when Billy pushed Adam’s head forward and stood close to him.

‘I think they call it a stork mark. You got one.’ His fingertips tapped Adam’s nape. ‘Right there. See,’ he ruffled Adam’s hair, ‘you come from somewhere, don’t you?’

Adam finished dressing. Billy took the square bandage off Adam’s forehead. Under it were two black stitches holding the small cut together. He peeled the bandaid from the crook of Adam’s arm and stuck it over the stitches, pressing firmly to make the sticky bits reattach.

‘We don’t want you looking like the walking wounded.’

In the lift down to the ground floor Billy made Adam laugh. He was pretending to be Maxwell Smart. A character Adam knew. Billy did the thing at the lift doors, the same thing Maxwell Smart did. He hummed the tune. He spoke in that voice, called Adam ‘Chief’.

Leaving the lift, Billy handed Adam the bottle opener.

‘Looked after that for you.’

They walked through a large open area towards a bank of doors. The clean cold hospital smells stopped; warm fumy smells began. Quietness ended. It was an unusual commotion – nothing in particular to see, a few cars passing, but it was as though something big was happening somewhere. Air hummed and rattled with activity.

Billy made Adam stand by a bin. They used the blade from the bottle opener to cut the hospital bracelet from Adam’s wrist. Adam looked at the plastic tag amongst the rubbish, felt a rush of doubt.

It was a little thing – silly, he supposed – but what bothered Adam most about changing his mind, going back in, was the nurses’ reaction to the broken bracelet. Now that it was in the bin it seemed too late.

Shops in the city stayed open late. People filled the footpath. Trams clattered on metal tracks. At one street crossing there were so many people that Adam lost sight of the skyscrapers, and of Billy. He got to the other side and waited, people stepped around him, someone bumped into him. Billy’s arm draped around Adam’s shoulders and he steered him off again. They walked beneath a train bridge. A man sitting on a camp chair and drinking from a thermos asked them for change. Billy gave him a cigarette instead.

They walked along a steep street and stopped in front of a big building, an art gallery. Behind the glass the entrance hall was brightly lit. Adam looked up at the green plastic cubes hanging from the roof. Things made of bits of tin and wood had been placed throughout the foyer. Paintings dangled from wires attached to the ceiling. Billy and Adam stood at the windows, looking in. Billy pointed to a painting on the back wall. It was huge, taking up the entire space. It was of a man holding a surfboard above his head, resting it like that. The sea was behind him. The sun was setting. The man was silhouetted. He had a wetsuit on, pulled down to his waist.

‘That’s me.’

It was Billy too.

‘A surf brand uses it. It’s on their tags and tops. It’s in magazines, that picture.’

‘Is it from the beach where we were?’

‘Sort of. I wasn’t down on the sand. I was inside Vern’s studio. He did a smaller one of it, then that bigger one. I had to stand for ages with that fucking board on me head. Vern gets money every time someone uses it. Every time you see that picture in a magazine or anywhere, Vern gets paid. People like it because I look a bit Abo, but not too Abo, you know? They like to think – maybe I am, maybe I’m not. And if I am, well, ain’t it great I’m doing something nice and white like surfing.’ Billy shrugged. ‘Thought I’d show you. No real reason. We were near it.’

‘How old were you?’

‘It was last year.’ After a pause he said, ‘I was seventeen.’

‘Was it the first time he painted you?’

‘It was the last.’

‘What’s Abo?’

‘Are you asking me that for real? It’s when you’re black, you fool. That’s what I’m sayin’, I’m not one thing or the other.’

‘What am I?’

He laughed. ‘You’re about as white as they come. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.’

As they left, cutting across the road, Adam looked over his shoulder, keeping sight of the painting of Billy for as long as he could. It was such a thing to see, Billy towering over everything in the gallery.

‘Will I tell you a funny thing?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t even fucking surf.’

At dawn they lay down in the long grass behind a burnt-out warehouse. Billy could have kept on going. Adam had tired. It was going to be another hot day. Adam lay down on his stomach, his arms up around his head to block the building sunlight. Flies crawled over his back. He could feel the feather-light touch of their legs through his T-shirt. The green grass felt alive, thick and spongy. Adam thought it was the best bed he had ever stretched out on. But soon the hard ground poked up under his hips and ribcage, things in the grass clicked and crawled. He felt tiny nips on his scalp and down on his ankles. Billy fell asleep, on his side, both hands under his ear, like a pillow. The singed back wall of the shed gave them shade.

Tolling church bells in the distance woke them both. Billy had the imprint of grass on his cheek and shoulder. His face was puffy. He yawned, squinted, scratched his chest. He lit a smoke. Adam sat up. His sleep had been a deep one. At some point he’d stopped half-listening, half-waiting, and relaxed. Hours had passed. Light wind rustled the branches of the trees along the fence. A blowfly whizzed past. Adam tipped his face to the sky. Streets were quieter here. Instead of houses, there were vacant blocks, locked-up businesses and sheds. No people. Birdsong and breeze. Adam shut his eyes and kept his face angled to the sky.

When he’d been little, playing with the tiger, he’d felt a certain way. An electric, excited thrill had travelled through him. His skin had tingled and his heart had felt light. It had been such a secret feeling; he’d hidden it from his father as carefully as he’d hidden the toy, both things too valuable to be discovered and taken. That same feeling swept through him now. Fresh, good-smelling air filled his nose and mouth and throat. Inside his chest was a fizz of energy. It was as though he might float up, nothing holding him down; everything seemed possible, no rules. For a while Adam was dazed, caught in the thrall of it. He marvelled at how long the feeling coursed through him. It flowed as strongly as it ever had. Adam’s eyes opened. Happiness. He felt as charmed and mystical as a tiger, as special. Slowly it faded. Adam shifted his weight, shifted the feeling. It didn’t go completely. It lingered just beneath his skin.

Billy was watching him.

‘You know what I get from you?’

‘No.’

‘You’re not a faker.’ Billy smiled, arched his eyebrow. ‘Not many people like that around.’ He ground out his smoke and got to his feet. ‘Soon enough you’ll be bullshitting with the best of us, though. That’s the trouble with wising up.’

The church bells had stopped chiming. Billy offered his hand to help Adam.

‘How you feeling, anyway?’

‘I feel good.’

‘What were these tests they reckoned they wanted to do?’

‘X-ray and blood and . . .’ Adam concentrated to remember. ‘Kidney test.’

‘You sure do remember stuff when you want to.’

Getting inside the blackened warehouse was as simple as stepping through one of the gaps in the walls. Blackberry bushes were growing in there. Adam and Billy picked the ripe fruit. Broken bottles and faded chip packets littered the concrete floor. Billy kicked a scorched timber beam until it collapsed and a sheet of roofing iron came sliding and clattering down. Berries stained Adam’s fingers purple. His tracksuit pants snagged on the thorny vines.

‘That’s Wade Park. The train station is over that way, always crawling with cops. If you’re in any kind of trouble, don’t use the trains.’

Across the street was a sweeping brick entrance into a green, tree-filled city block. A wide path wound through the trees. Cool air swept across the road. Birds made a chattering, monkey-like racket. The park was fenced in. Adam could see another gate at the next corner. White writing had been sprayed on the brick fence.

They had walked all afternoon, at a measured pace, lots of stops for Adam. Trees lined the street they now walked along. Flowers grew around letterboxes. Houses were two-storeyed. Adam got the feeling Billy was hungry. Starving. It made him smoke more. With the butt of one cigarette he lit the next. His stomach looked more sunken than when they’d first met. Adam noticed that the cigarette packet wasn’t such a squeeze to get in under the waistband of his shorts.

‘How long was I in hospital for?’

‘You went in Friday.’

‘When was that?’

‘It’s Sunday, kid.’

If Adam had to guess, he believed Billy had found it difficult to make money the hard way with the hope of easy money turning in his mind.

It wasn’t until they were one house down from the castle house that Adam recognised the street. Up ahead was the tall corrugated iron fence, the wooden gates. Adam stopped on the footpath. He forgot for a moment why they’d come. Saliva filled his mouth. His vision narrowed. Joe’s car was gone. There was a dead patch of grass where it had been. No chain or padlock on the gate.

‘So . . .’ Billy took a final drag on his smoke and flicked it away, ‘I came yesterday. Just to see if anyone was here. It looks like someone has been, but no one has moved in or nothing.’

‘He’s not inside?’

‘Who, kid? He’s dead.’

Adam nodded.

‘Perhaps you better stay out here.’ Billy pointed up the street. ‘Wait up there. Don’t let that woman from next door see you hanging round. You’ll have to tell me where the key is.’

If not for the tiger, Adam might have been tempted to let Billy go in alone. But since thinking about the toy, Adam couldn’t believe he’d left it in the house. Leaving it behind had been like abandoning Monty or Jerry, or not freeing the chickens; all the times the tiger had jumped the fence for Adam, and he wouldn’t go in and bring it out?

‘I’ll come in.’

‘Don’t you go fainting on me or anything like that?’

Billy opened the gates and went through onto the concrete, closed the gates behind them. He took two glass bottles from the grass and balanced them on the top inside beams of each gate wing. On the way around to the decking and steps, Adam went off into the grass and leaned forward, dry retched. The blackberries had been in him long enough to stay down. Billy came to stand beside him. His hand hovered by Adam’s arm. Adam gave the fear and sickness time to pass. It wasn’t that the yard and house felt too real, it was how unreal it felt. Strange that this had been his home, where he’d lived.

Adam knew then that Joe hadn’t been his father. Seeing the place again showed it to him. Being away, coming back, Adam was able to perceive it the way other people might. This was not Adam’s house. Joe had not been his family. This was not a home. Already Adam felt as though he’d lived more and lived for longer outside the place. What had happened – the way Joe had treated him, the things he’d done to him – other people might think it was all Adam was, it might be all they saw, but to Adam it was one thing, a single thing, a dark, flat, squashed memory. Billy was right, it was a good thing that Joe had taught him nothing.

A towel had blown into the pool and sunk to the bottom. It lay alongside the length of rope Adam had pitched into the water. Possum poo was in a pile by the sliding door. The door was locked.

‘You’ve hidden it inside, right? I suppose we’ll smash the door. I tried the windows yesterday, whoever’s been has locked them all.’

‘I know a way in.’

Adam took Billy down the steps and around the front. They walked along the other side of the house. Adam got on all fours and crawled between the stumps. Old wire cages were stored under there, some planter pots. Adam went around them. Billy crawled in after him. At the safe, Billy tried to open it, checking just in case. It was locked. Adam began to dislodge the floorboards above it. Billy helped. From below they removed the boards and then rolled the carpet away. They climbed up into the room.

Billy made Adam pause and listen.

In stops and starts they went down the hallway, opening doors, leaving them open. Adam walked close to Billy, fought the urge to reach out and take a hold of his friend’s hand or grab a fistful of his T-shirt.

The plastic tumblers from the bar were gone. Someone had taken the stools. Other things were missing too – the hall table, a lamp, the mantle clock, the coffee table, and . . . the TV. Adam stood staring at the empty spot.

‘You haven’t forgotten where you put it, have you?’

‘It was in the TV.’

‘Hey?’

‘I hid it in there.’

‘What do you mean, you hid it in the TV?’

‘That’s where I put it.’

Billy walked over and began looking around on the floor.

‘It was in the back.’

‘Why would you hide it in the TV? What’s the key look like?’

‘It’s heavy and brass.’

‘Could it have fell out?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, could it have fell out or not?’

‘It could have.’

Billy crouched and scanned the ground. ‘Shoulda fucken known . . .’ He shook his head and searched.

‘Will it be gone?’

‘What does it look like to you? Can you see a fucking TV?’

‘Will we be able to find it?’

‘Jesus, kid.’ Billy’s shoulders dropped and he looked away. A snarl lifted his lip and a look of hate hardened his features, not hatred for Adam, Adam didn’t think, but dislike of something bigger, all the things that couldn’t be controlled, perhaps. He got up. ‘I’ll do a circuit of the rooms and make sure the gear’s not been packed up somewhere. Wait here.’

Billy returned, unsmiling.

He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Suppose we might as well eat while we’re here.’

*

A pot of beans heated on the stove. They ate dry crackers from the packet. Billy dipped a cracker in the warming beans, used it as a spoon.

‘Look . . . after this, I’m going.’ He swallowed and wiped his lips. ‘I don’t think you should come. You’re not cut out for what I do. Wait till I go, then . . . ring the cops, I guess. You won’t get in trouble. Tell them Joe kept you down in that room. Tell them you don’t know who you are. They’ll work it out for you. Don’t talk about me or the stolen car or nothing. Don’t mention my name. There’s nothing here, so . . .’ He shrugged, didn’t finish the sentence. Billy loaded another cracker and took a big mouthful, hopped from foot to foot while chewing. ‘Gotta piss.’ He skipped off to the bathroom.

The remaining beans in the pot began to bubble. In his search for the can opener Billy had left the cutlery draw open. From where Adam stood he could see the knife he’d taken after escaping the backroom. He stared at it. His gaze moved to other things in the kitchen, the jug of utensils by the stove, the blackened potholder hanging on the nail, the grimy glasses on the windowsill where Adam’s baby teeth had, one by one, been left to soak and rot. Would he tell the police that too? Would the police want to know what cola, a potholder, a spatula, a stirring spoon, a jug cord could be used for, what they could do? Adam left the kitchen, went across the hallway, into his old bedroom beside the laundry. He knelt on the bed and reached for the tiger.

Adam took the toy and sat down against the wall in the hallway. He listened to Billy finishing up in the bathroom.

Billy came out, saw Adam and slid down against the wall opposite.

He lit a cigarette, sucked in and held the smoke deep, blew it out.

‘Still think you’re gonna get in trouble?’

Adam didn’t answer.

‘Just scared?’

Adam nodded.

‘People are gonna help you.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘You’re the sort of kid they help.’

‘What if I don’t want to tell them?’

‘Well . . . that’s the thing, ain’t it?’ Billy puffed and thought. ‘Just tell them stuff from before Joe.’

‘There is nothing before him.’

‘Come on, you know that’s not true. What’s the earliest thing you remember?’

Adam shook his head. He took a breath and fiddled with the tiger. ‘I remember he used to let me stay out of the backroom more when I was little. Sometimes he’d let me play outside. He’d only lock me up as punishment or if someone came. The older I got the more he put me down there.’

‘You’ve really only ever known Joe?’

Adam nodded, switched the toy from hand to hand.

‘No one else came and saw you?’

‘A man in a cap came once, he bought chickens.’

Billy fell quiet. He was looking at the tiger. He frowned at it.

‘What’s that?’

Adam balanced the toy on his palm. Billy eyed the tiger in a way Adam found familiar. It was as though Billy was wary of it.

He blew a stream of smoke out through his nostrils. ‘Where’d you get it?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Give it here.’

Adam passed it over.

On one of the tiger’s legs there was a slight discolouration, a small dot of dark orange that didn’t belong, only something a person would know about if they’d studied the toy up close. Billy turned the tiger upside down and looked directly at the mark. He turned it back over. ‘You didn’t have this on you before.’

‘I took it from in the bedroom just then.’

‘Where did you find it?’

‘I had it down by the bed.’

‘No, where did you find this, you first found it somewhere. Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

Billy placed the toy down on the carpet, a distance from him. ‘You reckon you went and got that now for no reason? Just because you felt like it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who gave it to you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why did you want to show it to me?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘I don’t . . . I don’t know what you mean.’

Billy laid two fingers across his lips, the cigarette between them, and he inhaled, hard, no smoke escaping, sucked directly into his chest. Billy let the smoke seep slowly out. He squinted off down the hallway. The tendons in his temple and in his jaw were tight and stood out.

It was then Adam saw it. Instantly he knew. The boy in the photograph, the dark-skinned boy holding the puppies, had been Billy. Now that Billy’s face was motionless it was possible to see it – the same boy in the picture. The same sadness remained. The reason Billy smoked and swore, licked his lips, talked and laughed, to hide it, so people couldn’t see it . . . the same boy.

‘It’s yours.’

‘What?’

‘The tiger is yours.’

‘And why would you say that?’

‘You were here when you were little.’

So hard not to stare then, and not because of shock or because of wonder (why would he come back? why was he still here?), the opposite of that. Suddenly there were fewer questions, less confusion. In front of Adam was proof – even with the ability to come and go, with all the doors unlocked, even with someone as strong and smart as Billy – it was hard to get away.

‘I saw a picture of you.’

Billy’s gaze shifted. Something in his face tightened further. Tension was creeping down his neck and into his shoulders. His lips barely moved when he spoke. ‘He showed you pictures of me?’

‘No, I found one.’ Adam touched his chest. Beneath his fingers his heart was pounding. ‘You were here with Monty and Jerry, when they were puppies. I was here too. I remember when they were first here.’

‘You saw them dogs come?’

‘They were here the next time he let me out. But I think . . . Did I see them come?’

‘Why the fuck are you asking me that?’

‘Did you bring them? When I found the picture it was like I’d seen you before.’ A wave of grief washed through Adam. It pulled wide his insides, dragged on his muscles, stretched his organs, it opened up his heart and parted his lips; it was heavy, raw and sore. ‘I think I do remember you. We were here together, weren’t we?’

Billy sneered and drew in on his smoke. ‘What the fuck are you trying to get me to say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I didn’t know anyone was down there.’

‘You don’t remember me? You didn’t . . . give me the tiger?’

Billy leaned forward, real spite in his eyes, a dark, liquid quality to his movements. ‘I’m telling you I didn’t know you were down there. I’m telling you I would have done something if I knew. But you can wipe that look off your face like you know it all now. You don’t know shit.’

Adam stared at the halfway point on the floor between them. He didn’t think he knew it all, he just believed he knew enough – it wasn’t only locked doors that trapped you.

‘Where are these photos?’

‘He burned them.’

‘You sure of that?’

‘I saw him do it.’

From the kitchen came the smell of the beans catching in the pot. Billy got up and left the hallway. There was silence, a few long minutes of it, then it sounded like Billy took the pot off the stove and threw it through the window. It sounded like he picked up a chair and threw it at the window also. Going by the racket, he ripped out the cutlery drawer, threw the drawer into the lounge room. He kicked the cupboard doors, tipped the kitchen table upside down and pulled things from the walls, plates and bowls from the shelves. He moved into the lounge room and began tipping up the furniture, flipping it. Adam sensed he was looking for the key again, not logically, not with any chance of finding it, but looking all the same. He lifted things and hurled them.

Adam went across to the tiger. Collected it, put it in his pocket.

He sat against the wall, closed his eyes, waited for Billy’s shame to pass.

Billy was in the hallway, pacing. A layer of sweat shined on his forehead. He looked at the phone, went across and reefed out the table drawer. He dropped the drawer onto the floor and kicked it, scattering the contents. In amongst the mess was a small green book. It had gold letters on the front. Billy picked up the phone handpiece and listened, ran his eye along the cord fixed to the top of the skirting. He followed the cord along to where it was plugged into a socket, shoved the plug in firmer, returned to the phone, listened again. From where he stood, Adam could hear that the phone now worked.

Billy hung up and sat down on the seat connected to the hall table. He drew in steadying breaths. He rubbed the corners of his eyes.

‘I didn’t know you were down there. I thought it was where he kept the money, and that’s why he wouldn’t let me down there. He’d buy me things. Give me cash. Whenever I came he’d give me money.’

‘Did he lock you up?’

‘I came and went. All right? That’s how it happened. I came, and I went. You had it worse than me, is that what you want me to fucking say?’

‘No.’

They were silent for a while.

‘The stuff hasn’t been nicked,’ Billy said. He motioned around. ‘Someone’s come and packed it up. It’s gotta be somewhere. Right? Someone’s got to have it. It can’t be that hard to track down a TV. What else are we gonna do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, that’s what I’m gonna do.’

Billy picked up the green book and turned the pages. His mouth moved but made no sound. He folded the top of the page, cleared his throat.

‘If you wanna say you don’t remember any other men, fine. But don’t go losing it if it’s pretty clear we’re suddenly talking to one of these men you don’t remember. All right?’

Billy ran his finger along the numbers and turned the dial. He put the phone to his ear and looked up at the ceiling. He took a final calming breath, exhaled smoothly.

Adam could hear the ringing tone.

Someone answered.

‘Yeah, hi,’ Billy said. ‘How’s it going? I was given your number by a guy who said you sell puppies . . .’

Adam listened to the soft bursts of sound on the other end of the line.

‘Oh, okay,’ Billy said. ‘Yeah. Maybe. I guess. Whereabouts?’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Is that out past Dandy? What side? Oh yeah.’ He reached out, picked at a piece of vinyl that had peeled back from the table edge. ‘Next litter, perhaps. Yeah. Actually . . . if he’s there, would you put him on? I reckon he might already know me.’

Billy left the vinyl alone and laid his hand flat on the table, tapped his fingers.

‘Kovac,’ he said after a moment. ‘I reckon we might know each other. You know who this is? . . . Nah, bit further back than that. We lived next door to you in Harp Street. You paid me to help with the dogs after school. How’s that jog your memory, arsehole?’ Billy fell silent. He put the phone handpiece back. ‘Yeah, he remembers real good.’

Billy rang back.

‘Don’t hang up again if you know what’s good for you. Got your address right here in front of me, you can thank your wife for that  . . . No, you listen to me. Joe Vander died and you’re going to find out where the stuff from his house went. You’re going to want to find out because —’

Billy stopped and listened. His face had lost its roundness. His shoulders had gathered in. Adam could hear the man’s voice on the other end, fast and in bursts. Billy spoke through his teeth.

‘I’m not threatening you, not yet. Just you listen – there was furniture in his house, and it’s not there any more. Someone’s been and you’re going to find out — I know for a fucking fact you kept in touch, don’t bullshit me. Yeah? And how do you figure that? . . .  Yeah, well, I don’t give a fuck what you think I am.’ Billy turned away. He said, his back to Adam, ‘You might wanna worry about the things he didn’t get rid of . . . Is that right? . . . You know what happens to people like you? One day, answering their door, they get shot in the fucking face, one day, going out for the paper, they get their head caved in with a hammer. And no one can work out why. Except those who know. That’s going to be you, Kovac. That’s what’s waiting for you. If it doesn’t happen next week, it’ll happen the week after. Don’t leave your doors unlocked or walk anywhere on your own, boy. You’re already dead.’ Billy slammed the phone into the cradle. He took a few shaky breaths.

‘Yeah,’ he said after a moment, ‘that cunt’s not going to find out nothing for us.’

Billy read through the green phone book. He squinted at the numbers and rubbed his eyes. Daylight faded. He moved his lips silently around the names. There were tiny creaks and faint electrical hums in the house. Sounds Adam knew. He thought back, trying to recall if there’d ever been any hints of another child. A voice Adam had heard. A cry? Lighter footsteps? The dimensions of the house seemed to change now that Adam knew Billy had been here. Another child within the walls. It was like a dropped chunk of truth, pushing out the walls, lifting the roof, shining light in all the darkened rooms. Billy here? As a boy? Sleeping in Adam’s bed beside the laundry on the nights Adam had been locked in the backroom? Billy sitting at the kitchen table? Billy watching TV?

‘Did Joe give you tablets?’

‘What?’

‘Maybe you saw me but don’t remember. He put things in my food and drink that made me tired.’

‘No, kid.’

Billy finished scanning the phone book and folded the top of a page.

‘I’m gonna try this number, it’s the only one under V. Worth a try.’

In the last of the light Billy dialled the number.

The voice on the other end of the line, when it answered, was a woman’s. She sounded old.

‘Good evening,’ Billy said in a smooth, pretend voice, ‘this is Brother Hayden from the True Life Mission, is this . . .’ he squinted at the page and stumbled over the first name, ‘Mar-ta . . . We’re ringing about the recent loss of your . . .’ he left it hanging. Billy nodded across at Adam, gave a confirming look. Whenever the woman spoke it sounded, from where Adam was, like she was shouting. Billy’s voice remained calm.

‘That’s fine. The Mission simply likes to pass on our condolences and offer you a service where we come and pick up any items you might have for our charity stores. We pay cash for larger items – furniture . . .’ Billy’s eyes narrowed with concentration as he listened. ‘You might need help shifting it . . . any heavy items? We’re happy to assist in any way . . . I see. Perhaps you would be interested in our clean-up service. We send our boys to mow lawns and tidy gardens. It’s all free of charge. Yes. We can do that. Whereabouts is the property? Your address?’ Billy moved his mouth as she spoke. ‘We’ve got a few busy days ahead,’ he said quickly, his voice more like his own, ‘but I’ll ring and let you know.’ He hung up. ‘She’s gotta have it. She reckons she’s his sister. She said she’s got the trailer. 178 Munro Street, Clarence – remember that. Say it to me.’

‘178 Munro Street, Clarence.’

‘Say it again.’

Adam did.

‘You got it?’

‘178 Munro Street, Clarence.’

Billy tore the page from the phone book, folded it and put it in his pocket. ‘What’s that address again?’

‘178 Munro Street, Clarence.’

‘Don’t forget it.’

After righting the kitchen table and picking up the kitchen chairs, Billy made what he called a gumbo stew. All the different canned things from the cupboards went in together. He stirred the pot. The ceiling globe had been smashed. They opened the fridge door for light. Cool air came in through the broken window. Billy carried the stew to the table and dished up two bowls of it.

They sat down to eat.

‘Back then it was different,’ he was saying. ‘You probably won’t get this, but back then I was safer here than what I was at home. That gives you a fair idea of what my home was like. I’d be here for a day or two at a time. Mum was drinking too much to notice, or give a shit.’

‘What would happen when you went home?’

‘What wouldn’t.’

‘Did your parents know Joe?’

‘They only knew Kovac.’

Adam fished around in his bowl for the bits of chopped up Spam they’d stirred through the stew. ‘Why did they let you be with Kovac?’ he asked.

‘They didn’t know him, not really. Not the way I knew him. Kovac would drop me here. Soon as he was gone Joe would start on about how he hated him, talk like Kovac was the real bad guy, you know? They do that – try and make you think they’re not sick in the head. Kiddin’ themselves. Joe would go on like he was saving me from Kovac . . . Thing was, in a way he did. Joe never frightened me like Kovac. Kovac’s the sort, you know deep down he just wants to kill you. With Joe it was more the feeling he wanted to always keep you around. I was shit-scared of Kovac. There was no way me dad would have done anything to him even if I told him, so . . . I went off the rails instead. No one could control me. Dad got me put in Fiddlers. You won’t get this either, but Fiddlers makes this place look like a resort. Some of those Brothers even make Kovac look fucking mild. You think you’ve got it tough until you land in there. First time I escaped, Mum was off the grog and had moved from Harp Street to the caravan park. She’d left Dad. He hadn’t found her yet. Scotty was running the park. He’s thirty-something; you wouldn’t guess it, would you? He don’t look that old. He was like a dad to me. I went to school, did everything I was supposed to. Then Dad turned up. All started going to shit again. He got me dragged back to Fiddlers.’ Billy swallowed a spoonful of stew. ‘When I got out next time I couldn’t go home. Dad was there. And coming back here felt a bit like payback, I guess. You know? Joe was still forkin’ out the cash. I was older. I’d push him round. I’d bring the older kids and we’d make him buy us smokes, give him heaps of shit; the boys would drink all his grog. It wasn’t long after that I got scouted by Vern, down on the beach. I almost made it out. Everyone’s so full of don’t do this, and don’t do that, but what about when you have to do a bit of this and you have to do a bit of that? What then? No one’s got answers then . . . All I’ve ever done is stared the fuckers in the face, stared them down and not curled into a ball like they want you to. If that’s doing the wrong thing . . . well . . . I dunno.’

‘Was the tiger yours?’

Billy didn’t look up. He dragged his spoon back and forth through the soup.

‘I must have left it here, dropped it or something, ages ago. Might not even be the same one I had as a kid. They make thousands of those things.’ After a spoonful of soup he pointed the spoon at Adam. ‘What do you say, no matter what happens we stick together? We should do that, do you reckon? We’ll back one another up. Wanna agree to it?’

They tapped spoons to seal it. Above the clink was the smash of one of the glass bottles falling from the gate onto the concrete outside. Billy put down his spoon. He went into the lounge room.

‘Cops,’ he said when he returned.

They sprinted as light-footed as they could down to the room above the safe, Billy cursing the whole way – that the woman next door must have heard them and called the police, and that they had to conceal the safe before leaving. It was difficult to see in the dark. Adam felt for the boards and put them carefully into place. Billy listened in the hallway. There were no sounds but Adam could feel the police out there, in the yard, walking around the house. He put the last board back. Billy rolled out the carpet. It unfurled into the corner with a slap. They froze.

They edged along the hallway. At the billiards room they stopped. A policeman was at the sliding door, shining a torch through the glass. Adam touched Billy’s shoulder and they began to back away down the hallway, towards the backroom.

It was pitch black.

Adam sidestepped along, feeling his way, breathing shallow, frowning to try to block the fear.

They made it all the way down the hallway. Adam squeezed his eyes shut. His hands groped blindly for the verandah door. His fingers trembled and fumbled. He hurriedly pushed it open.

Billy shuddered beside him.

‘Fucking spiders.’

Early evening light shone through the slatted glass of the verandah. Billy stopped in the doorway, eyeing the long dusty cobwebs draping down from the roof, the newer webs stretched across the corners of the room. Adam went to the window and inched out a broken slat of glass. He eased out a second piece. Night breeze pushed in. Billy weaved his way across to Adam, baulking at every web he encountered. Adam knew the door to the outside was nailed shut, no amount of pulling would open it, but he left Billy to try it all the same. Tugging on the barred door helped to distract him from the webs. Adam took out more of the grubby slats of glass until there was a gap big enough to climb through. He got up, curled carefully through, and lowered himself down onto the grass.

Billy couldn’t make his body as small as Adam had. His shoulders barely squeezed through the space. He got cobwebs in his hair, yelped and swore. Before jumping down, he tried to brush them away. He swatted frantically at his face. Lost his balance. To stop from falling he reached up, grabbing a sheet of glass above him; it cracked, smashed. A second slat fell. Billy gripped the window frame. His weight pulled the frame away from the rotting timber.

Billy, and those sheets of glass still in the frame, came crashing down. He landed heavily, glass showering over him, the window frame around him. It was hard to imagine him making more noise if he’d tried. He lay there for a moment, then cautiously began to move. As he got to his feet the glass slid off his back and shoulders and shattered at his feet. He shook the final fine shards and bigger pieces off him.

‘You all right?’

Billy held his fingers slightly apart. In the voice of Maxwell Smart he said, ‘Missed it by that much.’

Laughter bubbled up in Adam. He barked with pleasure, with relief. Flashlights shone on them. One policeman began running towards them. The other policeman peeled away and headed towards the front.

Billy and Adam sprinted around the back of the house and down the other side. Strewn bags of rubbish and bits of mesh, piles of grass clippings blocked their path. Billy bounded over what he could and wound his way through the rest. Adam tried to keep up. The policeman following was right on Adam’s tail. The other policeman had stayed around the front, by the gate, ready to cut them off. He stepped out, flashlight raised, lifted high to blind them. Billy grabbed Adam by the collar and reefed him to the side. They tripped and stumbled towards an overgrown section of the yard, scrambled in between the fence and the bushes. They crouched, catching their breath. Adam’s lungs burned.

