Her eyes flung open. Damn. It was around lunchtime that she received the letter, just after she had come back from the park with Hugo. Rosie had gone pale as she read the dry words stating the date and time for the hearing to be held at the Magistrates Court in Heidelberg. She had quickly sat down, feeling faint. Luckily Hugo was watching the movie and didn’t have to witness her anxiety and fear. Rosie immediately phoned Legal Aid and fortunately Margaret, their lawyer, was in the office. This is great news, the young woman assured her, this means it will all be over soon. Rosie put down the phone, in a daze. Four weeks. It would all be over in four weeks. She was about to call Gary on his mobile and then quickly decided against it. It was then that she composed herself. She decided she wouldn’t say anything to him till Friday. It was only two days away and it would be better that they spoke about it at the end of the week, with him having the weekend to look forward to. If she told him today he would just get drunk and not be able to sleep and be in a temper for days.

She had felt calm as she made the decision, but that had not lasted long. She couldn’t help thinking of what lay ahead. Margaret had explained that they would not have to speak unless the presiding judge asked for clarification from any of the parties. She wished she could get up on the witness stand and tell the world how that animal had hurt her child. That’s not the way it works, Margaret kept explaining, over and over, this is a matter between the police and the accused.

She rang Shamira straight after receiving the letter. Her initial impulse, as always, had been to ring Aisha, but it was early in the afternoon and Aish would probably be still finishing surgery, not able to talk. In any case, it was too complicated to ring Aisha. Maybe Hector already knew; his cousin, that bastard, might have already spoken to them.

So she’d called Shamira. Her friend had responded exactly the way she had wanted her to, with warm, uncompromising, unquestioning support. That was what Rosie needed at the moment.

Damn, she mouthed again, sinking further under the water so it lapped over her chin, her lips, her brow. She could open her mouth, let the water flood into her, take her over, fill her lungs and guts and cells till she exploded. She jerked her body upright, splashing water across the floor and the tiles. Fuck that animal. She couldn’t relax—she didn’t want to. This was her fight, her battle. Fuck him. She hoped he would be crucified, that the world would know the crime he had committed against her son, against her, against her family. The waves of fury and righteousness were intoxicating. She gently squeezed her right nipple and a thin ooze of milk slithered across the surface of the water.

There was a loud rapping at the door. ‘The water’s going to be fucking freezing.’

She dipped herself under one more time and then stood up in the bath. Gary had shoved open the door. She turned around and faced him, her smile innocent.

‘Can you pass the towel?’

She caught the desire on his face. It was like a reflex, animal in its urgency. The water was dripping off her. She flattened her damp hair against her scalp, took the towel he offered her and stepped onto the bathroom mat. She enjoyed him watching as she dried herself.

‘Get in,’ she urged him. ‘It’s just going to get colder.’

He stripped quickly. She pretended to ignore him, bending over the sink, drying her arms, neck and shoulders. His work overalls had dropped to his feet and she could see he had the beginning of a hard-on. He pulled off his singlet and underwear, tossed them on the floor, and stepped into the bath.

Rosie turned around. ‘Warm enough?’

He nodded, a sly, boyish grin on his face. That grin was Hugo’s, exactly the same. And just like Hugo, it came across Gary’s face when he wanted something from her. His cock was jutting out of the water. He touched her hand and pointed towards his groin. From the lounge room she could hear Hugo calling her. She hesitated; Gary’s touch had become a grip, his fingers beginning to twist around her wrist.

She pulled away. ‘Hugo wants me,’ she whispered.

Gary’s fingers uncoiled. She did not look at him again. She wrapped the towel around her, closing the door shut behind her.

‘I want some of that.’

Rosie frowned. ‘Don’t, Gaz.’

‘I do. I want some of your boobie.’

Hugo dropped her nipple and looked mutinously at his father. ‘No. It’s mine.’

‘No it isn’t.’

Hugo looked at her for encouragement. ‘Whose boobies are they?’

‘They belong to all of us,’ she said, laughing.

‘Mine,’ he demanded.

Gary plonked himself next to her and lowered her blouse. He pinched at her nipple, hurting her, and sunk his lips over it. There was a jolt of pain and then a numbing, agreeable tingle as his teeth gently slid over her nipple.

Hugo was looking at his father in astounded horror. He began to pummel Gary with his fists. ‘Stop! Stop!’ he screamed. ‘You’re hurting Mummy.’

Gary raised his head. ‘Nah,’ he teased. ‘She likes it.’

‘Stop it,’ the child demanded, his face now twisted with rage. She could tell he was about to cry. She shoved Gary aside and placed Hugo on her lap. Gary shook his head and got to his feet. She could hear him getting a beer out of the fridge. Hugo dropped her nipple and looked up at her. The poor little guy, he was scared.

‘Is Daddy angry with us?’

‘No, no,’ she cooed. ‘Of course not. Daddy loves us.’

When Gary returned with his beer, he sat on the armchair across from them and picked up the remote. The television screen screamed to white noise, then a news broadcast blasted through the room. Turn down the volume, she mouthed to her husband. For a few seconds Gary did nothing, then the volume dipped. Hugo looked up, shocked, as Nemo and his friends had disappeared from view. He looked across at his father, his mouth opening and shutting—just like a fish, thought Rosie—then he settled back in her arms and took her breast into his mouth. She stroked his hair as they all watched the news together.

Rosie did what she always did when her husband expected unquestioning obedience to his whims, she steered a median course, but reigned him in—gradually, so he wouldn’t necessarily notice. The television was never on during the day when she was alone with Hugo; then she only allowed him access to videos and DVDs. She would also open a book or a magazine whenever Gary turned on the TV, a subtle protest which she believed he did not notice but would have an influence on Hugo. The television must not become the centre of their domestic life. She looked over to her husband. Gary was sucking on his beer, staring vacantly at the screen. She leaned over and picked up an old Meccano set she had found at the op-shop and began to slot the pieces into one another, constructing a lean, tall tower. Hugo disengaged from her nipple and, more importantly, his eyes drifted away from the television to the game his mother was playing. The boy began to add pieces to the tower himself. Rosie stole another glace at her husband. He was worn out, all he wanted at that moment was oblivion.

She knew she was right to not say a word about the court notice till Friday night. On any school night Gary was tired and liable to fly into a fit, lose his temper, colour everything with pessimism. We should never have gone to the police, he would snarl at her, you made me do this. On Friday evening, with the work week over, she could talk to him and he would listen. She had made up her mind as soon as she had seen the antiseptic bureaucratic letter. Their case had a number, a code: D41/543. That simple fact could set Gary off. That meaningless number could come to represent the banal evil of authority; it could mean that they were now locked in the grip of an unforgiving, oppressive system. And it would all be her fault. Paranoia, anger, resentment—Gary couldn’t cope with it knowing he had to work the next day. On Friday night, with the weekend ahead, he could be tender, he could be sweet, he could be kind.

Fuck, Rosie thought to herself, watching her son build the tower, defying gravity as the structure swayed—I wish we had more money.

She took a quick peek at the TV. The weather report was on and she noticed the date on the bottom of the screen. Christ, she realised, it was her bloody birthday today. She could have sworn that she didn’t speak out loud but Hugo looked up from the table and the tower, and asked, ‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ It sounded foolish, it was silly superstition, but she believed that she could sometimes read her son’s thoughts and he could read hers. Not all the time, of course not, but every so often it did seem to be the case.

‘Nothing, sweetheart,’ she answered. ‘I just remembered it’s your gran’s birthday.’

His grandmother meant nothing to him. It wasn’t the way it should be, but there was nothing Rosie could do about it. Hers was not a loving family, and nor was her husband’s.

Again, Hugo surprised her with his presentiment. ‘Grandma’s scary. She doesn’t love me.’

‘Sweetie, that’s so not true. She loves you but she doesn’t know how to show it.’

Gary snorted. Please don’t, she silently pleaded, don’t make him hate my family.

But encouraged by his father, Hugo was nodding in stubborn assent. ‘She yelled at me.’

How often had he met his grandmother? Three times, and the first of those he had not yet been a year old, so he could have no memory of that meeting. That’s you, Mother, Rosie thought ruefully, cold and distant. The remorse she felt was not guilt. It was a long time since she had connected that emotion to the way she thought about her mother. It was just so sad: her mother was a peevish, lonely old woman.

Rosie looked at her son. She wanted to say to him, Your grandmother is incapable of love. But she doesn’t hate you or dislike you. She’s just not interested in you. He was way too young to understand, so she grabbed him and pulled him onto her lap.

‘Huges,’ she said, burying her face in his tummy. ‘Your grandmother loves you very much.’

It would not yet be six o’clock in Perth; there were still a couple of hours to go before the sun set over the Indian Ocean. But she knew her mother was ruled by routine, loved the order and sanity and safeness of it, and refused to answer the phone after seven-thirty. Rosie winced at the thought of leaving a message on her mother’s machine. She could well imagine what her mother’s opinion of that would be. You always leave things to the last minute.

‘I’m just going to make a call,’ she announced. Neither of them were taking any notice of her.

She picked up the hands-free and sat cross-legged on the kitchen table, under the poster of Wild at Heart. The table was her favourite piece of furniture, made of solid, stained redwood, both long and wide so it allowed for Gary to spread the paper across it in the morning, for crayons and notebooks and pencils to be sprawled alongside. It allowed them to be a family around it. She also loved it because Gary had made it.

Make the call, she pushed herself, make the call. Her fingers flicked across the touchpad, then abruptly she hung up and dialled another number.

Bilal picked up the phone.

She wanted to call Aish, but it wasn’t the time. She could not have stood it if Hector had picked up the phone.

‘Hi, Rosie. Sammi’s just finishing putting the kids to bed. I’ll grab her.’ Bil’s deep baritone contrasted with the lazy clip of his Australian accent, an unmistakable black accent, a jaunty melody in the vowels, distinctly different from the closed-mouthed thud of the white man’s tongue.

Shamira came on the line. ‘Sheez, why did we ever have children?’

‘Who was it this time?’

‘Ibby. Sonja was an angel. Ibby just complains all the time now. He doesn’t want to eat anything, he doesn’t want to go to bed on time, he doesn’t want to sleep in the same room as his sister. Is it just boys, are they all bloody whingers?’

They continued to talk, about their children, their husbands. Rosie looked over to the kitchen clock and reluctantly said goodbye. She and Shamira had talked for close to an hour. Hugo and Gary were still in the lounge room, probably both asleep. She must ring her mother. Her fingers flew quickly across the phone.

Anouk’s answering machine kicked in, her friend’s voice sounding cool, bored. Rosie began to leave a message when Anouk picked up.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey to you too.’

It was weeks since they had spoken.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’ Rosie tucked the phone under her chin. She went to roll herself a cigarette with Gary’s tobacco, but realised she didn’t need a cigarette. She was no longer a smoker.

‘Actually, we just received a letter from the courts. They’ve set a date for the hearing.’

‘Yeah?’ Anouk’s tone gave nothing away.

A flare of fierce anger took hold of Rosie. She wanted her friend to speak, to say something. She did not answer.

‘Are you nervous?’

‘Of course I am.’

Rosie realised that this was the first time they had spoken in ages without the conciliatory presence of Aisha. She wished she hadn’t called, she was feeling almost sick with nerves, and afraid of showing her anger. But fuck it, she wanted Anouk’s support.

‘Good luck.’

Now she wanted to cry. The relief was a release. She rubbed a tear away from the corner of her eye. ‘Thanks. I really appreciate that.’

‘Don’t get too confident, alright?’

That was so like Anouk: always a sting, always the bloody pessimist. But even so, she was heartened by her friend’s backing.

‘That’s what Gary tells me.’

‘Well, he’s right.’ Anouk’s tone again betrayed nothing. ‘He’ll be glad it will all soon be over, I guess.’

There’s no way she’d confess to not yet telling Gary. It would be humiliating.

‘What are you up to tonight?’

‘I’m feeding Rhysbo his lines for tomorrow. I can’t believe I wasted so many years writing that shit.’ Anouk laughed out loud. ‘He’s giving me the finger.’

‘It’s Mum’s birthday today.’

