Lark has skinned the sheets from Desiree’s bed and he’s shaking them from the front patio when I arrive, flicking away the sand he carts from the beach to the bed each day. He never did this at home, it’s something I can imagine Desiree insisting on, her cat’s bum mouth pursed as she picks the sand from the corner creases of the fitted sheet. The sheets make that cotton whump sound as Lark flicks them with a casual violence, the wind swelling their bellies so they look like sails.

I whistle up to him and he whistles back at me.

‘One Moment or It’s Your Lucky Day?’ he calls out.

He has his ear resting sidewards against his shoulder as he reads the sports section of a folded-up local newspaper that is sitting on the railing. His words slant down at me from the patio.

Once a week Lark meets up with all the guys at the local pub. They squirrel their coins for happy-hour beers, make cheeky banter with Tina, the middle-aged topless waitress whose reconstructed breasts are pretty much the only things about her that don’t droop, and most importantly they all have a punt on the horses. This is where I come in. Lark reckons I’m his lucky charm. I have no idea about jockeys or statistics. I just go on names. This infuriates his mate Macca, who approaches these things with a scientific rigour that could really get him far if he chose to apply it to something useful instead of sitting around, swelling the ranks of the unemployed. He can tell you every horse’s vital statistics, how they go on different courses and what their lineage is. I’ll just scan the list of horses and choose the name that has the nicest ring to it, and more often than not, Lark will come out on top.

I chew over the options.

‘One Moment, for sure,’ I call back. It makes me think of a line from a play by T. S. Eliot.

‘Huh, I woulda gone for It’s My Lucky Day.’ Lark’s still engrossed by the TAB listings.

I shake my head at him. ‘Too obvious.’

Lark shrugs and looks up at me. ‘You’re the charm, Yellow. Twenty bucks on One Moment.’

His arms suddenly jolt and he glances down at the paper, a look of annoyance making a small dent in his laid-back mask.

‘Oi, stop it. Oi you!’

Another jolt and the sheet is tugged from his hands and cascades down the stairs towards me, flapping and dragging across the ground. A lump marches underneath it, as though something small is pretending to be a Halloween ghost. It pauses at my feet and with a wriggle the creature shrugs off his costume and . . .

It’s Mitzy.

It can’t be.

And yet.

Black dots swim a jagged butterfly stroke in front of my eyes, and everything sounds echoed and whooshed, like I have a large conch shell pressed to my ear. I think I’m about to faint. If this is Mitzy, if he somehow survived, then who is Boogie? Did I make it all up? Has everything awful in my life sent me completely over the edge?

Please let me not be mad . . . I think.

Please let me not be mad.

The dog nips at my ankle and flops onto his back, snapping at the grass and sneezing when he swallows a mouthful. The next thing I know I’m swallowed up by Lark’s arms, and my legs dangle uselessly below me. Lark’s usually goofy face looks concerned, and he bends down so close to me his hair is tickling my forehead.

‘Hey . . . are you okay?’

The black dots swim away and everything comes back into focus.

‘Mitzy . . .?’ I ask.

My legs wake up and I can stand again.

‘What? No, Mitzy ran away, little bugger. Just when I thought my shoes’d be safe from now on, Desiree goes and brings this one home. Say hello, Tinkerbell.’

Lark lets me stand by myself and he crouches down to lift up a paw and wave it at me. My father’s like a small child, I think, as I watch his tongue peek-a-boo from his mouth, the way it always does when he’s concentrating hard. He mock wrestles the dog, taunting it by blowing on its nose, and he’s rewarded with small puncture wounds to his hands.

Now that I look closer, now that the shock’s worn off, I can see that this dog is different. This one has a small diamond patch of grey on its chest, and it’s bigger than Mitzy, younger too, although I can bet the wooden furniture won’t be any safer.

I still can’t bring myself to pet it, the shock’s too raw, but I pull my mouth up into a small smile to appease Lark, and I remember what I came over for. I need to get out past the breakers at South Beach to find Boogie.

Mitzy is still dead.

Boogie’s real.

‘Can I borrow a surfboard?’ I ask when my words return. Lark’s got a couple – he always has spares in case he snaps one, and that’s not such an uncommon occurrence, the way he surfs, chasing the monsters out to where it isn’t safe.

He cracks out a smile that almost breaks his face.

‘We’re gonna make a little surfer chick outta you yet.’

He scampers into the shed and comes back with a dinged-up Coolite – one that’s been relegated to a shed for years because Lark might be poor, but he wouldn’t be seen dead on a board like that. He might stand for hours in the Centrelink line every fortnight and he might cut his own hair, hacking at the ends so they fall onto the front lawn in uneven clumps, which the magpies and kookaburras will later snatch for their nests. He might consider baked beans a full, nutritious meal, but to ride a Coolite? Lark would shake his head scornfully. He has standards.

For me, though, it’ll do. It’s light, so I can carry it without the wind knocking me sideways. I can ding it as much as I want, and if I lose it, well, Lark’ll be happy to have the extra space in his shed. I grin up at him.

‘Thanks!’

‘Want me to give you more lessons?’

I shake my head no, he’s tried to teach me loads of times, and I know that nothing would make him happier than to have me out there, chasing the swell with him in the early mornings when the sun hasn’t yet fully risen, and the sky’s still a bruise amidst the sneaking yellow. The thing is, he’s a terrible teacher. The pull of the ocean’s such a strong thing for him he’ll forget me when he senses a good set rolling in, and while he dances on the lip of a clean six-foot break, I’m left pounded and pummelled until I’m dumped, spluttering onto the shore, sand wedged in my ears and right up into my swimmer bottoms.

Lark’s a bit disappointed that I’ve refused his offer, but also relieved. As much as he’d like to teach me again, he’s not really one to commit to anything. Besides, the surf might be pumping on the afternoon we’ve arranged it, and then he wouldn’t want to be stuck with me in the shallows.

‘Fair enough, but make sure you stay at Main Beach. And where the lifesavers can see you, yeah?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ I reply without meeting his gaze, and he musses up the top of my hair where it turns up into a cowlick.