‘Boys,’ the policeman growled as he approached, ‘get out here now . . .’

Billy pointed in the direction they’d just run. ‘Plum tree,’ he whispered, ‘other side, other corner.’

Adam nodded.

The policeman was nearing the bush. ‘Get out here or you’ll be in more —’

Billy and Adam darted out, ran back the way they’d come, bounding over the same things as before, zigzagging around the same obstacles. The policeman bellowed for them to stop. Billy and Adam ran down past the backroom again. They kept on towards the sheds and trees, past where they’d crouched and hidden the first night. Then they turned and sprinted along the fence line, past where the rubbish trailer used to be, and where now there was a pile of rubbish – Joe’s sister looked to have emptied the load onto the ground. The bags had split, the smell was twice as rank as it had been a week before. In the front corner of the yard was the plum tree. Billy stopped at the base of it and indicated for Adam to hurry.

‘Climb, climb, climb!’

Adam pulled himself up into the lower branches. Billy put his hands on Adam’s backside and pushed. Adam climbed. His legs were jelly. His breaths rasped. The tree wasn’t hard up against the fence. Once at the right height, he had to inch out onto a limb. Billy overtook him, managed to get from the thin tree limbs to the fence in one sure-footed step. He stood on top of the fence, walked along it, balancing one foot on the wooden beam and the other on the corrugated edge, until he got to the corner, where he crouched like a cat.

‘You can do it.’

Adam doubted very much that he could. His body was trembling. He couldn’t catch his breath. From where he was he could see the police car parked out front. He could see the torchlights of the officers in the yard, shining, searching for them.

‘Come on,’ Billy urged.

Adam stood. The branch bowed beneath him. If not for the streetlights it would have been impossible, as it was it felt like he was stepping into nothing. The thin edge of the fence met him, though. Now all he had to do was let go of the tree and bring his other foot across. Dogs in the street had started barking. Neighbours’ front lights were turning on. The door of the castle house opened and the woman stepped out. She stood on the doormat, looked into the street. After a long minute she went back inside.

‘Now!’ Billy hissed.

In the end it wasn’t as though Adam was attempting to escape: he was simply choosing to make a mess of it and fall. He brought his other foot across, found the top wooden railing, swayed in the dark, reached for Billy’s hand, held it. Somehow Adam made his way along. Billy grabbed him around the waist.

‘Got ya.’

Adam crouched, like Billy had, using the corner of the fence to spread his weight, while Billy lowered himself down the outside of the fence. Billy stretched his leg out, feeling for the solid concrete top of the castle house’s corner fencepost. He stood with both feet on it, helped Adam, guided Adam’s foot across. Once Adam had a solid footing on the post, Billy jumped down onto the castle house’s lawn. Adam copied, landing bent-kneed and low like Billy had. The castle woman had pulled back her curtain and was peering out. She saw them. Her brow drew in. Adam could see her mouth move around a string of hate-filled words. Billy pulled down his shorts and flashed his backside at her.

Adam was still grinning at the end of the street.

Wade Park was well lit. Street lamps lined the paths. Some of the day’s heat remained in the bitumen. Bushes rustled with the light wind that funnelled down the lanes. No one was about, not that Adam could see. A police siren sounded. It passed by out on the road. Billy and Adam walked down the main track, alongside a pond. A path branched off, thinner than the rest. It led to a brick toilet block. Male and Female signs had been scratched out. Cigarette butts and empty beer bottles littered the ground. Billy jumped over a section of wet concrete and walked into the male toilet. Adam edged around the puddle. He was recovering from running, swallowing every few breaths, occasionally coughing. The only lighting was a bare globe with a cage around it. The sinks were stainless steel. Taps missing. No mirrors. The urinal was white-tiled, watermarked and filthy. Adam rested the backs of his fingers against his nostrils. The smell in the toilet was so rich that it seemed to settle on his tongue and smart his already burning lungs. Billy was lighting a smoke. It was the first time Adam could see the benefit of cigarettes. Billy looked under the toilet doors. They went back outside.

On their way back up the path they met a boy walking towards them. It was the boy who’d been swimming at Joe’s. Adam remembered how he was able to extend his body out and coil it in at the moment of impact with the water, to create an impressive splash. Knowing what he knew now, Adam had to wonder if this boy had been at Joe’s house as a child too. All those rooms, was that what they’d been for?

‘Where’d you get to?’

The words were slurred. Billy leaned and peered at the boy’s face. ‘Really kicking goals there, aren’t you, Benny.’

‘Fuck you.’

For no apparent reason, Benny lost his balance and staggered off the path and into the bushes. His legs went out from under him and he sank down. The knees of his jeans were torn. His jumper was grubby. His eyes fluttered closed and his mouth grew slack.

‘Jesus,’ Billy said. He walked away, up the path. ‘Come on, kid, keep up.’

On the main track Billy went over to a woman standing on the grass by a park bench. She was taller than Billy. Her legs and arms were bony and long. Her shoulders were broad. She was wearing a short dress and a cardigan. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest. When she spoke, her voice was deep. Adam stopped on the path. It wasn’t a woman. It was a man dressed as a woman. He took one of Billy’s smokes, leaned down and had Billy light it for him. The man’s deep voice carried.

‘Who’s that?’

Billy glanced over his shoulder at Adam. ‘No one. Who did Benny get the gear off?’

The man scratched his head. His long blonde wig shifted. It sat crooked. He stuck the smoke between his red lips and pushed the wig back into place. ‘You’d have to ask Benny that.’ He spoke around the smoke.

‘No more agreement, Sal?’

‘You weren’t here to babysit, he was whining.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘Anytime.’

‘Could you spot me twenty bucks?’

Sal bent down and brushed some dry leaves off his stockings. ‘Nope.’

‘Come on, you just screwed Benny over for it.’

‘Who’s the boy?’ Sal asked again.

Billy walked over to Adam. He took him by the shoulders and pushed him off the track, into the shadows under the trees.

‘Don’t stand under streetlights, not around here.’

He returned to Sal. Adam watched from below the tree. Another police siren sounded and faded.

‘Please, Sal.’

‘Please? You are desperate.’

‘You know I’m good for it.’

‘Mmm, no question about that.’

Billy laid his hand across his chest. ‘I need it.’

‘Sweetheart . . .’ Sal sucked in his cheeks and smiled, ‘. . . you’re killing me.’

Billy went down on one knee. Sal flipped the blonde hair off his shoulder. He slipped his hand down the top of his dress and withdrew a folded note. He held it out between two fingers. As Billy went to take it Sal pulled it away. He fanned himself with the note. Billy got down on both knees, sunk low onto his haunches. Sal’s lips pursed. He held the money out again, and once again he snatched it back. Billy’s head lolled. He muttered something. Sal smiled and let Billy have the money.

‘Say you love me.’

‘I love you, Sal.’

‘Oh, Billy, you say it to all the boys.’

‘Could this street be any fucking longer? We’re gonna end up in Geelong at this rate. What’s the number on the side of the building over there?’ Billy squinted and tried to make it out. ‘That can’t be right. She’s not going to be living in a fucking car yard is she?’

Daylight wasn’t far off. Stars had begun to dim. They came to a wide intersection. Without waiting for the walking signal Billy crossed the empty road. Munro Street continued on the other side. It got darker and narrower.

‘This is more like it. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.’

They stopped in front of a tall mesh fence. Adam took the opportunity to squat and rest. Tiredness had a way of blunting fear. Adam couldn’t care less right then what they were doing, just as long as they got it done soon. A number was written in black paint on a letterbox set into the wire fence. In the middle of the bare block was a large shed. A smaller office section was at the front. There wasn’t a car or any indication that a person lived there. At the top of the fence were three rows of barbed wire, no lock on the gates, though. Billy lifted the gate latch and Adam got to his feet. They walked into the yard. Weeds and grass poked through the blue stone driveway. Sounds of trucks barrelling down the deserted roads carried to them.

They found Joe’s car parked around the back of the shed, in front of two steel sliding doors. No TV or any of Joe’s belongings packed inside the car. The shed doors were chained and padlocked. A small access door was also locked. Billy and Adam returned to the front of the shed. The sky was getting lighter by the second. They tried the office door. Locked. Billy began trying the windows.

Around the side, the small toilet window opened. The gap was narrow.

‘You’ll have to go in.’

Billy crouched and Adam climbed up onto his back and then onto his shoulders.

Adam pulled himself through the window. He went in headfirst.

There were porcelain ornaments, glass figurines on the toilet cistern. They fell and landed with a plop and dull clink into the loo. His feet not yet through, Adam pushed down the toilet seat with his hand. It was covered in fluffy fabric. He climbed down onto it.

‘Good?’

‘Yep.’

Ornaments toppled with each shift of Adam’s body. He felt for the light switch, knocking over more trinkets as he did. They landed softly this time, dropping onto the thick rug underfoot.

‘Still good?’

‘Yep.’

‘Hurry up, let me in.’

It was no better out in the hallway, just as tight. Adam found a light switch down the other end of the hallway. It shone dimly. He could now see the extent of the problem. All the rooms were filled with boxes, old furniture, bags of clothes, cans of food, piles of shoeboxes, bundled towers of magazines, teetering collections of baskets filled with soaps and toiletries, pens and pencils, balls of string, and seemingly every other possible knick-knack and household thing. The hoarded items also filled the office entrance. Under it all he could see the edge of the counter; on tiptoes he could see the top of the office door. He’d have to climb over everything to get to it, and then there’d be no guarantee the door would open.

Craning to see, thinking of what to do, Adam heard it. Snoring. For a moment he was too afraid to move. The amount of stored belongings made it hard to tell where the snore was coming from. Adam began to retreat, back down the hallway. He noticed, as he did, that the snoring got louder. It was coming from the room next to the toilet. The snoring stopped. Adam halted. The person coughed. Bedsprings squeaked.

Behind Adam was a short hallway leading to a steel door. The path to it was fairly clear. He snaked his way down to the door, opened it, stepped through, and had the steel door closed behind him before considering whether or not it was a wise thing to do.

With the door closed it was completely black. The floor was concrete. A musty and at the same time intensely sour smell filled Adam’s nostrils. All the fine hairs on his body lifted. And because the feeling of fear and the presence of Joe were so closely aligned in Adam’s mind, the two things combined as one. Adam could suddenly sense Joe there, he could hear his breathing, feel his touch, smell him, see him coming in his mind’s eye. To make things worse, real things began moving in the pitch black, scratching, rustling. A whimper started up. Adam was not alone. He squeezed his eyes shut and hugged himself. A warm trickle of urine ran down the inside of Adam’s leg and wet one side of his sneaker. He bowed his head, let the fear take over. It was all there was to do sometimes, in some situations – disappear.

Maybe Adam whimpered too, maybe he crouched, maybe he shook, maybe his eyes were open, maybe he cried, he couldn’t tell anymore. He was gone. Time and space went missing. It was like passing out. Maybe he did pass out.

Yowling brought him around. Adam was on his feet; he hadn’t fainted. All he did was lift his head and he was listening again, aware. The dark hadn’t changed. Scratching remained. A cat meowed. Then another. Paper crinkled and a cage door rattled.

Adam felt around him, one hand stretched out, waving it through the air. He turned and shuffled with his hands outstretched. He could piece it together now. He was in the shed section. Adam heard a dog yelp. He groped his way further along, and came to a wall of books. He had to double back.

Adam tracked his way back to the caged pets. A cat purred by his ear. He touched it through the bars, felt its fur. It was rubbing back and forth. He could hear the animal’s mouth dryly open. A broken croak came out. Adam put his fingers through the narrow bars and touched the cat as much as he could. It was bony and its fur was matted. There were scaly patches on its head. Adam whispered secret words, ones that only the locked-up and left would understand.

He continued past another cat. Two small dogs were in separate cages lower down. The animals had barked for so long, meowed for such a time, that their cries were weak. Adam crawled in behind the row of cages. He rested his back against the shed wall. He had no plan and no clue what to do. He half trusted that Billy wouldn’t leave him.

The animals liked having Adam there. With their good night vision they could probably see him. For sure they could smell him and hear him. They scratched at the back of their cages, as close to Adam as they could get. It didn’t take much, just him being there, staying there, and the dogs barked with increased spirit, the cats pushed and rubbed their bodies harder against the wire. It would be wrong to think, though, that after years of being locked up, a minute would pass quickly. It didn’t. A minute was still an hour. A day was a week. The animals seemed as familiar with this slow tick of time as Adam was. They began to grow frantic in the drawn-out minutes waiting. Their meows and barks rose to fever pitch.

The door Adam had come through opened. A grey-haired woman turned on the shed lights. She was straight-backed and eagle-eyed, dressed in long pants and a T-shirt. Her slippers were light pink. Adam watched her through the cages. The shed was more crowded than it had seemed in the dark. What Adam had mistaken for open space was actually just a wide track through the gear. Boxes of belongings were stacked in piles, a baffling number of books, clothes, gardening things, mountains of junk. The woman’s way of moving was similar to Joe’s, and she looked like Joe used to look: old but quick, strong, sure and sturdy. Her mind was sharp. You could see that. Her eyes fixed on the sliding doors down the back. Someone had started banging on the door. Adam hoped it was Billy. She walked briskly past. The woman unlocked and pulled the sliding door partway open. Morning light flooded in. The two small dogs leapt to life, throwing themselves at the bars. Desperation made them howl. A man stood in the doorway. It wasn’t Billy.

‘What are you doing here?’ the woman said.

The man was bald with a grey moustache. He was dressed in long shorts and a button-up shirt. It was hard to see him clearly from where Adam was. It was hard to hear him above the racket the dogs were making. The only reason Adam could make out what the woman was saying was because she shouted everything she said.

‘Why would I! I didn’t want you turning up at the funeral!’

The man stepped to the side and looked past the woman. He eyed the interior of the shed.

‘Get back!’ She tried to slide the door closed. The man stopped it with his foot. ‘Get out. Get off my property. Don’t think you can come around here!’

Fresh air had reached the cages. The thinnest of the cats, the one that looked too sick to stand, struggled to its feet. The dogs had bloodied their paws with their frenzied clawing at the latches. Adam inched along. If he could see the man and woman, chances were that they would soon see him. Adam crept down to a stack of kitchen chairs. Through the gaps, from his new position, Adam could see Joe’s trailer parked inside the shed. It was loaded with his furniture. Beside it, sitting on the floor, was the TV.

‘Settle down.’ The man’s voice had lifted. It came fast and in bursts; the same voice from the phone? Kovac? ‘What was at the house?’

‘Nothing. Get out!’

‘Stop shouting.’

‘Get off my property!’

The man stepped inside the door. ‘Stop shouting.’

‘Get out!’ the woman screamed.

He kept on coming and she backed up.

‘Look at this place. You’re disgusting, Marta. You’ve always made my skin crawl. You make me sick.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want the house keys.’

‘There’s nothing there. There’s no money, leave me alone! I don’t know what you want!’

‘I told you what I want.’ He pulled back his fist and punched her in the face. She fell onto her side on the floor. He leaned over, grabbed her by the hair, lifted her head off the concrete and held it up. ‘I want the house keys.’

‘In my bag . . . by my bed . . .’

She didn’t shout now. One hit had changed her. Her voice was more like a woman’s. Her body was curled and tense. Her head was on an uncomfortable-looking angle. He kept hold of her hair.

Although too far away to see, and with the woman’s hair further obscuring the man’s hand, Adam somehow knew the fingers on the man’s right hand were tattooed. A letter, greeny-black, was crudely written, on the flat part of each finger, below each knuckle. How could Adam know that? They weren’t Joe’s hands he was remembering. They were this man’s.

He smacked her head down onto the floor, lifted it again. ‘What did you find?’ He gripped her hair tighter.

‘Please . . . stop . . .’

‘Why didn’t you tell me he’d died? What’re you hiding?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Heartache. Kovac, please . . .’

‘Don’t think it’s not worse for you now – I will kill you. With him gone you really are in the shit.’ He smacked her head into the concrete again. ‘What did you take from the house?’

‘Furniture, nothing.’

‘Did you find him?’

‘No.’

‘Who found him?’

‘I don’t know. No one.’

‘Someone fucking found him; who?’

‘Please, Kovac, I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.’

‘Didn’t tell you what?’

‘He told me he was dead. I thought he was dead. I don’t think anyone found him. The police haven’t said anything; they aren’t looking. He must have just got away.’

His grip loosened. ‘What are you talking about?’

She fell silent.

He let go of her and stepped back. ‘I’m asking who found Joe . . . what the fuck are you talking about?’ he screamed into her face.

She stayed motionless on the floor. Her hands were the only part of her body that gave away how afraid she was; they were wide, her fingers like claws on the concrete, gripping the ground. Her voice also gave away her fear. ‘There were things there, clothes . . . I . . . I don’t know . . .’

Kovac put both hands around her head. ‘What don’t you know?’

‘Someone might have been living there with him.’

‘Who?’

‘I thought . . . maybe . . . the boy?’

‘The dark boy?’

‘Dark?’ she said.

‘The fucking half-caste kid!’ he bellowed. ‘The dark kid from the market.’

‘I don’t know!’ she cried.

‘Is that who you’re talking about – the dark one? Why is he still around? Why is he ringing and threatening me?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘What did you find there?’

‘Clothes and things. I thought it was the other boy, I thought Joe might not have killed him.’

Kovac’s fingers tightened on the sides of her head. ‘No, Marta, he’s dead. That boy is long fucking dead. He’s in the ground. Tell me that right now.’

‘I don’t . . .’

He bashed her head against the floor again. ‘Tell me that right now!’

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘You stupid, stupid bitch! You should have told me! If you thought that kid was still alive you should have fucking told me! You . . . stupid . . . stupid . . . bitch . . .’ Timed with each word he slammed her skull into the floor.

Her body slumped. Her head hung heavy in his hands. Blood leaked from beneath her hair. Kovac dropped her head. His spittle had sprayed on his chin while shouting and now he wiped it dry. He tugged at the collar of his shirt. For a while he stood there, breathing deeply. His eyes roamed around the shed but he didn’t focus on any one thing in particular. The cats turned tight circles in their cages. The dogs stopped clawing. Every living thing in the shed knew that Kovac was now the person to fear.

Kovac began searching through the gear on the trailer. He opened the hall table drawer and went through the contents, used a pair of gardening shears to cut holes in the bags and pulled out the linen and tea towels, the rolled-up lounge room mat.

‘Hey there . . .’

The words were whispered directly into Adam’s ear, coupled with a soft touch on his shoulder. Adam bucked against the shed wall, braced and spun. Billy had crept up beside him. He was crouched with Adam behind the chairs. Kovac heard them scuffling. He eyed their section of shed for a moment, then returned to searching.

‘Sorry,’ Billy whispered. ‘You right?’

Adam’s heart took a while to stop racing.

Billy showed Adam a deep cut on his arm. ‘Me and glass, hey. Smashed the toilet window.’

‘We have to go.’

‘We’re better off sitting tight. He’s not gonna wanna hang around. Do you reckon she’s dead . . .’ his voice trailed off. ‘Is that the TV?’ He squeezed past Adam to look.

One of the dogs had begun barking again, the cats were meowing: Billy was a new person to appeal to. He propped his elbows on his knees, hunkered down, looked awfully like he was about to light a smoke.

‘How about this place, hey? Creepy enough for you?’

Kovac kicked away a bag of clothes and threw down the shears. He walked the path through the gear, past the cages, disappeared into the front rooms.

Billy stood. ‘Let’s do this.’

When Billy tipped the TV up on one end they heard the key rattle in the back of it. Billy looked around for a tool to break the plastic casing. He grabbed the shears, stuck the blade into the TV vent and levered it. The plastic cracked, a section came away. Billy peered into the gap.

‘I can’t see it, can you?’

Adam looked. Down amongst the dust and bits of wiring inside the TV casing lay the brass key. He reached in and pulled it out.

They could hear Kovac returning.

‘Billy, he’s coming.’

As they stood, Kovac came into view. He had a can of fuel, was splashing the contents over everything. He tossed the empty can onto a pile of clothes. He hadn’t yet seen them. Billy sucked in a breath. It was a different Billy then, more like the Billy who’d walked into Joe’s lounge room. Veins sprung up on his temples. His arms seemed thicker, his chest broader. His hands were clenched. Kovac slowed to a stop. His eyes darted, then settled on Billy, swung across, settled on Adam. Kovac’s head tipped, confusion and realisation played out across his features.

‘What is this . . . ?’ he murmured.

‘Bit slow recognisin’?’ Billy said.

‘What is this . . . ?’ Kovac repeated.

‘You lot just don’t get it, do you – we grow up.’

It was perhaps not how Billy had imagined it, because Kovac turned and ran. He tried to climb a pile of crates. Billy pulled him off the stack and tried to make Kovac face him. Kovac wouldn’t; he thrashed about, got free and ran blindly into the wall of books. They toppled and spread everywhere. Billy dragged him into what little empty space there was. Kovac kicked and screamed, twisted and wriggled on the ground. He threw books. Billy swatted them away. He punched Kovac in the face. Billy’s eyes were glazed. His expression wasn’t angry. He didn’t yell like Adam had when he hit Joe. Billy simply punched . . . and punched . . . and punched. The cut on his arm was bleeding. It didn’t slow him down. His fist was bloody from the start. None of the graceful wheeling-around and sparring that he’d shown Adam, this looked like something that couldn’t be taught, or stopped. Billy held Kovac by the shirtfront and with his other hand he hit him.

It made sense, why Billy let some men touch him, why he felt little fear in fearful situations – Billy could stop the men when he wanted, with just his bare hands.

Smoke began seeping out from the front rooms. Adam went across and opened the first animal cage. As it was too frightened to come out on its own, Adam had to reach in and grab the cat. It hissed and spat, clawed him. He ran with it to the door and placed it down. Smoke got thicker and Billy coughed while hitting Kovac. He let the man drop. Billy came to help Adam. The animals would have to be carried out. The fire began to roar. Air got hotter. It burned to breathe. The second cat yowled and fought. Adam ran with it out the shed door and into the open air, released it. Billy was able to carry both the dogs. They weren’t fighting like the cats had. They understood they were being saved.

A churning column of dark smoke lifted from the shed. Adam didn’t go back in. He watched Billy drag the woman out by her ankles. She was weakly coughing. Her bloodied head bounced over the stones as Billy pulled her. Her T-shirt rode up.

Billy and Adam stood back and watched the fire build. In seconds it doubled. Bits of burning material and paper and cardboard lifted, floated back down. Heat radiated out, it pushed Billy and Adam back. Inside the shed, beneath the line of smoke, Kovac was crawling towards the doors, inching forward on his belly, barely managing to move. Blood bubbled from his face. Adam looked at Billy. The sides of Billy’s cheeks were streaked with ash and tears from the smoke. No emotion. Billy wasn’t pleased to have defeated him; he simply wished Kovac had never been in his life in the first place. Adam looked back to the fire. As they watched, the shed roof collapsed on top of Kovac. Sparks shot up high. He was swallowed in the flames.

‘Got that key?’ Billy said.

Adam’s body was getting better at keeping going, pushing on, but his head wasn’t. Thoughts got sluggish while his legs marched on. Sounds carried slow to him. Fire engines wailed in the distance. Billy and Adam kept on down narrow streets and along cracked pavements. There were things to think about, but Adam didn’t think about them yet. If he tried he’d be able to piece together a couple of things, make sense of what he’d heard inside the shed, seen inside his own mind, and what it all meant. But now wasn’t the right time to get his thoughts straight. When faced with the truth, when looking directly into a bright light, into the sun, the glare was blinding. The same way the freed cats had skulked off into the furthest corners of the yard, Adam felt safer hanging back and keeping to the shadows.

They went past the petrol bowsers and into the toilets.

Billy went to the tap and drank.

‘Lock the door.’

His voice was raspy and low. Smoke and heat had scorched his throat, like it had Adam’s. Billy’s hands and knuckles were swollen. He rinsed the blood away. He cleaned the cut on his arm. Adam watched as Billy touched the wound and pushed the slash together. Billy didn’t flinch. Adam got light-headed just seeing the bloodless colour of the flesh and the way the wound gaped and leaked a thick clear substance, as well as bright-red blood.

They washed as best they could. Adam noticed that along the way, at some point, the bandaid from his forehead had come unstuck and fallen off. His forearms were covered in cat scratches.

Billy crouched and rested against the wall. For a while he was motionless, deep in thought. Adam listened for people walking up to the door, watched for shadows in the crack of sunlight.

They left into the white heat of the day. Two men standing at the back of a ute stopped talking and watched them go.

The cab driver ducked his head as they opened the passenger door. The radio was going. A song was playing. The driver’s seat had a beaded cover. It looked uncomfortable to sit on. A speaker crackled softly on the dash. They climbed into the back seat.

‘Barbary Street.’

Billy lit a cigarette. He coughed and wheezed, checked for Sal’s money. The driver kept looking at them in the rear-view mirror.

‘Got enough there?’

Billy folded the note. ‘Yeah, I got it.’

‘Barbary Street?’

‘Is there a problem?’

The driver didn’t answer. Adam watched the man’s hand slide on the wheel. In silhouette, when the driver turned to check for traffic, his lips were pressed firmly together.

Billy put the money away. The cut ran down the back of his arm, finishing above his elbow. He kept the wound pressed against his side. Blood soaked his tank top.

Traffic crowded in and the taxi slowed. Footpaths were empty. On the radio they were talking about a heatwave, a top that day of forty-four degrees, record heat. Stay out of the sun. Keep indoors. Billy didn’t finish the cigarette. He squashed it into the overflowing ashtray. Bits of tobacco and ash stuck to his sweaty fingers.

Adam was sitting with his knees and feet together. His hands in his lap. He looked at the back of the driver’s head, studied the man’s hair and neck, the collar of his shirt.

‘Kid,’ Billy murmured, ‘cut it out.’

Adam looked out the window. The pocket of his trackpants bulged with the bottle opener, toothpaste and toothbrush. In the other pocket he had the safe key, pushed down deep, beside the tiger. Adam fingered the toy through the fabric. Billy began clenching and wriggling his right hand, as though testing it still worked. He held both hands up, palms facing down, and he compared them. The right hand was paler than the left.

They drove over a bridge, went through a tunnel. Billy checked his watch. A second song started on the radio. Billy scooted forward on the seat and leaned into the front. Joe’s street was ahead.

‘The corner will do.’

Patches of road tar gleamed soft and gooey. Curtains were drawn. Billy and Adam kept to the shady side of the street, crossed over at Joe’s gates. Adam pushed through his hesitation. Billy was in no mood for it: he gave the impression he wouldn’t stop. They went into the yard, got on hands and knees to go beneath the house, between the stumps, around the cages and planters. It was cooler under there. Dry dirt was chilled and powdered.

‘It’s not gonna be there,’ Billy was saying. ‘I know how this shit goes – another kick in the teeth every time. Be ready for that.’

Adam took out the safe key, put it in the lock, turned it, turned the handle. He lifted the heavy door, but could only get it partly open because of the floorboards above it. Adam peered through the gap.

‘Is it there?’

‘I can’t see.’

Adam began to close the door so that they could get the boards up.

Billy lunged forward. ‘Keep the fucking thing open.’ He stuck his hand in the gap. ‘Jesus? After all that? Don’t shut it. I’ll hold it. You get the boards up.’

Adam pushed the floorboards from beneath. It was difficult in the heat. Sweat covered him, dirt stuck to him, it was not unlike the feeling of the tablets – slower, not as strong, an effort to concentrate.

Billy looked through the gap into the safe. Light was poor under the house. He squinted and strained.

Adam finished. They lifted the safe door all the way open.

The stack of cash was there, where it had been, untouched and unmoved. A single breath fell from Billy. He reached in and picked up the notes, held the bundle, stared at it.

‘Is it a lot?’ Adam asked.

Billy gave him a strange sideways look, was straight-faced for a moment, then he swiped Adam’s head with the cash and grinned. He slapped the money against Adam’s arm. ‘You’re a piece of work, aren’t ya?’

‘It is?’

‘It’ll do.’ Billy tucked it in the waistband of his shorts. ‘We gotta be smart about this.’

No sooner had he said that, than he became distracted. He backed up from the safe and looked at it from a distance.

‘Can you see that? This thing should be deeper.’

The inside and outside of the safe didn’t match. The interior was shallow, while the safe itself was deep. Billy shuffled forward and pushed the safe’s back wall. He knocked on it.

‘Pass me your bottle opener.’

Adam held out the tool. Billy took it with his good hand, pushed the blade between the velvet back wall and the side of the safe. He levered the blade, got his fingers under the board and pulled it out.

The false back wall hid a space that ran the length and width of the safe. It had been built in with velvet-lined partitions and compartments. It looked to Adam as though you could choose to use the false wall, or take it out if you preferred open access to the shelving. There was evidence that the shelves had been used in the past – worn lining and small scraps of paper, snipped-off ends of negatives, bits of fluff. What was not yet disposed of, the thing still being stored there, was the handgun. It was sitting in one of the compartments, bulky and black. Beside it was a see-through box of small silver bullets.

The smell of the gun filled Adam’s nostrils. His scalp shrank with the scent. Billy glanced at him.

‘You knew that was here?’

‘Not here; I knew it was somewhere.’

‘I’m not much into guns. We’ll leave it, hey?’

Billy then noticed the wet brown smear on the safe lining near his elbow. He jerked his arm higher. He’d put bloodied marks everywhere – on the safe door, inside the safe, drops of blood on the steel. There were sweaty fingerprints on the removed board. He backed away.

‘Not real smart . . .’ he muttered.

The panic that entered Billy’s face made Adam’s heart rate soar. They stopped moving and listened. There was a creak inside the house, soft scampering and pattering not far from where they were. Billy looked up at the floor above his head. Adam reached for the gun.

‘What are you doing?’ Billy whispered.

Adam opened the chamber and checked to see if the gun was loaded. It wasn’t. He opened the ammunition box, took out some bullets, pushed two in.

‘What are you doing? Put it back.’

‘I’m going to take it.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I am.’

Adam put the gun in his trackpants pocket. It didn’t fit. He turned it around, put the stock in the pocket first, with the barrel pointing up. It felt less likely to fall out that way. The band of Adam’s T-shirt covered the majority of the thick cylinder sticking out. It didn’t hide the swell of the weapon, or conceal the telling weight. Adam folded the waistband of his trackpants to stop them slipping down. He put a few spare bullets in his other pocket. To lighten his load, he took out the toothpaste and toothbrush. Adam threw them away under the house.

He couldn’t help but look back at the scattered tube and brush as they left. His tongue probed his teeth. Everything was changing. There’d been a switch. The ash in Adam’s hair, the soot on his skin, the smell of fire in his clothes, blood and sky, earth and the soles of his sneakers, footpaths, gutters, houses, cars, light poles, letterboxes, . . . all of it was real. He wasn’t looking at it, it wasn’t happening on the TV, or taking place beyond a fence, he wasn’t watching it from a place inside himself. He was in it. Adam was real. Belonged.