‘Have you called her yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Hon, just do it and get it over with.’ This time Anouk’s voice was warm, encouraging.

Rosie felt the safe, sweet pleasure of shared history. ‘I know, I know. Can you believe that I still get nervous after all these years?’

‘They fuck you up your mum and dad.’ Anouk’s tone firmed, became cool again, took on an almost brutal directness. ‘Just call her. She’s going to make you feel like shit. But that’s just what mothers do.’

That was not what mothers did. She would not be that kind of mother. ‘Rachel wasn’t like that.’

‘I know, I know. My mother was a saint.’ Anouk was being deliberately sarcastic.

‘Alright, I’ve got to go. I’m going to call her.’

‘Good girl.’ Anouk hesitated, then rushed through her next few words. ‘Do you want to call back?’

‘No, no, it’ll be fine. We should all get together.’

All meant herself and Anouk and Aisha. Without the men. Reluctantly, Rosie had to acknowledge that for Anouk that would also mean getting together without Hugo. Without the boys.

‘Next week.’

‘You’re on.’ Rosie was about to say goodbye but Anouk had already hung up.

The frayed purple spine of the photo album instantly took her back to a time before Hugo, before Gary. She could still remember buying the album at a small, dusty newsagency in Leederville. She had been working as a waitress in the city, sharing a house with a morose couple called Ted and Danielle. She was doing too much speed, floating, directionless. It was the summer that Aisha had moved to Melbourne. Rosie swiftly flicked through the pages and found the photograph she was looking for. Jesus, she looked so young, she looked like such a slutty surfie chick. Well, she had been.

She was in the bright tangerine bikini that had been her favourite; the hallucinogenic fluoro intensity of the colour seemed shocking now. She was smiling ecstatically at the camera, pointing her chin forward because she had read in some teen magazine that this was the thing to do. Rachel was standing next to her, her bikini top a dull blue, a man’s white business shirt draped casually over her shoulders.

Rachel had no need to jut out her chin. She looked calm, assured, a half-smile that seemed now to Rosie to be mocking her younger self ‘s exuberant grin. Rachel was holding a cigarette. They were in Anouk’s house, the one Rachel had finally died in, that overlooked the beach at Fremantle. Anouk had been trying to be a good friend earlier on the phone. There was no similarity between Rachel and her own mother. Rachel could be cruel, yes, but only in her honesty, never as a weapon. Rachel was smart and adventurous and cosmopolitan. She took risks. And she expected her daughters to take risks. Yes, in that way she was hard. It had been Rachel who had told her to get out of Perth, to follow Aish to Melbourne. And she had expressed it in her abrupt, direct way. Get out of fucking Perth, girl. You’re just treading water here. You’re going to end up a boring, pampered lawyer’s housewife on Peppermint Grove, or worse, some bimbo wife of an ordinary dumb-as-dog shit bloke in Scarborough. Get out now, girl. Straight talking. Anouk was definitely Rachel’s daughter.

It was cruel. Unfair. The cancer had spread across both breasts and she had died within a year; Rachel who loved life, who was unafraid, so unlike her own mother.

She had to ring. Rosie gently shut the photo album and picked up the phone again.

There was just one ring, then the insistent beeping of the interstate connection, and her mother answered.

‘Happy birthday.’

‘Rosalind, it’s late.’

She would not apologise. ‘It took ages to get Hugo to bed.’

‘It’s much too late for him.’

I will not answer her, I will not answer her. ‘Did you have a nice birthday?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rosalind. I’m over seventy years of age. Birthdays ceased to matter to me a long time ago.’

It baffled Rosie how her mother could have lived all her life in the backblocks of Perth and still manage to sound so English, so proper.

Though it was an accent that Rosie had come to understand while living in London, it would be unrecognisable to anyone actually from the British Isles. It was an accent learned from the ABC and the BBC World Service generations ago.

‘Did Joan call around?’ Joan was her mother’s best friend. Joan was her mother’s only friend, she thought spitefully.

‘She did.’

Ask about your grandchild. Will you ask about your grandchild? ‘Did Eddie call?’

‘No, Edward did not call.’

‘I’m sure he will.’

The sniff from the other end of the line was almost coarse. ‘Your brother will be propped against a bar getting drunk. I doubt he realises what day of the week it is, let alone it is his mother’s birthday.’

Such spite, such sourness in her tone. Rosie felt her prickliness evaporate, felt only pity for her mother. She was relieved; soon the conversation would be over and there would be nothing to regret.

‘Joan is the only one who thinks of me.’

She should answer, I called. She should say, you make it so difficult. She could say, we don’t call because we don’t like you. What Rosie did instead was not answer at all. Soon, soon it would be over.

‘Your brother is a drunk. The men in our family are all drunks and the women in our family all marry them.’

Rosie felt herself blush. And as she felt the flush of warmth travel across her brow, her cheeks and neck, any sympathy she felt for the lonely old woman disintegrated. You malignant old bitch. It was not true. Gary was not an alcoholic. To drink at all was a sin in her mother’s fucked-up middle-class Christian worldview. Why couldn’t she be honest? The real reason she couldn’t stand him was because he was a tradesman.

‘Okay, I just rang to say happy birthday.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I’ll let you get to bed.’

‘You really should be putting Hugo to bed earlier.’

She could not think fast enough, could not find a way to disentangle herself from her mother’s trap. So she did the wisest thing. ‘He’s usually in bed much earlier,’ she lied. ‘Maybe he’s a little sick.’

‘Are you working? Mothers always find the need to create problems for themselves when they’re not working.’

Yeah, Mother, I am fucking working. I’m raising my child. ‘I’ll find work next year, when Hugo starts kinder.’

‘Please don’t tell me you’re still breastfeeding?’

That could only be answered by another lie. ‘No.’

‘Thank God for that. I don’t understand this obsession young women have to return to the days of being cows. I couldn’t bear breastfeeding.’

I bloody know.

‘When did you stop?’

‘Four months ago.’ She made it up.

‘Totally ridiculous. My God, he’s four isn’t he?’

‘Just turned four.’ She couldn’t resist it. ‘You didn’t call on his birthday.’

Rosie quickly glanced up at the doorway. Gary was stumbling towards the loo.

‘I sent a card. Is that why you called me? To hurt me?’ Her mother’s tone was furious.

Game, set and match. There was nothing else to do but that which her mother expected. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Good night, Rosalind. Thank you for calling.’ With that the phone went dead.

For a moment Rosie couldn’t move. She sat with the phone against her ear, listening to the phantom hiss of electricity. She slammed the phone on the table, feeling sixteen again, wanting to fuck a boy, fuck a man, fuck anyone, drink, shoot drugs, get paralytic, steal from a shop, curse and scream, anything to upset her, anything to make her mother hate Rosie as much as she hated her. She reached out for her husband’s tobacco pouch. Smoking would have to do.

‘You don’t need that.’

She felt caught, guilty; but her hand did not move away. ‘I just got off the phone with Mum. Yes I do.’

They stared at one another. She couldn’t read her husband’s face. Don’t yell at me, don’t be a smart-arse, don’t get pissy. Gary walked over, leaned down and kissed the top of her head, squeezing her shoulder as he did so. The tenderness made her teary. He wiped at her eyes, took the pouch from her hand and started rolling a cigarette for her.

‘She makes me feel like shit. She makes me feel like I’m a bad daughter, a bad wife, a bad mother.’

Gary snorted. ‘You know that’s bullshit. You’re the best mother. You know that.’

She was a good mother. She did know that, though it had taken so long to discover. Being a mother was what had given her a sense of completion, had made sense of the anxiety and rage and fear that had so long dominated her life. Being Hugo’s mother had finally given her peace. She sucked on the cigarette, prised a strand of tobacco from between her front teeth. She wanted to take advantage of this moment of rare, unguarded affection to say to Gary, please give me another child. She bit back the words, knowing he would withdraw from her, become angry. She feared the year to come, when Hugo would go to school and she would be left alone again. She knew her husband thought of the coming year as an opportunity in which she could find work and he could cut back his days, take up his art again. His bloody useless painting. They both needed to be working next year, to save up for a house. They needed more money.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Gary murmured to her. ‘Hugo’s asleep. You coming ?’

‘In a moment.’

He kissed her on the lips. She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard him make his way to the bedroom.

The smile on her face dropped away and she stared down at the phone. You’re wrong, she swore at her mother. I am a good mother. I am.

For the first six months, every time she held Hugo she shook with terror. She was convinced that she would kill him. Every time he cried she felt herself shrinking further from him. He was an alien being; he was going to destroy her.

For six months after the birth, she had continued to go to yoga, had kept wanting to meet regularly with Anouk and Aisha, had wanted to sleep, drink, take drugs, have sex, had wanted to be young.

She did not want to be a mother. She’d felt as if she were about to break in two, that she was no longer Rosie but this strange, evil beast that could not feel love for the child it had brought into the world. She hated reminding herself of it: God, how she had hated the child. She couldn’t even call him by his name. She distrusted him, was scared of him. She must have been mad, must have gone mad. The uncontrollable sobbing, the fantasies of drowning him in his bath, of snapping his neck.

For six months she had been insane and during that time she had not said a word about it to anyone—not to her husband, to Aisha, to the mothers’ group, to her family, not anyone. She had not dared. She’d smiled and pretended to love her baby. Then one morning she had been frantically trying to organise herself to go to yoga. The child was screaming, crying incessantly. Feeding, lullabies, screaming, nothing would stop the terrible sound of him. She felt a moment’s strange calm. She would let him cry, leave him in the house, the shitty little one-room box they were renting in Richmond, leave him there, let the little prick cry himself out, she wanted nothing of it. She was at the front door, keys in her hand, her sportsbag over her shoulder. She was going to get into the car and drive. Let him howl, let the little bastard howl himself to death. Let him choke.

She had opened the door and looked out to the street. It was summer, there was sunlight and no breeze and there was no one around. She had stood in the doorway for a good ten minutes, her bag still over her shoulder, her fist clenched around the keys, looking out to the world. You are not free, she’d told herself. If you want to survive this, if you don’t want to kill yourself or kill your child, you must realise you are not free. From now on, until he can walk away from you, your life means nothing—his life is all that matters. It was then that she had stepped back and shut the door. She shut out the street, the world. She had picked up the screaming baby and hugged it close. Hugo, Hugo, it’s alright, she whispered. It’s going to be fine. I’m here.

He was the focus, he was the centre, he possessed her body. She lost herself in him. That’s how she had set herself free. Not that the pain had ceased then. It was as if in the savage animal agonies of giving birth to Hugo a sadness had entered her that was to never go away. He had broken her, shattered her girlhood self. But she managed, slowly, with effort and determination, to put the pieces back together. The only evidence of the melancholy now was when Hugo or Gary were not physically with her, when she was left alone. For Gary had been wonderful in those first few months, had nursed her, comforted her, praised her, held her, saved her. It was always best between them when it was just her and Gary, when they were separate from the world. Without Gary, without her child, she could no longer survive in this world.

‘Lov-er.’ Shamira elongated the word, her tone playful, teasing. ‘My, that’s such a big word.’

Rosie couldn’t help laughing. ‘No other word fits. I couldn’t really call him a boyfriend.’

And it didn’t. Qui had been twenty years older than her; lover was the only word that fitted. She was conscious that Shamira was hanging expectantly on the phone. Of course, Qui would mean nothing to her.

‘It was nothing. It was just odd. I haven’t thought about him in years.’

‘How did Gary take the news about the hearing?’

‘He was fine. He was happy.’

And he had seemed pleased, had quickly read the notice and given it back to his wife. Good, he said. I’ve been wanting this fucking thing to be over with for months. He walked over to the fridge and pulled out a beer. She’d been wary, watching him, but he betrayed no signs of anger or resentment. It had been a perfect Friday night. Fish and chips, falling asleep on each other watching crap English detective programs on the ABC.

‘Can I tell Bil?’

‘Of course.’

Shamira wasn’t interested in Qui. She was right not to be. Qui was over twenty years ago. Qui was before marriage and child, before Melbourne. He was another life. She heard Hugo running helterskelter down the corridor towards her and she knew Gary would be up any minute.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘I’ll see you at ten.’

