The sun seems to be bearing down twice as strong as earlier in autumn. I can feel it eating away at my skin. Mum and Grandad have spent enough time outdoors that their skin finally got used to it, but Grandad’s face is all brown folds as a result. Nathan fares a lot better in the sun than I ever will—his mum is Polynesian. Fifteen minutes in full sun and I start crisping up like a baked potato wrapped in foil and chucked in the embers of a bonfire.

Across the road and further up, Clancy is sitting at the table outside Purple Emperor. When I get closer, I can see the books spread out in front of him. This year, he’s doing Year Twelve through distance education.

He knows I’m here, but he doesn’t look up till I sit down across the table from him. He grins. ‘Had to finish the chapter.’ He tucks a bookmark in. I have a tendency to fold back the corner to mark my page, so he thinks I’m a heathen. I like my spines cracked and my books well loved. Clancy likes his possessions being neat and nice and in like-new condition. After Year Twelve, he plans on selling everything he owns so he’s flush with cash when he goes to Sydney. You can’t resell a book with notes in the margins—how I like them.

‘What are you reading?’

‘Set text for English Advanced. Jane Eyre. I like it, but I’d like it better if it had a musical adaptation I could study instead. Mr Rochester dancing around, jazz hands. That sort of thing.’

‘I don’t think he’d be very cheerful after the fire. Once he’s lost his sight.’

‘It wouldn’t be a very uplifting musical, but the best ones aren’t. Les Mis being the prime example. Miserable is right there in the title. Hey, hey, how about that close encounter of the…third kind? I don’t know what the numbers signify. Anyway, Mr Jameson had an other-worldly visitation.’

‘I’ve heard. From everyone. Except Mr Pool because Mr Pool does not gossip.’

‘Do you get the sense that this is the beginning of something huge?’ he asks, very earnest.

‘What, like Kirby’s ordinary life as an apprentice carpenter and goat-owner came to an end one fateful day, when everything changed…Aliens came to town?’ I joke. ‘I always imagined it’d be zombies.’

‘Please, Kirby. I am not your Asian sidekick. I’m the protagonist. We are at a turning point here. The fulcrum. A new restaurant, a beautiful girl and aliens arrive in town, all on the same evening. It’s significant. We have entered the after.’

I shake my head.

Clancy sniffs. ‘You’ll see.’

He does have a point. ‘The suspense is killing me,’ I mutter, deadpan.

‘You fancy heading up to check out the crop circles?’ he asks.

‘It’s a bit hot today, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘And I have been working all morning.’

Clancy sighs dramatically. ‘You are so not an adventure-seeker. Excitement isn’t going to just fall into our laps, Kirb.’

Clancy digs around in the pencil case on the table (he’s had the same blue pencil case, the letters of his name tucked into the plastic sleeves, since primary school—it’s probably harbouring all sorts of germs) and brings out a black Sharpie.

I rest my arm on the table so he can draw dot-to-dot with my freckles, another thing we’ve done since childhood.

When we were kids, his parents were sort of obsessed with the idea that he and I were ‘meant for each other’, which didn’t make a lot of sense then and doesn’t make a lot of sense now, since we don’t really have that much in common. My mum’s never really been worried about me dating or getting married or anything like that; my mum is very much of the parenting tradition Leave Kirby To Her Own Devices. But Clancy is one of the best friends anyone could have, and I don’t think I’m too bad at friendship either. We’ve not had a single falling out since Prep; neither of us has ever betrayed or ditched or put down the other, and we’ve always been able to talk about almost anything. Sometimes I think about how much simpler it might be, for us, if maybe we were in an arranged marriage, childhood sweethearts who could grow up, get married and live happily ever after.

In real life, there’s no such thing as happily ever after, there’s just life passing day by day. After you ride off into the sunset, then you’re just in the middle of nowhere on a horse at night, aren’t you? And Clancy wants a lot of different things in life from the things I want, so he could hardly stay here and produce Kirby-Clancy babies without feeling like he’s missing out on life in musical theatre in the city. And just the thought of producing Kirby-Clancy babies with Clancy makes me feel a bit ill, no matter how hilarious and fun and good-hearted Clancy is. Maybe if he were a girl it’d be different, or maybe it wouldn’t be. But he’s not, so there’s no point ruminating on it.