They bolted out of the yard, out the gate, away from Wade Park. As Adam ran he kept the gun pressed to his hip, one hand clamped to it. Billy tucked his bleeding arm into his side and put his other arm across his waist, holding the wad of money firm.

‘You know what this is, don’t you,’ Billy said, ‘it’s a fuck ’n’ run. Leave whatever lame bastard you’ve been with, take their wallet, don’t look back, and just fucken run.’

Blood was thick between Billy’s fingers. It was slick down his arm. Sun sizzled Adam’s nose and cheekbones. A persistant fly kept landing on his uncovered stitches. They crouched beside a paling fence and caught their breath. With his good hand, Billy counted the money. Adam waved flies from both their faces. The air was so hot it made Adam breathless.

‘It’s eight thousand.’

Billy tucked the wad of money away again.

‘We’ve gotta do this right. They’re gonna put that fire together with Joe’s. We gotta get out of these clothes. One thing at a time. Clothes first. We’ll get that sorted and then we’ll think of the next thing.’

Sweat trickled down Billy’s temples. His lips were grey.

Adam had to help him to his feet.

At the first full clothesline they came to, with an empty driveway, Billy went into the yard and yanked the clothes from the pegs. They crouched between two parked cars in the street. Billy went through the clothes he’d taken, tossed away the small shorts and the blouse, held up the pair of jeans, passed them to Adam, held up the T-shirt, passed it to Adam too; he kept the long-sleeved top for himself.

Further along, inside a bus shelter, they got changed. It was Adam’s first pair of jeans. They were tight. Wranglers, Billy said. Adam slipped his sneakers back on, having not untied the laces. He pulled off his sweaty T-shirt and pulled on the clean one. It had a collar and a pocket. Adam had never before felt so dressed. He was holding the gun, not sure what to do with it. Billy turned him around and pulled out the waistband of the jeans.

‘Room in there?’

Adam tucked the gun in against the small of his back. Billy shook his head.

‘Stupid. We’re getting rid of that thing, first chance.’

Adam put the spare bullets, the bottle opener, into his jeans pockets, squeezed in the tiger. He pressed his fingers to his cheeks. The skin was burning. When he blinked his eyelids stung and stuck together. Billy sat down on the wooden seat and borrowed Adam’s bottle opener. Bare-chested, he used the blade to cut and tear up Adam’s old T-shirt. He made strips out of the fabric and bandaged his arm with them.

The money was under the waistband of Billy’s shorts. His cigarettes were on the other hip, across from the cash. Adam leaned back against the tin of the shelter, let his eyelids droop a moment.

‘Heaps better,’ Billy said.

He stepped out of the bus shelter and looked around.

‘Not sure where we are. I’ll see something that makes sense soon.’

Billy put on the long-sleeved top.

At a garden tap they washed their faces, had a drink, washed their hands and wet their hair. Billy pulled out his cigarettes and flipped open the top of the packet. The sight of that, the sound of the lighter flicking, soothed Adam. The smell of smoke relaxed him. Billy coughed, persevered with the cigarette. You could hear how tight his chest was. He didn’t drag the smoke deep. He kept it high and light inside him.

Each lick of Adam’s lips tasted of salt. There were shooting pains in his legs, tingling in his pelvis, pinpricks of light appeared in his vision. Blood had soaked through Billy’s sleeve. He was silent. His shoulders were rounded. His head was low. They walked on, down quiet streets, across parks and through empty sports fields. Their steps were trudging. Billy went to a streetlight and leaned against it. He stayed like that, head down, breathing.

‘Are we lost?’

‘I’ll work it out.’

He didn’t, though. Billy squatted on a footpath in a street lined with green lawns and brick houses. He turned and looked back the way they’d come. He tried to stand, swayed, squatted again. He looked like a sprinter at the start of a race, the fingers of his good hand steadying him, sucking in air through his teeth and peering ahead. Blood dripped from his elbow and hit the pavement.

‘Can’t you walk anymore?’

‘I’ll be okay.’

They’d stopped in front of a house with big windows that faced onto the street. The curtains were lace. The blinds weren’t drawn. The air conditioner on the roof was silent. There were no cars in the driveway or under the carport. Billy looked at the house from beneath his lowered brow.

It was as though he knew exactly how many steps he had left in him – he made it around to the back of the house and no further, sank down the moment he stepped onto the concrete path, and he sat there in the thin strip of shade. Adam crouched beside him. He wouldn’t have thought that a brown face could lose its colour, but it had. Billy was breathing open-mouthed, panting. The strip of shade wasn’t much. The concrete was hot beneath them. The backyard had plenty of green plants, but they were all small and low to the ground. There was a big dug-out hole in the middle of the lawn, where a pool had either been taken out or was going in. A bike was lying in the short grass, glinting in the sun. Down the back of the yard there was a shed – small and windowless. The hum of the neighbour’s air conditioner and the occasional warble of a magpie were the only sounds. Hardly any cars came down the street. No breeze.

‘I think I’m gonna spew,’ Billy murmured.

The sky was whitish-blue. It was hard to see where the sun was. Adam’s head had begun to ache. The gun was digging into his back; sweat trickled down around it. He found a tap, but didn’t know how to get the water across to Billy, who was trying to stand. He’d get to his feet, sway, and sink down again. He closed his eyes, and you could see he was working up the energy to try to stand again. Adam had no experience with cuts and blood loss, no experience with outdoor heat. He guessed that a cut shouldn’t bleed that much or for that long. He took cues from the hush of the neighbourhood, the way it was deserted, not even the birds seemed keen on getting about, and he remembered the advice on the radio: keep indoors.

The windows at the back of the house were locked. Adam shaded his eyes and put his face close to the glass. The living area and kitchen were one big room. The furniture was low and brown. Adam tried the sliding door. It was locked. The toilet window wouldn’t budge. The sun swapped sides. Billy’s shade was gone. Adam stood on the steps at the laundry door and thought about what to do. There was a sound down by his feet. A big tabby cat pushed its way outside through some flywire covering a hole cut in the door. The cat looked up at him, casually turned around and went back inside. Adam knelt and lifted the flywire, looked in through the hole. It was a big gap for a cat. Adam had squeezed through smaller. The cat flopped onto its side on the tiled laundry floor. Its tail snaked. The animal lay there staring at him. Adam put his head through the hole, began to try his shoulders, he pulled out and checked on Billy. He’d propped himself against the brick wall. His good hand was against his neck, tipping his head back, as though to hold it up. His eyes were closed. Adam stuck his head in the animal door again. He wriggled and twisted. The cat got up and wandered off down the hallway.

The house wasn’t as cool as it would have been had the owners shut the blinds, but it was cooler than outside. Adam walked down the wide passageway and unlocked the sliding door.

He put his arm around Billy. Together they stood up.

‘We can’t go in here.’

Billy’s words ran together. There was no conviction in his voice. His legs buckled under him. Adam took his weight and they struggled up the steps.

Adam steered Billy through the kitchen and over to the couch. Billy managed to stretch out and lift his head onto the cushion. Straight away he looked more at ease. Adam’s nose was running from exertion, also a precursor to tears. He sniffed determinedly. He was not about to cry.

The cat flopped onto its side on the carpet. It watched, tail flicking and winding. Adam looked over into the kitchen.

He took the tea towel from the handle of the stove, used it to wrap around Billy’s arm. Adam returned to the kitchen and got Billy a drink.

Billy groggily sat up, sipped the water. He nodded and lay back down.

‘What will I do? Should I wave a car down?’

‘What? No. Jesus.’

‘What should I do?’

‘I’ll be right in a tick.’

Within seconds he was asleep.

To keep awake Adam stayed on his feet.

Starting in the kitchen he did a slow lap of the house. The pantry was filled with what seemed like every single supermarket item. There was an entire row of boxed breakfast cereals, all different types. The fridge was crowded too. There were casserole dinners, half eaten, foil over the top. Plates and bowls in the cupboards matched, brown with green and yellow swirls. Mugs were lined up in rows. The glasses were etched with a pattern of vines and flowers. There was a picture of the family: the dad, the mum, a girl, a boy. Adam stood in front of the photograph. He looked from one face to the next, the way each person was dressed, the smiles on their faces. The father was young. The only deep lines were those either side of his mouth. He had no grey hair. The mother had glasses. She was pretty. Her smile was the nicest.

Their TV was in a long low cabinet.

They kept their things very tidy.

Down the hallway were more photographs. The girl was older in them. She played sport. Her legs were long, slim and tanned. The boy had a freckled face. Adam went into the parents’ bedroom. The bedcover was blue. Lampshades were blue. A picture of a glittering gold sunset hung on the wall.

The girl’s bedroom door was closed. There was a long piece of red cardboard stuck on it, handwriting all the way down it, and pictures from magazines cut out and stuck in amongst the writing – a pasted-on picture of a skeleton, a pair of eyes, a knife. Warmth increased the perfumed smell in her room. A wave of dizziness stopped Adam. The lightheaded feeling kept returning. He felt it again walking into the room, and at different times while looking around. She had posters of men on the walls, on the ceiling. There were clothes on the floor. Half the drawers were open, clothes shoved in and spilling out. Her bed wasn’t made. She had a full-length mirror. In it Adam saw how sunburnt he was – arms and face and neck. He turned to look at his jeans from the side, pushed his fringe back, straightened up his shoulders.

Stacks of books were on the shelves and handwritten things were everywhere, taped to the walls, in photo frames, in open books, things written directly onto her wardrobe doors. She’d written things on the posters of the men, words in love hearts, followed by crosses and circles. Adam went to the girl’s bed. He touched her pillow. He was dizzy doing that. It felt wrong and right to do it. He looked at a bra on the floor. Suddenly, vividly, the image of the woman on the back of Scotty’s toilet door filled Adam’s mind. He could recall the woman’s arms, her legs, her waist and neck and, most of all, her eyes. Yet he didn’t think he’d taken that much notice. In his mind the woman moved, she slid off the bonnet, smiled at him. A spear of feeling travelled through Adam. Followed by slow spreading warmth. He drew in a breath. The closest thing he’d felt to this was the energy, the magic, of the tiger – that same thrum and thrill, coupled with light-headedness, giddiness. He tingled. The feeling was as private as the tiger one had been. And as removed from Joe as all good things were. It occurred to Adam that there were things in him too intricate and mysterious for Joe to ever have known. If it had been about ownership, Joe had not succeeded. If it had been about destroying Adam, Joe had failed.

Adam went into the boy’s bedroom. On the mat was a racing car track. The constructed track had a loop. There were cars in a basket, train carriages, some soldier figurines. On the shelves were more toys. The bed had a stripy doona. Adam turned to see the tabby cat had come in. It jumped up onto the boy’s desk and stretched out on an open picture book. Adam leaned down and picked up a matchbox car from the basket. It was detailed inside: a tiny steering wheel and seats. The wheels were rubber. When he turned the car over to look underneath, one of its doors opened. Adam discovered the bonnet opened too, and the boot. In the basket he found other cars with doors that opened and closed. He found a truck with seats inside filled with plastic soldiers, stuck down, all with rifles and wearing army clothes. Adam looked at each car separately, rolled the wheels on his palm.

Tired of the weight of the gun, he took it from the back of his jeans and put it on the rug. Annoying too, was the tight squeeze of the tiger in his pocket. He took the toy out. Put it beside the gun. He knelt and kept looking at the cars.

When Adam stopped, looked up, it took a second for him to remember where he was. For a moment he’d forgotten everything about himself, who he was. His mind a blank slate, facts filled Adam’s head in a way they never had before. He could see a different set of matchbox cars, a different rug, he was in a different house – clean tidy rooms, cream carpet, sun streaming through the windows. He could remember a crowd and the tops of tents, he could hear the people’s voices, and he saw his own feet, small and in bright-yellow sandals, his hands were pushing through bushes, long ferns brushed past his face, and beside him, taller than him, was a boy, walking fast . . . the pale bottoms of the boy’s bare feet, slim dark ankles, and in the boy’s hand, a flash of yellow and black . . . the tiger. The backroom memories flooded in then; they came like the safe door closing – heavy, dense, locking everything out, locking everything in – but then the safe door just as quickly lifted, and it was as though all Adam had was one heartbeat of darkness, one suffocated second of time, and then there he was, in the present, sweating, kneeling beside the boy’s bed. Over on the desk, the cat swished its tail, eyeing Adam. Adam breathed, blinked and swallowed. He looked at the tiger on the rug, stared at it.

‘These people are gonna come home any minute.’

Billy had found him. He was standing in the doorway, holding the frame for support. His eyes were bloodshot.

Adam picked up the handgun and pushed it down the back of his pants, got to his feet.

He left the tiger there; didn’t want to, but it was the right thing to do. Like Monty and Jerry, the tiger couldn’t come. A child’s bedroom was where it belonged.

They took a backpack of things with them. Billy told Adam what to take – cordial, a drink bottle, chocolate, chips, crackers and fruit. He made Adam look for tablets in the cupboards. Adam found bandages and bandaids. He put them in the backpack. There was a black cap hanging on the back of the laundry door. Billy indicated that Adam should put it on. Billy was leaning against the wall, cradling his arm and speaking in short sentences. He kept glancing towards the front windows. Adam put the gun in the backpack. Zipped it up. He pulled the bag onto his back and they set off, left the sliding door wide open, left the tea towel bunched and bloodied on the couch.

The tabby sat in the front window and watched them leave.

They walked the way they’d come, to a sports oval they’d passed earlier. Billy was unsteady by the time they got there. They found a patch of shade behind the clubrooms. Bushes sheltered them from the sun. They settled in. Billy lay on his side and closed his eyes. Adam could see under the clubrooms. The building was raised on stumps. Mesh barriers stopped people from getting under there. A wooden ramp to the back door was beside them. Fixed to the corner of the building was a tap.

Adam mixed them some cordial in the drink bottle. He opened a packet of chips.

Cooling gusts came through the bushes. Two sparrows fossicked close by.

After a while Billy struggled up. His exhausted expression didn’t change, though. Sounds of cars on the roads started returning. A bee buzzed and hovered around a sticky icy-pole wrapper caught in the grass. Billy dragged the backpack closer to him. He popped two tablets from a packet, swallowed them. He re-counted the money.

Adam lay on his back. He put his hands beneath his head and looked up at the overhang of green leaves. He thought about the house cat, the tail-up swagger of the tabby compared to the low-to-the-ground stagger of the caged cats. Who’d willingly put their hand up as having come from that? What the house cat had displayed was a complete and utter lack of fear. It didn’t know to feel fear, because it had never felt it. Adam closed his eyes.

Sleep came like water, cooling Adam’s thoughts, eddying away the whispers; it lifted him up, took him, solid, steady, certain.

Clouds had gathered in the sky: thick white ones billowing and building. Billy took a banana from the backpack. He peeled it and tossed the skin down by the mesh. He saw Adam was awake.

‘What’s the story with the gun?’

Billy had re-bandaged his arm. The T-shirt strips were a blood-soaked pile beside him. He’d taken out the weapon. It was in the grass.

When Adam didn’t answer, Billy said, ‘You’re pretty shit at explaining things.’

Adam sat up. Billy finished the banana and took out the chocolate. It had melted and stuck to the wrapper. Billy licked the chocolate from the foil. He offered Adam some when he saw the way he was watching him; Adam declined, shook his head.

Billy tried again. ‘Did Joe show you how to load it? Was it a game? Was it for real? Was he testing you? Was it a way to spin you out?’

‘I think so.’

‘A way to spin you out?’

‘Yes.’

‘He let you load it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you why?’

‘He made me think I couldn’t leave the house, or be seen by anyone. He told me I’d be taken away. He said he was the only one who could look after me. If anything happened to him I’d have to kill myself. He showed me how to do it.’

‘He was messing with your head, all right.’

‘Do you know cracker nights?’

‘Yup.’

‘He used to let me watch them.’

‘The bonfire nights across from his place?’

‘Yes. Every cracker night he’d take me out into the yard. He’d put down a rug and we’d have takeaway. The last time, he made me sit right up the back of the yard. He didn’t have a rug or any food. It was dark. I couldn’t really see. When the fireworks lit up I saw he’d sat me in a hole. A hole he’d dug. I saw him take the gun from inside his jacket. He pointed it at me. He put it right against my head.’

Billy stopped licking the chocolate wrapper. ‘And?’ he prompted after a moment.

‘He couldn’t do it. He said it was my fault because I looked at him.’

Billy wiped his lips clean of the chocolate, threw away the wrapper and took out a cigarette. Lit the smoke. ‘Fucken hell.’

‘I realised later that he chose that night, the fireworks, to hide the shot. He was going to bury me in the hole. He must have drugged me too, because I wasn’t thinking properly, I wasn’t acting right. He just led me back inside and I fell asleep . . . I’d had the gun all those times when he’d taught me to use it and I’d never pointed it at him. I don’t know why. After that night he didn’t bring the gun out anymore. I was hardly allowed out at all. If he did let me out of the backroom, he’d tie my feet, he’d hit me for the slightest thing. He’d tie me to the table to eat dinner, tie me to the chair to watch TV. After that night he got much worse.’

‘Yeah, because he knew you knew. The game was up. When there’s a line in the sand, when you’ve worked out it’s you or them, then they can’t lie no more or play their games. They know you’re not gonna believe them. Put the gun in your hand then and you’ll know what to do. You won’t even think twice about it; you’ll cross the line without even thinking. But up until then you didn’t know.’

School must have got out. Shouts and laughter carried in the breeze. There were some older voices too, some swearing. On the other side of the bushes was a fence and behind that was a walking track. The sound of the children got louder. Some scuffed their way along the gravel and others skipped and ran.

Adam waited until they’d passed.

‘He knew how much I like the fireworks. It was a night he was always nice to me. But he wasn’t being nice to me. He was setting it up.’ A waver had crept into Adam’s voice. He swallowed it. ‘I’d had the gun and I hadn’t used it. I had other chances and I didn’t take them. I should have screamed when I was outside, all the times he’d let me stay in the front rooms, I should have known to run away.’

‘You thought he was your father. Give yourself a break.’

‘I should have tried harder.’

‘It doesn’t work like that. You were trying hard.’

‘For so long I believed the things he told me.’

‘Heaps of people spend their lives believing crazier things. You were little – kids believe in the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy. Don’t even get me started on the shit adults believe. You did nothing wrong. You gotta know that. Of course you did nothing wrong – you’re here, right? You’re alive. You see? That tells you. Everything you did led to you being alive right now, sitting here with me. They might have been shit things you had to do, but they got you here, didn’t they? That’s all that matters.’

‘No one will understand.’

‘Nah, they probably won’t.’ Billy inhaled and held the cigarette a little way in front him. He looked at the burning tip. ‘Chances are they’re never gonna be sitting in a hole on Guy Fawkes night with a gun pointed at their head, so . . . yeah, we’re all a bit alone like that. You might not understand half the things I’ve done. You’d have to go back and be me, to understand them, and even then we’d probably see it different and do it different. Some things no one is ever gonna get. But what I can understand is how you hate the things you had to do and you wish you hadn’t had to do them. If other people have lived any sort of a life, they’ll understand that too.’

‘What do you wish you hadn’t done?’

‘Plenty.’

‘What would you go back and change?’

‘What wouldn’t I?’

‘Did they lie to you?’

‘Different lies, I guess.’

‘I think I remember something, Billy.’

He glanced across.

‘The man in the shed, I think I remember him. I think I remember a river and a market.’

Billy licked his lips and looked away.

It hadn’t been school getting out. The children who’d come down the track had gathered out the front of the building. Adam could hear them laughing and talking. There was the sound of a car arriving. The gun remained in the grass. Adam looked at it. He looked at Billy. Billy put out his cigarette, got up and crept down alongside the clubrooms. Adam returned the gun to the backpack, closed the zip. Billy came back, shaking his head and pointing down. Adam moved lower, closer to the mesh. Another car arrived.

They had to wait. Footsteps and voices came from inside the clubrooms. Heavy things were being dragged about. Sports equipment was carried out onto the oval. If not for Billy’s arm they’d probably push through the bushes and climb the fence; if not for his arm they’d probably make a dash across the quieter side of the oval. Cars dropped children off. Kids were in shorts and T-shirts. All ages. They ran around in bare feet. Activities were set up for them. Billy and Adam sat side by side, knees up, chins resting on them. They didn’t return to the conversation. Too much talk took too much getting over. Adam sensed that in Billy too. Truth was best in bouts. Time in between to let it settle. It was there between them, though, what they’d talked about. It was like the money and the gun – another thing they’d collected, something that could, maybe, bring them undone. Or save them. It was tucked away for now. A whistle was blown. Watching through the mesh, Adam had a view of one of the outdoor activities, made up of mats and a springboard and a tall padded bench. The kids ran up the springboard; they either jumped with their legs apart over the bench or they did a handstand or they cartwheeled. One boy didn’t touch the bench at all and managed an airborne somersault. The whistle signalled a shift from one activity to the next. The closest Adam and Billy came to being discovered was when a man came to the corner tap and plugged in a hose. He was so close they could hear his breathing. It was dusk now.

Billy whispered, when he was gone, ‘A cop. They all are. They run these things.’

The police weren’t in uniform. They were dressed in tracksuit pants, white T-shirts and white sneakers. A sprinkler was turned on and the kids played under it. The moon was out early. Children’s bare arms and legs glistened in the light from the clubroom windows. When one of the policemen ran through the water, the children cheered and chased him. Billy pointed out two older kids who had separated from the group and were over near the goalposts. A girl and boy. It was possible to see them holding hands, just possible to see them kissing. Billy lifted the backpack and held it out for Adam to take.

‘They’re gonna start looking around for stragglers.’

It had grown dark enough to go.

Barbeque smells drifted from backyards. Some houses hadn’t closed their doors. Children were playing in the shadowy yards. Mums and dads sat on porch steps or watered their gardens. It had a cracker-night feel. It felt familiar to Adam for that reason. The moments leading up to the bonfire being lit, the noises in the street, people out, the smells, always on the other side of the fence, spilling over into Joe’s yard, only ever a sense of it, never in it, not like this.

Adam looked up at the stars. There were footsteps on the path behind them. Two girls were talking. As they caught up to the boys they stopped their conversation, giggled and overtook. The tallest girl glanced back. Her eyes and teeth gleamed.

‘Wanna know the trick to them?’ Billy said, when the girls were out of earshot.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t pretend you weren’t checking those two out.’

‘No.’

‘No? Really? Fair enough then. I won’t tell you. You don’t need to know.’

‘Okay,’ Adam conceded after a few more steps.

‘You gotta walk somewhere with them,’ Billy said. ‘That’s all you need to know. Girls love walking places. It doesn’t have to be somewhere fancy. Those two girls, all they’d be doing is heading off to the corner shop, but you’d never guess it going by the way they’re swinging their backsides. Yeah? They love going places. Take them somewhere, walk down the road with them, down the street, to the corner shop, walk around the block, anywhere. Do that and they’ll reckon you’re the most romantic guy they’ve ever laid eyes on.’

Adam thought about it. ‘Okay.’

Billy shouldered him. ‘Dag.’

‘Do you like girls, Billy?’

‘Hmm, let’s just say I don’t get nervous around them.’

‘How come you know the trick to them?’

‘When you don’t go to pieces it’s easy to see how they work.’

‘Does Scotty?’

‘Does Scotty what?’

‘Get nervous around them.’

‘Nah . . . he doesn’t get nervous or go to pieces . . . he goes to fucking water. There’s someone you don’t wanna go taking girl advice off. He’s hopeless. It’s painful, watching him with a chick. I’m not kidding you – you groan.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Well, for starters, he forgets how to speak, makes the lamest jokes, drops stuff, walks into stuff. I’ve seen him fall backwards over a kid’s bike, hit his head getting in and out of a car . . . seen him get tangled in an annexe door and almost hang himself on a clothesline.’

Adam could picture it. He smiled.

‘You think I’m kidding.’

‘Has Scotty had a girlfriend?’

‘Yep.’

‘Have you?’

‘No, kid.’ He sounded amused by the question. ‘But I’m not saying that people like us don’t have girlfriends. You’re gonna, no problem. It’s about jumping in there and not worrying about the knockbacks. Those girls, don’t worry, they were scoping you right back. The only thing you gotta be careful of is people telling you how they reckon you should feel, or taking a person’s fucked-up reaction as the way you should feel. When you’ve been through a bunch of shit like us, people think all sorts of stuff.’ Billy sliced his hand through the air. ‘But for me it’s like – what I do with someone and what was done to me, two different things completely. There’s the good game, and there’s the bad game, and, take it from me, the good game ain’t nothing like the bad one. Look at it like this – it’s like being punched in the face or touched on the cheek. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty clear on the difference there, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

*

On a high section of road Adam and Billy stopped and looked over the blanket of suburbs to the city lights in the distance. Billy lit a smoke. Adam sat down on a low brick fence and waited while Billy got his bearings.

‘How the fuck did we manage to get all the way out here?’

Adam got to his feet. He assumed they’d walk to the city. He thought they’d walk all night.

But they only went as far as a wide and busy street.

It had pubs and clubs. Low-slung rumbling cars cruised up and down the road. Music thumped inside the vehicles. Drivers waiting at the traffic lights revved their motors. Somewhere further off, a car’s tyres squealed.

At a drive-through bottle shop they went up to the counter. The man was sitting on a stool behind the cash register. He was watching cricket on a small TV. Billy bought some smokes and asked about the clothes pinned to a board above the fridges. A carton of beer had to be bought to get them. Billy turned his back on the man and slid another note from the bundle.

They walked out with a cardboard box of stubbies and a T-shirt and a jumper wrapped in plastic. Billy put the beer down by the kerb, left it there.

Down from the bottle shop was a motel with a neon sign in the shape of Ned Kelly. With each blink of the fluorescent tubes the gun he was holding lifted higher. Inside the motel foyer was a statue of Ned in all his armour. The woman at the counter looked up from the book she was reading. Her hair was in a ponytail. She switched her stony look back and forth between Adam and Billy. Leisurely she straightened in the chair, walked to a drawer and pulled it out. Billy glanced at Adam. He winked. She closed the drawer, dropped a set of keys on the desk.

‘Twenty-five dollars.’

‘For a double?’

‘Yes.’

‘Got something better?’

‘A suite?’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s got its own bathroom, and a —’

‘We’ll have that.’

‘It’s sixty bucks.’

‘That’s okay.’

She went to the drawer and came back with a different key. ‘Breakfast is included with the suite.’ She pointed across the foyer to a glass door and a darkened room beyond it. ‘It’s served till nine a.m. Check out is ten.’

‘Do you have room service?’

‘Kitchen’s closed. But there’s a pizza shop across the road. They deliver.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

‘You’re on the second floor, down the end . . . On The Run Pizza,’ she said as Billy paid. ‘Dial one to ring out.’

The stairs were carpeted. The room numbers were painted on small metal plaques in the shape of Ned Kelly’s helmet. Billy unlocked the door and held it open with his back. Adam went down the short passageway. The room was large. It had a boarded-up fireplace and a double bed, a couch and a coffee table. The dresser was dark wood with small silver handles. Heavy red drapes. A section of the neon Ned Kelly sign was right in front of their window, blinking and flashing. You had to look through the fluorescent tubes to see down to the street. Billy came over and closed the drapes. He turned on the lamps. Inside the dresser were a TV and a fridge, an electric kettle, cups, tea, coffee and sugar. The bathroom was through a narrow door off the passageway. It had a claw-foot bath and the cleanest toilet Adam had ever seen. Dazzling white.

‘This is really nice.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Can I have a bath?’

Billy got it running and arranged the shower curtain so that it hung outside the bath. He left. Adam locked the door.

The bath filled. The soap was pink and wrapped in rose-printed paper. Adam undressed. Steam fogged the mirror. He stepped in when the bath was half full, held the edge and lowered to a crouch. He’d only ever dipped his feet or hands in water. Joe had never let him swim in the pool. Immersing his body into water felt nothing like showering in it. Adam eased down lower. He kept a tight hold of the sides of the bath, moved his toes underwater. The bath continued to fill. Holding on with one hand he reached and put his fingers under the tap flow. When the water was as high as his chest he turned off the taps. Bath water stung his sunburn. After a short while he let go of the sides. For a few long moments Adam sat there. Tears wet his cheeks.

He soaped his body, eased his arms and shoulders under. Carefully he turned onto his tummy. In the other room Billy was talking. Adam stopped moving about to listen.

‘You sound pissed off. I thought you’d want to say goodbye . . .’

There was no response. No other voices. Billy was on the phone.

Adam climbed out of the bath. The skin on his fingers and toes had wrinkled. He dried himself. He pressed his sweet-smelling palms to his nose. He dressed again in his old clothes, opened up the door. Billy was sitting on the bed, the phone to his ear. He put his finger to his lips to stop Adam speaking. Adam went to the window and cracked the drapes. He looked through Ned’s leg, down at the street, to the cars passing, the shopfronts and people.

‘On the Run Pizza,’ Billy said. ‘It’s on Dryden Road.’ He checked his watch. ‘Okay.’ He got up off the bed. ‘All right. Yeah. Bye.’

Billy hung up, went into the bathroom and shut the door. Bath water gurgled down the plughole. The shower curtain rustled, the shower started running.

Adam tried to work out how to turn the TV on. It didn’t have an obvious on/off switch. Adam tried the buttons. Nothing worked. Billy came out with a towel wrapped around his waist. The arm bandage was wet. He unwound it and took a fresh bandage from the backpack, re-dressed the wound. He tore at the soft plastic wrapped around the bottle-shop jumper. He tossed the plastic wrapped T-shirt towards Adam.

‘Yours. Hey, didn’t you wash your hair?’

‘I didn’t want to put my head under.’

‘You gotta wash your hair.’

‘Why?’

Billy went back into the bathroom, spoke from there. ‘Because it looks like shit.’

After a moment he came back out. ‘How’s this?’ He stepped into the open and stood with his arms apart. He was in his old shorts, the new black jumper on. He’d towel-dried his hair. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes were still bloodshot. There were nicks and cuts on his legs and forearms, bruises and burns on his hands, grazes on his face.

‘You look okay.’

‘Bullshitting already, what’d I tell you?’

Adam put on the new T-shirt. It was black like Billy’s jumper, the same word was written in dark green across the chest.

‘You gonna wash your hair?’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Come on. Let’s do it quick.’

Adam knelt at the side of the bath. Billy passed him a face washer and made Adam hold it against his forehead, over his eyes. He leaned Adam forward over the tub. Billy used the kettle from the dresser. He kept the bath tap running, refilled the kettle, shampooed and rinsed Adam’s hair.

Shampoo ran down the sides of Adam’s face. It got in his ears and wet his neck.

Billy pulled up the towel he’d draped over Adam’s shoulders. He rubbed Adam’s hair dry.

‘I have to go and meet someone. I won’t be long. I’m only gonna be across the road.’ He gave Adam’s hair one last scruff and fluff, tossed the towel on the chair. ‘Stay in the room. Don’t do nothing dumb.’

‘Why do you have to go?’

Billy went to the bathroom mirror and leaned close. He prodded the cuts and bruises, pushed his tongue behind the grazes on his cheeks. ‘Just gotta,’ he said while poking.