‘Sure,’ Rosie assented. She put down the phone, put on the coffee, prepared toast for Hugo, whose clear blue eyes looked up at her, pleading hunger. ‘Boobies,’ he pleaded. She loved it when he said that. It was her favourite word.

Gary hardly said a word to her throughout breakfast, and bolted out the door as soon as he finished his coffee. She knew exactly why he was pissed off: he never liked it when she accompanied Shamira on her house-hunting. He started bickering with her as soon as she’d got off the phone to her on Thursday night.

‘Why are you going with them?’

‘To have a look?’

‘Why?’ He had been immediately suspicious.

‘Sammi wants a third person there, another opinion.’

‘Where are they looking?’

‘Thomastown.’

‘What the fuck for?’

‘She wants them to be on the same train line as her mum. I think it makes sense.’

‘Thomastown is a hole.’

‘It’s an affordable hole.’

He had pounced. ‘Don’t get any fucking ideas.’

‘I’m not.’

He looked at her with fierce distrust. ‘I’m not having a fucking mortgage round my neck. It’s bad enough with a kid. I won’t do it.’

‘I know,’ she snapped.

‘Good. And I promised Vic I’d go around to his place on Saturday morning. He’s got some songs he wants to play me. You’ll have to get one of the kids to look after Hugo.’

Thank God for Connie and Richie. That had been the only good thing about that awful barbecue, getting to really know those kids. Connie had rung up the day after Hugo was bashed, to find out how he was. They were good kids—those kids were saving her life. Fuck Vic and his songwriting. It was on a par with Gary and his art. You are bloody tradies, just workers—fucking deal with it.

She stayed calm. ‘Fine, I will. I’ll call Richie—Connie works Saturdays. ’

But Gary had already stormed off, into the backyard. She found herself breathing rapidly, panting, really scared.

Hugo came to the door, staring up at her quizzically. ‘Did you and Dadda fight?’

‘Of course not.’ She picked him up in her arms. ‘We weren’t fighting.’

‘You were.’

‘No, I promise.’

His face scrunched up, his eyes wary, and suddenly he reminded her of her own father. She hugged him close.

‘I promise, we weren’t fighting.’

A fucking house, Gary. A house. I deserve a fucking house.

She often avoided the house, especially in summer, with the school year over and time stretching ahead. She had hated the toxic wall of silence between her mother and father. Later, older and experienced with men, she found a grudging respect for the way her lovers could scream at her, abuse her, make their venom and anger clear. She could never be like that—it was impossible for her to even form the words. She would shut down. She knew it wasn’t healthy. That was one thing she was teaching Hugo: to be clear, to express himself, to not be repressed. Every emotion is legitimate, that was a mantra she whispered to him even before he had mastered speech. Every emotion is legitimate.

That final year before her parents divorced their house was almost explosive with emotion, things unsaid. She couldn’t bear to live in it. Thank God for the beach.

We’re losing the house, Eddie had told her. It was so like Eddie; he had sounded offhand, indifferent. That was the reason Aish had given about why she and Eddie split up. Your brother has no passion for anything, I mean, not for one bloody thing. Not cars, not the beach, not a career, not school, not girls. He’s got no blood in him.

We’re losing the house, Eddie said to her, almost yawning, Dad’s gambled everything away. He’s lost his job—Mum didn’t even know. We’ve got nothing.

Where are we going to go? she asked him, terrified. He shrugged, jumped off the beach wall, picked up his surfboard and headed off to the water. Where are we going to go? she screamed after him. She stayed there, sitting alone on the wall, watching her brother paddle his board out to the thin line where the water and sky touched.

‘Yo, little man.’

Hugo was jumping, struggling to reach the latch on the screen door but it was just out of his reach.

‘Hang on, hang on,’ she laughed. Rosie slid the latch across and opened the door. She leaned in and kissed Richie on the cheek. The boy blushed. Hugo immediately took the older boy’s hand and pulled him along the corridor, heading to the backyard. Richie turned around and mouthed, Sorry.

She waved them on. ‘Go play,’ she called out.

Shamira’s sister, Kirsty, was going to look after Sonja and Ibby. Kirsty and her sister shared the same heavy-lidded eyes and pale Irish, oval face, but beyond that the contrast between the two women was staggering. Kirsty’s T-shirt was low-cut, the logo of a Balinese beer stretched tight across her ample breasts. She was wearing skin-tight black jeans, sandals, and her blonde-tipped dark hair fell messily across her cheeks and down her shoulders. Shamira claimed that Kirsty had long ago accepted her sister’s conversion, but the younger woman’s suburban trashy look seemed a deliberate and pointed protest. Surely the choice of a T-shirt advertising alcohol could not be accidental? What was clear was that Ibby and Sonja adored their aunt, both of them vying for her affection and attention, Sonja sitting on Kirsty’s lap, doodling in an exercise book, Ibby standing at her side, leaning in, seeking to be enveloped by her. Rosie sat down across from the trio as Bilal came into the room, holding a pair of boots in his hands. He nodded to Rosie, sat down and pulled on the shoes. He turned to his son. ‘You are going to listen to everything your aunt says, you got that?’

Ibby nodded purposefully, his boy’s face suddenly serious, determined.

Bilal winked at him. ‘Good fella.’

To Rosie, the boy’s answering smile was full of joy and pride.

She let out a deep sigh. Shamira turned around, her eyebrows raised in question. Rosie shook her head apologetically, briefly patted her friend’s shoulder, and mouthed, I’m alright. It was the news of the imminent hearing, that was what had done it. She shouldn’t jinx herself, not doubt the inherent rightness of the decision she had made. She was a good person and her unease around Bilal was not just because he was Aboriginal. She remembered him as a young man—she’d met him when she first arrived in Melbourne. He always used to laugh then, a sing-song in his voice, an attractive, youthful wildness. But he seemed to be wound up all the time, ready to uncoil with ferocious violence. She had not liked him, had feared him, even. Now in his forties, Bilal seemed to have no connection with that youth. She trusted this man, she preferred him, but she rarely heard his laugh. She was convinced that he detested her, that he still saw her as the silly white girl who’d come over from Perth and couldn’t look him in the eye. In all that time they had barely exchanged a few dozen sentences. But now she was becoming friends with his wife, and she wanted to prove to him that she was no longer that silly, thoughtless white girl, that she had left all that a lifetime ago.

The unrelenting flat suburban grid of the northern suburbs surrounded them. The further they drove, the more Rosie thought the world around them was getting uglier, the heavy grey sky weighing down on the landscape, crushing down on them. The lawns and nature strips they passed were yellowing, grim, parched. The natural world seemed leached of colour. She thought it was because this world was so far from the breath of the ocean, that it was starved for air. She understood her husband’s resistance to even thinking about living here, to settling into this dreary suburban emptiness. But it was all they could afford. Unless they moved to the country. Gary refused to even think of it as a possibility, but it would be good for Hugo, good for Gary’s painting. But she knew he wouldn’t hear of it. She looked at Bilal’s reflection in the window. Here was a good man, a great father, an adoring husband. For a dizzying moment, the kind that took her breath away, she wished that she was the woman sitting next to the man in the front seat. She wished she was part of the couple going to look at a house. She shivered.

She leaned forward and placed a hand over her friend’s shoulder. ‘Are you excited?’

Shamira shrugged. ‘We don’t let ourselves get excited. We’ve been disappointed too often.’

Bilal’s hand reached across the gearstick to grasp his wife’s. ‘We’ll find a place, hon, don’t you worry.’ His voice was gruff, embarrassed. Rosie sat back in her seat. He didn’t want her with them, it was obvious. She shouldn’t have come along—this was an activity for husband and wife. But what other opportunity would come her way? She didn’t want to look for houses on her own, to look for a home on her own.

The street was a small cul-de-sac a few blocks back from High Street. There was a school around the corner; the kids would be able to walk to it. The house itself was a low-ceilinged, square brick-veneer built in the early seventies. An auction sign was hoisted above the wire fence: Family Convenience. Rosie chuckled to herself. How Gary would hate that phrase. Family values. Working families. Family First. ‘Family anything’ he hated. Some neighbours were hanging over their own fences, looking on dispassionately at the steady stream of people walking in and out of the house. One of them was an old Greek-looking man, and further up the street a group of kids were playing soccer, chaperoned by an African woman, her head scarfed, anxiously keeping watch on the traffic. It would be a quiet street. She wouldn’t be afraid of Hugo playing outside in such a street.

The house itself was drab, there was no other word for it. The tenants had moved out and the place seemed like a shell to Rosie, devoid of personality or charm. The rooms were small, the carpet faded, and there was a distinct smell of damp in the bathroom and laundry. However, it was on a large block, with a decent-sized work shed perched precariously in the far corner. The yard had not been tended properly for years; the small garden beds were full of sickly looking weeds. But Rosie could tell that her friends loved the yard, the space, the possibilities. Quietly, she slipped back into the house, feeling like a fool, the only one on her own. The place was packed with young couples flushing the toilet, tapping the thin walls, measuring the dimensions of the rooms. She walked back out through the front door. When she had first walked in, the round-cheeked estate agent had offered her a leaflet and she had refused. He was still standing under the porch and he went to offer her one again, before recognising her, smiling, and dropping back. On an impulse she stretched out her hand. The photograph on it had a view of the residence taken from the most appealing angle, shot from below to give the house much-needed height and width. She turned the leaflet over and examined the plan. There were only two bedrooms; the kids would have to sleep together, but that was no different to the arrangement in the flat Shamira and Bilal rented in Preston.

‘You interested in Thomastown?’ There was a note of sly cynicism in the estate agent’s tone, as if he had examined Rosie closely, that he’d noticed her clothes, though obviously op-shop, were put together stylishly, that he’d observed she wore expensive Birkenstock sandals.

She avoided the question. ‘How much do you think it will go for?’

The agent’s reply was cautious, speculative. ‘Two hundred and thirty to two hundred and sixty. But.’ He did not need to add anything on to that damn but. Two hundred and thirty to two hundred and sixty—a bargain, close to shops, schools, train. A bargain that she could not afford and one that would most likely go for much more than the price quoted. Three hundred friggin’ thousand dollars. For this dump, for this distillation of banal, ugly suburbia? She handed back the leaflet.

‘Are you looking for an investment property?’ The man slipped a card out of his pocket and handed it to Rosie. ‘Call me any time.’

Was he flirting? What was he? Twenty-five? Younger? She was sure he was being flirtatious and she found the thought both gratifying and absurd. She looked down at the card in her hand. Lorenzo Gambetto.

‘Thank you, Lorenzo.’

‘Any time.’

‘I’m just here with friends.’

‘Ah, yes. I noticed the couple.’ His tone was even, offhand, but she caught the inflection of curiosity. The couple. She had been aware of it from the moment Shamira and Bilal had got out of the car. The stares, most discreet, but some rude, a few even threatening. The man was obviously an Aborigine, the woman a Muslim, but with the complexion and face of a stereotypical Aussie working-class girl. Who are they?

She tactfully turned the question back onto Shamira. ‘What did you think?’

‘There’s only two bedrooms but we can only afford two bedrooms, unless we find a place much further out. But I want to be close to Mum and Kirsty, and Bilal wants to be close to work. I could easily live here.’ Shamira’s eyes were bright, enthusiastic.

Rosie knew exactly what to say. ‘I thought it was a real nice place. The street seemed really welcoming, lots of kids, and you’ve got a primary school around the corner.’

‘There’s also the high school up the road, for later on.’

Rosie smiled at Bilal, wondering if he could read through it, see the disbelief it was shielding. How long would you live here if you got it? How long could you bear to live here?

‘It’s perfect.’

She half-listened in the car on the way back, aware of her friends’ excitement, their apprehension and nervousness. She was wondering how to convince Gary to even begin looking for a house together, to just turn up to inspections.

Spring Street turned into St Georges Road and the skyline of Melbourne suddenly came into view. This was where she wanted to be, this had been her world for years, where she dreamed of buying a house. But if some shit-box in Thomastown was going for three hundred grand then there was no way they could afford to buy here. The inner north. The cafés. Her favourite shops. The pool. The tram rides into Smith Street and Brunswick Street. The luxury of the Yarra River and the Merri Creek for long walks. It was unfair—it was here that they belonged.

