Jack sometimes slept on his back, one arm flung across, face buried in the crook of his elbow. He lay still, hardly breathing. Their bedroom might have been any room, anywhere, but for the smell of wattle-blossom coming in through the fly-screen. And the heat. The night was seamless, inky. It poured into the house, filling up the space between walls, muffling. Lara lay in the dark beside Jack, listening to frog-song with clenched jaw. There was always a mosquito, more than one. She bunched the damp sheet in her fists, wringing. She could feel the heat coming off Jack’s body where her thigh ran alongside his. He was so still. Sometimes Lara believed that he might have smothered himself with the weight of his own limb.

‘I’ve just bought a house,’ were his first words. He shouted them over the bar, bleary-eyed, a good six pints in, celebrating. Lara, who didn’t waste time with drunken customers, who hated their sloppy arrogance, had turned away, sighing, wiping her hands on the damp tea towel hanging from her apron strings. Conversation surged over her; she was submerged.