He turned around and leaned against the sink, gave a strange, unsure smile.

‘Do me a favour? When you hear me coming back, just duck in here for a bit, until you know I’m alone. If I’m with someone, stay in here, real quiet? You know? Yeah?’

Billy waited out the front of the pizza shop. Adam watched from the motel window. A red car pulled up and a young man got out. He was in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. He was tall with light-brown hair. He stood on the footpath. They greeted one another, standing back. Billy folded his arms and hunched his shoulders, looked down and kicked the toe of his sneaker on the footpath. For a while they both looked away in opposite directions. Neither of them seemed to speak. Something must have been said, or a look must have passed between them, an unspoken thing, because the man locked his car and they walked together across the road. Billy let the man get in front and he glanced up to the hotel window, like he knew Adam would be watching.

Adam took the backpack with him into the bathroom. Locked the door. He sat down on the chair beside the bath, put the bag between his feet and leaned forward on his knees. In the backroom there had been so few things to lose – a bed, a light, blankets. Outside the backroom the things to lose were so much bigger. No longer simply objects and items, but undefinable things, immense things. It was as though Adam only now had a life to lose. At stake were freedom, friendship, hope. He couldn’t lose those things. He couldn’t go back to a bed, a light, blankets. Wouldn’t. Searching through the bag, Adam couldn’t find the gun. Billy had taken it. His friend understood the fear. He knew the panic. No act too great to stay safe. Adam sat back, took a breath, listened to the hotel door unlock, listened to them come in. Dirty bath water had left a line around the enamel. Strands of hair were coiled in the plughole. No window. Only his bottle opener.

The man was first to talk. He had a drawn out, deliberate way of speaking.

‘Is this place for real?’

‘When did you get the car?’

‘Dad got it for me, for my birthday. Not sure I would have picked red. What’s wrong with your arm?’

‘Nothing. I pulled a muscle.’

It sounded like Billy moved across the room. When he spoke his voice was muffled. ‘How’s that go with work?’

‘I don’t smile too wide. I know what you’re thinking.’ The man used a higher voice, ‘But your teeth were straight before.’

‘Is that what everyone says?’

‘Without fail.’

‘They weren’t straight, though,’ Billy said. ‘Your bite was off.’

The man chuckled.

They were silent for a while. Floorboards beneath the carpet creaked. A bedspring squeaked. Something soft dropped on the floor.

Adam heard the man say, ‘Pulled muscles bleed now, do they.’

It was hard to make out Billy’s response. Whatever he said was brief.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ the man said.

Billy murmured something, pitching his side of the conversation below what Adam could hear.

‘You disappeared,’ the man said, ‘you didn’t call.’ It sounded like he got up off the bed. ‘And now you’re still not going to explain. Just say what you want.’

Billy muttered a response.

‘It’s ridiculous. I’m here right now. Tell me now. Have you hurt someone? Is that why you have to leave? Who have you been fighting?’

Adam strained to hear. He missed most of what Billy said, only caught: ‘ . . . might get back in.’

The man sniffed loudly. It sounded like he moved towards the window. ‘Do you know how many people have asked me where you are and how they can reach you? All year. What you walked away from is mind-blowing. Did you just not care?’

‘All I’m asking,’ Billy said, barely audible, ‘is for a few names and numbers.’

‘Why Queensland? Why not here?’

‘I want a change.’ Billy’s voice had lifted. He lowered it again. Adam barely heard, ‘I’ll get my own place. You could come up.’

‘Why are you whispering?’ The man’s sudden change in awareness was tangible. His voice became clipped. ‘What’s through there?’ His movements got louder. Floorboards creaked sharp and deep. The bathroom door handle rattled. The door shunted against the lock. ‘Why is this locked?’

‘I think it’s the door between rooms.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘If you want the bathroom it’s out in the hallway.’

‘Are you for real?’

‘Jason.’

‘Give me a fucking break.’

Had Adam not changed his top and washed his hair he would have felt uncomfortable. Jason’s hair was soft and shiny. His shirt was ironed. He sat with his legs crossed. The jeans hugged his legs all the way down to his ankles. Although tall, he didn’t look old enough to be driving a car. He did have an Adam’s apple. His nose was long and his jaw was angular. Parts of him were grown-up. His fingernails were short and clean. He wiped his mouth, pulling back his lips, and Adam saw a thin band of silver across his teeth.

Billy was bare-chested, picking his jumper up off the floor. He seemed undecided about whether or not to put it back on. It was warm in the room. He was sweating. A patch of blood was showing on the new bandage. He left the jumper off.

‘We were about to order some pizza. Want some?’

‘No, thank you.’

Billy took a cigarette out, put it in his mouth, didn’t light it, put it back in the packet. He scratched his eyebrow with his thumb. He was, for the first time, nervous. Adam looked at him. He looked at Jason. Couldn’t work it out.

‘That’s pretty bad sunburn.’

‘He knows.’

‘It’ll blister.’

‘No, it won’t.’

‘He’s certainly got that “I’m under William’s spell” look.’

‘No, he hasn’t.’

‘Do you do modelling?’

‘No, he doesn’t.’

‘Stop talking for him.’

‘He likes me talking for him.’

‘How do you know each other?’

‘You wouldn’t get your head around it, Jase. Trust me.’

‘Oh for God’s sake . . .’

‘I’m helping him. All right?’

‘By dressing him in a matching top, renting a room with one bed, and looking like you’ve both robbed a bank or escaped from prison? Genius. Helpful, all right.’ Jason stood up. ‘You expect me to drive the two of you to Queensland, don’t you? That’s what you want. That’s why you called. Why don’t you ever say what you really want?’

Billy crossed his feet, leaned against the edge of the dresser. He held his friend’s gaze, passed a message. Not him, just me. Adam wasn’t blind.

His friend walked towards the door. ‘You make it impossible.’

‘Don’t go.’

Jason did, left the door open, and began down the hallway. ‘Call me when you’re a normal human being with a normal life.’

Billy shouted after him, a sudden high note to his voice, ‘What do you think I’m trying to do!’ He went to the door. ‘Why don’t you say what you really mean – I’m not fucking good enough for you!’ Billy slammed the door.

The room felt empty after Jason had left.

When the pizza came, Billy only ate one piece. He lay down on the couch. Adam sat on the bed, with the pizza box beside him. Billy had also ordered garlic bread. It came wrapped in foil. It was a toss-up, which thing Adam liked more – pizza or garlic bread. He overate and lay on his side. Billy wasn’t asleep. Adam turned off the lamps.

Sunburn made sleeping difficult.

Adam got up and opened the window to let the breeze in, pushed back the drapes. Neon colours lit the room. The two of them lay there in silence, listening to the late-night sounds from the street, occasional laugher, thuds and stumbles out in the hotel hallway.

When Billy spoke his tone was flat; there was a quietness and stillness that Adam hadn’t heard in him before.

‘I’m gonna tell you something. It’s big, I suppose. No, I don’t suppose – it is big. At that shed, the woman and the man, you said you remembered that man? Kovac. What I didn’t know, not until I saw her, was that I’d seen that woman before. She used to buy puppies off Kovac, years ago, back in Harp Street. I didn’t put it together until I saw her. I never knew her name, or maybe I did but I’d forgotten it. I don’t reckon I ever knew she was a Vander, though; I would have remembered that. What I’m saying is I didn’t know she was Joe’s sister.’

Adam looked up at the ceiling, at the colours and the long shadows cast. He nodded, as much to himself as to Billy.

‘It’s just . . . I didn’t know she had anything to do with Joe. She was always hanging around Kovac. Never could work out why he put up with her. I supposed it was because she bought a puppy a week. He was always going on about her reselling them . . . Anyway, you said about remembering a market?’ He waited.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that woman was at this market once. Kovac was there selling puppies. He’d taken me to look after the litter.’

Billy fell silent for a while.

Adam blinked in the dark. He could not recall a time of being so relaxed. He was lying in the centre of the wide bed. The bedspread was pillowy and soft. His skin was on fire from the sunburn and his chest was growing tight with a feeling like he might cry at any moment, but his body and his mind were at ease. He was not afraid. Not on any level.

‘At that market a boy was taken,’ Billy said. ‘Stolen. You know? It was big news at the time. You still see it on TV sometimes. The kid taken was about four . . . It’s gotta be you. Hasn’t it?’

Adam lay there. The urge to cry left him. He was empty. Light. Hollow maybe. Although feeling nothing, he knew he must be feeling something, must be experiencing something, because he didn’t move, he didn’t talk, there were no words, no thoughts, no actions, and that couldn’t be right – he should ask questions, should sit up, turn on the lamp, discover this, find out more. It was time to talk. He searched inside himself for a way to do that. Closed his eyes.

‘I didn’t know Joe until after that. I would’ve thought something of it, if I’d known – that the woman was Joe’s sister. In my head I didn’t put Kovac and Joe together in that way. I didn’t realise they knew each other like that, hooked up with that; the market, I mean.’

Adam managed to say, without much thought, surprised by his own voice, ‘That’s okay.’

‘Well, it’s not really, is it? It’s about as far from okay as you can get. If I’d cottoned on, it would have been different, wouldn’t it? I would have put two and two together. But what it means is that you’ve got a proper family. People looked for you for ages. They’re gonna wanna know you’re okay . . . I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘It was only when I saw that woman that I started to think you could be the kid that went missing. Then the things you said. And Joe keeping you down there, trying to kill you, it all fits. I reckon Kovac took you, and Joe paid Kovac for you. That’s what I think. I know Joe paid for me – I saw the money change hands. Kovac wasn’t rich, not like Joe. And did you see the look on Kovac’s face when he saw you? He knew who you were. Your age is right. The kid taken had blue eyes . . . They said so on the news,’ he added after a pause.

Billy was lying on his back. Adam could tell because his words were being spoken towards the ceiling, left to drift across.

Adam didn’t direct his sentence either. He put what he said out there, into the dark, to go whichever way it liked. ‘And when you saw the tiger.’

‘Hey?’

‘You knew I might be that boy when you saw I had the tiger.’

Billy paused. ‘Nah.’ He switched to a casual tone. ‘I don’t think so. It was seeing the woman that made me put it all together. And what you said.’

Adam nodded, slowly, to himself again.

‘You were at the market?’ Adam asked after a moment.

‘Yeah. I didn’t go home with Kovac, though. Only heard what had happened later. On the news and stuff. It was real busy there, heaps of people. I didn’t hang around long. I kinda remember a search, but that’s about it.’

A lump formed in Adam’s throat. It felt about the size of the toy tiger. Lodged, hard to speak around. ‘Do you think I’ll find my parents?’

‘Real easy, I reckon.’

‘Do you think they’ll want me?’

‘Don’t start with that. Of course they’re gonna want you.’

‘I don’t know if I want to go and be with strangers.’

‘They won’t be strangers. It’s gonna be all right.’ Billy injected his old lightness into his voice. The playfulness. The gruffness. ‘What did I tell you, hey? We’d get the money and sort it out. We’ve done that. Yeah? Our luck has turned around. You think about it – Joe’s dead, Kovac’s dead, that sick bitch from the shed is burnt and probably brain dead. You’re gonna meet your family.’ Adam listened to him reach for his cigarettes, flip the lid, draw one out. He mumbled with it in his mouth, ‘At some point, it’s gotta even out. A bad run can’t run forever.’ There was a pause while Billy flicked the lighter and took the first puff. ‘Tomorrow I’ll take you somewhere. Get you set up to go to the police. You don’t have to be worried about it. You don’t have to be scared or nothing like that. It’s all gonna be fine. You’ll see. It’s all gonna work out good.’

If Adam wanted to, if he let himself, he could close his eyes and fall back, through years of dark, all the way back to that day, sounds of the market, sounds of the river, and the rocky bank beneath his yellow sandals, a toy placed in his hand.

Play with this. Stay here. Don’t be scared. Don’t cry.

For breakfast Adam had a Kelly Gang Grill. His fingers got greasy eating it. The orange juice was watery. Billy blew his cigarette smoke out the corner of his mouth, up and away from the table. He’d ordered scrambled eggs.

‘Jason’s a real proper snob,’ he said as though they’d already been talking about him. ‘Doesn’t know any different. He thinks some of the stuff he’s been through is hard. It’s hard to him; nothin’ to compare it to.’

‘I thought he seemed nice.’

‘Did you?’ Billy said brightly. ‘He is, you know. He couldn’t help out just ’cause he couldn’t. I know that. If I was him I don’t suppose I’d wanna jump in boots and all with someone like me either. At least he came. He coulda said don’t ring me. And he didn’t . . . Did he?’ Billy asked as though suddenly unsure.

‘He said ring when you’re normal.’

‘Yeah. He said that. And he could’ve said never.’ Billy snuffed a laugh. ‘But hey – never gonna be normal.’ He grew serious, looked down at his eggs. He hadn’t touched them. They’d gone cold. ‘Jase has got this thing about him, like he’s calm inside or something. Did you think that?’

Adam nodded.

Billy looked away. He took a final deep drag of the smoke, put it out.

‘You finished yet? We good to go?’

The sky was cloudy. Warm wind gusted. Adam was wearing the cap. He had the backpack. The gun was back inside it. The money was under Billy’s waistband.

Boxing gloves and barbells were painted on the cement-block walls of the co-op. Windowless buildings and narrow laneways surrounded it. Graffiti was scrawled everywhere. Traffic congestion, the roads they’d walked along, turns, tram lines, tunnels and lights all merged as one singular activity behind Adam, one dull noise. Bacon, eggs, toast, sausages and orange juice churned in his stomach. Steel grates covered the ground-floor windows of the co-op. A roller door sealed off the front entrance. The steel backdoor was locked. Billy knocked on it. When no one came he stood on top of a bike rack and threw a squashed Fanta can at the top storey window. The can bounced off the glass. The small window wound out. It wound back in.

A man dressed in football shorts unlocked the steel door. He squinted in the morning glare. His hair was dirty blond, long at the back, short at the top. He wore grey moccasins.

‘Mornin’.’

‘How’s it been, Hog?’

‘Ah, ya know.’

‘Much been happening?’

‘Nothin’.’

Adam walked in behind Billy. The lights downstairs had not been turned on. Hog went around flicking switches. Hallways lit up, the office in the corner illuminated, the Solo sign on the drink fridge blinked to life, and a plastic pair of red boxing gloves hanging from the ceiling glowed from within. In the main room were two boxing rings. The corner posts were padded. The ropes had springs attached. Through into the smaller rooms were weight benches, weights and foam mats on the floor, an exercise bike and a boxing bag.

‘Gonna take a piss,’ Hog said.

‘You mind if I go out back?’

‘Go for it.’

Hog scuffed down a hallway and disappeared up some stairs. Adam followed Billy. They went past the office, down a corridor and through a swinging door into the kitchen, turned on the light. There were gloves and padded helmets on the table. On the bench, alongside the tea and coffee, was a box filled with bandaids, bandages, creams and bottles of antiseptic. There was a tape deck on the stove with cassettes scattered around it. The floor had not been swept. Every room in the place smelled the same – old shoes and disinfectant. It was like a hospital had set up camp in the bottom of a shoe bin. Billy reached up into a cupboard and brought down another box of medical supplies. He took out a lunchbox container and sat down at the table with it, took off his jumper, made room in front of him.

Adam wandered around to the other side of the table. On the wall was a pin board covered in photographs. Snapshots of men and boys fighting in the rings, photos of black eyes and injuries, bloodied grins, sweaty beaming faces, middle fingers close to the camera, a man with his head over a toilet bowl, two men fighting in pink tutus, and a photo of Billy with a mouthguard in, gloves on, hands together on top of his head, muscular, enviably strong. A corner section of the board was dedicated solely to Billy. There were pictures of him when he was younger, pictures of him on the exercise bike, playing pool, a photo of him on Hog’s shoulders, arms raised, cheering, his legs dangling down the front of Hog’s chest.

A man in a singlet top and rolled-up trackpants came in through the swinging doors. He stopped. He was flushed and out of breath; he put his hands on his hips and puffed.

Billy put out his cigarette and unwound the bandage from his arm. ‘How’s it going, Nuts?’

‘Billy.’

Nuts looked at Adam, looked over his shoulder into the hallway. ‘Hog know you’re here?’

‘Yep.’

Nuts got a drink from the tap.

Adam eased a kitchen chair out. Lowered into it. He slid the backpack off and nursed it on his lap. Billy glanced across. He opened his hand in a calming gesture.

Nuts drank a full glass, poured another, rested it against his chest and breathed some more. ‘Better day out there today than yesterday.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hog let you in?’

‘Why?’

Nuts took a towel from the back of a kitchen chair and wiped his face with it. He took a key from his pocket and hung it on a nail in the cupboard door. ‘No reason. What have you done there?’ He nodded at Billy’s arm.

In the shoebox were suturing supplies and small winged bandages. Billy was laying a selection of them out. Billy let Nuts see the wound.

‘Holy crap.’ Nuts leaned close. ‘Oh man . . .’

‘Bit worse than I first thought. Didn’t hurt much when I did it.’

‘The big ones don’t.’

‘Been hurting a lot since.’

‘Big ones do.’

‘You reckon Hog will give me some antibiotics?’

‘Not if you didn’t do it here . . . He let you in?’ Nuts pinched his nose and propped on the table edge. He wiped the sweat from his legs.

‘Why do you keep asking that?’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Hayden’s looking for you?’

‘Nup.’

‘He’s really looking for you.’

Billy had laid out about ten thin sticking plasters. He pushed the lunchbox away and got up to look in the bigger first aid kit over on the bench. He took out a small dark bottle, shook it, put it down, kept on searching. ‘I don’t give a shit.’

Nuts lowered his voice. ‘That’s kinda what I’m gettin’ at, others do.’

The two of them looked up at the ceiling.

‘I think you better pack that to go,’ Nuts said.

‘When did he come?’

‘Yesterday arvo. Came back three times. Was here at lock-up. Sat out the front in his car for an hour or so after. See what I’m sayin’?’

‘What does he reckon he wants?’

‘Wouldn’t say, just that he has to see you.’

Billy sat at the table with the things he’d taken from the first aid kit.

As Nuts left he said, ‘Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warnin’.’

‘Nuts,’ Billy called. ‘Could you give us a hand with this?’

There was no answer. In amongst the gear on the table were open packets of jellybeans. Billy reached into the nearest pack. Fished out the black ones. He chewed, uncapped a bottle of antiseptic.

‘Give us a hand, kid?’

Adam had to flush the cut with saline. He squirted it from a thick syringe. He had to paint the wound, inside and around it, with Betadine. He’d pulled up a chair beside Billy. The slash was freshly bleeding. It gaped. Adam dabbed the blood away. Billy’s forehead was down against the table. His feet wriggled beneath the seat.

‘The money doesn’t mean much to you, does it?’ Billy said while squirming.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The money isn’t the biggest thing for you.’ Billy winced when Adam touched a particularly tender spot. After a breath he continued. ‘You’re not thinking about it, because you don’t have to think about it. But it means a bit to me.’

Adam sat back to indicate he’d finished.

Billy straightened and looked at what he’d done. He blew on it, touched it to feel if the Betadine was dry. It was still sticky.

‘Thing is – we stole that money. Tell anyone about it and it gets taken off us. Stealing is stealing no matter who you steal it from. You can’t very well mosey up with four grand in your pocket, can you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m telling you, you can’t. If they find out about it, it’s gone. Without the money, I’ve got no way of getting out. If you want your half, I can keep it for you, but I’ll have to keep it for a while, until everything blows over.’ He ran his finger down the table surface, next to where he’d put the small sticky strips in a row, spaced how he’d like them spaced on the cut. He held his arm out straight. The wound pulled in. ‘Neat and tight.’

Each sticky strip was individually wrapped. Adam peeled back the paper.

‘We made a deal. I’m gonna stick by it. I know you’re nervous about fronting up. But more than ever you’ve gotta be quiet about me. If you start saying one thing, it leads to the next thing. Cops are pretty good at that. They won’t ask the obvious stuff. You can be telling them something without realising you’re telling them. You’re better off not saying anything about me at all.’

Adam put the first strip on. He began unpeeling all the strips, so that they were ready to go, one after the other. Billy lowered his head again while Adam put them on. They held fast when Billy sat up, bent his elbow and moved his arm around.

‘That feels good. Thanks . . . It’s just . . . we don’t get looked at the same way. They could blame me for the shed burning, for Kovac, for everything. Depending on how much they work out, it could be real tricky for me. Thing is, no matter what, they’d take the money, and I can’t lose it.’

He cut a long piece of gauze to cover the wound, snipped off bits of tape, took a roll of bandage, unfurled the end, cut another short length of tape, stuck half to the bandage and the other half to his bicep, and began to wrap his arm.

‘If not for that, if not for the fire and for hitting Kovac, if not for the stolen cars . . . taking you out of the hospital . . .’ He smiled, tight-lipped. ‘Let’s face it, I was never gonna be able to take you in.’ He motioned around the room. ‘But this isn’t me walking out on you, is it? This isn’t me hiding from you. Down the track, hopefully, it’s not gonna matter so much – the money, Kovac, the shed and that. The cops won’t ask forever. I brought you here to show you that I’m not going back on what I said. This place, and Scotty’s, they’re ways that you can always find me if you need me. We made that pact and I meant it. If I didn’t think it was going to work out with your family, I wouldn’t be saying you’ve gotta go and be with them. You’ll be okay, though. If it all goes wrong, if you do need help, you can come and find me. But they’ve been looking for you. You’re a missing kid.’ He laughed at the way he’d put it. ‘I’ll be gone for as long as I reckon it takes to blow over. Keeping low.’ He smiled and swiped Adam’s head. ‘Yeah?’

The weight on Adam’s chest, the same weight from when he’d left Monty and Jerry, was back. He looked at Billy but couldn’t look at him – looked through him, tried to imagine him not there. Couldn’t imagine it.

Billy took his jumper from the table and put it on. Swept the small bits of rubbish from the sticking plasters into his hand, scrunched them, threw them in the bin. He returned to the first aid kit and the bench.

‘So not a word, hey? Just keep saying you don’t remember much. They love that sort of shit anyway. There’s a station in the city. A big one. I’ll take you and show you. All you’ve gotta do is walk in and say you think you’re the kid from the market. I’m telling you, everyone is gonna be real happy you’ve turned up. That’s all that’s gonna matter and all they’re gonna care about.’

It occurred to Adam then that Billy was perhaps too wise. Not a faker, but he’d done too much, seen too much, his mind took on too many possibilities, created too many outcomes, for him to trust in a simple thing or believe a straightforward thing might happen. His life without a backroom had its own problems and traps. Billy’s world made it hard for him to shut everything out and focus on one thing. Behind the brown of his eyes he was making so many calculations. More than Adam could fathom. The most Adam could guess: Billy was about to run. Patched up and ready to sprint.

‘I won’t tell them about you, Billy.’

‘Thanks. I actually believe you.’

‘Can I ask the police about Monty and Jerry?’

‘Not real sure that’s gonna work. What do you want to ask them?’

‘If I can find out if they’re all right.’

‘How about I promise to go and check on them for you?’ He rubbed the palms of his hands together. Keen to go. Time to move. ‘I’ll make sure the dogs are okay. But you’ve gotta leave me out there to do that. A deal?’ He held out his hand to be shaken.

Adam would have preferred that they hugged. Such was the pull to do it, Adam had to plant his feet, tense his tummy, lock his spine, all to stop from reaching out, holding on, clinging tight.

Nuts was at the window, taking down a notice. Hog had put on a singlet. Both men looked across when Billy and Adam walked out. Hog had swapped the slippers for a pair of thongs. He had a rag and bottle of pink spray and was squirting and wiping down the padded corners of the boxing ring.

‘What are the chances of getting some antibiotics?’ Billy said.

Hog looked through the ropes. He went back to spraying and wiping. ‘I’m not saying yes.’

‘Thanks, Hog.’

‘I wouldn’t thank me. You shoulda known better. I can’t fall out with them, you know that.’

‘I’ll be quick.’

Billy jogged down the hallway and took the stairs two at a time. Adam fell behind. Upstairs was a one-room apartment – a lounge and a foldout couch made into a bed; Hog’s slippers were on the floor. Adam caught up to Billy in the narrow kitchen. He’d pulled open the fridge. The shelves were mostly bare. In the door were boxes of tablets and foil-topped bottles, syringes and bags of coloured pills. Billy unwrapped a syringe, picked up a bottle marked with a green x; he pushed the needle in through the foil, drew up a dose, bubbled a little out of the top, pushed up the sleeve of his top and jabbed his good arm. Billy also took a blister pack of tablets, stuffed it in the backpack.

Waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs was Nuts.

‘Not quick enough,’ Nuts said and walked away.

Billy leapt down the remaining steps and veered in a new direction.

They jogged along a narrow passageway into a change room. Billy flicked on the lights. A wooden bench seat divided the room. On the right wall were showers, on the left wall were lockers. Billy went to the far end locker. Inside it were his clothes. The singlet top from the first day Adam had met him was balled in with other dirty tops and pants. Billy took the backpack from Adam, unzipped it, unloaded the last of the stolen food onto the floor and began choosing which of his clothes to take, cramming them into the backpack.

Brother Hayden walked in.

Around Brother Hayden, Billy turned into the most disturbing of all the people he could be. He played at being frightened, and he was so good at it that Adam had to keep checking his face, to be sure it was just an act. Billy swallowed, tugged the sides of his top. Brother Hayden had come from church. He was dressed in a black robe with a red sash around his shoulders and a white cord around his waist. Adam stepped over the bench and stood on the shower side of the room. He was giving Billy room to attack the man.

Brother Hayden stopped a few steps within the doorway. He didn’t look at Adam. He wasn’t ignoring him, he was pretending he didn’t see him, and he was so good at that act, Adam did feel invisible. Adam took a few more steps back, stopped at the edge of the sloping drain. The air in the room was cold. It smelled of damp towels. A showerhead dripped. Billy put the backpack in the locker and shut the locker door. There was no window in the change room. Something told Adam that the steel door they’d come through, the only entrance and exit to the building, had been locked.

Hayden turned and motioned up the hallway, the way he’d come. He began to leave. But Billy sat down on the bench seat.

For a while there was a standoff – Billy staying put, Brother Hayden wanting the conversation somewhere else, in private. It meant that Brother Hayden did see Adam there. And it meant that Billy was also pretending: he can’t have been too scared if he was willing to be so stubborn. There were no sounds from out in the gym.

Brother Hayden began to talk, stopped himself, cupped his face, looked along the lockers, around the room, almost looked at Adam – his gaze came across, the barest fraction from settling on him, then slid away.

‘The young man in the hospital,’ Brother Hayden said at last, ‘the one you said for me to look out for. Do you remember him?’

Adam looked at Billy, waiting for him to look across. He didn’t.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s troubling because he’s left the hospital, and no one has seen him since. Have you seen him?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘People are saying that you’ve been with him. I spoke to Sal last night. She tells me you had him at the park.’

‘Not like that, I didn’t.’

‘That’s not what Sal said. Little Benny too . . . It is what you do, Billy.’

He shook his head.

‘You haven’t told him your usual lies, have you?’

Straight-faced, Billy answered, ‘I’ve tried some new and unusual lies this time.’

Brother Hayden pressed his fingers to his temples. He closed his eyes and rubbed. He smoothed his robes. ‘Have a think. I’m not standing here having this conversation with you.’ A cold smile lifted one side of his mouth. ‘I’m truly not. Someone has to be blamed and it could easily be you. Asking me to look out for him at the hospital, involving me, was a foolish exercise. I am simply saying if you’ve done this deliberately, you’ve made a big mistake. If you think the limelight is going to help you, you’re wrong.’ He took a step to go.

Billy lowered to kneel, both knees on the concrete, his back rounded, his head hanging low. If it was to stop Brother Hayden, it worked. He paused to stare at him.

‘You don’t even know who he is, do you?’ Brother Hayden said. ‘You need to quickly separate yourself from this. No one can be associated with you, can they, Billy? You’d best let that boy return to his family on his own. Get up.’

Still kneeling, Billy said, ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Don’t do this.’

‘I have to tell you.’

Brother Hayden eyed him harshly. There was cheek just in the way Billy knelt there. But it was as though Brother Hayden couldn’t resist.

‘What?’

‘It’s just,’ Billy scratched the top of his head, ‘well, out of all the Brothers, you’ve always been the one . . .’ Billy looked up and smiled sweetly, ‘with the ugliest cock. Plain fucking ugly. If I had a dick like that I’d look down each day and wonder what the hell I did to deserve it. I wonder if that’s what you pray to God for? A cock that’s not like a strangled maggot. Is that what you pray for, Brother Hayden?’

Brother Hayden said, after a second or two, ‘It’s all going to come back on you. You’re vulgar and offensive. You’re delinquent and immoral. When you’re not talking filth and selling yourself on the street, you’re taking boys and pushing them to it. That’s what will come out. Anything else from you, or from anyone who has been in your company, will be seen for what it really is – lies to save your skin.’

‘Fair enough. But God’s honour, your dick is a maggot of a thing.’

Brother Hayden stormed forward. He grabbed Billy by the hair, leaned down and hissed in his face, ‘It’s not in your control. It’s in our control. Say one word about the Mission and you will drown in what we pour on you.’

‘Promise? Because you know I love those water games.’

Brother Hayden’s lip curled. ‘You haven’t set this up. You’re too stupid.’

Billy put his hand on the Brother’s knee and slid it in between the folds of the robe. Brother Hayden stumbled back, swatting Billy away.

‘Get off me!’

In an athletic, energised move, Billy got to his feet without using his hands, went from kneeling to squatting in one swift muscular motion. Getting up like that meant he didn’t need to say anything or act in a threatening way – the ease, the casualness of his strength was enough. The Brother’s eyes widened. It was as though he’d never seen Billy move that way before, or seen him stand at full height. Did it only dawn on the man then that he’d come to a gymnasium to find Billy, a place with two boxing rings in it? What had he been thinking? Hayden was strange. He moved through the world in the oddest fashion, as though he was untouchable. Maybe in some places it worked, but not in the locker room, not on that day, not with Billy.

Billy grabbed Brother Hayden by the throat, walked him backwards, until he got to the concrete pillar beside the door, and he slammed him against it. Held him there with one hand. The Brother had clearly never experienced that. Not from Billy. If he had he wouldn’t have pulled Billy’s hair a moment ago, or hissed in his face or spoken to him the way he had. Brother Hayden’s expression was now blank. Billy’s example of keeping low, keeping it in, ducking and weaving, until you explode and surprise them, was happening then. He didn’t hit Brother Hayden, though. He didn’t choke him, not properly. He made him cough, partly crushed his windpipe, squashed his body to the wall; he got right up in his face.

‘Another thing – you gotta do some exercise or get outdoors a bit – you always fucking stink. I don’t know what it is, but you always smell like you’re decomposing. I know – let’s fix that.’

He dragged Brother Hayden by the hair, around the bench and over to the showers. The man was coughing, gasping. Billy turned on the cold tap. He kicked the Brother in under it. He spluttered, slipped under the stream. He went to crawl out but Billy kicked him back under.