‘So when’s the auction?’

‘In a month.’

The weekend after the hearing. It would be an enormous week. Bilal would be full-time at work, Shamira would be doing all the running around. Rosie had no idea what was involved, but she assumed there would be banks to visit, lawyers, estate agents, God knows what.

Shamira read her thoughts, turned around, grabbed her hand. ‘I’ll be there.’

Rosie could not believe how grateful she felt.

They all looked up when she entered the shed. She felt as if she had intruded on some masculine game, as if she had walked into an exclusive club. Gary’s face was expressionless. Richie, who was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, a pile of magazines across his lap, looked up at her, his mouth open, shocked, guilty. Hugo’s face expressed only uncomplicated adoration and pleasure. He rushed at her and she lifted him up, but in doing so almost stumbled back, had to support herself on the frame of the door. He was getting bigger, he no longer fitted snugly into her arms. His body was separating from hers and she felt a twitch of need; wished he could be a baby again, a tiny thing that fitted perfectly into her. She kissed her son once, twice, three times, then set him gently back on his feet.

‘Mummy,’ he exclaimed. ‘We’ve been looking at boobies.’

Richie had swiftly snapped shut an open magazine when she’d come in, but she immediately saw what the pile on his lap was: Gary’s collection of Playboys, a box he had purchased at a flea market in Frankston when they had first begun dating. The box had travelled everywhere with them since. The editions were largely from the late seventies and eighties, long past the magazine’s heyday; they looked completely innocent these days. Still, what the fuck did Gary think he was doing? Showing centrefolds to a child and a teenage boy? Didn’t he realise how perverse that could seem?

Gary took a final deep drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out on the dirt floor. ‘Can you believe Rich has never seen a Playboy before? ’ Gary’s wink was defiant, challenging. ‘But I guess there’s no need now, is there? He’s got the internet.’

At that, the shame-faced youth rose to his feet, spilling the magazines around his feet. Sheets of centrefold slid out, Miss January 1985’s boobs flopping next to Miss April 1983’s arse. Further mortified, Richie knelt and began stacking the magazines haphazardly into a pile. She felt pity and affection for him; the poor love couldn’t look at her. She knew exactly what Gary was doing. He’d planned this moment, deliberately chosen to show the boys the magazines when he knew she could be home at any moment. He was paying her back for going off to look at houses. The best thing to do was to not react. She’d known that the moment she had walked into the shed. The best thing to do was to not get angry. Because the prick was spoiling for a fight.

Rosie crouched and helped Richie stack the magazines. ‘My dad used to read Playboy,’ she said simply. ‘For the articles.’

The youth did not get the old joke, had obviously not heard of it before. He could not bring himself to meet her gaze, his cheeks were still blazing.

‘I’m going to make lunch. You’re welcome to stay.’

Richie’s mumbled reply was almost inaudible, but she made out that his mother was excpecting him home for lunch.

She stood up and looked down at Hugo. ‘You want a feed, darling ?’

With this she turned and walked out of the shed, holding her son’s hand. She was sure that Gary’s eyes were following her.

Gary got what he wanted. Of course they fought. He needed an altercation, an argument, an opportunity to shout, to belittle her, to rant. An excuse to go down to the pub, to stay there till closing, maybe go off into the night, then roll up home, stumbling, incomprehensible, insensible, sometime after dawn. That’s what he wanted, what he always wanted.

At first she refused to bite. I suppose you’re pissed off I showed Richie those magazines. No, I don’t mind. Then he complained about the lack of salt in the pepperonati she had made, sneered when Hugo wanted to breastfeed after lunch. He walked up and down the hallway muttering, cursing because he could not find the copy of the Good Weekend he wanted, for the picture of a young Grace Kelly on the cover. You threw it out, didn’t you? No, Gary, I didn’t. You always throw my shit out. I didn’t throw it out. Then where is it? I don’t know, Gary. What the fuck do you know, do you know anything, you fucking moron?

She tried to take a nap but he played music loud, Television’s Marquee Moon, something with no lightness, no melody, so that she could not sleep at all. He started drinking straight after lunch, had finished a six-pack by four o’clock and then had raged at her when she’d hesitated handing over twenty dollars for more beer: I work for that money, that’s my money—you do shit-all. Give me my fucking money. While he was at the pub she quickly rang Aisha, but she only got the answering machine. When she tried to ring Shamira, the phone just rang out. She decided to go over to Simone’s, who lived just a few blocks away. Hugo could play with Joshua. They were ready to leave when Gary came back from the pub.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I thought I’d take Hugo to Simone’s.’

‘Hugo doesn’t like Joshua.’

‘Yes he does.’

‘No, he doesn’t. Joshua pinches him. Isn’t that true, Huges?’

‘Joshua doesn’t pinch you, darling, does he?’

‘He fucking pinches him.’

‘You tell Joshua that he isn’t allowed to touch your body without your permission.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Rosie, what kind of PC bullshit is that?’

‘Let’s go, baby. Put on your jacket.’

‘Yeah, go Hugo, and if Joshua does anything to you tell him that your mummy will sue. Tell him that’s what your mummy does.’

That broke her.

That pissed her off.

That made her fly at him.

What she wanted was simple: his support. She could not bear that he withheld it from her. She understood his apprehension about the hearing, his fear of being disgraced. She shared the same anxieties. She wanted them to share the weeks ahead, to plan, to work, to hope, together. So she snapped, told him to fuck off. That was all, two abusive words that slipped out of her, but they were enough to set him off. You got us into this. It was the unfairness of the charge that rankled. What had got them into the situation was that a stranger, an animal, had hurt their child. Gary knew this, she was convinced he felt the insult as acutely as she did. She had been so proud of him at the barbecue when he’d turned on that bastard, so proud of his immediate, unquestioning defence of Hugo. And later he had been in complete agreement when she said they must go to the police. Hugo had been inconsolable, she could not get him to sleep, he’d refused to let her go, clutching at her, a hurt, terrified animal. That was why they were doing it, for what that monster had done to their child. Gary had agreed, had been calm, convinced they were taking the right action. That the bastard couldn’t get away with it. She had been grateful; for she knew that everything that had occurred in Gary’s life had made him distrustful, antagonistic to the police. But all that history hadn’t mattered, he’d made the call and she had been proud of him. I don’t regret anything we’ve done, she blurted out, can’t you understand we are not responsible, he’s the one who has done this to us? It was then that Gary had screamed— literally screamed, the whole street must have heard—No, you did this to us. You fucking caused this. You shouldn’t have called the cops. She refused to bite, tried to brush past him to continue chopping the vegetables for the soup. He would not let her pass. You called the cops. There, she said it. You made me ring them, he hissed at her. She tried to reason with him then. It was a mistake. He was already pissed, way beyond reasoning. It’s just a few more weeks, Gary, and then it’s all over. It’s already over, he yelled back at her, or it should be. It happened, Hugo’s forgotten it. He has not, he remembers it. That’s only because you keep reminding him of it every bloody day. You’re the one who can’t forget it. He was pleading now: Let it go, Rosie, just let it go. Her anger resurfaced. How can we let it go? Do you want him to get away with it? Is that the kind of father you are? He grabbed at the wallet and drew the last few notes from it. She tried to snatch them back but he struck her hand away. He was walking down the corridor, he was going to the pub, he was going to stay there all night. She tried to stop him at the door but he had shoved her violently against the wall. I hate you. Not yelling, not screaming, just those three words said quietly. He had meant it. Then he was gone and the afternoon seemed filled with silence. She was alone.

She watched him sleep. With his eyes shut, unable to look into the spectral pale-blue eyes that mother and son shared, Rosie could see only Gary in him. He had Gary’s chin, his colouring, his large lopsided ears. He was so her husband’s child and in recognising her husband in Hugo she could not help but think of her child’s grandfathers. She wondered if it was possible to protect Hugo from his ancestry. Increasingly it was said that mental disease, alcoholism, addiction, it was all genetic. How could she protect him from the microscopic particles of his biological destiny? Her own father’s alcoholism hadn’t been congenital, that sickness had not run in his family. His drinking had a cause, it was an effect. The man had lost his job, his house, his wife, and finally his children. But the sickness was in Gary’s blood. His father had been a drunk. As had his mother. And his grandparents as well. They were probably drunks all the way back to the first convict ship. She almost laughed. He was an exemplary Australian, her husband. She recalled a conversation during dinner from over a decade ago, when Hector had expounded how Australian drinking differed from all other cultures in its extremity, in its lack of conviviality, in the way it centred on the pub bar and not the dinner table. She had blushed then, as she blushed every time she remembered the occasion. How Hector had been able, without any malice in his tone or distaste in his demeanour, to fill that word, Australian, with such derision.

They had horrified her—the two nights they spent there had seemed endless. The house was tiny, a commission unit at the edge of Sydney’s western suburbs, not really urban, but not country either. There had been nowhere to go, nothing to see, only the local pub down the road. They had gone there both nights for dinner and for the first time she had seen Gary really drink, compulsively, to the point of oblivion. Lying next to him in bed both nights she could not sleep for the snoring and farting and heavy wheezing. It had terrified her, and on returning to Melbourne, for the first time, she questioned whether she should marry this man.

She had not long been back from London when they had first met. Like so many other Australians, she had wasted eight years of her life there on temp jobs, partying, riding the crest of the house, techno and rave wave, falling stupidly, conventionally in love with a married older man. She referred to it as love but her feelings towards Eric had never been passionate. She had certainly never truly felt joy with him, certainly never experienced anguish. They had both been aware of the reasons they stayed together, why he was prepared to be adulterous, why she was content to remain a mistress. Eric had a beautiful young girl to fuck; she got to stay in the apartment he rented for them, that great flat with the view of Westminster. He bought her beautiful clothes, paid for the marijuana, the ecstasy and the cocaine. They looked remarkable together, fashionable and sophisticated; Eric knew how to wear a suit. He was a good lover, prepared to indulge every fantasy, she liked his maturity, was happy to surrender to it: Daddy, can I fuck you? He took her to the opening of David Hare’s Racing Demon and had scored prime seats for Madonna’s Girlie Show at Wembley. And most importantly, to give him his due, he had never once offered to leave his wife for her, had never made that ignoble promise. There was another reason why she had stayed with Eric for so long: because it would piss off her mum. But in the end she was sure that she would have returned back home, returned to her friends, even if Eddie had not made the call. Rosie, I’m sorry, Dad’s dead. He hanged himself.

She had cried on leaving Eric but they both knew the tears were not for the relationship, that they had both been playing parts in a late-twentieth-century soap opera that needed to come to an end. They were bored with each other. Always the gentleman, he organised her ticket, helped her to pack up the flat, drove her to the airport, and with his final kiss slipped a Valium in her palm for the interminable flight home.

The funeral had been organised for the day after her arrival in Perth. Her mother did not attend, and to spite her, Rosie stayed with Eddie for a week, putting up with the scattered pizza boxes, the filthy toilet, the mould-caked bath. She then hired a car to drive across to Melbourne. She wanted to feel Australia again, to immerse herself in the enormous open canvas of the sky and the desert and the soil. She drove in ten-hour stretches, seeing nothing but the burnt scrub and the infinite blue firmament, parking the car in isolated service stations and braving the freezing cold of that emptiness while she willed herself to sleep. By the time she arrived in Port Augusta, avoiding the deadened stares of the Aborigines as she sat in a cheap café to eat hamburgers made with stale bread, she felt that she had washed Europe off her, that the eight years had disappeared.

In Melbourne she first stayed with Aisha and Hector, learned to change nappies on Melissa who had just been born, got work as a receptionist for a boutique clothing company in Fitzroy, and found a flat in Collingwood. Two months later she met Gary at an art opening in Richmond. He was the only one with balls enough to denounce the hopelessly outdated postmodern bricolage of the artist’s work. Back then he wore an industrial grey wool suit, a thin black tie, and pale crimson button-braces that he’d found in an op-shop in Footscray. She had noticed him at once, even before he began to insult the artist, because he was the only man in that crowd who dressed as well as Eric. But unlike Eric, Gary was not born to elegance. Gary’s flair was instinctive, his style his own. He was not handsome like Eric, but that didn’t matter. His features were distinctive, extravagant, the sharp chin, the steep cheekbones, the intense eyes. Honesty was his God. She thought him thrilling, dangerous. She’d had none of that with Eric: for charm, like that her father possessed, and politeness, like that of her mother, were evasive qualities that concealed the truth.

