Acid Song

‘GO AWAY … OH, sorry, Richard. Come in. I didn’t mean to … It’s been one of those days.’

‘What happened to your face?’

Richard looked at the dark swelling beneath his friend’s eye, not black but purple. The corner of the eye was a shocking red, fanning out to merely bloodshot nearer the iris. There was a scraping of dried blood beneath the nose, and his bottom lip was bloated, a dark jagged line marking the place where its surface had been ripped in two.

‘You want to see the other guy,’ William joked, but his eyes darted quickly from the contact. His right eyelid twitched, beating out an SOS. The bottle of whisky on his desk was open.

‘Have you had that seen to?’

‘It’s just scratches. Nothing’s broken.’

‘Just kids. You know, caught up in the moment.’

‘Did you recognise any of them? You have reported this, of course.’

Amanda had rung to tip Richard off, and no doubt fish for a comment. But even when he was prepared, the sight was shocking. William Harding, twenty years a friend, who would never hurt anybody. Not knowingly. That distinction in the end was either everything or nothing. William’s office was bigger than Richard’s, and better ordered. Everything in its place, even now. Meticulous. Stubborn. Broken. They sat in silence. Whatever the way forward, it was obscured. As it had been for over a month. Ever since William first showed Richard the article.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘It’s Elizabeth’s birthday. I’m meant to be home early, but I rang her before. She’ll understand.’

‘I sent her a card.’

‘You should come round later.’

‘You’re not going out?’

‘She prefers to stay in. And I have to work on my speech, you know, for tomorrow.’

Richard rolled his eyes, but William didn’t buy it. ‘Just vain enough’, was the way William described his friend’s love of the limelight. William by contrast really was happiest conducting his business on the pages of academic journals.

Richard knew what he had to do, but not how to do it. They sipped at their drinks, William unable to hide the pain as the liquid seared his broken mouth. He put his glass back down on the desk and stared at this friend with his one good eye.

‘Just say it. Everybody else has. You want to. And you have every right to. Say it, and I promise I will listen. Then we can both get on with what we have to do.’

‘I respect you William.’

‘I know you do.’

‘Academically, I mean. I don’t want to dismiss what you’re saying.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s not my area.’

‘It’s exactly your area.’

‘Not the analysis. Not without repeating the research myself… But look, if you say there’s something there, well there’s something there. I’m not disputing it.’

‘So what are you disputing?’

‘I didn’t come here to dispute.’

‘Maybe there’s no but.’

‘Of course there’s a but.’

There was, of course. There had to be. But …

‘What have you bought her?’

‘Elizabeth.’

‘A necklace thing. It’s paua, but subtle I think. I hope. I mean shit, I have no idea. The kid in the shop told me it was subtle. She asked how old my wife was. She didn’t seem surprised when I told her. It’s good manners isn’t it, to look surprised? Our young people have no manners.’

‘I was thinking the same thing today,’ William smiled. The whisky was doing its work.

‘You’ve got to lay charges.’

‘I thought you’d come here to tell me to back off.’

‘That’s not how you back off.’

‘It’s assault. Amanda’s got it on tape.’

‘Who’s Amanda?’

‘The documentary maker I told you about.’

‘It was her fault. She penned me in.’

‘She’s overenthusiastic.’

‘I’m over enthusiasts.’

‘It’s how people are. We have to make allowances.’

‘You’ve never believed that.’

‘Maybe I’ve just never voiced it.’

‘No.’ William shook his head.

Richard had first met William at a conference, although that simple summary cast more shadow than light. It was the conference that was meant to forge Richard’s international reputation. The single breakthrough that every academic secretly hopes will one day rescue them from the years of crawling forward one uncomfortable, unnoticed speculation at a time. Maybe it could have turned out that way, but for a single decision, and a single woman, or so she told him. Then again, he lied too. Ridiculous, foolish, predictable, and impossible to take back: a pebble thrown in the past, rippling out forever.

1984. The conference was one of the cross-disciplinary gatherings that were fashionable for a while. Thinking about Thinking, as he remembered it, in Manchester of all places.

Richard was to deliver an address on the evolution of culture, and more importantly was scheduled for a head-to-head debate with Stephen Watson. It was, within the limited world of the social sciences, an important meeting. He and Stephen hadn’t met since the fateful question time in Palmerston North, and within the mythology of The Institute the looming debate had taken on the aura of a rematch between two prize fighters. Watson probably didn’t even remember their first meeting. His star had continued to shine brightly; he had become the darling of the talk show circuit, the reliable provider of twenty second McPinions across a variety of formats. In the strange style of populist academics, Watson’s interests were branching out into areas far beyond his specialist base, that he might more freely express his thoughts, unencumbered by any depth of knowledge.

Watson’s latest dalliance was in the field of ethics, where he was bravely proclaiming that the human moral code was biologically determined. The bout was scheduled for the last night of the conference, immediately before the dinner, and should have provided the grand finale.

Richard was sitting at the hotel bar, enjoying a quiet congratulatory drink after the minor success of a small group presentation, when she introduced herself. A cliché of course, the older man of established reputation drinking alone; the up and comer, the admirer, striking up a conversation. But then what isn’t cliché, Watson might have asked. She was ten years his junior, with bright engaging eyes and an accent like rolling gravel, a Scot from the north. He wasn’t sure of her name now. He’d never written it down, never save one time spoken of it, and now, when he thought of her, all that remained were the eyes, and the stupid fluttering of his stomach as he bought her a drink and listened to her earnest, insistent questioning. The burred voice reverberating deep inside his chest. He remembered thinking ‘Could I?’ and the shape the thought formed inside his head, too sharp to be ignored, too heavy to eject. Richard was no womaniser, he had never taken the time to learn the skills, yet here he was. Could I? He could. He did. They did. He was married then. He and Elizabeth were happy together; grateful, on their better days.