‘Not till you’re clean.’

Brother Hayden sat on the bench seat in his saturated robe. He shivered, coughed and recovered. Billy went to the locker and carried on choosing things to take. Water pooled under the bench seat. Brother Hayden touched his throat. Billy finished, shut the locker door, zipped up the bag, and winked.

‘Always fun catching up, Haydo.’

At the door, Billy took a set of keys from his shorts pocket and rattled them. Brother Hayden felt his pockets through his wet robe.

‘I’ll drop it back when I’m done. Keep up the prayers; you never know.’

Hog and Nuts weren’t downstairs, perhaps not upstairs either. The lights in the building had been turned off. The steel door was locked. Deadlocked. They went to the kitchen and Billy took the key hanging on the cabinet door. Adam saw that the photos of Billy had been taken from the pin board. Thumbtacks were scattered on the floor beneath the board. One photo of him had been missed, though, the one in amongst the other pictures, where his gloved hands were resting on his head, his mouthguard smile.

The day had got warmer and windier. Brother Hayden’s car was a white sedan. The interior smelled of citrus air freshener. A small scented pine tree was hanging from the column gearshift. Brother Hayden’s satchel was on the passenger seat, along with a newspaper. Adam sat both things on the floor. He put his seatbelt on. Billy backed the vehicle up. The motor whined with the speed at which he did it. His sneakers squelched on the pedals.

Out on a straight stretch of road, as he drove, Billy tuned the radio to different stations, listening for a second or two to each song or to the announcers before he turned the dial to the next channel. His driving was erratic because of it.

‘Is that the paper?’

Adam unbuckled and leaned down to get it. On the front page was a sketch of a boy with a heavy side fringe, short back and sides, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, a small plaster on his forehead, thin lips. He wasn’t smiling. It was Adam. Adam laid the paper sideways on his lap, so Billy could see it as he drove. Billy glanced across. The heading, printed in capitals, was three words and a question mark. Billy looked from the paper to the traffic.

‘What does it say?’

Billy didn’t answer.

Adam turned the paper around to face him. On the next page was a second sketch, of a man – dark skin, dark eyes, a broad face and a wide, flat nose, full lips and curly hair. He was scowling. Billy looked across at it. He pulled a pained expression and looked to the road again.

‘Is that meant to be you?’

Even if they’d drawn the picture with Billy smiling, it was still completely wrong. Billy wasn’t as dark, his eyebrows weren’t as thick, his jaw wasn’t heavy, his hair wasn’t as curly and his nose was not half as wide.

‘Why have they drawn you like that?’

Billy didn’t answer.

Along with the sketch was a photograph of a toddler dressed in overalls, and a picture of a riverbank. The next page had more pictures of the toddler, sitting on the bottom of a slide, on the hip of a woman, holding hands with an older child – a girl in a dress. The biggest photograph was of the toddler standing on the lap of a young man; the little boy’s arms were outstretched, the man was helping him balance, the boy was smiling, chubby-faced, the man had light-brown hair and sideburns, he wasn’t looking at the camera but off to one side. The man was, Adam realised, his real father.

Billy hadn’t switched off the radio after searching. The station was broadcasting the cricket. The announcer said, ‘We’ll go now to an update on the unfolding Market Boy search.’

Billy switched the radio off.

Adam turned to the next page. The photographs from that point on didn’t seem related. He turned to the family pictures again and lifted the paper close to study each photograph. The car listed around a bend. Billy braked hard at a stop sign. Adam studied his parents’ faces, tried to put a finger on what he felt. Couldn’t. Seeing them wasn’t helping him remember them. Billy accelerated. Adam kept the paper open on his lap. His mother was holding Adam on her hip like the boy had been carried in the supermarket. Adam had no memory of being carried that way. He wished he did. They drove over a bridge and passed a line of police cars. Billy didn’t talk; he kept snatching his hand from the wheel to scratch his head, or he’d reach back to rub between his shoulder blades. His breathing was irregular.

Heading up the hill to the caravan park, Adam closed the paper.

He took it into Scotty’s with him.

Billy had the backpack. He tripped up the steps.

‘Scotty!’

The TV was on in the lounge room. The radio was on in the kitchen. Adam put the newspaper on the kitchen table. He opened it back up to the page with the family photos.

‘Scotty!’

The toilet flushed. Scotty came out, wound up, ready to go, drawing in a breath and about to let fly. He was hoicking up one side of his shorts. But he saw Adam and he stopped. It was probably both their faces that made him change what he’d been about to say. Scotty closed his mouth and pushed his glasses up his nose. Billy put his hands together on top of his head, no boxing gloves on, no mouthguard in.

‘I’m fucked.’

They stood in front of the TV in the lounge room. The female reporter was in front of Joe’s gates, talking into a microphone. She wasn’t as close as she first appeared to be. A police car pulled up on the road behind her. She was standing on the footpath across from Joe’s. Joe’s gates were open. Police tape was across the gap and officers were ducking under the tape to get in and out of the yard.

‘What is becoming clear is the sense of desperation,’ the reporter said, ‘with each hour that passes . . . it’s in the air, Mike, I can’t describe it . . .’

‘Any sight of Gerard Laziro?’ the man at the desk in the newsroom said.

‘Not yet. After the Fisher family, it’s hard to imagine a more emotional arrival here.’

‘Absolutely, Liz. While we wait, we’ll play the footage of him breaking the news last night.’

‘Okay, Mike, I’ll get back to you soon.’

The face of the man at the newsdesk filled the screen. ‘Here’s retired Senior Detective Gerard Laziro, the detective originally in charge of the case, brought in as a special advisor, reading the initial statement last night.’

It switched to footage of a man standing in front of a grey wall. He was dressed in a suit. Lights were shining on him. He had a deep voice and a bushy beard. He read from a sheet. ‘At ten a.m. yesterday, police and firefighters attended a shed fire. A woman at the property was found in a serious condition and admitted to hospital. A vehicle at the shed was traced to the home of a recently deceased man. Arriving at the man’s property, officers discovered evidence of a break-in. The woman regained consciousness and was able to assist police with their enquiries. This assistance has led to the discovery of a body inside the burnt-out shed and fresh information about the 1974 abduction of Nathan Fisher.’

He paused. Lights flashed. Someone shouted a question: ‘Is Nathan alive?’ Gerard didn’t answer. He held up a picture, the sketch of Adam’s face, the one on the front page of the paper.

‘In relation to Nathan Fisher, police are asking for anyone who may have seen this boy to come forward. He is described as being one hundred and sixty-five centimetres tall, pale complexion, blue eyes, slim build with light-brown hair. If anyone has seen this boy, please call the number on the screen.’ A phone number scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

‘Is it Nathan?’ a reporter shouted.

‘Are they looking for more bodies in the shed?’

‘The circulation of this picture and any information about this boy is what the police are focusing on at the moment,’ Gerard said. ‘They’re appealing to the public for help. Anyone with any information, please call . . .’ he began to recite the number.

The program cut back to the man at the newsdesk. ‘That was last night. This morning police have confirmed that they believe the boy they are searching for could be Nathan Fisher, the boy snatched from Golding’s Farmers’ Market ten years ago. The sketch was drawn from a woman’s eyewitness account of seeing a boy, possibly Nathan, outside a house in Barbary Street, Melbourne, as recently as Sunday. Liz,’ he said, ‘you spoke of a sense of desperation in Barbary Street.’

The report switched back to the woman. ‘And disbelief, Mike. Shock.’

‘Have the police there spoken any more about the man seen with the boy?’

‘Very little information on that man, Mike.’

Scotty wouldn’t stop staring at Adam’s face. He was looking in such a fixed and persistent way, at Adam’s features, at his hair, his eyes. Not into his eyes, though. It was like Scotty couldn’t see beyond the surface, like Adam was a reflection, not a person.

The TV camera panned over to the castle house. Police were on the porch. The door was open. Men in suits were walking over the footbridge.

The reporter was saying, ‘In this wealthy suburb, this quiet street, was Nathan Fisher, all this time, hidden and held captive alongside families going about their everyday lives?’ The reporter lowered her microphone as someone spoke to her. ‘Mike, are you getting that? We’re crossing to the hospital . . .’

Mike was looking down at a piece of paper being handed to him. ‘We’re crossing to the hospital,’ he repeated.

The footage swapped to the hospital. There were sounds of a helicopter. Police cars lined the street. A police caravan was parked on the sidewalk.

Adam didn’t, at first, recognise the woman, because she wasn’t dressed in a nurse’s uniform. As she spoke, though, he realised it was the young nurse. The silver bluebird was around her neck. Three different microphones were pointed at her. Reporters were jostling for position, crowding the footpath, blocking her way.

‘I’m not allowed to answer any questions,’ she was saying.

‘Do the Fishers believe this boy is their son?’ a reporter said.

‘Have you spoken with the parents?’ another shouted.

‘Are you the nurse who recognised his sketch on the news?’

‘Let me past,’ she said.

A police officer was running down the road towards the huddle. The reporters quickly fired off more questions.

‘Was his condition life-threatening?’

‘Why was he discharged?’

‘Were medical records used to confirm his identity?’

‘A birthmark,’ the nurse suddenly said. She touched the back of her neck. ‘The doctor who examined him saw . . .’

The policeman jogged up. He pushed the reporters back. He turned the nurse away and led her off.

A male reporter stepped in front of the camera. ‘I’m not sure how much of that you got, Mike, but that was one of the nurses called in to speak with the Fisher family. We know the family is inside right now.’

‘Dennis,’ Mike said, ‘the nurse mentioned a birthmark?’

‘Yes, I don’t think a birthmark has been mentioned before, has it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘A detail withheld for identification purposes, perhaps.’

Scotty tried his best not to look too pointedly at the back of Adam’s neck. He leaned to the side, slowly craned his head. Billy pulled Scotty into the kitchen. Adam followed.

The radio was reporting the same kind of news as the TV.

Billy slapped the kitchen table.

‘What the hell, Billy?’

‘They’re going to blame me.’

‘Why are you still with him?’

The paper remained open on the table. Billy leaned down over it, scrunched the page. ‘Look how they’ve drawn me. Look at that. You look at that and you tell me what they’re gonna do. Look at it, Scotty!’

‘I’ve seen it.’

‘They’re gonna put it on me.’

‘Who?’

‘Everyone.’

‘Put what on you?’

‘They’re gonna find a way to lay the blame on me.’

‘Sit down.’

‘It’s bullshit! They didn’t have to come at me. I’ve said nothing about the church.’

‘Come at you? What are you talking about?’

‘The Mission is threatening me. They’re saying they’re gonna blame me.’

‘Settle down. Sit down.’ Scotty roughly pulled a chair out. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered.

Billy sat. He splayed his upper body on the table, buried his face into the crook of his good arm. He was like a child for a moment, muttering things into his sleeve.

‘What’s the Mission saying?’

Billy dragged the heel of his hand beneath his nose. ‘Say anything about the church and I’m done.’

‘What have they got to do with it?’

‘Fucking nothing! They’re sticking their nose in because I’m involved.’

‘Stop shouting . . . Why didn’t you take him in like I said?’

‘I just didn’t, okay! I know it was wrong. I was about to do it. Today I was fucking doin’ it. But the church want me dead; that’s what they want, I swear, they do.’

‘They’re threatening you?’

‘Yes! They think I’m gonna put them in the shit.’

‘So don’t put them in the shit and there’s no problem, right?’

‘The cops will blame me and the church will get on board no matter what. They won’t stop this time. This is their chance. They want me buried.’

‘You’re getting carried away.’

‘You don’t know them, Scotty.’

‘Why do they care so much? Why do they do this to you?’

‘Because they don’t just beat kids.’

‘What?’

‘They didn’t just beat me.’

One look at Scotty’s confused expression and Billy pushed himself up and away from the table. The chair tipped backwards. He stormed off down the hallway.

‘Fuck!’ he screamed.

Scotty looked across at Adam, smiled tightly. ‘Hanging in there okay? We’re gonna get you to your mum and dad real soon.’ He spoke like Adam knew them.

‘Can I use your toilet, Scotty?’

‘Sure.’

Adam couldn’t hear as much in the toilet. The TV and radio didn’t reach that far. Voices in the house were muffled. He sat down against the toilet wall. Magpies were warbling in the gum trees outside the vented window. Wrens and songbirds tweeted. Adam noticed how his jeans had stretched. He could comfortably sit with his knees up now. After a few minutes he looked at the poster. The woman on the car looked different from that angle, misshapen. It was only when sitting on the loo, looking at her front-on, that it was clear how beautiful she was. Adam stayed on the floor. It wasn’t the right time to look at her. It was probably a strange thing to think, but he wanted to save her, for better moments, not for when he felt like this.

He pressed his knuckles to his lips.

Billy was sitting at the table again. Scotty was talking. They glanced up as Adam entered.

‘Because he was gettin’ interviewed early this morning,’ Scotty was saying, ‘as the expert on street kids and the homeless, and you know what he said . . .’ Scotty spread his hands and smiled tight-lipped, ‘no one knows who he is. The description doesn’t fit with any of the street kids he knows about. And he reckons he knows them all. That picture in the paper is a joke, but you can’t tell me that the church doesn’t know it’s meant to be you.’ Scotty’s voice was winding up, getting faster. ‘They can’t have it both ways – have they got all this stuff on you or haven’t they? Do they know you or don’t they?’

‘They’ll just say the picture didn’t fit.’

‘They’ve got you spooked because it’s big. But it’s big for them too. Keep quiet and they will.’

‘But I didn’t take him straight to the cops.’

‘Nathan,’ Scotty said.

Adam looked blankly at him.

‘What are you gonna say to the police?’

‘About what?’

‘About Billy.’

‘I’m not going to tell them about Billy.’

‘Hey?’

‘Scotty, you don’t get it. When they ask for real, if I have to tell them I stole a car, two cars, I broke into places, stole money, a fair bit of money, I didn’t report a fire . . .’ His eyes clouded. He swung his head. ‘Nup.’

‘You saved the Market Boy, that’s all they’re going to care about. They’re not gonna pile a heap of petty shit on you. You’re a good kid. People are gonna see that. What else are you gonna do? There’s nothing else to do. Take my car, drive to the hospital. Tell them you saw it on the news, you panicked a bit and then you brought him in . . . How’d you get here?’

‘I took Brother Hayden’s car.’

Scotty squeezed one eye shut and twisted his head away.

‘I couldn’t take a taxi!’

‘You’re in a church car?’

‘What could I do?’

‘How did you figure stealing a priest’s car was gonna help you?’

Billy spun off down the hallway again. ‘See!’

No one called him Adam. He was The Market Boy or Nathan Fisher. Adam knelt close to the TV and watched old footage from the farmers’ market. They showed the search for him. The market backed onto a reserve. The reserve led down to a river. The searchers walked through the low scrub. Dressed in waders, they searched the river. He wasn’t found. It was a sunny day. His mother and father appealed at a press conference. They sat side by side, red-eyed, puffy faces, their hands clenched in their laps, sometimes staring down, sometimes staring ahead, occasionally looking at each other. His mother begged, ‘Please, please . . . anything . . . any little thing could make a difference. We just want our little boy back.’ She glanced at a policewoman beside her. The woman encouraged her. His mother kept going, but it was hard, you could see that. ‘His name is Nathan Fisher. He’s four years old. He likes Matchbox cars and playing in the sandpit. He has two older sisters. He’s frightened of the dark. His favourite bedtime story is The Poky Little Puppy. His favourite food is . . .’ she seemed to be undecided on what it was, or whether or not to say it, ‘. . .  ice-cream cake.’ Next to her, Adam’s father had broken down.

Gerard, younger, without the beard, was filmed angrily dismissing that Adam had drowned in the river. He counted off on his fingers: ‘One: child-sized footprints walking away from the bank. Two: the river too shallow and slow-flowing to sweep a body away. Three: no animal large enough to carry away a drowned body. Four: no evidence of any blood or dragging. Five: unexplained vehicle marks on the other side of the river. Six: extensive forensics finding not one shred of evidence to support drowning . . . Do you want me to keep on going? Nathan Fisher was lured away from the market. He was abducted. It was premeditated. Planned. More than one person was involved. People out there know who took this boy. We need one of them to come forward.’

Billy and Scotty were at the window. The stripy bedsheet pulled aside. They were looking out at Brother Hayden’s car.

‘How do you do it?’ Scotty said. ‘How do you manage every time for it to be like this?’

‘Don’t blame me.’ Billy’s voice was small.

‘You knew something wasn’t right. I told you something wasn’t right. I don’t understand why you couldn’t have just done what I said.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Billy said wetly. ‘I didn’t know it was him.’

‘Anyone could see he needed help. You go at things so backward. I don’t understand the angles you take. It’s like you come at every fucking problem from the absolute bottom. This stuff you reckon the church will say about you, is any of it true? Are they just making up that you took kids from the Mission?’

‘I didn’t take them for the reasons they’ll say.’

‘Why are you always with these sorts of boys? Start sayin’ somethin’, Billy, cause it’s not adding up.’

Billy crouched. He held his head. ‘I get them out. I was only ever saving them. I was trying to help them. Anything is better than in there . . . I made it as safe on the street as I could for them. I never made them do anything they didn’t want to. I didn’t take their money. I stayed with them to stop them getting hurt. If they went with someone, I stayed with them to protect them, not to make them do it or take their money.’

‘You sayin’ these kids were pimpin’ themselves?’

‘I protected them.’

‘Jesus Christ. How is anyone gonna see it the way you see it, when you see it so fucking backwards?’

‘I thought he was just another homeless kid. I thought if I took him to the police they’d put him somewhere or give him to the church. No one believes what they do, Scotty . . .’

Scotty had folded his arms and was staring out the window. ‘He wasn’t right. I saw it. You saw it. You still took him out there and you’ve done I don’t know what . . .’

‘They had him at the hospital . . . wouldn’t you think at the hospital they would know? I swore I thought he was just another kid. That mark on his neck, no one had ever said anything about a mark . . . I was sure it wasn’t him.’

Scotty unfolded his arms and frowned down at him. ‘What do you mean you were sure it wasn’t him?’

‘I was gonna take him in, but I didn’t think it would be like this – on every station, in every paper, how could I know it would be like this? It wasn’t meant to be like this. I was taking him in – I was. It was gonna be all right . . .’

‘What are you saying – you didn’t think it was him? When?’

Billy was crying. ‘It all stops, everyone stops and looks for him.’

‘Did you know he was the Market Boy?’

‘Everyone caring, everyone looking . . .’

Scotty lowered his voice to a growl. ‘When did you know?’

Billy cried harder.

‘When?’

‘Don’t hate me, Scotty.’

The backpack was on the floor by the armchair. The TV was turned up. Billy was sobbing now. Scotty’s voice got lower. Their backs were turned to Adam. They weren’t looking at him. Adam unzipped the backpack and took out the gun. He walked with it down the hallway, to the bathroom this time. He didn’t want the woman in the poster to see this or to be in the room with this. The shower was best. Adam shut the bathroom door, pulled the shower curtain closed. He sat down with the plughole between his legs.

Newspapers had been rare at Joe’s house. People like Joe probably didn’t have much interest in the news. When Adam had opened the paper in Hayden’s car he’d not fully understood. Had Adam thought that one newspaper was the only newspaper printed that day? Watching the TV he’d understood. Everyone watched TV. People on TV watched TV. Young people, old people, children, every person passing in the street, the people in cars, the ones sunbaking on the beach, lining up at discos, shopping in supermarkets, the girls walking to the corner shop, they all watched TV. Adam turned the gun around to face him. There’s no place in the world for you, a boy like you.

It was okay, though. Adam wasn’t sad, not really. He’d had time. Time being a boy. Climbed up on things, jumped down, balanced on things. He’d sat in a barber’s chair, eaten a hamburger in a café, seen the beach, walked through the city, felt the rain, got sunburnt, slept in the grass; he’d laughed with a friend and listened to him giggle, smelled the scent of a girl, had a bath . . .

Not sad, but crying. Adam took the gun from between his teeth, so he could wipe his nose and brush away the tears. Squashed and compressed memories shouldn’t take up a lot of room in a person’s head, but they did. Adam put the gun back between his teeth, sat with the barrel pointing at the back of his throat, tasting the steel, feeling the size, the awkwardness, the weight.

Sook and I’ll make you sit there with it in your mouth all night.

There was a sudden rap on the door. Adam jumped. It gave him such a fright, not the knock, but the way that he’d startled, the way his finger had twitched on the trigger and the way his arms had tightened, so close . . . a heartbeat, less, away from having blown his brains out. Adam’s vision whitewashed with fear. He swayed back against the tiles, took the gun out. He gasped for air, filled himself with it.

Billy was knocking on the toilet door, one room over. ‘You in there?’

Adam called weakly, ‘I’m in here.’

Billy spoke through the bathroom door. ‘I’m taking you to the hospital.’

‘Okay.’

Billy began to leave, but paused. ‘What are you doing?’

He opened the door.

Adam hid the gun beside his leg. He moved the shower curtain.

‘What are you doing in there?’

They looked at one another, two tear-stained faces.

‘I know you were there, Billy.’

He nodded.

‘You did give me the tiger.’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t tell anyone. I know they won’t understand.’

‘Come on, I’m taking you to your parents.’

This time he was.

Adam got up from the shower. At the sink he splashed his face. He put the gun down the back of his jeans, pulled the T-shirt over it.

‘One hour,’ Scotty was saying to Billy in the kitchen, ‘that gives you time to have a flat tyre. But if in one hour I’m not hearing on the TV that he’s with his parents, I’ll go the whole row on you, Billy. I swear I will. I’ll tell them everything you just told me. Don’t think I won’t. No fucking around.’

‘Gotta do one thing.’

Billy drove out of the caravan park, turned right, went up the road, alongside the caravans. The vans backed onto a tall wire fence. Each home had a clothesline, a single carport and a garden. Billy drove up the gutter onto the nature strip. They sat, car idling, looking through the wire fence at the back of a van. It was long with purple awnings. Billy cut the engine. He took out the bundle of money, tugged down the peak of Adam’s cap.

‘Don’t look at no one. I’ll be real quick.’

He went to a tear in the fence and paused there, looking at Adam through the windscreen. It was a back road. No passing traffic. Across the road was a boarded-up building with rusting machinery parked in a dusty yard alongside big piles of sand and gravel. The bushy hill emerged steeply from behind the last few caravans in the park. It was the kind of bush Skippy bounded through. Strong wind rocked the car. Adam wound down the window. The interior was heating up. Beneath the citrus was a mild trace of Brother Hayden, enough to turn Adam’s stomach.

Billy returned.

‘Someone’s gonna see you, you better come.’

They went sideways through the tear in the fence. Adam pressed the gun to his back to stop it catching on the wire. They cut through one yard and into the yard of a van with purple awnings. As far as caravans being places to live went, they struck Adam as perfect – small, thin walls, safe with everyone around you. Billy made Adam stand under a flowering gum, next to a wheelbarrow with daisies in it. A stone path led to the van door. Washing flapped on the line. A couple of plants dotted the vegetable garden. The closer Adam looked, though, the more unsettling the yard became – not a single weed, not a blade of grass out of place, the white stones in the path gleamed as though individually cleaned and polished. Just as it had been in Joe’s overrun and messy yard, there was something unreal about this place. It wasn’t a home. It wasn’t a place to come home to.

‘Stay here. Do not move,’ Billy said.

He went into the van.

From Adam’s spot he could see one or two other caravans. He could see down the track, almost all the way to Scotty’s house. He could see through the fence behind him, to Brother Hayden’s car on the grass. If not for the wind Adam would have been able to hear Billy’s movements in the van – as it was he did hear some thuds and footsteps. He heard talking. Billy came back out.

‘My mum’s coming,’ he called across. ‘She’s getting some stuff together. She’s being quick.’

He went back in.

Billy’s mum was pregnant. She was wearing a summer dress and sandals. Billy carried her suitcase. She had long dark red hair and freckles across her shoulders. The skin on her face was pale and thin; it wrinkled easily. Her lips were back and her teeth were set in a grimace. Her eyes were narrowed. She and Billy were rushing. She slung her handbag over her shoulder.

‘Hi,’ she said to Adam.

‘Hello.’

The three of them went through the fence. The case was left until last. Billy’s mum held the wire apart and Billy hauled the case through. When she turned and saw Hayden’s car she stopped.

‘That’s Brother Barry’s car.’

‘Hayden’s. I’ll explain when we get going.’

‘Why are you in his car?’

‘Please get in, Mum.’

‘Do they know you’ve got it?’

‘I’m taking it back.’

‘The church knows you’re here?’

‘No.’

‘They’ll tell your father.’

‘They won’t. Please get in, I’ll explain.’

‘The church will call him, Billy.’

A gust of wind blew her dress up. She caught it and pushed it down. Adam saw a glimpse of her cotton underwear and round belly. He saw the tops of her legs. She had the same scars Billy had. Hers weren’t shiny or raised like Billy’s. Hers were angrier. Red and knotted jab marks in her upper thighs. The wind pushed up her dress again. Her belly made the dress hem sit out and catch easily in the gusts. This time she was less concerned and she let the dress flutter. Adam couldn’t help but stare. The scars were healed but raw. Violence branded into her. In Billy it had faded. Adam looked at her face; it felt to him that he knew her better then, she was more like Billy’s mother. She was staring back at Adam, but not with the same understanding. Billy closed the boot, loaded with the case. She backed up.

‘Take my case out.’ She checked her watch. ‘Take it out.’

‘No, Mum.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Get in the car.’

‘He’s the boy from the news.’

‘I’ll explain.’

‘You’re the other one.’

Billy took the money from his waistband. He held out the bundle like it might draw her towards him and coax her into the vehicle. Whatever she was feeling, though, was stronger than the pull of the money. It had got her that far, but it didn’t get her any further.

‘Get my case out now.’ She pointed up the road. ‘Get it out now!’

‘Mum, please. That’s why we have to go. You can’t be here.’

‘Get my case out of the car and inside now!’ She pushed blindly through the wire. Her dress ripped. She staggered and fell, got up and gripped the wire. ‘Get it inside!’

‘I’m not bringing it in.’

‘You’re not doing this to me! Get it in there, Billy!’ Her knees were grass-stained from where she’d fallen. Her hair had been blown around in the gusts. She was gripping the wire and screaming through it. She looked crazed, with her huge belly and wide stance, her dress still flapping. ‘Get it inside before he gets here!’

Caravans were bigger inside than Adam had imagined. The kitchen and lounge were all together. The furniture was fixed down. There was something satisfying about that – no two ways about it. The lace on the windows was cream and clean. The stove and sink looked like something out of a doll’s house. On the sink was a plate with crumbs on it and a crust. On the other side of the kitchen was a narrow doorway with a colourful curtain pinned up to the side. Through there was a bed and wardrobes, very little floor space; everything could be reached from the bed. Billy was bringing in the case. He moved without energy. He put it on the bed and unzipped it. She pushed him back. He stood mutely, watching her unpack.

‘Get out! Go!’

‘I told you, Mum.’

‘Get away.’

‘I told you.’

She noticed the rip in her dress, pressed her hand to it and screwed up her face as though to will it mended. ‘It will be all right,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll handle it . . .’

‘It was Kovac.’

‘If you don’t get out now . . .’

‘Kovac took him, I told you I was there. They’re going to release his name. My name will come out. Dad’s gonna find out.’

On the wall above the bed was a cross. There was a figurine of Jesus by the phone. In the case she’d packed clothes and some ornaments, photos in their frames, a carton of cigarettes, a tied-together pile of letters. She’d packed shoes. She took a glass dish out of the case and pushed past the two of them to put it on the coffee table. She turned it, straightened it, fanned a set of cork coasters inside it. Her hands were shaking. She kept murmuring things about handling it and how it was going to be all right.

‘He’ll kill you,’ Billy said.

‘Don’t talk to me. Get away from me. Move.’ She pushed him aside to pull out a drawer and put a bundle of baby clothes away. ‘If he does kill me, it’s your fault.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s always your fault.’

‘Please don’t say that, Mum.’

Unpacked, and after sliding the case under the bed, she took off her dress. She did it in plain view. The skin on her belly was drum tight. There were faint blue lines through the swelling. The scarring on her legs, compared to the porcelain smoothness of the rest of her body, was gruesome. It was the only place she was scarred. Her bra was white with wide straps. She balled the torn dress and hid it in the bottom of the wardrobe. The dress she pulled on was a snug fit. It came to her knees. She licked her fingers and rubbed the grass stains.

‘Go!’ she shrieked at Billy.

He started slowly towards the door. His mother opened a kitchen cupboard and took out a bottle of vodka. She drank it like water. Licked her lips. Took another long swallow before capping the bottle and putting it away.

‘Leave the money.’

Billy turned and put the bundle on the bench.

Before leaving, he said, ‘Have it. Spend it on being off your face and wasted for the next kid’s life too. I was eight. You did nothing. I needed you. You hurt me more than any of them did. You always have. You always do. Don’t expect anything else from me. Don’t call yourself my mother.’

‘Get out!’

They got as far as the trunk of the flowering gum. Its blossoms were pink. Out on the road a green car was driving slowly by Hayden’s car. The green car picked up pace once past it. Billy rolled his body around the tree trunk until he was leaning against the far side. He stayed there, staring ahead through the fence, his gaze fixed off in the distance. Adam stepped in behind a jasmine bush. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. Billy wasn’t trying too hard to hide. He paid no attention as the green car came down the track. It pulled in under the carport. The jasmine plant had been trained to grow over some lattice. The leaf cover was patchy. Adam was able to see through the gaps.

Billy and his father looked alike – the same shape face and light-brown skin – but they weren’t altogether similar. The man getting out of the car was slightly built, wiry. He walked with a lift to his chin and a cold sideways glance either side of him. He wasn’t handsome, not like Billy. He might have been if not for his eyes. There was ugliness in them and it made him ugly. He was dressed in overalls and white sneakers. There was a word on his breast pocket and on the back of the shirt. The straps of the overalls crossed through the word. He carried a workbag and shopping bags. He glanced towards Billy and Adam, was looking past them, though, out at Brother Hayden’s car. He sat the shopping down, took away the heaviest bag, the one that clinked with bottles, and returned it to the car, put it on the driver’s seat and shut the door. He patted his springy hair, felt to see that the straps of his overalls were straight. He picked up the shopping again. Billy stayed staring off through the fence. Washing flapped. The jasmine scent was sweet. Billy’s father went in.

Going by the occasional words he heard, Adam could piece together enough to know that Billy’s father was asking about Brother Hayden’s car. He was speaking in a low voice. He used short sentences. He only asked things once. Billy’s mum wasn’t good at hiding her fear (at one point while unpacking Adam had heard her teeth chatter; that kind of fear was hard to hide). Her explanations weren’t working. The van curtain pulled back and Billy’s dad looked out, over towards the car, seeing if it was still there. He let the curtain drop. He opened the van door and leaned against the doorframe, stood there, not making it too obvious that he was looking around for somebody. He stepped down and crouched to look underneath the van. Having to do that made him angry. He was stiffer when he straightened. Billy’s father went back in and shut the door. Adam could hear Billy’s mum’s voice clearer now. She didn’t know where Brother Hayden was. He must be visiting other people in the park. Billy’s father’s anger didn’t build. It would have been there before he’d stepped inside the van, before he’d come home. There while he’d been at work. It lived in him. From outside the van you could feel it roll its shoulders, crick its neck, crack its knuckles and stretch. His anger liked getting a run.