She had gone straight up to Gary and objected that he was being unfair to the artist, that an opening was meant for celebration, not criticism. He’d scoffed at that—was that the first time he had accused her of being bourgeois?—but they had both been smiling. He asked for her number and called her the next day. They went to dinner that Friday night and he had thrilled her with a conversation that encompassed music and film and art and the challenge of evolutionary psychology on the dogmas of feminism. She loved that he read widely but had never been a student, that he had left high school at sixteen, took on carpentry as a trade and left that as well to move to the Cross in Sydney and transform himself into a bohemian who would finally remove all traces of his previous life. He kept nothing from her. He had been a rent-boy, had pimped a girlfriend, wasted three years on heroin, had fled Sydney owing thousands. She hardly said anything all night, dazzled by his skill with narrative, his assuredness, by the seductive power he already had over her. She wanted to fuck him that night, but she did not invite him in. He rang again next day and they spent Sunday afternoon on the banks of the Yarra. That night he stayed, and the next morning, after he had left, as she was getting ready for work, she rang Aish. I’m in love.

From the beginning Gary was defensive around her friends. He thought Aisha cold, Anouk arrogant and, most of all, detested Hector’s attempts at fake mateship. He thought them all stuck-up and, overcompensating, Rosie found that she fell into a gush of talk when they were together, dominating conversation so that no conflict could emerge. They are so fucking middle-class, so dull, Gary would holler when they returned home to her flat, how the fuck can you stand them? She defended her friends but secretly, surprisingly, she found that she was elated by his resentment of them. Her friends no longer seemed so successful, so assured, so perfect, when viewed through Gary’s eyes. When she had returned from visting his family in Sydney she said little to Aisha about them. She said nothing about her doubts. She was going to marry him. She loved him. Fuck them, fuck all of them and their disapproval. In the end her friends were loyal. Anouk was there at the wedding, and Aisha and Hector had been their witnesses.

Next morning, when she found Gary passed out on the back lawn, neither of them mentioned the argument. She cooked an omelette for Gary and herself, made toasted sandwiches for Hugo, and they watched Finding Nemo together, Gary making his son laugh, mouthing all of Dory’s lines.

The weeks stretched out endlessly to the hearing, but the days seemed to fly by. There wasn’t a minute in which the thought of the upcoming trial did not loom. Her keenest desire was to shield Hugo from what was happening. She gave herself over to the house, an enormous spring clean, scouring the oven, attacking the cobwebs in every corner of every room, rearranging the kitchen shelves. She planned menus for the week, shopping at the market, walking with Hugo to the shops on Smith Street every second day. She was attuned to Gary’s mood. If he arrived home brooding from work she remained silent until his first beer, allowing him to relax. She badgered Margaret on the phone until she was given another appointment at Legal Aid; and even though there was nothing the lawyer could tell her except to remain calm, she was heartened by it. Margaret reiterated that Rosie and Gary were doing the right thing, that an assault against a child could not go unpunished. Rosie wished Gary was not so suspicious of the young woman. He thought her immature, anti-male. But they were getting her services for free, and Rosie thought they should be thankful.

She was grateful for the assistance of Connie and Richie over those weeks. They looked after Hugo together, or took turns minding him, while she allowed herself the opportunity to go to the pool for a swim, to do yoga, to give herself over to fantasies. Though Margaret had explained the unexciting, bureacratic workings of the hearing process, Rosie allowed herself the luxury of daydreams. She imagined herself in the dock, passionately, convincingly detailing the crime that monster had committed against her child. She swam fifty laps a time lost in those thoughts.

Shamira too proved herself a true friend, calling every day, bringing her kids over to play with Hugo on the days she wasn’t working at the video shop. One afternoon Shamira invited her to a park in Northcote where a group of mothers whose children attended the same school as Ibby would often meet to watch their children play. Rosie appreciated her friend’s efforts to keep her occupied but she found the afternoon tiresome. The other women were all Muslim and, apart from Shamira, were all born to Arab or Turkish parents. They were welcoming, polite, but Rosie was aware of a subtle distance between herself and these women. It was not the religion itself that created the barrier. Only a handful of the women were scarfed. But their easy camaraderie, their teasing of each other and their parents as ‘mussies’, as ‘wogs’, their disinterest in her life, her marriage, her world, pissed her off. She wondered if Shamira too felt some of this estrangement—would she always be ‘that Aussie girl’ to these confident, loud wog chicks? Would she always be an outsider no matter how many times a day she prayed? Rosie watched Hugo try to join in a game of soccer with the other boys and he seemed so fair, so white. She fell into silence, watching her child. He’d given up on the soccer game and was climbing on the adventure playground on his own. Shamira, noticing, called out sharply to Ibby to let Hugo into the game.

Don’t do that, thought Rosie bitterly. Don’t shame my son. She rose to her feet, smiling. ‘It’s been lovely to meet you all but we’ve got to get home.’

Shamira started to rise but Rosie stopped her. ‘It’s alright. It will be a nice walk home.’

The truth was that she missed Aisha with an almost blinding, childish indignation. This was the time that her friend should be by her side. This was the moment in her life when she most needed her friend’s support. She knew that she was being unfair. Aisha—and Anouk—had supported her through her parent’s divorce, the loss of the house, had looked after her the first time she moved to Melbourne. They were there when she returned from London, when her father killed himself. Aisha had come to the funeral. Yes, it was unfair but that was how she felt. Shamira was kind but they did not share a history. Connie was generous, supportive, but she was only a teenager. I’m lonely, thought Rosie, holding her son’s hand as they crossed Heidelberg Road. Since having Hugo her life had contracted to her family and a few friends. It must have been over a year since she’d seen the girls she used to work with. You’re my life, Hugo. She did not want to give voice to this thought, and he definitely did not need to hear it. But it was true. He was her life, her whole life.

So she felt joy and relief when they got home to a message from Aisha. Rosie, how are you? Do you want to meet Anouk and me for a drink on Thursday evening? Give me a call. We’re both thinking of you. Love you.

‘Fuck the hearing, fuck messing about with lawyers. Why don’t I get my cousin Vincent to deal with the prick? He’ll cut off his balls.’

Antony turned to his assistant. ‘Do you know that this prick just went up to Rosie’s child and slapped him? Just like that.’

The assistant, open-mouthed, was obviously horrified.

Antony nodded in grim assent. ‘That’s right, we should kill the cunt. Mind my language. But we should kill him.’

She was doing the right thing. She was definitely doing the right thing.

Anouk arrived a few minutes later, dressed in a man’s suit. She was growing out her hair and the thick black locks, streaked with grey, fell to her shoulders. The two women looked at each other, grinned in mutual admiration.

Anouk pecked her on the cheek.

‘You look gorgeous.’

‘So do you. You look delicious.’ Anouk whipped out a cigarette and lit it. She nodded appreciatively to the young waiter who had unobtrusively placed another champagne glass on their table and was now filling it. ‘You didn’t come with Aish?’

‘You know what her work is like.’ Rosie raised her glass. ‘I took the tram and she can give me a lift back.’

‘Good.’ Anouk looked down Fitzroy Street to the grey-green water of the bay, gleaming in the fading afternoon sun. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Beats the concrete and clay on your end of town.’

Rosie said nothing to this. Though she had now lived long enough in this city to understand its divisions and mythologies, she remained uninterested in their pettiness. It was a treat coming to St Kilda, certainly, she’d enjoyed reading Vanity Fair on the long tram ride, had enjoyed dressing up, going out. But the bay could not compare to the ocean of her youth. She certainly never swam in it. It felt dirty the few times she had done so; she had felt like a layer of grease was coating her skin.

‘How’s the book going?’

Anouk groaned.

‘That good?’

‘I’m enough of a Jewish princess, sweetheart, to feel the intense shame of having to confess to mediocrity. I’m just trying to write the fucker at the moment, get the story down, but I re-read an earlier chapter this morning and I felt like shit afterwards.’ Anouk took a deep breath. ‘It was so damn womanly. All oogie-boogie, feely-feely.’ Her face broke out into a cheeky leer. ‘I told Rhys that the next one is going to be porn. Poofter porn. No feelings, no emotions, no girly stuff. Just hardcore sex.’

‘When do I get to read it?’

‘The poofter porn?’

‘No. What you’re writing.’

‘When I get the courage to show you. When I don’t think it’s shit.’

‘It won’t be shit.’ Rosie was confident. Anouk had always belittled her talents. Arrogant, tough, unafraid when it came to living her life, she lacked confidence when it came to her art. She and Aisha had always seen Anouk’s escape into television writing, into soap operas, as running away. She had made lots of money but it wasn’t what she was destined to do. Even as young women, Aisha and Rosie were convinced that their friend was going to be famous, had teased her about which one of them she would choose to escort her to the Oscars. They had both been ecstatic when Anouk announced that she was giving up the soapies to write a book. It would do well, she would be acclaimed, there was nothing to worry about. Anouk had always had promise.

‘How’s Rhys?’

‘He’s working on a student film and he’s over the moon. There’s no money but it’s a good part.’

Rosie took a sip from her champagne. Anouk wasn’t going to ask about Gary, or Hugo. She knew her friend well enough to understand there was nothing deliberate in this omission. She just wasn’t interested. It helped when Aisha was with them; somehow the conversation flowed much more easily. She set down her glass, about to recount something from the magazine she had been reading on the tram. But Anouk spoke first.

‘I’m glad Aish is running late. There’s something I want to say to you.’ Anouk glared across at her. ‘You have to promise you won’t say anything, you won’t tell Aish that I’ve said anything.’

‘Cross my heart.’

‘I mean it. Fucking promise.’

‘I fucking promise.’

‘She had a big fight with Hector on the weekend. She wanted to come with you on Tuesday. She’s been feeling like crap that she can’t be with you.’

Rosie remained silent.

Anouk looked nervous. ‘Are you okay?’

Okay? She was bloody gleeful. It was what she needed to hear. Not that she was delighting in her friend’s marital conflict, but she needed to know that Aisha was looking out for her, that she understood exactly what this moment meant for her. She didn’t have to be physically there because she was there already. Had been all this time.

‘I’m glad you told me.’

Anouk took another deep breath. ‘Rosie, I’ll come with you if you want me to.’

She almost burst out laughing. The last thing she would need that day would be trying to make sure Gary and Anouk didn’t scratch each other’s eyes out. She grabbed her friend’s hand.

‘Baby, thank you, but you don’t have to.’ She winked. ‘I’d be too scared that you would make a good witness for the defence.’ She saw her friend baulk at this and this time Rosie did laugh. ‘I’m joking. Thank you. And thank you for telling me about Aish. I know she can’t be there. Shamira’s coming with us.’

She realised Anouk was uncomfortable with the physical intimacy; she withdrew her hand.

‘How’re she and Terry, I mean, Bilal?’ Anouk shook her head dismissively. ‘What the fuck is that about, that stupid name change? Can’t a Muslim be called Terry?’

In her heart, Rosie agreed. Why couldn’t Shamira remain Sammi, Bilal remain Terry? The taking on of new names had always struck her as something affected in their conversion, as if they knew that they were never real Muslims. She recalled the Lebo and Turkish women in the park the other day. One of them had called herself Tina, another Mary. They didn’t have to prove their religion. Like you, Rosie looked across at her friend. You’re born Jewish. That’s what’s real, you’re just born into it. Nevertheless, she thought she had to defend her friends.

‘I guess it’s like baptism, proof of accepting the new religion. It’s making it public to the world.’

‘I don’t think the world really cares.’

‘I think it took a lot of courage for Terry to become Bilal.’

‘Because he’s Aboriginal?’

‘Yes.’