Besides, a best friend is a pretty good thing to have. I wouldn’t want to give that up.

He goes quiet while he’s drawing, focused. I’m working up to telling him about the photo in the paper of a bloke with a name very like my father’s and a face very like my father’s, rolling the words around in my head. In a way I don’t want to say it; if I do I might make it true. It’s entirely possible that I’m not related to the bloke in the paper at all and that I am grossly overreacting—and overreacting is really more of a Clancy thing to do.

Then I see the girl from the restaurant walking down the footpath, like a mirage. Clancy has got a pretty elaborate mandala going on my right forearm—I have a lot of freckles—so I see her before he does.

She’s wearing a white sundress with a full skirt, a colourful pattern all over it. When she gets closer I realise the pattern is Russian dolls, the kind that nest together. Her hair is back in a plait and she’s wearing red sandals. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone so dressed up in town except for a wedding. She is so beautiful it’s hard to believe she’s actually there. It would be easier to believe that I am hallucinating in the heat.

She is headed straight for us, smiling. She raises a hand in a half-wave and approaches. Clancy only looks up when her shadow falls across us.

‘Hi, Harry Potter wallet. We met the other night. And you must be Clancy?’

The swirl he was drawing on my arm has trailed off into a wiggly line. He’s looking very deer-in-headlights. ‘Yes. Yes. Clancy Lee. How did you know?’

‘Psychic.’ She is aiming for a laugh but neither of us delivers. We are too stunned by her presence. I am trying not to analyse how perfect the slope of her nose is. ‘Kidding. Everyone’s been telling Mum and Dad and me about you and your family. Our “competitors”.’ She makes air quotes, like she’s amused by it. ‘We’re across the road there.’ She points. The Grand Opening banner is still flapping in the wind.

‘I know,’ says Clancy. ‘I’m Kirby’s best friend, by the way. She of the Harry Potter wallet.’

‘So that’s your name. I’m Iris.’ She offers me her hand to shake. Her fingertips are callused but the rest of her hand is soft. My grandfather likes to assess people’s characters on the basis of their handshakes, or at least he used to. I think he would give Iris full marks, regard her as trustworthy and suitable for business dealings, on the basis of her handshake being neither too firm nor too dead-fish-like. I don’t share this thought with Iris because it would be a weird thing to say when you’ve just met a person, and also because at the moment I cannot form words beyond a couple of basic syllables.

‘Kirby,’ I repeat, like an idiot.

I notice she’s holding an enormous bag made of multicoloured fabrics woven together, like a bag that a magician might carry. It appears to be loaded with stuff. I wonder what?

‘Looks like you’re studying?’ she says.

Here we are, loitering outside a takeaway restaurant. Does she think we’re wagging, like proper cool, bad kids? Does it seem possible to this beautiful stranger that I am a cool, bad kid who wags school? I feel cooler at the mere thought of it.

‘Yeah, nah,’ I say. I am not cool. I am the opposite of cool. How could I even entertain the notion that this girl could think I was cool? I am about as eloquent as Mr Down is after he’s had a dozen beers up at the pub and starts philosophising about life in the newsagency game. Totally incomprehensible.

‘It’s pretty much just Kirby and me and a bunch of twelve-year-olds in town during term. I do correspondence. Kirby builds stuff with Mr Pool.’

‘Carpentry,’ I mumble.

‘Chairs, tables,’ says Clancy. He’s making me sound more boring by the minute. I am boring, but that’s not the point.

‘Explains your hands,’ says Iris. ‘I thought you might play guitar or something. I play mandolin, so.’

‘Mandolin,’ I say. ‘Cool,’ and nod, as in I think it’s very cool that you play mandolin, I don’t have an iota of musical ability in my body. But three syllables seem to be my limit.

She shuffles from foot to foot, then goes, ‘Well, it was nice meeting you guys. Again. Sort of.’

I panic. We’ve made her uncomfortable. I want to know more about her. I want her to sit and chat. I can’t seem to bring myself to say we should hang out! for fear it will sound insincere or presumptuous. I still don’t know how old she is. Maybe she’s a proper grown-up, like twenty-three or something, totally uninterested in me. Us.

Iris turns to leave. Clancy shouts, as if suddenly struck by a brilliant idea. He does this a lot.