He didn’t shout. Billy’s mother did.

‘Please! Let me tell you. Don’t be upset. He didn’t come. Billy did. Billy took his car. It’s Billy. Billy’s been here. He’s caught up in something. It’s not his fault . . .’

He didn’t give her a chance to say any more. There was a sharp cry, the sound of her short distance run through the van, and thud of her body as it landed from being hit or pushed or thrown. They heard her falling to the floor, the muffled cries and the restrained struggle. He was covering her mouth. Adam could guess, Billy’s father didn’t like to draw attention. He didn’t hit to leave telling marks. He needed it to happen just so, so that it could happen just so again and again. He had her on the floor at the lounge room end of the van. The lace curtains swayed.

‘Go down to Scotty’s,’ Billy said in a trance voice. ‘He’ll take you to the hospital.’

Billy walked over to the van. But his father had locked the door. Billy came back.

‘You got that bottle opener?’

Adam took it out for him.

Billy gave the bottle opener a little shake. ‘This has been good, hasn’t it? Cheers.’

He returned to the van door and used the blade to jimmy the lock, broke the blade in the process, snapped it off, but got the door open anyway. He went in.

Billy had a sore arm. He’d inhaled too much smoke the day before, fought, lost blood, almost passed out, he hadn’t slept, they hadn’t eaten very well for all the days they’d been together, and the dogged way he’d climbed the step suggested he wasn’t even going to try to fight. Adam wasn’t the least bit confident Billy would stop his father. He took the gun out, checked that the two bullets remained in it. He turned the baseball cap around. Pushed it down firm on his head, the peak at the back. He didn’t want the brim to obscure his vision. He figured he’d need clear sight.

Billy’s mum had got free. She was on the bed, cowering up near the pillows. Billy had taken her place. He was under his father down near the couch. He was pinned beneath him, in pain because his father was kneeling on his bad arm. The cut was bleeding again. Billy’s father didn’t look up, didn’t hear Adam come in or see him standing there behind him.

Adam watched for a moment – the struggle. Billy being controlled, so he could be hurt. Hurt, so he could learn who was in control. It was a circle. No one screamed. Taught not to. An unspoken thing. There were lots of unspoken rules; they played out during the hurt as much as they did during the lulls in between the hurt. Surprised people screamed, shocked people screamed, outraged people screamed. Billy wasn’t surprised, shocked or outraged. This had happened plenty of times before. Billy’s mother wasn’t shocked. She was shaking her head in fear because Adam had a gun. A gun wasn’t in the rules. If anything would make her scream it was that – the shock of the rules being broken.

Billy’s father began to talk. His voice had a touch of Billy’s street tone and some of Hayden’s polish. It was deep, precise. It contained a lot of hate.

‘Do you want it to be her?’

Billy had to take the hurt without complaining. He had to let his father do it. It had to be like that. Complete control. Billy wasn’t fighting. He squirmed at most. He couldn’t lie too still. It had to go the way his father liked it. From start to finish, over the years, each time, always the way he liked. That way he made Billy a part of it. Made Billy agree. That way Billy would look back over it and think he’d let it happen, every time he’d let it happen; he hadn’t fought enough and it was his fault for not fighting harder. He’d think about how shameful it was – not to always be a fighter, sometimes just scared and powerless. On the floor was the bottle opener. Billy’s father picked it up. One-handed, he prised out the corkscrew. Rarely used, the corkscrew locked firmly into place. Billy’s father closed his fist around the handle, raised his hand, corkscrew facing down, above Billy’s legs.

Thank goodness someone screamed. Whoever it was didn’t see it as a struggle. Not once. Not ever. Controlled from the start. Never fair. The scream had outrage in it. It had shock and disbelief. It was strong and loud and terrified. Uncontrolled. It was piercing. It went outside the walls into the park. Anyone who heard it would know what was going on. A scream like that stopped people. It made them listen. Billy and his father stopped. They looked at Adam.

Adam’s mouth was open. His throat burned. The scream filled his mind, drilled into his ears, blinded him, shook the air. Billy’s father got to his feet. He came for Adam. One of his hands was reaching; the other hand dropped the corkscrew and closed into a fist. When it seemed like nothing could be louder than that scream, nothing could be any bigger in the van, the gunshot came and soared above it. BANG. A bang that made every other bang before it seem tiny and ridiculous. Not a boom. Not a crack. BANG. A firecracker going off. The screaming stopped. Adam staggered back with the recoil of the weapon. His arms had flown above his head. The gun was loose in his hands, now pointing up. Billy’s father spun sideways. It was as though the bullet turned him, caused a neat swivel at the hips. His arms jerked up, flapped once, like bird wings, and he buckled. His legs tried to follow his torso around but they didn’t make the turn. He collapsed, an awkward cross-legged sit in the small space between the coffee table and built-in cupboards. He stayed sitting. Alive. Stunned. Billy scrambled up onto the couch. His lips were saying no, but the bang had deafened Adam. Adam used the last bullet to shoot Billy’s father in the head. BANG. No two ways about it. No confusion. Line crossed. Blood splattered everywhere behind Billy’s dad. He fell that same way, the way the blood went.

He couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.

Billy snatched the gun from Adam. He put it on the bench. His mother crawled over the mattress and stood at the foot of the bed. She limped further forward. To see the body she had to look around Adam. Her top lip was puffed up. She had a red welt on her cheek and fingermarks around her arm. Her knee was bruised. Her eyes moved in a slow arc from each thing to the next – from the body to the gun, to the blood, to Adam, to Billy. Smoke hazed the air. There was a smoky smell. Adam’s teeth and jaw felt like they’d suffered a sonic boom. The van had contained the sound, increased it. Adam pressed his ringing ears. When he took his fingers away, Billy was saying to his mother, ‘Careful, it’s loaded.’

She’d gone across to the bench and picked up the gun.

‘It’s empty,’ Adam corrected.

She rubbed the handle and barrel with her dress. ‘You shouldn’t have touched it,’ she said to Billy.

‘You’re touching it.’

She put it down, stepped away, looked at her hands and rubbed her fingers on her dress.

The broken van door buffeted in the wind. The right sort of gust would fling it wide open. Billy and his mum looked at one another. She pulled a tissue from the box and went over to pass it to him.

‘Is everyone coming?’

Billy turned to the window and looked through the lace. ‘They’re all too scared to come.’ He wiped his tears.

Tenderly, his mother touched her belly. She pressed the top and bottom.

‘Is it all right? Did he hit you there?’

‘It’s moving.’

Billy checked again for people coming. Adam turned his back on the body. It didn’t seem human, like a thing was in the van with them. It wasn’t even dead, not like a bird could be dead, or a mouse in a trap, or a headless chicken in the grass, it was its own thing, disturbing, dropped in from another world, slumped in a van, bleeding everywhere.

‘We didn’t shoot him.’

‘Mum.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s wasn’t us. We didn’t know he was going to do that. We’re not going to get in any trouble. Whose gun is it?’

‘We did know,’ Billy said. ‘It’s not going to be okay. It’s all going to come out. Everyone is going to know we knew. Everyone is going to blame me.’

She turned her back on the body too. Billy was the only one comfortable looking at it. Adam watched his friend’s gaze take in the blood and bent limbs and partly missing skull. Billy rubbed the corner of his eye, sighed and swallowed. His mother looked at Adam, lingering over his arms and wrists, the skinniness. She looked slowly over his collarbones, his hair, his eyes, nose and mouth.

‘What happened? Why are you with him?’

‘He was at a house I went to.’

‘The house on the news?’

Billy’s chin creased and his eyes filled with tears. His mouth grew full; he covered it. He nodded.

‘Did you know he was being kept there?’

Billy shook his head, his hand clamped to his lips.

‘Did you know he was alive?’

He shook his head.

‘Why were you there?’

‘Kovac,’ Billy cried behind his hand, ‘he would take me there when I was little.’

‘To the same man who had him?’

‘But I didn’t know that.’

His mother came to Adam. She touched his arm. ‘Do you need to sit down? Are you okay? Here.’

She led him to the sink. She wet a tissue and wiped his face. There must have been blood splattered on him. The soggy tissue turned red. She wet another one and cleaned the side of his nose, under his chin, down his neck. It took a couple of tissues to get it all off. She cleaned his forehead and pulled a dry tissue through clumped strands of his hair.

‘Quite a set of lungs you’ve got.’

Adam had never been touched that way before. He’d never been so near to a woman. Her fingers were slim. The pressure was light. Her ears were small and her nose was fine-boned. The freckles were delicate and pretty across her brow. Blood spray was on his T-shirt too. She dabbed at it. The dark fabric hid it.

‘Will we turn your cap back around?’

She did it for him, rested her hand on his shoulder when it was done and looked into his eyes, right into them.

‘That looks better to go home.’

Adam wasn’t stupid. Never had been. Granted, a week ago, fresh from the backroom, he wouldn’t have been as quick to catch on. Colour and movement alone would have bogged him down, made him retreat. Time away from the backroom had changed him, though. He could keep up. Billy had taught him to keep up. Away from Joe, Adam didn’t have to hide anymore. He was free to think. He was free to look and wonder what other people were thinking. Adam could see the hurt in Billy’s mother. Years of pain. Years of being controlled. It had hardened her in all the wrong places. Her heart wasn’t dark, though. Just brittle. A shell had formed around it. Adam also saw how connecting this way to her sharpened her interest in him, made her expression lighten.

She squeezed his shoulder. ‘I was frightened. It’s no excuse.’

If you asked Adam, it was an excuse. At least he hoped it was, because fear had locked him in and stopped him for a long time.

Billy had gone to the door and was looking out as it blew open and shut. He let the wind dictate what he got to see and what he didn’t.

The change in the van was acute. Before and after were not comparable. The violence hadn’t gone for a while; it had gone forever. Billy’s father wasn’t going to get back up and start again. Not ever. And Billy’s mother felt it. She was seeing things differently. She was experiencing what Adam had, when he’d escaped the backroom. Everything looked altered, even down to the colour of things, the size, the texture, feel; fear skewed everything. Once it was gone things were closer, thoughts were sharper, movements quicker. It wasn’t just the haze of drugs or alcohol lifting; it was as much the fear leaving.

‘Are they coming yet?’ Billy’s mother asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Who knows you’re here?’

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘Did you tell anyone you were coming?’

‘No.’

‘Did anyone see you come in?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t think so.’

‘Well, did anyone see you or didn’t they?’ she said.

She looked and sounded so much like Billy then it was interesting to watch her.

‘Why?’

‘Brother Hayden?’

‘No.’

‘Go then.’

‘What?’

‘Just go.’

‘What are you talking about? The police will be coming. Everyone heard the shots.’

‘Just go. Take him to his parents. He doesn’t need this. His parents don’t need this. Everyone coming here? No. Just go.’

‘The police will think you shot him, Mum.’

‘Is the gun someone’s?’

‘I don’t know. We can’t just go.’

‘Yes, you can. Let’s try it. It’s worth a try. Go.’

‘If you say you shot him, they’ll believe you.’

‘I think they will.’

‘You can’t do this.’

‘Why can’t I?’

‘You could go to jail.’

‘Billy,’ she said and frowned, ‘I should go to jail. I knew. I knew what Kovac was doing to you. I let you go next door to him. I let him take you. How could I have done that? Any mother, any good person, would have stopped that. I belong in jail.’

‘You did try.’ Tears began to fall again down Billy’s cheeks. ‘You left Dad.’

‘I let him back.’

‘He would have killed you.’

‘I should have risked that for you. A good mother would risk that.’

‘You did risk it,’ Billy cried.

‘What you said was right. I hurt you more than they did. What I did was worse.’

‘No,’ Billy sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean it. I don’t blame you, Mum, I don’t.’

‘You should.’ She raised her hand to stop him as he went to go to her. ‘I should have got you away from your father. I should have got you away from Kovac. I should have believed you and listened to you. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I don’t expect this boy or his family to ever forgive me. I knew and I said nothing. It was never your fault, Billy; it was mine.’

The money was on the bench. She picked up the bundle and gave it to him.

‘Take him home.’

Scotty was jogging up the track, in his thongs, calling for everyone to stay inside, yelling that the police were on their way. Billy and Adam went out through the van door. Scotty saw them and stopped. Billy motioned to his watch, tapped the face. They were within their hour. They still had time. Scotty put his hands on his hips. His face said it all. Dumbfounded. Adam could only imagine his reaction when he saw inside the van.

During the drive in they turned the car radio on for news.

‘. . . Barbary Street Rest and Recuperation Home for Returned Servicemen,’ a report was saying, ‘privately run by the Vander family, left to Joe Vander by his mother. Neighbours described Joe Vander as a recluse. Locals knew him as the Chicken Man. Behind the locked gates and high fence, the squalid state of the property has now been revealed. Joe Vander’s only involvement in community activities was his association with the Save Wade Park committee and his annual contribution to the Skyline Fireworks, held on the Water Tower Rec reserve —’

‘Here we go,’ the radio announcer interrupted, ‘listeners, I can tell you that the Fishers are now arriving at the house. The police escort has pulled into the street . . . they’re travelling up to the gates . . . the Fisher parents are about to go inside . . . police are referring to a visit as necessary in the investigation and to assist in their search, but information leaked to the media suggests the Fishers are in no doubt that this was where their son was held . . .’

‘Bugger,’ Billy said, ‘they’ve gone to the house. That’s back the other way.’

‘Can we still go to the hospital?’

‘You wanna?’

‘I don’t want to go to the house.’

‘You sure?’

Adam nodded. ‘I don’t want to go there ever again.’

A parking spot in the city was hard to find. They drove around the busy streets, parked a fair way out. Billy left the money in the car; he locked the doors, put the car key in his pocket. He looked at his watch.

‘Is the hour gone?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Buildings funnelled the wind into a blast. Sun came in and out from behind the clouds. Billy’s arm was hurting; as they walked he patched it up as best he could, put his hand inside his sleeve, feeling for the strips that had come unstuck, re-sticking them. Leaves skittered along the sidewalk. Rubbish collected and swirled in doorways. Shoppers and office workers pushed against the hot wind or trotted along with it at their back. Those in pairs or groups were talking about the search. Their words got whisked away. It felt like at any moment someone would wise up and look twice at Billy and Adam.

Across from the hospital was a diner. Thirsty, they went in for a drink. Billy paid. Adam slid into the end booth. He sat by the window. The diner had a pressed-tin ceiling. Figures of rock’n’roll dancers were painted on the walls. Ice-cream advertisements hung on the large panes of window glass. In a taped-off area out the front of the hospital was the police caravan Adam had seen on the news. Set up on the sidewalk was a mannequin dressed to look like Adam. They’d put it in trackpants and a T-shirt. It had sneakers on, a light-brown, messy wig.

‘What did I tell you? David Bowie.’

Billy slid into the booth with the drinks. He sat across from Adam. Billy had a can of Solo. Adam had a Fruit Box. He poked the bendy straw into the foil circle. Billy cracked his can. On the diner counter a TV had been set up. It sat precariously on the counter, the cord snaked across the floor. The sound had been turned down. On the screen were pictures of Joe’s house, police cars out the front. The report cut to different footage. Adam watched his parents get out of a police car – only glimpses of them, a tall man with light-brown hair and a short beard, a woman in a dark blue cardigan and sunglasses, both of them shielded by police. The police tape was lifted for them. They went into Joe’s yard.

‘Mum probably won’t go through with it,’ Billy said. He took a long drink of Solo. ‘She’s not good at doing things she says she’s gonna do.’

Adam drank his juice. ‘She might now.’

‘Hey?’

‘She might do the things she says she’s going to do now.’

‘. . . Yeah, I guess.’

Adam tipped his drink and moved the straw. It was a fruit mix, Tropicana, a pineapple taste mostly. Billy downed another long swig of soda. He took out his smokes. Lit one. The ashtray was made of tinfoil. He tapped his smoke before there was any ash formed.

‘They’re not gonna charge you with anything if she does tell. You don’t have to worry about that. No one is going to care that you shot him. You’d be the one person in the whole city who could get away with it.’

Billy rolled his smoke in the ashtray. He probably didn’t realise, because the counter and the door were behind him, and the booth backrest was high, and because he was deep in thought, but three police officers from across the road walked in. They went up to the counter.

‘Are you sad?’ Adam said. ‘Are you upset at me?’

‘At you?’ Billy scoffed. ‘That would be pretty fucking rich, wouldn’t it? I should have done it, I suppose, years ago. I guess you think that one day they might change, they might one day love you. But he was never gonna.’

At the counter, one of the policemen opened a packet of smokes and put a cigarette between his lips. He took a lighter from his pocket and began flicking it. It wouldn’t ignite.

Billy put his hand under the table and slapped his leg. ‘The thing he did, it was all about him. He’s got scars like that on his legs too. Did it to himself, though, Mum thinks. He grew up in a church-run thing. Gets to everyone differently. It got to him.’

The policeman was shaking his lighter. He tried again to ignite it. Billy’s cigarette pack was on the table. His lighter was on top of it. He tipped the Solo and drained it, sat the empty can down with a chink. The policeman reached the front of the queue. He took his unlit smoke from between his lips, looked up at the board.

‘You never knew what was gonna make him mad,’ Billy said. ‘What he was gonna fly off the handle about. But once he lost it over something, well, that was it, he was off the chart. I mean as if Mum would ever cheat on him. The postie once waved at her and dad tied her to a kitchen chair for half a day because of it. That was him. You couldn’t work him out. The moment Kovac asked if I might want some pocket money, it was on. He reckoned Mum and Kovac had something between them. Nothing done to Kovac, of course; Dad didn’t work like that. Kovac knew it too. He read the whole thing in a snap.’ Billy clicked his fingers. The sound was sharp. The police all glanced over. The one with the unlit smoke had his wallet open. He eyed Billy’s lighter at the end of the table, put the dry smoke back in his mouth and finished paying.

‘I couldn’t not go work for Kovac because Dad woulda thought that meant something was up, but also, by working for him, Dad thought that meant something was up. You couldn’t win. You don’t know until you’ve lived with someone like that, it’s buzzin’, nonstop on the edge . . . like there’s no time to think . . .’

‘G’day there.’

The policeman had come across in three long strides, too quickly for Adam to warn Billy. He was right there, pointing at the lighter.

‘Sorry to interrupt, you don’t mind, do you?’

Billy looked up, blinked a couple of times. ‘No, you’re right.’

The policeman smiled, picked up the lighter, nodded to Adam. Adam nodded back.

‘Yeah so . . .’ Billy said, because it would seem strange if he didn’t continue with the story he’d been midway through. He looked out the window, licked his teeth. ‘Yeah, it was like that . . .’

‘Thanks,’ the policeman said, his cigarette lit.

The man’s eyes narrowed at Billy as he placed the lighter down. He had white-blond hair, a sweeping side fringe and a small moustache, white-blond too. A pair of sunglasses was hooked in his pocket. He had a gold ring on his finger. His belt was overloaded – radio, pistol, baton, other things in leather cases. He drew in on the smoke and frowned at Billy. Billy peered out from between his lashes, his head down, his mouth small. His hand was at the ashtray, fingers frozen mid tap. Adam had a cold moment thinking he’d realised who they were . . . but the policeman then said, ‘You’re not that fella, are you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You look like him – the Silver Wave fella.’

Billy tapped his smoke. ‘Oh. Yeah. I am.’

‘Thought so. Got that picture on my wall. Great painting.’ The policeman looked over to see if his order was ready. It wasn’t. He settled into his hip. His legs were long. His forearms sinewy and tanned. ‘Looks real, like a photograph. But I suppose everyone says that. Bloody detailed. So where do you surf?’

‘Better not say. Might ruin the picture for you.’

‘Ahh . . . I did wonder that. I surf a bit.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘But if you don’t, I suppose telling you where isn’t gonna mean much to you.’ He gave a short laugh.

Billy laughed back stiffly. ‘Nah.’

The policeman touched the table near the lighter. ‘Anyway, thanks for that. Nice meeting you.’

‘Yep.’

He left.

They kept their heads down while he collected his food, didn’t look up to see if he glanced over again.

‘Dad didn’t like her too sober,’ Billy began again quietly, looking at his hands as he spoke. ‘He also didn’t like her too drunk. The thought of people knowing about her drinking, looking down on us, was just another thing he was paranoid about. He’d always kept up the grog steady to her, only as much as it took to stop her from getting it together and leaving.’

Billy was focused on telling, and Adam didn’t want to interrupt. His friend needed it off his chest. Trouble was, no sooner had the blond policeman disappeared inside the police van, than he came back out again. He stood on the footpath, in front of the hospital, eating his lunch, looking across the road at them in the diner window. His hand dipped into the greasy brown paper bag and drew out another potato cake.

‘Kovac started taking me to the market. My job was to carry a pair of puppies around so people could see them, and then bring people back to the litter. I can’t remember it exactly, just that I was walking back to where Kovac was set up near the car park – I turned around and you were there behind me.’ Billy was frowning, thinking back, trying to remember. ‘You must have followed me through the crowd. I know no one will believe me, but it wasn’t planned, I didn’t mean for it to happen. I’m sure Kovac and Joe talked about that sort of thing, taking a kid, I’m reckoning they did for sure just for the fact that they did take you in the end, but that day it just happened. Kovac actually cracked the shits when he saw you – he told me to leave the puppies and go and take you back to your parents.’ Billy swiped a hand in front of his face. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t do that. I just . . . went into the reserve. I knew you were following. I suppose I wanted to get in trouble. It was my dumb kid way of trying to get everyone’s attention, trying to have someone see what Kovac was doing to me. Next thing I remember the market was going crazy. It was like every single person there was looking for you. I panicked. A group was starting into the reserve. They were calling your name. We’d gone as far as the river. You were playing with rocks on the bank. I remember that.’ Billy put his elbows on the table and cupped his face. He looked down and wouldn’t look up. He gave a shake of his head. His voice caught in his throat. ‘I told you that you had to stay there. You were getting upset. I gave you the tiger to play with, to stop you crying. I told you to wait and your parents would come. I thought they would. I thought if you just waited there they’d find you.’ He pressed the corners of his eyes and wiped away tears before they could fall. ‘I don’t know what was going on in my head. You were just a little kid. I knew it was wrong to take you down there. I knew it was wrong to leave you. When I got closer to the market I saw that woman, Joe’s sister, she was waiting for me, she said Kovac had gone. His car was gone. She took me home. That was it. I figured all those people searching must have found you.’

He dragged his smokes and lighter closer. He didn’t take out a smoke, just spun the pack on the table. Over in front of the hospital, the policeman had screwed up the paper bag, thrown it in the bin. He was rubbing the salt and oil from his hands.

‘The first time I heard it was on the radio at Kovac’s. We were in the kennels. They were talking about the Market Boy. They were talking about tyre marks on the other side of the creek. Kovac was watching me as I listened. He said, “What did you do to that boy?”’ Billy looked up. ‘I knew then. He’d taken you. One time I’d hidden down the creek after a market and he’d come and found me. When I didn’t come back, he must have gone down there looking for me, must have seen you, seen a chance. I told my mum.’ He shrugged. ‘Even if she’d rung the police and didn’t tell her name, that wasn’t gonna stop Dad, not when it came out I was there, what I’d done. He wouldn’t have handled something like that, everyone thinking we were a part of something like that.’ Billy stopped spinning the smokes. He rubbed his forehead. ‘If I’d taken you back to the market none of it would have happened. If you hadn’t been by the river Kovac wouldn’t have seen you. I’ve told myself a thousand different things – like what would the point be in telling the cops. I thought you were dead for sure. It wasn’t like your parents were gonna be getting good news. Why would they want to know that Kovac had taken you and killed you? Right up until the moment I saw you, saw that tiger, I thought that’s what he’d done. It never crossed my mind that he might have sold you to Joe. I never thought you’d still be alive.’

The white-blond policeman had stepped off the pavement and onto the road. He’d walked through the taped-off area and was waiting for a break in the one lane of banked-up traffic. He held up his hand to stop the cars.

‘I suppose there were a couple of times it crossed my mind, that it could be you. When I first saw you, and you kept saying you didn’t know who you were. But I kept saying to myself – it can’t be. I don’t suppose I wanted to believe it. When you had the tiger . . . of course it was you, of course they’d done it. The whole thing was a game to them. They made me pose for that photo. They wanted to remember that day. They must have thought it was so fucking perfect for them, so easy. I didn’t know how to tell you I’d worked it out. I didn’t know how to tell you it was my fault.’

‘Billy, you better go.’

He nodded grimly. He couldn’t look up. ‘Yes.’

‘No, I mean the policeman is coming back.’

‘Hey?’

‘See.’

He looked. Billy got to his feet. ‘Fuck.’

The policeman had crossed through the traffic and was nodding to the driver who had stopped to let him cross. Billy collected up his smokes.

‘But he knows who I am anyway.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘And Scotty would have called the cops by now.’

‘I don’t think he would have. I’m not going to say anything about you . . . Are you sure you’d get in trouble, if you told them everything?’

‘Last time the church threatened me was when the surf picture went big. If I hadn’t dropped off the radar then, they would have brought me down. They’re bigger than anyone knows. They can control the cops.’

‘You better go then.’

‘. . . Yeah.’

They looked at one another. No time to hug. Not sure how to. Billy swiped Adam’s head, winked – it was more a flinch, a twitch.

He said without a smile, ‘I’m so sorry, kid.’

He was gone before Adam could say he didn’t blame him, never would.

The policeman caught sight of Billy ducking out the door. His hand flew to his belt and he broke into a jog. He looked along the window and saw Adam still sitting there. Adam waved. That stopped the policeman. It was an odd wave to give a policeman: Looking for me? The policeman’s hand dropped away from his belt. He came through into the diner. There were people queuing at the counter. A nurse was amongst them, and a man with two cameras over his shoulder, other media people. They turned because of the way the policeman burst in through the door. He glanced at them, looked out the windows, at the camera crew walking along, at the media van stuck in traffic. The policeman closed the door gently behind him, and stood in the queue, then he quietly made his way down to where Adam was.

The policeman slid in where Billy had sat. The seat was probably still warm. He laid his hands flat on the table, tried to smile but it was tense. He stared at Adam. What he did then wasn’t what Adam expected. The policeman held his hand out to be shaken. ‘I’m Constable Kieran Worth.’

It was a firm shake.

‘What’s your name, mate?’

‘I think I’m Nathan Fisher.’

The policeman nodded. He let go of Adam’s hand and looked above the backrest at the queue. ‘Okay,’ he murmured. ‘Right.’ He sat in the seat again. He took the radio from his belt, held it up to his lips, put it down. ‘What happened to your friend?’

‘He had to go.’

The policeman looked at the ashtray and at the Solo can and at Adam’s empty Fruit Box. He put the radio to his mouth and spoke quietly into it. ‘Constable Worth here, chasing Sergeant Prescott, urgent priority.’ The radio blurted a garbled response. He turned the volume down. ‘I need you to put him on,’ he said into the handpiece. He looked out the window, over at the police van. He waited. A short response came through, difficult to understand.

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Kieran said.

The person on the radio barked something.

‘Yes, Sergeant, it is. I’ve a closed gate here, in Bobby’s Diner across the road.’

‘Repeat that,’ the voice on the radio said, clearer now.

‘A closed gate in Bobby’s Diner across the road.’

After a pause a response came through. ‘Yep, I’ve got you.’

Out the window, over by the van, an older policeman, round and short, had stepped onto the pavement. He was standing beside the mannequin. He had a radio to his mouth. Kieran lifted his hand and acknowledged him through the window.

‘We’ll get it cleared for you now,’ the Sergeant said through the radio. ‘Are we able to confirm?’

Kieran lowered the radio. ‘Nathan, could take your cap off for me, please?’ Adam took it off and sat it on the table. Kieran stood as best he could in the booth and he leaned across. ‘Sorry about this, one check and we’ll be done. Could you lean forward?’ He looked at the back of Adam’s neck. ‘Thanks, that’s all I need.’ Into the radio he said, ‘That’s one hundred per cent confirmation, Sergeant.’

‘We’re calling that?’

‘Yes, call it.’

‘Steady there, Worth.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Four officers crossed the road. They stopped the traffic. The sergeant directed another two up the street. Those two broke into a run. The sergeant sent another two off in the opposite direction. The four officers came into the diner. Constable Kieran Worth didn’t turn to them. He smiled at Adam.

‘They’re just organising it so we can get across without the TV cameras and the reporters getting in the way.’

‘Okay.’

‘It might take a couple of minutes. You want to tell me about your mate?’

‘He’s a friend.’

‘Why did he have to go?’

‘He had to.’

‘You can call me Kieran if you like. Is it okay if I call you Nathan?’

Adam looked away without answering. On the TV screen, over on the counter, the media spokesperson from earlier reports, Gerard, was speaking to reporters. The sound was still turned down. As Adam watched, Gerard was tapped on the shoulder. Someone whispered into his ear. Gerard nodded. He walked off without another word. Camera flashes flared. The footage filmed the grey wall for a second and then it jerked around to film Gerard going out through a door, police ushering him out. Adam hoped Scotty was watching.

Officers were filing the customers out of the diner. They were made to walk in the other direction, away from Adam.

‘Do you have questions about what’s going to happen?’ Kieran asked. ‘You can ask me anything you like.’

‘I don’t have any questions.’

‘It’ll settle down once we’re across the road.’ His radio was hissing and crackling. He switched it off. ‘I’ll stay with you. I can stay with you as long as you like.’

A police car had blocked the lane of traffic. The officers in the diner were staying up the other end. Diner staff were taking turns looking through the round window in the kitchen door.

‘You were in this hospital,’ Kieran said.

‘Yes.’

‘Once we’re over there, we’ll go up into one of the wards. They’re going to want to have a quick look at you. Is that okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Any nurse you’d like to ask for? I can do that.’ He smiled. ‘Did you have a favourite?’

‘Nurse Rosie.’

‘Done. We’ll get you over there, and as soon as I can I’m going to find out where your parents are. They’re not far. They’ll be on their way already.’

‘Okay.’

‘Thought of any questions yet?’

‘Do you know my parents’ names?’

‘Pauline and Mitchell.’

The female officer came down from the other end of the diner. ‘We’re ready to go.’

‘But are we ready?’ Kieran asked.

Adam thought. ‘Yes,’ he said.

In the polaroid, Monty and Jerry were at the picket fence. The picture was taken from the footpath. The dogs were white and fluffy. Tummies round as barrels. Jerry had his paws up on the fence, mouth open, mid-bark. Maybe he remembered he didn’t like Billy. Monty was excited, ears pricked, wagging her tail. Billy’s thumb was in the bottom of the picture. Thumbs up. Rat dogs are all good. The photo had a rushed feel about it, out of focus.

On the back of the polaroid was Nathan’s name, misspelt. Give to Natan Fisher. Written in childlike script.