Anouk lit another cigarette. ‘I’m not sure it takes any more courage for an Aborigine to become a Muslim than a white guy.’

Rosie shrugged. ‘I think in this world now it takes courage for anyone to call themselves Muslim.’

‘And Shamira? I guess she became a Muslim to marry Bilal.’

‘No. That’s not it. She had already converted. They met at a mosque.’

‘Really?’ Anouk looked astonished. ‘What the fuck makes a yobbo chick like her become a Mussie?’

‘She heard the call.’

‘The what?’

Rosie felt inadequate for this explanation. She had asked Shamira, early on, the very same question, possibly with an equivalent lack of comprehension. Shamira’s answer had been so simple, and so lovely in its simplicity, that Rosie knew she would do it no justice in telling it to her cynical atheist friend. Sammi had been working in the video shop, the same shop she still worked in on High Street, when a man and his young son had come in to look for a video to take home. Sammi was listening to triple J on the store stereo when she became conscious of a song that was falling from the young boy’s lips. It was a chant, and it made her switch off the radio. I felt light, Rosie, she’d said. I felt a light and I felt a peace. She had asked them what the boy was singing when they came up to the counter and the tall African man laughed and said it was not a song but a verse from the Qur’an that his son was learning. Shamira seemed to remember every detail about that day: the vermillion skull-cap the father was wearing, the boy’s chipped front tooth, the copy of The Lion King they’d taken up to the counter. And Rosie, Shamira confided, that night I went back to the flat and Mum and Kirsty were there, ready to go out, and they offered me a beer and a bong and for the first time in my life I said no. I’ve been smoking bongs and on the piss since I was twelve. But I said no. I just wanted to lie in bed and think about that chant. Really, that was it. That was the beginning. Sure, there was a lot of shit. I had to work hard to get people to believe I wanted to learn about Islam. The Lebo girls at school thought I was crazy. And so did Mum. Kirsty still doesn’t get it. But I heard God, I heard him speak.

Rosie poured Anouk another glass of champagne. ‘I don’t know what made her convert. Ask her yourself one day. What makes anyone religious?’

‘Fear of death. Ignorance. Lack of imagination. Take your pick.’

You’re hard. You’re hard, Anouk. At that moment they heard an insistent honking and they turned around. Aisha was in her car, waving at them, indicating she was trying to find a park. Anouk pointed towards the esplanade. The cars behind Aish started to beep their horns. Aisha nodded and drove off. Rosie caught the waiter’s eye and asked for another glass.

Aisha looked flustered when she walked in. ‘I’ve just met the devil and she is a seventeen-year-old drug-fucked bogan from Preston.’

Anouk chuckled. ‘Satan sounds like he downsized.’

Aisha, taking her seat, laughed as well. She raised her glass. ‘I need this.’

‘What happened?’

Aisha looked across at her friends, a scowl on her face. ‘Look at you two. I feel so frumpy and middle-aged.’

Anouk scoffed. ‘Shut up, you look gorgeous.’

‘I don’t feel gorgeous. I didn’t have a chance to get home and change. I’m scared I smell of dog piss and cat’s blood.’

Anouk laughed again. ‘That’s alright. You always do.’

Rosie smiled at her friend. Aisha’s olive top was plain, her navy pants simple and functional, but she would always look beautiful, no matter what she wore. Even in her forties, she had the slim body, the high, elegant neck, the sculptured, lean feline face of a fashion model. And that almost uncanny porcelain skin. She was the most splendid woman Rosie knew. ‘You look great. Now tell us what happened. ’

‘It was my last consult, this doped-up young girl and her kitten. She just needed a vaccination, nothing serious. Anyway, one of our clients rushes in with their dog bleeding all over their arms and in the waiting room. It’s been hit by a car, Tracey runs into the consult room to tell me and I turn to this girl and say, Excuse me, I’m just going to have to attend to this emergency.’ Aisha’s tone was urgent, but as she spoke she began to calm down. ‘So I’m trying to revive this dog and we suddenly hear shouting from the front. This little bitch is screaming that she had an appointment, that we should see her first and attend to the dog later. Tracey goes out to calm her and she starts yelling even louder. I’m trying to save this dog, his owner is crying next to me and we have this little shit screaming down the clinic. Anyway, the dog dies on the table, I’m feeling like crap but I go in to finish the consult with this girl who is telling me she’s going to lodge a complaint about us. Then she has the gall to complain to Tracey because we don’t have discounts for concession-card holders.’ Aisha looked from Rosie to Anouk, a look of incredulity on her face. ‘I wanted to kill her. How do these people exist? What makes them think they have the right to act like that?’

Anouk crossed her arms, sat back in her chair. ‘Don’t start me, Aish, don’t even start me. These kids, they’re unbelievable. It’s like the world owes them everything. They’ve been spoilt by their parents and by their teachers and by the fucking media to believe that they have all these rights but no responsibilities so they have no decency, no moral values whatsoever. They’re selfish, ignorant little shits. I can’t stand them.’ Anouk’s outrage was so vehement it was almost comical. ‘You know what you should have said, you should have said that if you can’t afford a vet visit maybe you shouldn’t have a cat in the first place. Losers. I’m sorry, there’s no other word for it. What the hell makes them think any of us owe them a living? How can they be that way?’

Aisha nodded. ‘Tell me about it.’

Rosie couldn’t speak. It was a terrible story, of course, the selfishness of this young girl, not understanding the imperative for saving the dog’s life, but she was hurt by the crudity of her friends’ responses. Sometimes you just don’t have money, sometimes you just want a discount and you get so embarrassed about asking that you come across as nasty or belligerent. The girl did sound selfish. But not everyone without money was like that.

‘She doesn’t sound quite normal.’

Aisha swung around to Rosie. ‘Oh don’t worry, she was out of it on something. Of course she was. She had no money, she was on the dole, she was on drugs, the perfect victim. Just perfect. And of course she was going to report us to the vet board. Of course. She has rights.’ The force Aisha put into that final word was like a blow.

Rosie twisted her fingers together. I’m not going to say anything. I shouldn’t say anything.

Anouk waved the waiter over and ordered another bottle of champagne. ‘It’s our world,’ she said flatly. ‘Can you imagine what the future is going to be like when these kids rule this country? Expecting everything on their plate and having to do nothing for it. It’s going to be hellish.’

Aisha nodded in approval.

Rosie thought, when is a girl like that ever going to rule the world?

Aisha looked ruefully at the waiter as he settled a new bottle on the table. ‘We better eat or I won’t be able to drive home.’ She wrapped her arms tight around herself. Dusk was falling into night. ‘And can we go inside?’ She poked her tongue out at Anouk. ‘It’s too cold to indulge you smokers.’

‘Well, you better not ask for one after dinner, then.’ Anouk lowered her voice. ‘I’m not sure about the food here.’ She mentioned the name of an Italian restaurant around the corner. Rosie stiffened. She’d heard Aish mention it. It was supposed to be expensive. Unaffordable, out of this world expensive.

Aisha nodded. ‘Sounds good.’ Rosie felt her friend’s hand squeeze her own under the table. ‘Our shout,’ she said quickly, looking across at Anouk who nodded.

‘Thank you,’ answered Rosie, weakly.

It was a fabulous dinner. That was the word for it—the kind of word she could not use around Gary who would snort in derision at it. She hadn’t eaten like that for years: an osso bucco that fell gently off the bone, freshly baked herb bread, a delicious tiramisu that Hugo would have loved.

Afterwards they drove Anouk home and Rosie was glad that Aisha declined the offer to go upstairs for a coffee. Hugo would be missing her; he was unlikely to have fallen asleep without her there. On the drive down Punt Road, crossing the Yarra, Aisha, for the first time that night, spoke about the upcoming trial.

‘You know I want to be there.’

‘You are there.’

‘I hope they make that bastard Harry squirm.’

Rosie, you’ve got the best friend in all the world, she thought to herself. The best friend in the whole world.

Rosie made herself a peppermint tea, wrapped her dressing gown tightly around herself and walked out into the garden. There was no wind but it was bitterly cold, a true Melbourne late winter morning, where the night denied the world any hint of the coming spring. She forced herself to sit on the old, rusting kitchen chair, to wait for the sun to rise. She couldn’t bear the thought of standing still but this was exactly what she knew she had to do, stay still, remain calm, fight against the nausea which was only fear, only cowardice.

She had finished her tea when she heard Gary stumble into the kitchen. She went inside and they sat quietly and drank a coffee together. When she asked for a cigarette he rolled her one without comment. She woke Hugo, who took it upon himself to start wailing because he would not be allowed to come with them. But, darling, she said to him, Connie is coming especially to spend the day with you. Thank God for that girl. Connie was taking a day off school to babysit, a day she could ill-afford to lose so close to exams, but she had been adamant. Rosie, I want to do this for you and Hugo. For once she allowed Gary to deal with Hugo’s tantrum and she began getting ready. She was not going to give him a feed this morning. There was no time. And she had to be more firm about weaning him off her breast. It was time.

She had chosen her outfit months ago, a conservative fawn business suit she had worn to interviews when she first arrived home from London. By the time she finished applying her make-up Gary had somehow managed to calm Hugo. She made toast for her son while Gary showered and got dressed. He asked Rosie for assistance in doing up his tie; she noticed that his hands were shaking. She clasped them tight, kissed his fingers, which tasted of cigarettes and soap. He kissed her back, on the mouth, with a force that was almost erotic. It will all work out fine, he whispered. Shamira, who had picked up Connie on the way, arrived just after eight. Rosie almost cried when she saw her friend. Shamira was dressed in a thin black wool sweater, with a matching long black skirt. She had let her hair out. She still wore a headscarf but it was a simple cobalt silk shawl that coiled loosely across her head and shoulders, allowing the bulk of her hair to fall as a blonde wave down the back of her jumper. She had let her hair out. Can’t take any chances, she joked as Rosie hugged her, just in case the judge has it in for us Mussies. Gary didn’t seem able to speak. He too hugged Shamira tightly. See, Shamira laughed, wiping a tear from her eye, I told you I’m really just a white-trash scrubber underneath all this.

She drove them to the courthouse in Heidelberg. It was not yet nine o’clock when they parked but already the steps leading up to the building were full of people, all of them seeming to suck on endless cigarettes. Two bored-looking policemen were speaking quietly in front of the court’s glass entrance. As they approached the steps, the mixture of people waiting seemed to Rosie to represent the whole world. They were white, Aborigine, Asian, Mediterranean, Islander, Slav, African and Arab. They all seemed nervous, uncomfortable in their cheap, synthetic suits and dresses. It was obvious who the lawyers were. Their suits were finely woven, well-fitting.

Gary was frowning. ‘Where the fuck is our lawyer?’

‘She’ll be here.’

‘When?’ Gary started to roll a cigarette and a young man wearing a pale blue shirt a size too small for him peeled away from the crowd and walked over.

‘Mate, can I scab a rollie?’

Silently Gary passed him the pouch. The young man rolled a cigarette and with a cheeky grin handed the pouch back to Gary.

‘What are you here for?’

‘Assault.’

‘Ma-ate,’ the boy called out, making the word into a chant, ‘me too.’ He winked again. ‘Course, we didn’t do it, did we?’ With a grin he fell back into the crowd, standing next to an old woman who looked spent. Rosie smiled at her and received a sad, fatigued, frightened grimace in return.

Sad, fatigued, frightened. That pretty much summed up the faces of everyone around her. She quickly glanced over at her husband. He wore another face, a face that could also be glimpsed on some of the other men in the crowd. Tight, arrogant, tense, as if the day was a challenge they were preparing to take on. Like her husband, these men scowled as soon as anyone looked towards them. A small number of these men had forsaken suits and ties and cheap department-store shirts for their track-pants, hip-hop hoods and leather jackets. She knew that Gary would admire them, respect their refusal to participate in the charade. She could read his thoughts clearly. She bit her lip. But this wasn’t about him or her. This was about Hugo.

The courthouse doors were opened and the crowd started to move inside. Gary smoked another cigarette before Margaret finally arrived, breathless, apologetic, complaining about the traffic. Gary fixed her with a vicious glare that stopped her mid-sentence. She ignored him and turned to Rosie, who introduced her to Shamira.

