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make sure.’
    â€˜You think?’
    â€˜Course.’
    Renny had travelled one block northwards and was negotiating a right-hand turn around a roundabout as I pulled the papers back out of the glove box.
    It was the oddest thing to see them not signed. How could Dave have followed through with a charade like that? How could he have changed that much? ‘They’re not signed,’ I said, ashen voiced, the papers quivering as incomprehension reached my nerve endings.
    â€˜We’re going back.’ She pulled on the steering wheel.
    Dave was yanking debris from the lawn at the front of the house. Renny pulled up beside him.
    â€˜You didn’t sign them,’ I said, piling out of the car.
    He stood up, looking supercilious with surprise. ‘Oh, I never said I’d sign them.’
    â€˜You never said you wouldn’t!’
    Ah… no.’
    â€˜You’re not going to let him go?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜I don’t have to have a reason.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜That’s typical,’ Renny said, out of the car as well, calling from across the bonnet, all peace exploding. ‘He’s not going to help you, Monty. You might as well face it, he’s never going to help you.’
    I eyed Dave. ‘You’re saying this to me for real. You’re not going to let Marcus come away with me?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Is it no or yes?’
    â€˜He’s not going.’
    I got in the car, slammed my door shut.
    Renny mouthed a few more expletives before getting in too and taking off. I burst into hysterical sobs – the mood, I thought venomously, he wanted to reduce me to. When I finally sobered, swallowing my failed attempts to execute the trip – my reflection staring back at me in despair from the grubby glass of the car window – we drove home in stony silence.

EIGHTEEN
    W ith the possibility of an overseas holiday obliterated, I was determined that the two of us still needed to go away, as much for the memory of a journey that only involved him and me as for any other reason. I decided on Alice Springs, a camping tour to Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. Dave can’t stop me taking Marcus there, I thought. I swallowed my pride. I needed Dave to drive Marcus halfway to Melbourne, so that I wouldn’t have to do the round trip. I tried again to have a decent conversation with Dave about where and when to rendezvous.
    â€˜Eventually he’ll be old enough to travel on the train,’ I said, coming up with a bridging comment.
    â€˜Alright.’
    We agreed on a time and place.
    â€˜Have you written it down?’ I asked him, wanting desperately for this arrangement to work without a hitch.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, Dave, to ask. But just to be sure, can you read it back to me?’
    He did. When the day came and I was sitting at the allotted spot waiting and waiting, that’s all I could think about, the fact he’d read it out to me. I used my phone and couldn’t raise anyone. Finally, after an hour had passed, I reached a mutual friend. She had no idea where he could be, of course, and I hung up delirious with what I should do. Our plane left at eight the next morning. If I didn’t have Marcus with me, what was the point of going: fares, accommodation, an Adventure Tour would all amount to nothing at very great cost to me. Stockpiling behind my annoyance was the energy it had taken to organise the trip, not to mention the insult at not going to Bali.
    I sat, a demented agitation flowering in me. I couldn’t ring Renny; it was too much to hear her fury at him from a place where she couldn’t assist. When finally he turned up, distrust had pushed infuriation to boiling point in me. He, his new partner, Sue, and Marcus, strolled up the footpath as if they were on their way to a Sunday market. Leaping from my car, I probably became my most pitiful, my own worst nightmare. I