‘It was left at a police station.’

Nathan’s mum and dad were sitting on the bed. Nathan was at his desk. Rain pattered the window. The wind was blowing down the hill, not across the flats like it usually did. The sky was luminous and sheer. The house had ducted heating. Warm air pushed down from the ceiling vent. His mother came across and squatted by the desk chair. She went to reach for Nathan’s hands, stopped herself, looked up into his face.

‘The police have had it for a few weeks. They’re thinking the two dogs were with you in the house, is that right?’

His mum’s hair was tied back in a low ponytail. Her brow was lined. She had a habit of fiddling with the rings on her left hand. She wore skirts and cardigans most days, smelled of whatever thing she’d been doing. If she’d been outside, soil and freshness came inside with her, garden smells and animal smells, dry leaves and hay. If she’d been cooking in the kitchen, she smelled of food – browned mincemeat, roast smells, garlic, potato peel, onion, melted butter, cinnamon. After doing the laundry, the scents were of washing powder and fabric softener. Today she smelled of the makeup she’d put on for the police visit.

Over on the bed, Nathan’s father sat in silence. His knees were wide apart. He’d come inside from the sheds. His shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. The bottoms of his work pants were tucked into his socks. A smudge of soil was on his forehead, underneath his fringe. He only ever smelled of one of two things: soapy, steamy showers or the shed. Hessian potato sacks, the fibrous, coarse string used to tie the bags, dry dirt, tractor exhaust fumes, those shed smells were almost always detectable on him. Except after his long showers. His eyes were blue, set well back. His lips were thin. His hair was thick and brown, turning grey. His beard was darker than his hair.

‘Nathan?’ his mother said. ‘What’s this photo about?’

Nathan looked out the window. He could see the boot of the police car, an unmarked vehicle. Adam listened for noises down in the kitchen. Nothing.

‘Kieran’s still here,’ she confirmed. ‘He said they dusted the photo for fingerprints. They matched some taken from the house. They believe the man from the diner is the same man who took this photo.’

‘Is Kieran here to talk to me?’

‘He has the detective with him. Only here to listen; the detective won’t ask any questions. But Kieran has a few.’ Her gaze pinched in and she shook her head. ‘We’re worried the reason you’re not talking or telling us anything is because the man who took this photo has warned you not to. The police are wondering if this photo is some kind of threat. Reminding you not to talk. Is it that?’

‘No.’

‘They’re taking it very seriously. They think the man is dangerous.’

‘Are they looking for him?’

‘Did he threaten you? Did he tell you not to talk? The police say he might not have made it seem like a threat. They say he’s very clever and persuasive. They’ve found out things about him, Nathan. They’ve asked us to let them tell you, but . . .’ She glanced over at Nathan’s dad. ‘We could tell you,’ she said quietly.

‘Might be best to have the conversation in the kitchen,’ Nathan’s father said.

Adam’s mother put her fingers to her lips and looked away. She started crying. Those hot slipping tears that came without much warning. Hurt leaked out like that. Suddenly, small bits at a time. Her nose started running. She pulled a tissue from her sleeve.

‘We can tell them to go away,’ she whispered. ‘If you talk to us. Tell us, Nathan. Please tell us. We don’t expect you to feel any certain thing, or behave in any particular way, but we do want you to trust us.’ This time she took his hands in hers. Squeezed them. ‘Nothing you say will get you in any trouble. We’re going to love you no matter what you say. You can’t say the wrong thing to us. We are always, always going to be on your side.’

The eldest of Nathan’s two sisters, Sarina, walked past the open doorway. She was nineteen. She had a handbag over her shoulder. It looked like she was heading out. She wore long boots, stockings and a short coat. She didn’t look in.

Nathan put the photo of Monty and Jerry on the desk. In his bedroom he had a wardrobe, a tallboy, a bedside table, a lamp, the desk and the chair he was sitting on, a square plastic container with a basketball and a football and a skateboard in it. He had a cassette player and four cassettes. He had a shelf on the wall above his bed. On it were some of the gifts children had sent him. A carved wooden figure from a boy living in a village in Indonesia, a Rubik’s cube, a Stretch Armstrong, a snow globe of the Eiffel Tower from a French schoolgirl, Star Trek figurines, an Etch A Sketch, Matchbox cars, a cup of golden plastic popcorn from a high school class in Hollywood. The gifts were neatly displayed.

Nathan’s mum let go of his hands. She got to her feet. She’d paled. ‘We’ll go down then.’

His parents stood outside the bedroom while Nathan put the chair under the desk, ejected the Summer Hits ’84 cassette he’d been listening to and put it away in its case. You could hear, down in the kitchen, Sarina and Kieran talking. Sarina’s voice was musical, her laughter in particular. Nathan straightened the doona where his mum and dad had creased it. He put on his shoes. Tied his laces. That morning he’d put on jeans and a zip-up tracksuit top, a red T-shirt underneath.

Around the house were framed photos of the family. Pictures from before Nathan had been taken. There were no recent photographs.

Sarina had left. Nathan’s other sister, Tamara, slid open the dining room glass door and was about to come inside. Small drops of rain glistened in her hair. She had a chubby face. Her voice contained a squeak. Every second or third word came out higher than the rest, not very musical, but interesting all the same. She saw them, saw Kieran and the detective sitting at the kitchen table, and slowed her progress.

‘G’day, Nathan, mate,’ Kieran said. ‘Hello, Tamara.’

She waved her hand towards a jumper balled on a bench. ‘Sorry. Just grabbing that.’

The tight corduroy pants she was wearing were the ones she’d worn the day before, and the day before that. The skivvy was perhaps from the day before as well. A slob, a grot, Sarina called her. A normal teenager, their mother said.

‘Each time I see you, Nath, you look bigger. You’ll be taller than your dad soon.’

Kieran wasn’t in uniform. The man with him was in a suit. He looked familiar. Adam might have spoken to him before. He said hello as though they’d met, smiling gently, nodding, using Nathan’s name. So many gently smiling faces. It was hard to distinguish them, remember them, because they were so softened. Lots of moderated voices too. As though Adam’s ears might need protecting. Did they think he was too sensitive to hear a person’s proper tone? They should have heard Billy’s voice. Too fuckin’ right.

Nathan sat down across from Kieran and the detective.

Sarina rushed in the front door. ‘Forgot the keys.’ She took the car keys from the sideboard and rushed out again, the wind caught the door as she went to close it. It slammed shut. ‘Sorry!’ she called from outside.

At least Nathan’s sisters had stopped smiling gently at him. Nathan had caught them, more than once, exchanging eye rolls when they thought he wasn’t looking. They could be relied on for some kind of animation and reaction.

‘Mitch, I should’ve mentioned,’ the detective said, ‘we’re going to need that photo back.’

Before Nathan’s dad, or anyone else, could go to get the photo from Nathan’s bedroom, Nathan got up.

He felt all adults’ eyes follow him as he walked down the hallway.

‘William Benson. He’s spent time in youth facilities and in state care. His parents lived together. Father worked. Evidence of domestic violence . . . That’s covering what we’ve already told you . . .’ Kieran paused to light a smoke as Nathan sat back down. Nathan’s mum had brought out the guest ashtray. It was made of coloured glass. Dark red. Heavy. Kieran maybe thought the ashtray always sat in the centre of the kitchen table, beside the salt and pepper shakers. It didn’t. He offered the open packet of cigarettes around. Everyone declined.

‘What the detectives have pieced together,’ Kieran tapped his lighter on the paperwork in front of him, ‘is detailed and fairly . . . ’ He glanced at the detective. Kieran sucked on his cigarette. The faint crackle could be heard. Adam watched the cigarette tip glow. Drifting across was that first-puff smell, a lingering hint of lighter gas. ‘Maybe you should run through it, Peter?’

‘We told Nathan it would be you,’ Nathan’s mother said.

‘No disrespect, Pete,’ his father added.

‘It’s fine. We came prepared.’ The detective moved his chair along to create distance between him and Kieran. He flipped the notepad cover over, clicked his pen, laid it on the pad. ‘I understand you’re comfortable with Kieran.’

Kieran dragged the papers closer. He cleared his throat. It was probably only because Nathan knew about the surfing, but it was like you could see the ocean in Kieran, his face and his body reminded Nathan of the beach. Fine white hairs on his temples, cracked lips, strong limbs, a far-off, lost-at-sea look in his eyes, and a wide-as-a-beach smile. Kieran wasn’t moderated. He joked. Swore. He was a gust of salty, or, more like it, cigarette-filled air. Nathan breathed it in.

‘By going through what Peter and his team have put together here, they’re thinking, it might help you remember, Nath, mate, or it might help you see why they need some police action. A bit of this info your parents would have already heard . . .’ his voice trailed off while he skimmed the first page. ‘What’s prompted some action,’ he scratched his head, took a drag, exhaled, ‘is that the shed fire was deliberately lit . . . yes . . . and the photo . . .’ Kieran read, gathered his thoughts. ‘Okay, so it’s been discovered that William and his family once lived beside Miloslav Kovac. Miloslav being, obviously, the man who took you from the market, Nath, and the man who died in the fire. A call was made to Miloslav the night before he died. The call has been traced to the Barbary Street house, made . . .’ Kieran was reading again, ‘when you and William are thought to have been there.’ Kieran tapped his ash, looked up. ‘Do you remember anything about that call or anything from that time?’

‘No.’

The detective moved his pen and shifted in his seat. Kieran glanced at him.

‘Actually . . . let me make that a bit easier for you, Nath,’ Kieran said. ‘We’re gonna keep it simple. Were you in the house with William at the time he made the call to Miloslav Kovac?’

Nathan shook his head.

‘That’s a no, mate?’

Nathan shook his head again.

‘Okay, well, let me tell you why we need to know and what the detectives are thinking. They believe William rang Miloslav to organise to meet him at the shed the following morning. William chose the shed because it was where Marta Vander lived. William’s intention was to light a fire with them both in the shed.’

‘That’s not true.’

The detective started jotting.

Kieran’s gaze lightened encouragingly. ‘That’s all we need from you, Nath. That’s great. Now, there’s a reason, of course, why they have that suspicion.’ He read then, as though unsure of that very reason.

The detective pushed the tip of his pen against his chin, watched Kieran with a wrinkled brow.

‘Yes . . . because . . . like I said, the detectives went back and discovered that William lived beside Miloslav at the time of the abduction, and William was at the market with him the day you were taken.’

Kieran’s eyes rose to meet Nathan’s. Everyone was looking at Nathan. Watching. Waiting. The information was meant as a test. His mum and dad were staring expectantly at Nathan too.

Kieran restated it, this time with the gravity he was perhaps meant to use the first time. ‘William was at the market the day you were abducted.’

Nathan listened to the weather blustering its way onto the verandah. He thought about how he hadn’t heard Sarina’s car start up and go off down the long driveway. In the country you’d expect to hear something like that, a car going, or coming. But it wasn’t the case. Space, open paddocks, meant that noises sometimes lifted and took flight, disappeared, or they mixed in with the other sounds and were blended away. But then again, on other days, a sound could carry across the largest of the paddocks, travel the longest distances. Nathan’s dad’s tractor could sound like it was idling next to the house, when, in fact, it was in the hilly paddock far away. No buildings here, no walls, no high fences to trap sounds or bounce them back at you in a way that was regular or expected. It was all up to the sky. Whatever the sky wanted to do that day.

They’d all stopped looking at him and were looking down.

Kieran scratched between his eyes.

‘Marta Vander,’ he read, ‘was questioned further and confirmed William was there that day. She drove him home. She recalls Miloslav saying to keep an eye out for William. Throughout her questioning she has denied being a part of any abduction plan. She claims only knowing Nathan had been taken after she had dropped William home and went next door to the kennels. She says she discovered Miloslav with Nathan . . .’ Kieran read ahead, skipped over details, ‘. . . says he threatened her because she had found them, and that he then hatched a plan to include her and her brother, to insure she wouldn’t talk. Detectives believe she’s lying. They believe it was premeditated, with William playing the part of luring Nathan away from the market, and Marta providing an alibi for Miloslav when he was questioned as to what time he left the market. If William’s fear of being uncovered as an accomplice in the abduction was extreme enough, it explains how the fire came to be lit, why Miloslav and Marta were targeted. It explains why William took you from the house, Nath. Why he took you from the hospital.’ Kieran read the next question from the page. ‘Did William tell you he was involved in your abduction at the market?’

For this one, Nathan watched the thin tendril of smoke wind up from the tip of Kieran’s cigarette into the air. The ducted heating kicked in, the flow of warm air swirling the vine of smoke away. The influx of heat helped with the chill creeping into the air.

His mum got up. She took the empty cups.

‘Would you like another drink? I’ll put the kettle on.’

‘Thanks, Pauline, that’d be lovely.’

‘Okay, let’s look at this . . .’ Kieran turned to the next sheet. He read a moment. Smoked the last of his cigarette, stubbed it out. ‘The day you were discovered at the diner. On that same day William’s father was shot and killed at the Newhaven Hill Caravan Park. I think this has been mentioned to you before, right, Nath? The shooting took place only two hours before we met in the diner. Originally, you were told that the shooting was believed to be a result of an argument William’s parents had. But since then, it’s been discovered that the bullets used were from a batch found at the Barbary Street house.’ He looked up from the page. ‘The detectives now believe the gun used was stolen from the Barbary Street house, and that William stole the gun to take to the caravan park and shoot his father.’

Nathan shook his head.

‘Were you in the caravan at the time of the shooting?’

In the kitchen, at the sink, rinsing the cups, Nathan’s mother stopped and bowed her head. Her jaw clenched. Her ragged breathing could be heard. Nathan’s father was staring through the archway, into the lounge room. His chest rose with a deep breath.

‘It’s hard,’ Kieran said, having glanced at both of them, ‘none of us think it’s fair, Nath, that you might have been there. It was . . . I’ve seen the pictures of the shooting . . . not something anyone would want to see. We all think the same. If you were there, you shouldn’t have been. Joe Vander was dead; you should have been safe. You weren’t. And that’s what everyone is trying to get to the bottom of here, mate. Your ordeal should have been over, but it wasn’t.’

‘It was.’

‘Did William tell you how involved he was in the abduction?’

‘He didn’t need to.’

‘We know he was a kid when it all started, no one is saying he wasn’t, but . . . he’s done things since, mate. They can’t be ignored.’

‘Only because he had to do them.’

‘Are you saying he shot his father?’

‘No.’

‘Did he light the shed fire?’

‘No.’

‘He’s had opportunities to change his life.’

‘He wanted to change.’

‘It doesn’t seem that way, mate.’

‘He was threatened.’

‘By who?’

The detective suddenly leaned forward. ‘Everyone has tried to help him. He doesn’t want help. He planned to murder. He injured Marta Vander in the hope she wouldn’t talk. Joe Vander’s death wasn’t due to natural causes. William did that too.’

‘No.’

‘He eliminated every single person who could put him at the market that day. They’re all dead. That’s not a coincidence. The reason he didn’t take you to the police was because he had to do that first.’

‘It’s not true.’

‘He was protecting himself, not you.’

‘It didn’t happen like that.’

‘What he did was incredibly calculated and criminal. William is not someone you want to be protecting. His damaging behaviour started as a child, and has continued.’

‘It’s not true.’

The detective reached for the photo of Monty and Jerry. He held it and waved it. ‘He sent you this? So you trust him?’

‘I do trust him.’

‘We tracked down this house. These two dogs . . .’ The detective dropped the photo onto the table again. ‘Billy killed them. After he took that.’

‘No,’ Nathan breathed.

Kieran’s head swung around. He stared perplexed at the detective.

‘He killed the dogs?’ Nathan’s mother said.

‘Peter.’ Nathan’s dad lifted his hand and held it open. ‘You didn’t tell us that?’

‘Oh my god. He killed the dogs? Why didn’t you tell us that? We wouldn’t have shown it to Nathan . . . Nathan?’

The detective leaned back. He jiggled his pen between his two fingers. Red crept up his throat. Nathan noticed the small pin on his lapel. A gold cross.

Billy.

No other policeman called Billy that.

Kieran shuffled the papers. ‘Okay . . .’

‘It’s not true.’ Nathan pushed back from the table. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Nathan,’ his mum had come across, ‘we didn’t know about the dogs, they didn’t tell us. We wouldn’t have agreed to any of this if —’

‘It’s okay. They’re not dead. Billy wouldn’t do that.’

‘Peter? Why didn’t you tell us he’d killed the dogs?’

‘Can’t you see he’s a liar?’ Nathan said.

Nathan went to the glass sliding door, looked out at the sheeting rain.

‘Trick a criminal into telling you what you need to know,’ his dad was saying, ‘but do not trick my son.’

‘Some pressure is sometimes needed if we’re ever going to get anywhere.’

‘By lying?’

‘If you ask me, they’re as good as dead. Everyone else William gets anywhere near ends up dead.’

‘This is exactly why we insist on Kieran.’

‘We need some movement, Mitch.’

‘Don’t come in here and tell me what it’s going to take for my son to open up. You lot were the ones who walked through that house and missed what anyone with half a brain would have seen.’

‘You know it’s been —’

‘How many times did the woman next door ring the police and tell them homeless boys were constantly in and out of that house? Out of all those calls, how many times did a cop actually step inside the door?’

‘It’s not that simple. Officers can’t —’

‘Call after call after call.’ Nathan’s dad held up a finger. ‘One search, one time, one walk through that house, one enquiry, one check.’ His body was tense. He sounded out of breath. ‘Don’t make my son think it’s up to him, it’s on his shoulders; it’s on your head.’

‘We’ll go.’

‘You’ll go,’ Nathan’s father said, pointing at the detective. ‘I’d like to talk to Kieran.’

The detective packed up the paperwork. He put the photo of Monty and Jerry in the folder. Nathan’s dad came to stand beside Nathan at the door. He unlatched it and slid it open. The cold and damp blew in on them. Nathan’s dad shut his eyes to it. Behind them, the detective said goodbye to Nathan’s mum, thanked her for the coffee. He went to leave.

‘Peter,’ Nathan’s dad opened his eyes and said, ‘ever think about the one person around William Benson who didn’t end up dying?’

‘Good luck or good management. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Damn good management I would say, if you look at the three who are dead.’

‘I’ll be waiting in the car, Kieran.’

Kieran cringed once he’d gone. ‘I don’t know what happened there.’

‘He lied. That’s what happened.’

Kieran checked over his shoulder that the front door had shut. ‘It’s not like him.’

Nathan’s mum pulled the sliding door closed. She looked at Nathan’s dad, touched his arm. ‘Sit down. Both of you.’

Nathan went with his father to the table.

‘I don’t know,’ Kieran said as they sat. ‘Media has dropped right off. No one is baying for blood. Within the ranks everyone thinks like you do, Mitch. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of . . . people. Peter’s getting pressure from somewhere, though.’

‘How much is true?’

‘I don’t get briefed. I just get told what to say.’

‘How close are they to finding him?’

‘I’m not sure. The photo has them believing that William and Nathan might be closer than they first thought. They think Nathan knows where he is.’ Kieran exhaled his smoke and then smiled close-lipped at Nathan. ‘The dogs are fine. I’ve seen them myself.’

‘All we want to know is that Nathan is safe. Is William as dangerous as they’re making him out to be?’

Kieran scratched his jaw. ‘For me, where things tend to fall down, is that anyone who actually saw William and Nathan together, including me,’ he tipped his head, ‘can only testify to the fact that the two of them looked like a pair of good mates. William wasn’t hiding him. He wasn’t hiding himself . . . There are questions. William’s mother, and the caravan caretaker, they’re lying about what happened with the shooting. The two of them can’t get their stories straight. One minute they’re saying Nathan wasn’t there at all, next they’re saying he was down at the caretaker’s residence. And it’s hard to ignore that a call was made to Miloslav. No one can work out why they were all at the shed. Autopsy reveals Miloslav was beaten before he died. Marta was beaten. Joe Vander had signs of being beaten . . . but . . . is it exactly like Peter thinks? I don’t know. I guess only Nath knows. It’s not beyond all realms of possibility that William didn’t try and get rid of everyone who could put him there that day. But, like you say, Mitch, if that’s the case, if he’s that ruthless, why deliver Nathan safe and sound, why sit him down in the diner to be found? And why drag Marta Vander from the fire? If anyone was going to talk, it was going to be her . . . I’ve said this before but William, to me, he came off like a tough kid but a good kid.’

‘I can’t get past it,’ Nathan’s mother murmured. ‘He was at the market? I don’t understand it. I can’t work it out. I don’t know if I want to work it out.’

‘I know what you’re saying, Pauline. It’s not that much of a shock to us, though; we see it all the time. It’s a web. These kids get stuck . . . My gut? What experience tells me? It’s always a bit of what you think and nothing like what you thought.’

‘He’s up against it, isn’t he?’ Nathan’s father said. ‘If they find him?’

‘Bloody oath. They’re not going to pass up a fall guy. He’s got a rap sheet that makes it all too easy. I better go.’ He put his smoke in his mouth and got up, lifted the chair and placed it in tight against the table. ‘Pete’s got too much pulling power to piss off. Try saying that with a ciggie between your lips.’

He had a shoe rack now, five pairs of shoes on it, not counting his farm boots and gumboots by the back door. Not counting his slippers. He had coats on hangers. A farm coat, a stonewash denim jacket, a duffel coat. In the drawers were socks and jocks and T-shirts, three different pairs of jeans, trackpants, jumpers, singlets, shorts and swimming trunks. Nathan took the plastic bag from the top shelf of his wardrobe. Folded inside were the clothes he’d been found in, packed flat by Nurse Rosie, at Nathan’s request, the bag tied off tight, not yet untied. Nathan sat down at the desk and tore the plastic.

He took out the Wrangler jeans. They were dirty, stiff with dried sweat, smudged with soot, ash, misted blood and bigger dots of blood, melted chocolate, grass stains; they smelled of fire smoke, stale cigarette smoke, gunpowder. From the pocket, in with the spare bullets, he took out the photo he’d taken from the Boytime Co-op pin board. It was the picture of Billy with his gloves on, grinning with his mouthguard in.

Nathan’s mother had sat on the bed. He passed the picture to her. ‘That’s him.’

‘This is him? William Benson?’

She switched on the lamp.

In the hospital, when Nathan met his mother, the amount of pain in her had amazed him. He’d looked into her face and seen her torment. She’d barely been able to stand under the weight of it. It had dawned on him: what had happened to him had happened to her too. Maybe not physically in the backroom with him, but there mentally, every step of the way. The same with Nathan’s father. The hurt in him had been huge. It had winded him, made him shake, had him crying. Written on both their faces: taken too, dragged from life, locked away, sleepless nights, empty days, painful moments. Years of it. Nathan’s mother, after seeing Nathan, had been treated for shock in the next room.

His mum was shaking again now. She’d taken the soggy tissue from her sleeve. The pain was back. Nathan didn’t know what to say to her about it. He didn’t know how to tell her he was sorry. It felt like his fault.

His father had come into the bedroom. He glanced at the torn bag and dirty clothes. He stood a few paces back. Nathan related to the way his father held things in, chose his words. It wasn’t about being closed off; it was about not falling apart.

His mum passed the photo to his dad.

‘That’s him.’

Nathan watched for the reaction in his father. This was Nathan’s test. He needed to see for himself what they really felt about Billy. He needed to know if his parents were forgiving, open to understanding, able to push past blame. Hurt didn’t seem to surface in Nathan’s dad, or anger. He seemed curious. After glancing at Nathan, he handed the photo to him.

Nathan took the photo and pinned it to the corkboard above his desk. Beside the times tables sheet and that week’s words. It was right to have Billy up there, in the open. Billy gave the corkboard colour. If Nathan was to step back from the desk, look at the picture within the context of the room, Billy’s vibrancy and attitude made everything else look straightjacketed and lifeless, as though he was the only real thing in there.

From the pocket of the jeans, Nathan took the spare gun bullets.

As soon as his mum spotted them, she sobbed.

‘I shot Billy’s father. I took the gun.’

‘It’s not fair,’ his mother cried.

‘Kovac lit the fire, not Billy. Kovac hit the woman. Billy saved her. We were at the shed because of me.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘I killed Joe. I hit him. I didn’t give him his tablets. Billy took me from the house because I asked him to.’

‘No one blames you.’

‘Billy left me down the creek for you to find me. I followed him down there. He didn’t make me go.’

‘No, Nathan, no, it wasn’t your fault . . .’

‘They took Billy too. He was trapped too.’

‘He wasn’t, though; he got away.’ Nathan’s mum was back there then, at the market, at the hospital, slumping on the bed, too much weight, too much sadness. She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest. ‘He could have told someone. How hard is it to tell someone?’

‘Harder than it seems.’

Nathan palmed his tears away.

‘Why aren’t his mother and the caretaker blaming you for the shooting?’ Nathan’s father said.

‘They’re trying to help me.’

‘Why is William hiding if he hasn’t done anything wrong?’

‘He’s scared.’

Nathan got up and went over to his mum. She was fighting to breathe. Rocking with the grief. He sat beside her. ‘He was trapped. But no one looked for him, so they didn’t have to hide him.’

She cried harder, gripped him, pulled him to her. She was clinging, not wanting to let go. He put his arm around her and let her press her face against his neck, let her touch his hair. ‘My boy,’ she said. ‘My beautiful boy.’

‘Do you know where to find him, son?’

‘I know where to look.’

‘Left turn?’

They were in the city. It had taken them two hours to get there. Nathan was holding the mud map his father had drawn for the trip. The bigger map was opened up between them, on the middle console. His father glanced at it.

‘Left,’ Nathan said, reading from his dad’s map.

‘And then left again?’

‘Yes.’

‘Street name?’

‘Ha–ay–te. . .Hat-ter, Hatter?’

‘I think we’ve got this nailed.’

A notice on the co-op door told them it was shut. They had an hour before it was due to open. It was eleven a.m. Monday. Nathan thought about explaining the Fanta can technique, but he couldn’t really see his dad throwing empty cans at windows.

Not many businesses in the area were open. They walked around the streets. It was overcast. They had jackets on. Drizzly rain began to fall.

They made their way back to the car. Sat in silence.

‘You learn things fast, like your mum,’ his dad said, out of the blue. ‘A good memory for things.’

‘The home schooler said that because I was read to up until I was four it helps with my learning.’

‘She said that?’

‘She says when it comes to a person’s brain the important years are younger than anyone can imagine. As a baby. She said it’s how much love you get then that matters. One and two are really important. You make all the big connections then. Your ability to learn happens then, too. Even the way you react to things. It’s all decided when you’re tiny.’

A gentle smile lifted his father’s face. ‘She sounds like a good teacher.’

The co-op’s roller door rattled up. Behind it was a small foyer. Hog was in sweatpants and a jumper with the co-op logo on it. He had on slippers and a beanie. He carried out an ice-cream sign and set it up by the light pole. He scuffed up the steps, through the foyer, and back inside.

Nuts must have arrived without them noticing. Jogged up the alleyway, perhaps, gone in the back door. He was flushed, dressed in a T-shirt and rolled-up trackpants. The ends of his hair were damp with sweat. He greeted them as they walked inside.

‘G’day there.’

‘Hello,’ Nathan’s dad said. ‘You must be Hog?’

‘I’m Nuts.’

Nuts hadn’t recognised Nathan. Hog walked up. He didn’t recognise Nathan either.

‘Hello, Hog?’

Hog and Nathan’s dad shook hands.

‘What can I help you with?’

‘I’m Mitch Fisher.’

It didn’t click. They summed him up. Eyed him head to toe. Nathan guessed Hog and Nuts wouldn’t see a lot of moleskin pants and cable knit jumpers in the gym. Not many farm boots. The downstairs lights were on. The place smelled of disinfectant, less like feet this time. Winter seemed to have cooled things down.

‘You’ve met my son, Nathan.’

‘We see a few kids.’

‘Nathan Fisher.’

Hog’s and Nuts’ faces opened up and their arms folded in. ‘Oh.’

‘He said he met you both. I hope you don’t mind us dropping in.’

‘Changed much?’ Nuts said to Nathan.

Nathan’s father smiled, looked at Nathan too. ‘He’s put on weight pretty quick.’

‘Middleweight.’

‘Probably so. In time.’

‘Quick time, I’d say.’

‘Can we talk somewhere?’

‘You wouldn’t pick it,’ Hog said, ‘but Mondays are busy for us.’

‘Just a quick chat?’

‘We got somethin’ startin’ real soon.’

Hog had slouched back into himself. His arms had not shifted off his chest. Nuts had loosened one arm, was scratching his ear, rubbing his neck.

‘We don’t want to hold you up. We wanted to ask about William.’

‘Billy,’ Nathan said.

Two teenage boys came in through the foyer. The boys whooped and whistled.

‘There you go.’ Hog waved in that direction. ‘It’s startin’ already.’

‘We were wondering if you could help us find him.’

‘Fizza!’ Hog hollered. ‘Pull it together!’

The whooping and whistling stopped. Another teenage boy came in.

‘Nathan thought you might know where we can find him.’

‘He said I could find him through here,’ Nathan said.

‘We ain’t seen him.’

‘We’d like to help,’ Nuts said.

‘But we ain’t seen him.’

‘He didn’t leave a message?’

‘Nope.’

Nuts discreetly shook his head.

The boys turned music on. One of them started skipping. More boys came through the doors.

‘Could we come back at a better time?’

‘Different day ain’t gonna change it.’

Nathan’s dad parked in front of the kiosk out on the road and they walked up through the gates into Newhaven Hill Caravan Park. The grounds were smaller than Nathan remembered them. It hadn’t been that long since he’d been there, eight months, but the dirt track seemed narrower and the gumtrees not as tall. Scotty’s house was more like a shack than a home. He’d taken down the bedsheet curtain. In its place was an orange blanket. Under the carport the same two cars were up on bricks. Everything was wet. It was cold, grey and quiet. A few magpies warbled. The gravel track crunched damply underfoot. His dad went around to Scotty’s kitchen door, where the office sign was pointing. He knocked and came back down the step and stood on the path with Nathan.

A couple of rusty tyre rims leaned up against a soggy cardboard box on Scotty’s lawn. You could hear the TV on inside the house. Nathan was smiling before Scotty opened the door. He didn’t disappoint: his small frame and pinched-in expression, glasses, jeans and thongs, a T-shirt with a car on it. Scotty was like a rabbit in Nathan’s mind. Spoke like a rabbit. Jumpy, like one.

‘Yeah, what?’

He was speaking from behind the wire door.

‘Hi there, my name is Mitch Fisher. I was wondering if I could have a word?’

‘Yeah?’

‘From what I believe you’ve met my son, Nathan?’

‘Hey?’

Scotty opened the wire door. He pushed his glasses up his nose and peered at Nathan. He then swung his eyes to Nathan’s father’s face, looking, it seemed, for signs of aggression. A small bright smile lit Scotty’s face.

He held the door wide.

‘Jeez, hell, hey. Bugger me. Come in. I wasn’t expecting this. Mitch, you said? Scotty. Nice to meet you.’ They shook hands. ‘Seen you on the TV. You’re a big bugger, aren’t you? I got the heater on. Hey, Nathan, how are you? It’s real good you’ve dropped in. Sit down, sit down.’