‘Should we go in?’

‘Yeah,’ Gary replied sullenly. ‘I guess we should fucking go in.’

The courthouse was only a few years old, a grey steel monument to the new century’s economic boom that had already started to develop the forlorn, dissolute air that seemed to attach itself to any government institution. It smelt of cleaning agents and abandoned hopes to Rosie—there was no colour anywhere and the little there was, in the bad landscapes and still lifes on the walls, seemed to be draining away, as if to conform with a monochrome future. Margaret led them down the corridor to an enormous waiting room where a small screen sat high above everyone’s head. There was no sound and the television chef looked ridiculous as he silently instructed the audience how to cook a Thai curry. They found seats and Margaret left them to look at the schedule affixed on the courtroom’s door.

‘It’s a busy day,’ she announced on returning, scanning the crowd, not catching their eyes. ‘But we’re not far down the list. Fingers crossed we might get called before noon.’

Gary cocked his eye up at her. ‘Who’s the judge?’

‘Emmett. She’s alright.’ Margaret was still not looking at him.

‘What do you mean by alright?’

Rosie placed a warning hand on her husband’s knee. Don’t antagonise her. She’s on our side.

‘She’s good.’ Margaret was about to add something further when she suddenly stopped. They all turned around at once.

She hadn’t seen him since that awful day he’d come over with Hector to apologise. Not that he had meant it. It was obvious he hadn’t meant it. She could never forget that sneer. He wasn’t sorry; he had come over to look down at them. He had not once taken that sneer off his face. There was a trace of it now, as he looked around the waiting room. He had not yet noticed them. But everyone had noticed them. Rosie’s heart sank. He and his wife stood out from this crowd, stood high above this crowd, not because of any elegance or sophistication or style. There was none of that in the new suit, new dress, new shoes, new handbag, new haircuts. All they were, all they screamed of was money. Dirty, filthy money. But that was enough to raise them up above everyone else in the room. Rosie watched as their lawyer, inhumanly tall, like some mutant insect trapped in a suit, led them towards a seat. It was then that Rosie caught his eye. That sneer, that up-himself arrogant cunt, that sneer was still on his face. But that was not what made her gasp, made her body tighten, as a shock of naked, electric fury ran through her. Walking behind them, escorting them there, was Manolis, Hector’s father.

She went straight for him. Gary leapt up to restrain her but she shook his hand away. The monster went to say something to her but she refused to look at him, refused to acknowledge him or his trophy wife. She went up to Hector’s father and when she spoke her voice did not tremble but there was no mistaking her fury. You shouldn’t be here. Aren’t you ashamed? You shouldn’t be here. Her spittle landed on his shirt. She didn’t give a fuck. Their lawyer went to say something to her but she was already turned on her heels and walking back to her husband and her friend. She was trembling as she sat down but she had achieved what she wanted. She had shamed him, she’d seen it in the old man’s eyes. She had humiliated him. Good. That was exactly what he deserved. Aisha was the one who should be here, Aisha should be here by her side, but she’d had the human decency to do right by her family. But family was not only blood. She and Aisha were like sisters and Manolis knew this. He and his wife Koula had been there at Hugo’s naming ceremony, and how many wog Christmases and wog Easters and namedays and birthdays had they shared with Manolis and Koula, how often had they been guests in their home? Too many to count. She was glad that she felt no urge to cry. He was in the wrong. She would never forgive him.

The pettiness of people’s lives, the mundane sadness of what people did, mostly for money, sometimes for love or out of boredom, but mostly for the desperate need for money, is what Rosie took away from that day. Young men—just boys really, but already with long, tedious prior convictions read out by equally young, bored coppers in hesitant monotonous tones—faced the dock for stealing toys, stealing radios, stealing iPods, stealing televisions, stealing handbags, stealing work tools, stealing food, stealing liquor. There were young mothers ripping off the dole, young girls shoplifting trinkets and mascara and DVDs and CDs and Barbie dolls for their kids. There were contrite men charged with drunk-driving offences or for having beaten up some stranger who looked the wrong way at them outside a pub. The police would read out the charges, a lawyer—they must have all been from Legal Aid, all young, anxious, weary—would make a stab at a defence and then the terse judge would make her ruling. She seemed burdened by her work, handing out fines, suspended sentences, a short stint in prison for a young bloke who was up for his fourth burglary charge.

After a while Rosie stopped listening. Every so often Gary would get up to go out for another cigarette and she would not look at him. She knew what he was thinking because she had begun to think it as well. What are we doing here? She must not think this way. Their charge was not petty. The crowded, unadorned, windowless room was far too hot, the atmosphere was constricting, claustrophobic. Rosie knew that this was the world Gary had been born into and which he had wanted to escape. It dawned on her that losing money was not equivalent to never having had money. That was why Gary had been so frightened of coming, why he had been so resistant, so angry. He did not want her exposed to this world.

Rosie held tight to Shamira’s hand. It would soon be over. She was aware that the monster and his wife were sitting at the other end of the crowded courtroom. Manolis was sitting beside them. She did not glance their way once. She concentrated on the weary face of the judge. It was obvious the woman wanted to be kind, that she was not eager to send these young men and women to prison. But it was equally clear that she had long given up any interest in or passion for the process. Her words, her pronouncements, her explanations of protocol, her summations were all intoned in the same tired, disengaged manner.

Dear God, she prayed silently, grant me victory, please grant me victory.

Though outside the courtroom he had seemed ludicrous, a ridiculous caricature, inside he was good, he was very good. What he did, what Margaret had not done, was tell a story. Her earnestness could not compete with this gift. He made a tale of that day and had everyone convinced of its truth. Rosie had been there at the barbecue, had seen that monster hit her child, but for the first time she was forced to see it through Harry’s eyes. Yes, it was true, Hugo had raised the cricket bat. Yes, it was possible that Hugo could have hit the defendant’s child. Yes, it had all happened so quickly, in an instant, it was over in a second. Yes, it was regrettable, all too human, all too understandable. Yes, it was true, a parent’s first instinct is to protect their child. All of it true, but Rosie wanted to rise, stand up and shout, scream it out to the crowded courtroom: that’s not what happened. That man, that man standing looking innocent up there, that man hit a child and I saw the look on that man’s face. He wanted to hurt Hugo, he enjoyed it. I saw his face, he wanted to do it. He didn’t do it to protect his child, he did it to hurt Hugo. That was the truth, she knew it, she could never forget his sneer. The lawyer was everything she had fantasised about. He was Law and Order and Boston Legal, Susan Dey in LA Law, Paul Newman in The Verdict. He was what money could buy. But he was wrong, he was a liar. She had seen the look of triumph in the man’s eye when he hit her child. Rosie felt squashed, hopeless. The lawyer finished speaking and was now looking expectantly across at the judge. She heard Gary next to her let out a long, slow breath. Shamira was squeezing her hand. She did not need to look at her husband. They both knew it was over. But still, but still, she leaned forward, hoped for a miracle.

The judge’s pronouncement was precise, intelligent, compassionate and crushing. For the first time that morning it seemed that she was genuinely interested in the nature of the case, as if she knew it did not belong to this overheated, crammed, ugly courthouse. First she reprimanded the police. It is possible, she began, her voice stinging, contemptuous, that you might have been a little too rash in pursuing a charge of assault. The young cop was staring straight ahead, straight into the faces of a crowd he knew hated him. The judge then looked down at the man standing before her. Rosie leaned forward to try to see his face. There was not a trace of arrogance there, no sneer; he looked ashamed and afraid. He’s acting, she was sure of it. The bastard was acting. Violence was never a proper response to any situation, the judge scolded him, and especially never when a child was involved. The monster was nodding respectfully, in full agreement. Fucking liar, fucking wog cunt liar. But, the judge continued, she realised that the circumstances of this particular case were exceptional and that lacking further evidence she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He was a hardworking businessman, a good citizen, a good husband and parent. His only previous dealing with the law was an adolescent misdemeanour from years ago. She could see no good coming from a conviction. She apologised. She actually apologised for the waste of his time. Then, coldly, the judge looked out to the room. Case dismissed.

Beside her, Shamira was crying but Rosie had no tears. She looked at her husband. He was staring straight ahead, refusing to catch her eye. The next case was about to be called and he suddenly sprang to his feet and marched out of the courtroom. Rosie and Shamira struggled to their feet.

They almost had to run to catch up with him as he headed for the carpark. They heard her name, then Gary’s name called, and it was only then that he stopped and turned around.

Margaret was slowly walking up to them. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Gary gave a harsh laugh. ‘You’re a cunt.’

Margaret looked as though she had been slapped—by the word, by his hatred.

‘You know why you’re a cunt?’ Gary continued. ‘It’s not because of what happened in there. They obviously paid good money for their lawyer and he was worth every cent. You’re not a cunt because you’re free, you’re not a cunt because you didn’t do your work. You’re a cunt because you didn’t stop her, you’re a cunt because you let her go ahead with it.’ And for the first time in what felt like hours Gary looked directly at Rosie. A look of spite, of contempt, of utter derision.

He thinks it’s my fault. Rosie was shocked. He thinks it’s all my fault.

Margaret had crossed her arms. A small smile was on her lips. ‘I’m sorry it didn’t go your way. There wasn’t much I could do about the charge.’ Her tone, her smile, were glacial as she looked at Gary. ‘You’re the ones who went to the police.’

Gary’s body suddenly sagged. Rosie wanted to go to him and put her arms around him but she was petrified of what he would do.

He was nodding, slowly, shamefaced. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I called you.’ He turned and headed towards Shamira’s car. ‘I’m the cunt.’

Even before Shamira had finished parking outside their house, Rosie flung open the door and scrambled out onto the street. She ran to the front door, hearing Gary’s rapid footsteps behind her. She must get to Hugo first. She turned the key, threw open the front door and rushed down the corridor. Connie and Hugo were in the kitchen, a sprawl of butcher’s paper, pencils and textas covering the tabletop. The girl’s eyes flashed expectantly.

Rosie could hear her husband pounding down the hall. She gathered Hugo into her arms and kissed him. ‘It’s all over with, honey,’ she whispered, kissing him again. ‘That awful man who hit you has been punished. He got into such big trouble. He’s never going to do such a thing again. He’s going to jail.’

She swung around. Gary was standing there, his mouth hanging open, staring at her.

‘Isn’t that right, Daddy?’ she prompted. ‘The bad man has been punished, hasn’t he?’ Oh, he must understand. He must understand that she was doing this for her son.

Gary took a step forward and she cowered, thinking he was going to strike her. Instead he collapsed into a chair and slowly nodded his head. ‘That’s right, Huges. The bad man has been punished.’ There was only heaviness, surrender in his voice.

She just wanted to be with her son. She didn’t want to have to explain anything to Connie, didn’t want any more of Shamira’s consolation, didn’t want her husband’s accusation or defeat. All she wanted was to be with her son. She took Hugo out into the backyard and lay back on the overgrown lawn. She told him the story that she had been waiting so long to tell him. She described to him how the nice policeman who had come to their house that night—did Hugo remember him, how kind he had been—well, he explained to the court what had happened. You should have heard it. The court was full of people and they were all shocked, they couldn’t believe it, they were horrified. She then told him how the judge, she was a lady judge, Hugo, stood up and pointed to the horrible man who had hurt him. Do you think you know what she said to him? Hugo nodded, he looked up at her, smiling. No one can ever hit a child? That’s right, baby, that’s exactly what she said. And he’s going to go to jail? Yes, the bad man is going to jail. Hugo grabbed tufts of grass and pulled them out of the dry, hard soil. He looked up at her again. Will Adam be mad at me cause I made his uncle go to jail? Darling, no, no, of course he won’t be mad. No one is mad at you. No one. Hugo touched her breasts. Can I have boobie? She hesitated. Hugo, she said firmly, next year you are going to be in kinder. You know you can’t have boobie when you go to kinder. The boy nodded, then brightening, he touched her chest again. Can I have boobie now? Yes, she laughed, kissing him, she felt like she couldn’t stop kissing him. They lay on the grass, Hugo sprawled across her breasts and belly. She heard the screen door slam. Gary was standing above them.