‘Kirby! We should invite Iris.’

I am at a loss. ‘To…what?’

His eyes flash. ‘To…to…join our youth amateur theatre troupe.’

Iris turns back and smiles. Her eyes crinkle. ‘Oh, thank you. For the offer. I’m not really an actor. I’d probably let you down.’

‘That’s fine,’ says Clancy. ‘Amateur is right there in the name. We’re putting on a musical, aren’t we, Kirb?’

I am so confused right now. ‘We…are?’

He nods. ‘Yep. Haven’t made the final decision yet, though. We’re considering…’

I rack my brain for the name of a musical. ‘Grease? Cats? Hairspray?’

‘If you’re taking suggestions, I like Little Shop of Horrors,’ offers Iris. I have never heard of it, which is surprising, given that Clancy talks about musicals constantly. Maybe I just block it out after a certain point. ‘You know the one with the plant from outer space that eats people? There’s an unpleasant florist, and there’s a psychopathic dentist, and the only girl character is a total ditz, which is revoltingly stereotypical…but I still like it.’

Clancy gives a Cheshire-cat grin, cheeks dimpled. ‘Awesome. It’s in the top three. We’re going to have auditions. We’re putting it on at the pub. Are you keen?’

She’s still uncertain. ‘I…yes. Sure. Could I paint sets or something, though?’

‘How fortunate. We have a set-painting position open. I mean, we’re so pleased.’

‘Pleased,’ I echo. My language skills have taken a hit in the last ten minutes.

A woman emerges from Saffron Gate and walks across the road directly towards us—without looking both ways—an enormous smile on her face. Within moments, she is upon us. She stops at Iris’s side and waits expectantly, her smile never fading.

‘This is my mum,’ says Iris. ‘Mum, this is Clancy of the Purple Emperor and Kirby of…’

‘Kirby of the Goats,’ offers Clancy, in the most unhelpful way possible. ‘Goat Kirby.’

At first glance, Iris’s mum doesn’t look like her daughter. She’s white, with dark-blonde hair and green eyes. But their faces are the same: similar thin, long, ski-slope noses, wide eyes, plump lips and narrow chins.

‘Delightful to meet you both,’ she says. She has a New Zealand accent. There is hand-shaking. ‘Such a lovely town! So great to be in the restaurant business so we can meet people!’ She is relentlessly enthusiastic. ‘Sorry to drag you away, sweetheart, but there’s something stuck in the dishwasher. It won’t go on, and you have the smallest hands.’

Iris nods. ‘All right.’ She gives us a quick wave. ‘I don’t have a phone at the moment, but you know where I’ll be.’ She smiles at me last, glancing at my scrawled-upon arm. That probably means nothing.

I reckon Iris is the most enchanting name I have ever heard. I try not to watch her disappear into the restaurant. I could find out in no time where they’re living—Judy at the bakery would know, she’s got all the town information, because she’s willing to offend people to get it—but that would feel creepy. The last thing I want to be is creepy.

I turn to Clancy when they’re gone. ‘Did you tell me about this play and I forgot? Or was that all made up?’

‘You’re not that forgetful. I’m clearly a great actor if you think I didn’t just make that all up on the spot.’ He pops the lid back on the texta. ‘Sorry about the arm. Was looking pretty good till then.’

‘I don’t reckon they’ll let you put on a musical at the pub.’

He is staring into the middle distance, as if in a trance. ‘She knew my name. She knew my name. I think I’m in love.’

‘I’m actually sort of excited about this.’ I clarify, ‘The amateur youth theatre troupe, I mean.’

‘Good. I’ll let you be on the committee. It is imperative that we go to the pub after you finish work. My entire future is at stake.’

The publican is not keen on hosting our musical.

Clancy leans over the bar between Mr Down and Mr Jameson, trying to get the attention of Mrs Hunter as she pours a beer. ‘Mrs Hunter,’ he says, in his deepest possible voice, which is not at all deep, ‘how would you feel about offering live entertainment at your venue? I feel like it would really boost attendance.’