The fruit bowl had grapefruits in it. The red toolbox was there, the table and foam-filled cushions on the chairs, the board with all the keys. Lino floor. It was warm. The hallway door was closed. Nathan couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. His dad kept looking at him.

‘I’ll get you a cuppa. You wanna hot drink, Nathan?’

‘A cordial please, Scotty.’

After going through and turning off the TV, Scotty made the drinks and sat down. All the while he talked about how pleased he was they’d come.

‘I’ve talked enough to the police. If I don’t ever see another copper again in me entire friggin’ life it’ll be too soon.’

Nathan’s father was relaxed. He had one hand around the mug of coffee and leaned forward on the table, held Scotty’s gaze.

The conversation somehow turned to cars. They talked about broughams. Ford Gran Torinos. Scotty was saying he knew someone who had traded a yellow 1965 Galaxie 500 on a Torino GT hardtop. Nathan hadn’t known his dad could talk so fast.

‘Can I use your toilet, Scotty?’

‘Don’t reckon it’d be much of a visit if you didn’t.’ He gave Nathan a knowing smile.

The poster of the woman was gone. A new poster was in its place. This woman was blonde. She was kneeling in the sand, naked. Not even the beach backdrop could elevate the picture to something special. It was all to do with the woman’s eyes. They weren’t saying anything. No fearlessness. No devil glint. Nathan turned around and peed, even though he didn’t really need to, had to stand there for a while before it happened.

When he went out, the conversation had switched to Billy.

‘Wish he did,’ Scotty was saying, ‘but he hasn’t been within cooee. He’s got it in his head that the cops will pile everything on him. He won’t even go to his mum’s.’

‘Is she still in the caravan park?’

‘She’s moved out. He’s visited her at the new place, but won’t stay there. His mum and me haven’t always seen eye to eye, but she’s trying this time. I suppose. We’ll see. She wants him there with her. He tells her, though, that the cops will find him, same thing if he comes here. He’s rattled. Doing it tough, I think.’

Nathan sat back down.

‘Is there some way we could get in contact with him?’ Nathan’s dad asked.

‘I could tell his mum to mention you came to see him. He rings her pretty regular.’

‘Nathan would like to talk to him. We’re going to tell the truth about the shooting.’

‘Ah, okay, I see.’

‘If they tell their story together, I don’t think Billy is going to get in any trouble.’

‘That’s gotta be what has to happen. It can’t go on like it has been. Billy’s not gonna come around easy, though. It’s not just the cops; he’s paranoid about the church too. It sounds stupid, I know.’

‘Is he in Queensland?’ Nathan asked.

‘He did mention something about Queensland. I think he musta given whatever money he had to his mum. She’s been buying up big for the baby. Be just like Billy to give it to her. Just like her to ask for it too,’ Scotty muttered. ‘He’s not interstate.’

‘You’ve got no idea where he might be?’

‘My guess, he’s sleeping rough. Moving around. Other than me and his mum, I can’t think of anyone he knows who wouldn’t sell him out for a packet of smokes, or to get on the good side of the cops, or who isn’t tied up with the Mission.’

‘Could we go and see his mum?’ Nathan’s dad asked.

‘Hmm, not sure she’d be up for that. She might feel a bit shit, you know? I’d have to check. She’s pretty guilty about it all and that.’

Nathan’s dad frowned. ‘About covering for Nathan? We know he did it. We’re not angry that anyone tried to help him.’

Scotty pinched his nose and looked down. Sneaked a look at Nathan. ‘Probably more about things way back then. Looking back, I reckon she thinks she could have done a bit more.’

‘Is there anywhere else we could try?’ Nathan asked.

Scotty tapped his teeth and thought. He danced his fingertips on his lips. ‘I don’t think so. I’m just trying to remember stuff his mum’s said. She reckons he talks like he’s losing it. Saying he’s being followed and he can’t go out, stuff like that. Says he’s changed the way he looks so no one will recognise him. It might have all caught up with him, I think. Billy can’t see it, but if he starts talking, everyone’s gonna listen. He’s got some stuff to say, all right. About the Mission mainly. If you’re next to him, Nathan, the Mission can’t knock him down; they won’t be able to touch him. Someone’s gotta get that through to Billy, though.’

‘I’ll leave my number. If you could tell his mum we’re going to set the shooting straight. Tell her Nathan’s still got his clothes from then. There’s going to be evidence. It’s all pretty clear.’

‘Okay, yeah, I’ll tell her.’

‘And see if she wouldn’t mind us going to see her.’

‘I’ll ask.’

Nathan had been staring off to the side, thinking about something Scotty had said, or all the things together . . . a person not linked to the Mission . . . Billy staying in . . . changing his appearance. Nathan looked up.

‘I think I know where he is.’

The more Nathan thought about it, the surer he was. Keeping low. Obvious.

They got up to leave. Nathan stopped next to Scotty, leaned in to speak to him.

‘You had a different poster up in the toilet last time I was here.’

Nathan’s father was standing by the door, trying not to interfere or seem thrown by Nathan’s private words to Scotty. You could see it affected Nathan’s father, though. He stuck his hands in his pockets, dropped his head, looked wounded for a moment.

Scotty kept his ear close to Nathan’s mouth, frowned and shook his head. Then a grin lit up his face. ‘January,’ he whispered back. ‘You’re lucky I liked the detailing on the car. Stay here.’

Nathan’s dad pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. He glanced at the folded-up poster when Scotty returned with it.

Scotty slipped it into Nathan’s hand.

‘Good taste, I must say.’

On the way down the path, Nathan’s father looked again at the folded poster. Nathan didn’t know how to explain it, he felt too unsure to even put the poster under his jumper and protect it from the light rain. He kept it down beside his leg, pretended he didn’t have it.

In the kiosk, while his dad ordered pies for lunch, Nathan stuffed the poster up under his jumper, held it there with his arm – as casually as he could manage – across his tummy. He was careful getting into the car, not wanting to bend or crease it any more. Quickly, while his dad walked around to the driver’s side, Nathan took the poster out and stashed it under his seat. He sat up.

Nathan ate his pie. His dad opened up the map to look for the best route to the beach. They had Big M milks. They didn’t talk.

Footpaths were cleared of outdoor dining. People were eating inside the restaurants, in the warmth. Cold ocean wind cut through Nathan’s clothes and chilled him. Stung his cheeks. Made his eyes water. It whipped the colour from his father’s lips. They walked past the barbershop, past a footpath sign with pictures of Vern’s artwork on it. One was a small reproduction of the Silver Wave picture. Nathan’s dad motioned to it.

‘It says to go up the stairwell at rear.’

‘That’s right.’

When they got to the alleyway, Nathan’s dad checked behind them.

‘Is this artist guy a big fella?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he hurt you?’

‘No.’

‘Should you wait in one of the shops?’

‘Billy won’t know you. He won’t trust you.’

Vern’s brown van was parked beside the steel stairwell. Nathan and his dad climbed the steps. No seagulls about. Roar of sea and sky.

Nathan’s dad slid the glossy door open.

It was warm inside the studio. The fans were rotating slowly, pushing heated air down. Vern was painting at an easel. He was dressed in loose baggy pants and a knitted poncho. The smell of paint and turpentine was strong.

Vern called out, ‘Welcome. Please look around.’

Nathan kept his head down to avoid being recognised. Vern continued painting. The kitchen door down the back of the studio was shut. Nathan started towards it.

They wandered past large artworks. Wound their way around easels displaying finished paintings. Prices were written on hanging tags, gently fluttering in the moving air. All boys. In every painting. Most of them with naked torsos, some with bare backsides. Nathan could feel his father’s hackles rise. There was one painting that caused him to do a double take. At a glance the boy looked like Nathan. The boy was sitting in a gutter. Shirtless, solemn expression, a hairstyle similar to the one Nathan had when he was found. Nathan’s hair had been cut even across the fringe now. The sides and back were still short. His face wasn’t as gaunt anymore. It did seem, though, that his face was naturally bony.

‘Is it you?’ his dad whispered.

‘No.’

‘Did he paint you?’

‘No.’

‘Happy to look?’ Vern called. They were getting close to the kitchen door. He put down his brush.

‘We’re good,’ Nathan’s dad called back.

Vern got up.

His dad left Nathan’s side, walked to meet Vern.

‘I wouldn’t mind you talking me through this one over here.’

When they went behind the easel, Nathan made his way quickly to the kitchen door.

His heart hammered. He could sense, just knew, Billy was in there.

A piece of canvas had been hung over the window. The kitchen was dim because of it. A bar heater down on the floor glowed red. The smell in there wasn’t right for Billy. It was cold takeaway, body odour, the worst type of cigarette smell – tar and chemicals that seeped into skin and hair and nails – and another smell Nathan couldn’t place, earthy, fungus-like, not pleasant. The couch was strewn with clothes. The floor had greasy wrappers and pizza boxes on it. On the sink was a tobacco tin containing a row of roughly rolled small cigarettes. Beside that was a plastic bottle filled with dirty water, a piece of pipe pushed through it.

Billy was on the bed behind the door. He was on his side, facing the wall, lying on top of the blanket, in jeans and nothing else, legs curled, spine showing, shoulder blades protruding, shrinking muscles, a still-red scar running down the back of his arm, and a head of close-cropped hair. He hadn’t woken. Nathan felt a rise of panic, fear for his friend. This room, Nathan knew. This bed, he knew. The blanket, the empty plate on the floor, the poor light, the faint smell of urine. Nathan wasn’t recalling the kitchen from the last time he’d been in it; he was seeing the room for what it really was. Billy’s backroom.

Billy woke. He swallowed. You could hear it, a dry and sticky throat. He turned on the bed, squinted bleary-eyed at Nathan.

‘He wants us in the studio,’ he croaked. ‘Wait out there.’

Billy sat up, put his legs over the side of the bed, hands either side of him, head down, looking at his knees. With his short hair he looked finer-boned and frailer.

‘Fuck off, I said. Let me wake up.’

‘Billy, it’s me.’

He shaded his eyes, as though the weak light coming through the canvas was too much.

‘Kid?’

Nathan hadn’t shut the door. His ears had been ringing, now the ringing faded enough for him to hear his father’s voice in the studio. ‘I want you to call the police. Do it,’ he was saying.

‘What’s going on?’ Billy said. ‘Who’s that? Who have you brought here?’ Billy grabbed a fistful of blanket and pulled it up over his shoulders.

‘It’s my dad.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve come to let you know that we’re telling the police.’

Billy got up, the blanket slipped from him. He went across and took the tin and bottle from the sink, put them in the cupboard. Nathan went to the couch, picked up a T-shirt, held it out for Billy. Billy didn’t take the top; he eyed Nathan’s body, his clothes, his hair, his shoes.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have to tell the police.’

In the studio, an easel or large painting dropped with a loud bang.

‘I know people,’ Vern was saying. ‘You’re making a very big mistake.’

‘I don’t care if you know the fucking queen.’

‘That’s your dad?’

‘Yes.’

Billy breathed out, snatched the T-shirt from Nathan’s hand. ‘Fucking hell.’

‘Nathan?’ his dad called. ‘You all right?’

‘We’re okay.’

Getting up and moving around had made Billy short of breath. And dizzy. He leaned on the table for support. There were dark circles under his eyes, bruising around his biceps, a red mark on his shoulder, one on his neck. He regained his balance and coldly surveyed Nathan again.

‘You don’t know what you’re doing. Vern will kick me out.’

Billy turned away, went to the sink and washed his hands, splashed his face. He used his T-shirt to dry himself. The act of washing weakened him again. He sat down on a kitchen chair.

Nathan’s dad pushed the door wider and turned on the light. Billy covered his eyes, blinded by the high-watt globe.

‘You okay, Nathan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Vern says he’s ringing the police, so that should be good.’

Billy kept his face shaded, swung his head and muttered, ‘Fucking hell.’

Nathan’s dad held Nathan’s gaze.

With the light on it was clearer what the room had been. A cell.

In amongst the clothes, Nathan found a jumper. Under the bed were Billy’s sneakers. Nathan reached and got them out. Nathan’s dad followed Billy into the studio. Billy went to the windows. He was looking for any sign of the police. Vern was hovering nearby, not too close, though. He might be solidly built, but if it came down to a fistfight, Nathan’s dad would win. Vern knew it too. Nathan took the jumper and shoes to Billy. He’d sat down in a brown leather armchair. It was a high-backed, crafted piece of furniture, a prop for paintings. As Billy put on the sneakers and pulled on the top, the fluidity worked its way into his body. His voice lost the croak.

‘If the cops come it’s because you called them,’ he said accusingly.

His number one habit returned: he looked around for his smokes. Remembering seeing them, Nathan returned to the room to get them for him. He came back out and handed the packet of smokes to Billy. The lighter was inside the packet. Billy took out a smoke and lit it. Sucked in hard.

Vern went into the kitchen. They could hear him there, opening cupboards and moving things about. Billy settled deeper into the chair.

‘Terrific you feel better for warning me, but you can piss off now.’

‘We’re telling the police I shot your dad.’

‘Happy days for you.’

‘William,’ Nathan’s dad said, ‘we had to come. Nathan has to talk. We know you’ve done nothing wrong. You don’t have to hide. Nathan can clear your name.’

‘He can do that, can he? Well, fuck me.’

‘The only way to stop the police blaming you is if we talk,’ Nathan said.

‘That’s gonna work real good for you and real shit for me.’

Vern walked past with a plastic bag of rubbish from the kitchen. Billy tried to catch his eye. Vern didn’t look across.

Billy switched to stare blindly out the window, his nose wrinkled. ‘You’ve told me. I know. You’ve done the right thing. Off you go.’

‘Scotty says the Mission won’t be able to touch you if you stand up next to me and say it.’

‘Scotty doesn’t know the Mission. He’s got no fucking clue. None of you have. The cops are the Mission. Vern is the only one they can’t touch, because he knows the next rung up. And you’ve just fucked that up for me. If you don’t believe me . . .’ He looked up at Nathan’s dad, pointed his cigarette to a wall covered in photographs. In one of the pictures Vern was on the steps of the Opera House. He was bowing in front of Queen Elizabeth. In other photos he was posing with TV stars and singers, politicians. ‘Not so clever now, hey?’

Nathan’s father stared across at the photos.

‘Come with us, Billy,’ Nathan said. ‘It feels like you can’t leave, but you can. The police know you were at the market. They’re making up how it happened. They’re saying you lit the fire. They’re saying you planned to kill your dad.’

‘And that’s exactly my fucking point.’

‘How about this . . .’ Nathan’s father said. He lowered his voice and crouched in front of Billy. ‘I can ring someone who was a detective but isn’t now. He knows people in the media. He was high up in the force and knows how it works. What if I can get him to meet us, and we can go together to a news station, straight to a paper? He’ll get you on the news, in print, before the police can lay any charges, or take you away, arrest you. Say whatever it is they’re trying to stop you from saying, say whatever you have to about this man, don’t hold back, and it’ll be out there. There’s no reason to chase you if you’ve said it, nothing will be gained from keeping you quiet if you’ve already spoken. It’ll be out. They might keep trying to charge you with things, but everyone will question what they say.’

Billy didn’t immediately dismiss it. He blinked fast and wide a few times.

‘The man is a friend,’ Nathan’s father pressed, seeing he almost had him. ‘He was in charge at the start of the case. He knows it top to bottom, but he’s out, out of the force. He won’t ring the police. I know he won’t. Use that against these people,’ Nathan’s father said, pointing at the pictures on the wall, ‘everyone will listen because of that. You’ll have Nathan backing you up. This ex-detective can get the biggest reporters onto it. He’ll get it on the news tonight.’

‘It won’t make any difference. They’ll find a way.’

‘It’s all going to come out anyway. If you move first you’re ahead of them.’

‘Don’t you hate me?’ Billy said suddenly to Nathan’s father. ‘Why are you trying to help me? Don’t you know what I did?’

‘I know.’

‘So leave me alone. Don’t pretend you wanna help me.’

‘If we’re not blaming you, Billy,’ Nathan’s father said. ‘I don’t see how you can keep blaming yourself.’

Billy’s hand trembled on the way to his lips. He swallowed the smoke more than drawing it in.

Nathan’s dad stood up. He went to the desk against the wall, picked up the phone, dialled. He stared flatly when Vern appeared and began to approach. He said across at him, ‘Well, come on, keep on coming, have a go.’

Vern didn’t. He folded his arms and just watched.

Nathan’s dad turned his back on Vern, kept his voice down. Nathan heard him say Gerard’s name, heard the beach mentioned.

‘And no police,’ he finished the call with. ‘Okay.’

How Nathan wished there was a way to lock Vern in the kitchen, like he’d locked Joe in the backroom. Then Vern might start to understand. Then he might finally get it. The kitchen walls might start to feel like bars to him. If no one came when he banged and screamed, if no one heard his cries, if they walked past the window and never looked up, he’d have to start to see. Or probably not. Vern was using Billy’s fear even now, using Billy’s hesitation, twisting that; Vern opened the studio door, slid it as wide as it would go, cold air flooded in, he put his hands on his hips and stood back, as though blameless, completely faultless, as good as saying, The boy doesn’t even want to leave, the kid can’t have minded too much if he doesn’t want to go.

Billy walked slowly to the door.

He had to stop and take a breath before stepping out onto the staircase landing.

‘I won’t be able to tell them everything.’

‘Tell them as much as you can.’

‘You won’t bail on me?’

‘I promise I won’t.’

‘He’ll know,’ Billy said, looking at Nathan, ‘Jason will find out I’m not normal.’

‘I think he’ll see how normal you really are.’

A chicken or a tiger, it was hard for both to leave their cages.

A couple of days later Nathan remembered the poster he’d stashed under the car seat. With everything that had happened it had slipped his mind. Tamara was outside stacking firewood, dressed in a grey jumper and bright pink pyjama bottoms, slippers on her feet. She’d been allowed the day off school, but had a list of jobs to do instead. Morning sun covered the ground. It hadn’t warmed the air. Tamara stopped stacking when Nathan appeared outside and walked across to the car.

Nathan felt under the seat. Took the poster out. He put it under the flap of his duffel coat. The sound of a helicopter drifted in. Tamara didn’t look up. Nathan didn’t either. They craned to see down the driveway towards the gates. If the choppers were up it meant the media vans weren’t far away. Sure enough, Channel 7 was parking by the letterbox.

Nathan ducked inside, walked fast into the kitchen.

His dad was on the phone to Sarina. ‘Hasn’t the university got security? Ask for their names . . .’

Nathan veered down the hallway, a light jog into his room.

He shut the door.

A problem. The only place for January was on the back of the door. Where else? She had to be up. It was like the photo of Billy on the corkboard; Nathan’s room needed colour, spark and energy. January had as much life in her as Billy. The difficulty being, though, that Nathan’s mum came in and closed the door when she vacuumed. If not for that, he’d be the only one who ever saw the back of his bedroom door.

Nathan took the roll of sticky tape from his desk drawer. Regardless, he had to see what she looked like up there, even if she had to come back down.

Nathan took the time to get her straight. A faint scent of Scotty’s house permeated the glossy paper. He noticed that the detailing on the car was creative. Easy to see why Scotty liked it. January was – no need to say it really – beautiful. Nathan backed up and stood looking at her from the best distance. He resolved to leave her up until tomorrow. His mum was busy with everything, unlikely to give the place a clean for a little while.

Tamara had come in from stacking wood. She’d tracked in dirt. Nathan’s dad hung up the phone.

‘Tamara, wipe your bloody feet.’

‘You’re honestly yelling at me right now?’

‘William’s mum is on the TV,’ Nathan’s mum called from the lounge room.

They went through.

The media called her Mrs Benson. She was out the front of her house. It was a weatherboard place, with a steep driveway. The green car was parked under the carport. Lace curtains, a tidy garden, but not too neat. The lawn needed a mow. Gerard was standing by Mrs Benson’s shoulder. Billy’s little brother was in a pram. He had a blue bonnet on. The footage showed the crowd of reporters on the nature strip. Gerard singled out which reporter could ask the first question. Mrs Benson’s hair had been blow-waved. She was wearing high heels. She touched the corners of her mouth, checking her fingers for lipstick. Nathan’s mum raised her eyebrows at Nathan’s dad. He gave her a little frown and a small shake of his head. Mrs Benson did seem to be taking it all very well, though. She used the words I and me and my a lot. She talked about the threats she’d received, the suspicions she’d always held, the trust they’d broken in her.

‘My son was betrayed. He suffered at the hands of those men. I sent my son in good faith to the Mission. My faith is absolutely shattered.’

Nathan wondered if Gerard had told Mrs Benson to deliberately avoid using Billy’s name. Maybe all she was doing was shifting attention from him. She was better able to cope with it. Nathan sensed that Billy was in the house, not watching, turned away.

Since seeing him again, Nathan felt as though he could feel his friend, able to tap into Billy’s heart and mind. Maybe it was because they’d been in the house together, or because of the week of escape they’d shared, or because Nathan could imagine the dark compressed memories in Billy’s head, the squeeze of confusion and pain in his chest. Whatever it was, Nathan knew he had access to his friend despite their physical distance. What Nathan felt was that Billy had gone quiet. Motionless inside. Years of being strong, being fierce, had come about through winding the cogs inside him, up and up, faster and faster, tighter and tighter, louder . . . Now Billy had wound down. No one could do what he’d done forever. No one could fight that hard and that long and not reach a point of stopping. He’d wind back up eventually. It was perhaps not even up to Billy how much time that would take. For now, he was hushed. In Nathan’s mind Billy was the tiger, resting on his side, tail winding, head up, watching, out of the glare of the sun and in the cool shade of a tree.

The news report switched to footage of a church. The doors were closed. A notice taped to them.

Nathan’s mum turned the sound down.

Above the house a helicopter circled.

‘They’re not allowed that close.’

‘I’ll ring Gerard.’

‘Why are they even here? Why can’t they leave us alone?’

Tamara pointed at Nathan’s shoes. ‘It’s his fault; it’s him.’

Nathan looked down at his feet. The soles of his sneakers were dirty.

‘Don’t say that, Tamara, please. The floor doesn’t matter.’

‘Not now it doesn’t matter. If it’s his shoes it’s fine. It’s all the way down the hallway. I got yelled at, it wasn’t even me.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘And it wouldn’t be if I’d done it.’

‘We’ll leave it to dry,’ Nathan’s mum said, ‘it’ll vacuum up.’

Vacuum. Nathan could hardly believe it. Fate, something like that, was telling him to take the poster down, telling him he should have never put it up.

‘I don’t get you two,’ Tamara said.

‘We struggle to get you.’

‘I think it’s wrong the way you —’

‘We don’t care what you think.’

‘Oh my god.’

‘That’s enough. Your mother didn’t mean it. It’s hard when the media is here.’

The carpet was cream coloured. Nathan took off his shoes and carried them to his room. Dirty footprints led all the way to his door, continued as scuffs within his room.

Down in the lounge room the arguing got worse. His mum’s voice was rising. Tamara began to shout.

‘Someone has to explain things to him! Someone has to tell him he has to say something sometimes! You have to tell him when he’s doing something wrong. Sarina thinks the same thing. You two are turning him into a mental case because of the way you treat him like a mental.’

‘Don’t say that!’ Nathan’s mum screamed.

Nathan’s father came into his bedroom. He shut the door.

The one time Nathan needed for him not to do that. January was right there. Naked. On a car. Spanner between her breasts.

‘That was always going to happen,’ Nathan’s dad said. He motioned behind him. Thankfully didn’t look behind him. ‘It’s not you. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just everything.’

Nathan nodded. He felt himself sway back and forth with the action. Dared not blink. Tears would spill.

‘Are you okay?’

No matter what Nathan said or did, his father was going to see the poster. If he asked his dad to go, he’d turn around and see it, if he didn’t ask him to go, he’d eventually turn around and see it anyway. It shouldn’t matter. But it did. It shouldn’t feel scary. But it did. Nathan’s pulse was racing, fear was building, terror nipping, no amount of deep breathing was slowing it . . . His head knew his father wasn’t going to hit him. His body wasn’t listening.

The door swung open and his mum came in, Tamara too. The door flung back, hit the wall, swung forward again. Halfway closed. January was there again.

‘Pauline, no, not now.’

‘Apologise to your brother.’

‘What for?’

‘Tamara, apologise.’

‘No!’

‘Mitch, I can’t deal with her.’

‘Tamara, go to your room.’

‘You guys went mental at me!’

‘Stop saying that word. Say it again and I swear I’ll hit you!’

‘Pauline!’

She covered her mouth. Tamara spun around and reached for the door, grabbed the handle, saw the poster, halted.

She straightened her shoulders, leaned her head to the side. Tamara looked over her shoulder, clamped her teeth on her bottom lip. She grinned at Nathan. He held his sister’s gaze, saw her amusement. She strolled out of the room, pulling the door partway closed behind her as she went.

‘I bet he’s allowed to keep that too,’ she said from the hallway.

His mum and dad saw January.

They stood there in silence, staring at her.

‘This is what you took from Scotty’s?’ his father said.

Crouch, a part of Nathan was shouting, cover your head, protect your face, curl into a ball. Another part of him, a different voice, screamed hit, fight, stop this, punch it away. Nathan was caught between those impulses. He felt like a flattened piece of nothing in between them. He barely managed to whisper, ‘Yes.’

Nathan’s parents were smiling. His dad was crying, happy tears.

‘All I ever wanted was you home walking mud through the house, putting up posters in your bedroom, annoying your sisters. I didn’t dare believe it would happen. But look at you. You take my breath away, son. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of you. You don’t know how happy you make me, how happy you make us.’

It was then for Nathan, months after leaving, days in the sun, safe night after safe night, good meal after good meal, baths, warm clothes, shoes on his feet, trips in cars, phones ringing, doors unlocked, paddocks, sky, clean air, kindness, but only then, right then, that Nathan felt free enough to let go. It wasn’t until he was free that he could let himself feel how frightened he had been. Banked up, the feelings released as a torrent. They flooded over him. He heard himself cry out. The water came and came, no time to brace for it, no warning of its strength. It pushed him. He had to reach out. He had to take hold of something, to stop from being swept away. He felt his mother’s hands, felt his father pull him in. The river water wouldn’t stop. Nathan couldn’t breathe in it. It was like drowning. He could feel himself going under. His parents had him, though. They’d waded in, long ago; they’d been there since that day at the market, never left the stream, there for when he surfaced. They weren’t going to let him go. They held him up.

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2014

Text copyright © Honey Brown, 2014

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Cover design by Alex Ross © Penguin Group (Australia)

Cover photograph by Mohamad Itani / Trevillion Images
penguin.com.au

ISBN: 978-1-74253-834-1

ALSO BY HONEY BROWN

It’s Christmas morning on the edge of the rugged Mortimer Ranges. Sarah Barnard saddles Tansy, her black mare. She is heading for the bush, escaping the reality of her broken marriage and her bankrupted trail-riding business.

Sarah seeks solace in the ranges. When a flash flood traps her on Devil Mountain, she heads to higher ground, taking shelter in Hangman’s Hut.

She settles in to wait out Christmas.

A man, a lone bushwalker, arrives. Heath is charming, capable, handsome. But his story doesn’t ring true. Why is he deep in the wilderness without any gear? Where is his vehicle? What’s driving his resistance towards rescue? The closer they become the more her suspicions grow.

But to get off Devil Mountain alive, Sarah must engage in this secretive stranger’s dangerous game of intimacy.

‘One of those books that has to be read again to see how she does it.’
Lucy Sussex,Sunday Age

‘A ripper. Brown keeps the pages turning and the pulse racing with a masterful, sexy and chilling plot.’
Weekend West Australian

‘A taut suspenseful psychological drama of the best kind.’
The Hoopla

It’s only by chance that Trudy and Bruce Harrison notice the isolated Ocean View gallery on their way home. It’s not listed on any tourist pamphlet. There are no other visitors. Within the maze of rooms the couple begins to feel uneasy.

And they are right to. The next few hours will rip them from their safe, comfortable existence forever.

Bruce and Trudy escape from the gallery, bruised and brutalised. But a man is dead. Was someone else there that day? Did the attack even happen the way they remember it? Their doubts grow until they can no longer trust anyone – not even each other.

There is no return from the dark places their fear will take them. Thrilling, stylish and strikingly atmospheric, After the Darkness is an extraordinary psychological suspense.

‘Achingly powerful.’
Australian Women’s Weekly

‘Excellent.’
Sun Herald

‘Enough twists and turns, mystery and gruesome touches to keep all psychological fans satisfied.’
Weekly Times

Rebecca Toyer and Zach Kincaid each live on the outskirts of town, but come from very different sides of the tracks. When Zach’s wealthy mother goes missing, Rebecca – the truckie’s daughter – is implicated in her disappearance. In the weeks that follow, Rebecca and Zach are drawn into a treacherous, adult world. Eager to please, Rebecca finds herself in danger of living up to the schoolyard taunts she so hates, while Zach channels his feelings through the sights of his gun.

In the fading summer light, grudges are nursed and tempers fray, and as old lies unravel it seems nobody can be relied on. But beyond the fallout, the hard lessons in love and betrayal have not been wasted. Rebecca and Zach realise that judgements can be flawed – and that trust is better earnt than given.

Original, unsettling and compelling, The Good Daughter is the much-anticipated second novel from Honey Brown.

‘A force to be reckoned with . . . [Brown is] a gifted novelist and a natural writer, her style subtle, elliptical and spare. There’s something shatteringly archetypal about The Good Daughter, as though Brown has somehow hit an artery in the soul. It recalls songs, stories, movies, novels and writers from both Australia and the US, from Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy to Kenneth Cook’s classic Wake in Fright.’
Sydney Morning Herald

‘A thrilling read – one that captures the brutal essence of Australian small-town life, in which characters shift along a sliding moral scale. Honey Brown’s writing carries the same dark, atmospheric weight of Sonya Hartnett’s books, with an authenticity that will resonate with teenage as well as adult readers, particularly fans of crime fiction.’
Bookseller+Publisher

Shannon and Rohan Scott have retreated to their family’s cabin in the Australian bush to escape a virus-ravaged world. After months of isolation, Shannon imagines there’s nothing he doesn’t know about his older brother, or himself – until a stranger slips under their late-night watch and past their loaded guns.

Reluctantly the brothers take the young woman into their fold, and the dynamic within the cabin shifts. Possessiveness takes hold, loyalties are split, and trust is shattered. Before long, all three find themselves locked into a very different battle for survival.

Daring, stylish and sexy, Red Queen is a psychological thriller that will leave you breathless.

‘Riveting, atmospheric and tautly written, Red Queen is a remarkable debut.’
Michael Robotham

‘These characters are superbly drawn and Brown’s manipulation of her stylish, erotic, unusual cinematic story firmly places this novel into the welcome league of must-reads.
Courier-Mail

‘HM Brown’s Red Queen is a cracker. There’s a good chance you may miss your train or bus stop, or show up to work with Vuitton-like bags beneath your eyes from a sleepless night trying to race to the last page.’
Vogue

THE BEGINNING

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