‘Shamira’s taken Connie home.’

She nodded. She did not feel like talking.

‘I’m going to the pub.’

Of course you are.

She closed her eyes. She could feel the sun on her, the tantalising pull on her nipple as Hugo suckled. She heard the front door slam and let out a sigh of relief.

He had not returned by dinner time. She’d taken the phone off the hook, put her mobile on silent. She thought she would go mad from all the calls during the afternoon. Shamira had left a message, then Aish, then Anouk, then Shamira again. Connie too had called. At one point in the afternoon, while she was watching and rewatching the Wiggles video with Hugo, they had heard a knock at the door. She had put her finger to her lips. Shh, she had whispered, let’s pretend we’re not home. He had imitated her action, putting his own finger to his mouth. Shhh, he hissed. Then suddenly he’d jerked forward on the couch.

‘What if it’s Richie?’

‘Richie’s in school. It’s not Richie.’

‘Can we ring Richie? Can we tell him the bad man is in jail?’

‘We’ll call him tomorrow.’

He wanted a brother, he needed a sibling. It was time to have the conversation again. She and Gary had been procrastinating for too long. No, that was being unfair on herself. All she had been able to think about the last few months was the bloody court case. Well, it was over, she had to move on, she couldn’t let herself get depressed. Next year she would be turning forty, getting too old. She was ready for another child, she would love to be pregnant again. They couldn’t talk about it tonight, he’d be too drunk. They’d talk it through on the weekend, talk about schools for Hugo, maybe she could bring up the subject of buying a house. And fuck him, if he said no she’d just put a hole in the condom. He wouldn’t know. Couldn’t he see how desperate his son was for a sibling, how he hungered to play with other kids, how he needed a brother?

By ten o’clock Gary was still not home. She was on her third glass of white wine and had taken half of an old Valium she’d found in the bathroom cabinet. But she could not sleep. He never stayed out till late on a weeknight. He had left his mobile behind so there was no way to contact him. She tried to fall asleep next to Hugo but it was impossible. She could not stop thinking that he might do something terrible to himself. She couldn’t sit still, kept pacing around the kitchen staring up at the clock. At ten-thirty she made up her mind. Her fingers shook as she punched in the number. Shamira answered on the third ring.

‘Rosie, what’s wrong?’

She was inarticulate, a mess, all she could let out of her were loud, bestial sobs. She had gone to ring Aisha, but then the thought of getting Hector on the other end overwhelmed her. She became aware of Shamira’s panicked questions, could hear Bilal on the other end asking what was wrong.

She took deep breaths, found words. ‘I don’t know where Gary is. I’m so scared.’

‘Do you want to come over?’ She could hear Bilal raise an objection and then Shamira quickly hushing him. ‘Come over. Come over now.’

Hugo whimpered as she carried him out to the car but he fell back to sleep as soon as she strapped him in the child seat. She hardly knew how she managed to drive to her friend’s house, she felt drunk, high, could hardly see through her tears.

Shamira took Hugo from her and put him into bed next to Ibby.

Bilal was dressed in a hoodie and track-pants, and was drinking tea when Rosie arrived.

‘I’m frightened he’s going to do something terrible to himself.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

Rosie shook her head. ‘He said he was going to the pub.’

‘Which pub?’

Bilal’s questions were clipped, harsh. She couldn’t answer him, she looked down at her feet. She needed new slippers. The seams were fraying, they were falling apart. She had no clue which pub her husband was at, she didn’t know which pubs he went to. That was his life, it was separate from hers and Hugo’s. She didn’t want to know the places he went to, the people he saw, the things he did when he was drunk.

‘I don’t know.’

Bilal gulped the last of his tea. ‘I’ll go and find him.’

Rosie noticed the exchange of looks between husband and wife. Shamira’s eyes offered sheer, unadorned gratitude.

Struggling, wobbly, she got to her feet. ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No.’

She struggled free of Shamira and followed Bilal down the hallway.

‘Bilal will find him,’ her friend called out to her.

‘No, I’m going with him.’ He’s my husband. I have to go.

First they went to the Clifton, close to her house, but it was already closed. They tried the Terminus and the Irish pub on Queens Parade before heading into Collingwood. They found him in a pub in Johnston Street, he was sitting in the back, at a table with three other men. As they approached she saw that two of the other men were Aborigines. She was glad that Bilal was with her. He would know what to say, how to act, what to do. He could protect her.

Gary was so pissed he had to squint, to focus his eyes before he recognised them. He started to snort with laughter. He turned to one of the men, an enormous man, all heaving belly, taut arm muscles but lumpy fat everywhere else, his round moon face and shaved bald head the colour of dark ale. His skin leathery, battered. One of his eyes was half-closed, a vicious purple bruise spreading around it. Gary was pointing up at Bilal.

‘That’s him,’ he slurred. ‘That’s the one of your mob I was telling you about.’

Gary looked proud of himself, as if he had conjured Bilal up at will.

The large man extended his hand. Rosie could see his nose had been broken a few times, that his arm was full of spidery, faded tattoos.

‘How are you, cuz?’

Bilal shook hands with the two Aboriginal men at the table. The other white man, a young weedy fellow with a greasy Magpies baseball cap backwards on his head was tapping his finger compulsively on the table. Bilal ignored him.

‘Have a beer, cuz.’

‘I don’t drink.’

The large man started to laugh. The rolls of fat on him bounced, a shimmering dance down the length of his body.

‘Just one drink. Come on.’

Bilal’s refusal was almost imperceptible. Just a slight shake of his head. He pointed to Gary. ‘I’ve come to take this man home. He’s got responsibilities. He’s got a young ’un.’

‘We’ll have a drink and then you can take him home. No problem.’ The large man winked at Rosie. ‘You want a drink, love, don’t ya?’

Bilal didn’t let her speak. He tapped Gary’s shoulder.

Gary shrank away from him. ‘Fuck off. I want a drink. Buy me a drink or fuck off.’

The other men at the table started to laugh. Gary looked surprised, then pleased, grinning at the men around the table.

The large man put up his hand in warning to Bilal. ‘It looks like your mate wants to stay here, cuz. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him.’ He was directing the words to her.

Rosie was conscious that everyone in the pub was now looking at them, that the publican was leaning over the bar. She begged her husband. ‘Gary, please, come home.’

Gary shook his head, violently, adamant, like a child. He looked like Hugo. ‘I don’t want to go home. I don’t want anything to do with home.’

It happened suddenly. Bilal grabbed Gary by his shirt collar and hoisted him off his seat. She heard the fabric tear and in that moment she let out a scream. She was terrified. Bilal had become Terry again, the young man who liked to drink, who liked to pick a fight, the young man who terrified her. She was scared he was going to hit her husband. With the scream the publican had come rushing over to the table.

The large man struggled to his feet but the publican placed a warning hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll deal with this, mate.’

Bilal was still holding on to Gary, who looked shocked, afraid, again like a little boy.

The publican was short, but he was fit, barrel-chested; he fixed Bilal with a fierce stare. ‘You leave now or I call the cops.’

For a moment she thought Bilal was going to strike him. Instead, he let go of Gary’s shirt, turned and walked out of the pub. The other white man at Gary’s table hooted with derision. ‘You’re no Anthony Mundine, are ya?’ The two Aboriginal men were silent, stone-faced.

‘Gary, please come home.’

‘Fuck off.’

She had no idea what she should do.

Gary sighed and looked at her with pity. ‘Rosie, just go home. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I just want to get pissed, don’t you get it?’ His eyes were pleading with her. ‘I just want to get so drunk that I forget that you or Hugo even exist.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Bilal pointed to a man who had come out of the pub, following her. He had lit a cigarette and was looking towards the car.

‘Do you know what he’s doing?’

She looked over. She had no idea who the man was. She shook her head.

‘He’s being kind to strangers,’ Bilal said quietly, starting to drive away. ‘He’s making sure I don’t do anything to you. He’s letting me know he’s clocked my licence plate. He’s wondering what a nice white woman like you is doing with a boong like me.’ With that Bilal started to laugh, his body rocking back and forth, it was that hilarious, his body bashing again and again into his car seat.

Bilal indicated a chair and Rosie sat down opposite him. He pointed to his cigarette packet and Rosie, trembling, took one. He lit it for her.

‘I’m going to say something and I want you to let me finish before interrupting. Do you understand?’

She nodded. She felt ridiculously shy.

‘That was the first time I have gone in a pub for years, for a long time now.’ His voice sounded curious, as if his own words had surprised him. ‘I don’t know why I ever liked those places. They’re foul.’ His eyes narrowed.

She must not look away, she must not be scared of him.

‘I don’t want you or your husband or your son in my life. You remind me of a life I don’t ever want to go back to. I don’t want you to talk to my wife, I don’t want you to be her friend. I just want to be good, I just want to protect my family. I don’t think you’re any good, Rosie. Sorry, it’s just your mob. You’ve got bad blood. We’ve escaped your lot, me and my Sammi. Do you get it? Will you promise me that you won’t ring or see my wife? I just want you to promise me that, that you’ll leave my family alone.’

She felt nothing. No, that was not quite true. She felt relief. She was right: he had always distrusted her. He knew everything she was.

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I promise.’

‘Good. I’ll drive your car back here in the morning. I’ll leave the keys in the letterbox.’ Bilal stubbed out his cigarette, picked up his own keys, and left her house without a word. For a long time she did not move. Then she walked over to the fridge, took out the bottle and poured herself another wine.

She got back at them by sleeping with their boyfriends, with their brothers. She fucked their fathers. She continued doing it at the new school, the state school, full of boys to fuck. She had fucked and fucked, one night allowing herself to be fucked by seven of them, each taking turns. She had bled, her cunt had torn. Everyone at the new school knew what she was. The new girl was a slut.

Only Aisha had protected her. How she wished Aish had married Eddie—but, of course, Aish was too good for Eddie. Aish protected her, introduced her to Anouk. She had looked up to the older girls, they had offered her a vision of a life beyond Perth, beyond the desert and the ocean, they had encouraged her to escape. With them she never let on what she was. She hid her real self from them. Then they both left, went east to Melbourne and she was alone. She met Qui. He was only thirty-five, but that made him close to an old man back then. He was her older man, her lover, her businessman paramour from Hong Kong. Qui had looked after her, he was the first to buy her things. She had stopped fucking other boys. She was only a slut for Qui. Then he left. Without a word. She didn’t have a number, an address, she didn’t even know his surname. He just disappeared, bored with her. Qui knew what she was—he could see through her. The people she loved had no idea who she was, what she had been. Aisha didn’t know, Gary didn’t know, Anouk didn’t. Hugo would never find out. She was what Bilal inferred. He had always seen through her, like her mother had. You’re dirty, Rosalind. You’re just trash, Rosalind, just rubbish. You’re a slut.

No. She was a mother. It seemed to take an eternity to get out of the chair. But she had to. She staggered down the corridor, pushed open her bedroom door and collapsed next to Hugo, who had awoken in tears. She cuddled him tight, so tight into her that they became one, were one. It’s alright, Hugo, the bad man has gone, the bad man won’t harm us. Repeating it, over and over, she and her child fell asleep.

The next morning she found her husband passed out on the lounge-room floor. His stench made her retch; he had shat in his pants. She got him up, struggled with him to the bathroom where she stripped him of his soiled clothes, bathed him, put him into bed. She fed Hugo, rang Gary’s boss, told him that Gary was too sick to come into work. She took Hugo to the park and played with him on the swings. When they returned her car was parked outside their house, the keys were indeed in the letterbox. In the afternoon she rang Aisha on the mobile and when her friend started to console her, Rosie burst into tears. He got away with it, Aish, he fucking got away with it.

Gary, repentant, guilty, did not have a drink till Friday evening. On Saturday night she cooked a baked snapper and made french fries for Hugo. They were in the middle of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Aisha called to tell her that Shamira and Bilal had bid on the house in Thomastown. They got it, it was theirs.

‘I’m so glad,’ Rosie gushed loudly on the phone, and even though Aisha could not see her, she made sure she had a wide, brilliant smile on her face. ‘I’m so glad for them,’ she kept repeating, ‘so glad.’