Mrs Hunter has managed the pub for at least five years, because the Worthingtons, who own it, are too old to manage it now. We live in an ageing town. It’s comforting and safe and everyone has lots of good stories, but I do worry that once the older generation dies, the town will gradually die with them. Mrs Hunter isn’t with her husband anymore (he moved to Adelaide to build boats) but we still call her Mrs Hunter. She wears her hair short with a shock of purple at the front—she thinks it is ‘jazzy’—and has the sort of thick build that makes me think she’d be a great hugger. Not that I have told her this.

She takes a minute to respond, placing the beer on a coaster in front of Mr Down. I watch the condensation on the outside of the glass. She sets her hands on the bar and stares right at Clancy before she speaks. ‘Clancy, are you going to be the one doing the entertaining?’

‘I may be part of the show.’ His nonchalant tone betrays him; of course he’s going to be part of the show.

‘We can’t have a cabaret in here, Clancy. It’ll drive customers away.’

Clancy puts his hands together as if praying, moving them back and forth to emphasise each point. ‘I am really out of my cabaret stage. It’s a musical, but it’ll be fun and upbeat and everyone will be able to eat their parmas while it’s on. It will in no way interfere with the running of the pub.’ He is making promises he can’t keep. I am trying not to undermine him, but I can’t stop myself from cringing.

His theatrical hand movements have obviously affected Mrs Hunter, who throws her own hands up in the air. ‘What’s the incentive for me to have it here, then? I like you and I like your parents but it’ll be an inconvenience.’

‘It is very disappointing that a community-oriented business owner such as yourself would not support cultural programs in your own town. It’s like you want the youth to be disengaged.’ His tone is absurdly indignant.

Mr Down laughs, glances over at us. ‘Hi, Kirby. Didn’t see you there.’ We shake hands. He is sunburnt, his nose peeling.

I give Mr Jameson a pat on the shoulder. ‘Hi, Mr Jameson.’

‘Don’t ask me about the aliens,’ he says into his drink.

‘Now you’re just being ridiculous,’ says Mrs Hunter, still talking to Clancy.

‘He has a flair for the melodramatic,’ I explain. ‘Could I get a packet of chips? Chicken, please.’ I fish a fiver out of my pocket.

She takes my money and hands over the little green packet and my change, carrying on her conversation with Clancy all the while. ‘Why don’t you put it on in your parents’ restaurant?’

‘It’s too small, and my parents don’t believe in musicals because they think they’re too American. Never mind all the English ones, or the French, or even the Chinese. This would be a brilliant performance space.’ He gesticulates to the back of the pub. ‘Stage there, seating, green room in the beer garden, beautiful acoustics—what more could you ask for?’

‘If your parents aren’t keen, I’m not going against them.’

‘I am prac-tic-a-lly an a-dult.’ He emphasises each syllable. Mrs Hunter is used to belligerence in the pub, but I am embarrassed at this stage, especially considering Clancy doesn’t have intoxication as an excuse for his behaviour. ‘I am four months off eighteen.’

‘So a bit old for me to indulge you in a song-and-dance routine.’

I try not to say ooh. I exchange a look with Mr Down.

‘It will be a piece of professionally produced musical theatre with a multi-person cast. I can guarantee between fifteen and twenty attendees, most of whom will binge drink, despite the health dangers. One night only. Two hours. Three hours max. A Saturday evening, say, two months from now. I will be forever grateful. You’ll be personally mentioned when I win a Tony. Not if, when. I will be a musical theatre trailblazer. The lack of roles in the theatre for Asian-Australians? That’s not going to be a problem, after me. And everyone will know this is where my story began. You’re going to feel a lot better about yourself if you support local talent. Whereas, if you deny my right to perform musical theatre in my hometown, this could turn into Footloose.’

He isn’t likely to sound more reasonable than this. She thinks for so long I eat half my packet of chips. She even wipes down the bar. Clancy is vibrating on the spot.

Finally, she exhales, a great sigh. ‘You’ll have to pay to hire the space, because all this stage area you’ve got planned usually contains tables where I could have paying customers. Three hundred dollars for three hours on a Saturday night. Not a minute more.’

‘What?’ He is so loud everyone in the pub pivots to look at him.

‘That’s a very competitive rate,’ Mrs Hunter says defensively.

‘This is a monopoly! This is not legal! I will take this to the ombudsman!’ He turns to me. ‘Is there a pub ombudsman?’

‘Can we pay it off, like layby, would that be all right?’ I ask Mrs Hunter. ‘We’ll have to get the money together.’

Mrs Hunter nods.

Clancy grabs my shoulder, eyes wide with incredulity. ‘Kirby! This is extortion!’

‘I don’t think you know what extortion is. Do you want to have your play or not?’

Clancy eventually concedes that he does want to have the play, and we agree to reconvene the committee (me and him) when we’ve worked out where we’ll get the cash from. I apologise to Mrs Hunter and Mr Down and Mr Jameson and the rest of the patrons, and make my way home.

When I get in, the kitchen table is cluttered with paperwork: receipts, bills, statements, the minutiae of our financial lives. Mum is at her spot at the head of the table, clicking a pen over and over again. She looks up and takes off her reading glasses.

‘I had something I wanted to test on you,’ she says, and gestures for me to sit. I sit next to her. She looks around the kitchen, trying to find something. ‘Ah!’ It’s a spray bottle. A new product. No label, dark glass, no hint of its contents.

Without warning, she sprays it in my face. ‘Ugh, Mum, can you not mace me?’

She spritzes it in her own face, then puts her glasses back on. Then she waves her hand in the air to waft the scent around. ‘It’s a face mist. What do you think?’

‘It smells like lavender and dirty socks. It smells like something someone would use to disguise the overpowering stench of having thirty cats living in their house.’

‘Exactly who I was aiming for. Who do you think buys our stuff?’

‘I think our market is more mothers of children with sensitive skin.’

‘More lavender, less dirty socks, then?’

‘I think so,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why you thought putting dirty socks in was a good idea to begin with.’

Mum smiles. It’s a rare sight.

‘I could be more involved with the goats and soap and everything, you know?’ I tell her. ‘I’m much better at this than Nathan is. Remember when he tried to eat a bar of soap because he thought goat’s milk meant it was edible? He’s clueless.’

Mum shakes her head. ‘He was ten. He’s got smarter in the last eleven years. Slightly.’ She looks back at the piece of paper in front of her and sighs. ‘I better get back to this.’

I get up to leave. Trying to explain my point of view to her seems pointless.

Grandad bursts out from his bedroom, agitated. This is a fairly common occurrence.

He’s patting at the pocket of his shirt and the pockets of his trousers. There’s a dribble of soup spilt down his shirt. ‘Jess? Jess? Where’s my passbook? It’s pension day. I need to take my pension out.’ He hasn’t noticed that it’s after dark.

Mum speaks slowly, her voice level. ‘It was pension day on Thursday. We spoke about it. I already took it out. The cash is in your dresser drawer under your hankies.’

Grandad isn’t soothed. ‘See I need that money to pay the bills, Jess. That’s how I do it. I pay the bills at the post office in cash.’

‘You don’t need to worry. We pay them on the computer.’ She puts down the pen.

‘Some of them come in the mail and I have to pay them at the post office. You know how I do it.’

Mum takes off her glasses again, slowly, balances them between her hands. ‘Yes, I know, Dad. We’ve got it all sorted.’

‘We’ll get the money out at the post office tomorrow,’ he says. ‘That’s that.’

‘We already got it out. It’s in your drawer. Bills are paid. I’m on top of it, don’t you stress. All right?’ She doesn’t falter. Mum is patient, but with Grandad she is most patient of all.

Grandad gets more aggressive, accusatory, as if Mum is deliberately trying to undermine him. ‘Jess. What don’t you understand? I get cash out on pension day to pay the bills.’

‘I understand, Dad. We’ll deal with it in the morning. Yeah?’

Then it passes. He nods, echoes her. ‘Deal with it in the morning.’ He turns and goes back to his room.

Mum sits there in his wake for a minute, staring at the spot where he had stood. ‘Don’t know what to do,’ she says, all in one exhalation. I think she’s talking to herself, so I don’t respond.

I was going to tell her about the photo in the paper that may or may not be of my father, but now seems the wrong time. She looks like her batteries have been totally drained. It would not be very sensitive of me to dump something heavy on her now—like discovering what the bloke who abandoned us has been up to all these years.

So I say, ‘Shall I chuck some dinner on? And do you fancy a cuppa?’

She squeezes out a smile. ‘We’ve got chicken soup in the freezer. Tea would be good.’