They spent three hours together in his hotel room. They talked and played and fucked like teenagers. Richard drowned in it, the most ridiculously, childishly exciting late afternoon of his life. A truth he bravely resisted, every time he thought of it. Foolish, weak, embarrassing: these were the adjectives he came to rely upon, to keep the memory weighted down.

Coming out of the hotel room, freshly showered and still glowing, she of no name on his arm, Richard collided with Stephen Watson, returning to his room. Watson must have heard them giggling together, it was impossible to believe otherwise, and the look he gave Richard in the moment their eyes snagged was calculated to humiliate. Stephen Watson surely was the sort to reveal his secret, and to do so at the most excruciating moment. How could he resist? The next day Richard feigned food poisoning, and on the last night of the conference, when he should have been making his mark, he was holed up in a bar five blocks away, melting his shame in alcohol.

There he met William, a young academic just starting out, who had his own reasons for escaping the crowds. William didn’t ask him why he had missed the debate, and it was this discretion that first brought them close. Whisky cemented the friendship and Richard, feeling the need for absolution, and confident they would never meet again, shared his secret. Five years later William was posted to Victoria University and the two became solid friends.

‘So what do you think we’ll find at the bottom of this particular bottle?’ William asked, twenty years on.

‘Questions we can’t answer, promises we can’t rely upon.’

‘You’re meant to be cheering me up.’

‘I thought I was meant to be lecturing you.’

‘So lecture me.’

‘There has to be a way out of this,’ Richard told him.

‘I’m not apologising.’

‘I’m not saying you should.’

‘I’m not trying to make any particular point, you know that. I’m just following the data.’

‘That’s not true,’ Richard challenged.

‘No, it’s partly true.’

‘So what’s the rest?’ William asked.

‘I tell my students objectivity is like a torch. While it may illuminate without prejudice, we still get to choose where to shine it.’

‘But I’m not a student.’

‘I’m sorry if I sound patronising. I do this when I’m out of my depth.’

‘I didn’t choose this question.’

‘You chose to publish.’

‘It’s what we do, Richard. We take what we find and we make it available. Unpalatable though it may be.’

‘I think that’s too heroic.’

‘I think that’s too cynical.’

‘We censor all the time,’ Richard insisted. ‘We do it to get funding, to get publication, recognition, job opportunities, love, whatever it is we’re hunting at the time. If we simply followed the data we’d be paralysed by choice.’

Richard looked at his friend who, ever since this thing had broken seemed to be shrinking, in the manner of a cancer patient. Richard hadn’t called in to talk through the intricacies of right and wrong. He was here to save his friend, that was all. He waited for William to say something, but the psychologist simply refilled their glasses and waited too.

‘Look, regardless of how you feel about your responsibilities towards the data, there have to be ways we can go about engaging with it. Ways we go about presenting it. I don’t know what I’m suggesting, I haven’t thought this through, I honestly didn’t intend to have this conversation. I wasn’t going to, I heard you’d been hurt, I just wanted to …’

‘You’ve started now.’

‘I have… You know how these things go. People are afraid. Not of the data, but of what will happen with the data. And I don’t think they’re wrong.’

There, he’d said it: negated his way to disloyalty. William rose to the challenge. Despite being no public speaker, in a one-on-one confrontation William could be formidable. The professor was a master of the contemplative silence, never tempted to squeeze shape from a half-formed idea. He was most likely to respond to a question with one of his own, a method that in his hands was less Socratic than diversionary. Richard had seen many a colleague lose his footing in the scree of William’s arguments.

‘You don’t think they’re wrong?’ He said it slowly, as if considering this possibility for the first time.

‘What frightens you about people, more than anything?’ Richard asked.

‘You seriously think that can be answered in a sentence?’

‘I can answer it in a word. Tribalism. You and me. Us and them. Insider and outsider. Take me anywhere through time and space, point to any conflict, and at the heart of it I’ll show you an in-group first defining and then attacking an out-group. Before we can strike we must find a way to camouflage the most unpalatable of truths: that the closer you stand, the more valuable your life is to me. So Christian slaughters Muslim, white slaughters black, north– erner attacks southerner, Japan invades Korea, Kenya falls apart; and every time it’s the ability to paint the Other as different that makes the conflict plausible. And do I feel fear at the possibility that yet another badge of difference is to be made available to those who have no desire to properly examine it? Who wouldn’t?’

Even now, when his intention had been to lend support, Richard could not resist an argument. He took great pleasure in the way flapping edges of thought could so quickly be folded and tucked beneath the shape of the proposition in question. And he took a certain pride in it too.

The injured man waited, chewed silently on some segment of his swollen cheek, and fashioned a smile from amongst the wreckage.

‘Well me, I suppose, as you ask. You gave me a word, let me give you one in return. Ignorance.’

And again his friend paused, cheap but effective.

‘That conflict is based around identity is surely nothing more than a consequence of definition. Without readily identifiable sides, there is no conflict. You claim it is the availability of these badges, as you put it, that facilitate conflict, and here I disagree.

‘Finding difference will never be difficult; in the heat of conflict difference need not be substantive. An accent, a birthplace, a circumcision, which end you break your egg. Yes, go to any time, any place of conflict, and you will find, unsurprisingly, the conditions of conflict. But ask this. What are the conditions we find when conflict has been supressed? What of the powerful who do not take slaves, the men who do not rape women, the countries that do not declare war? I would suggest to you that the common thread is not the absence of identifiable difference, but the slow, miraculous progress of the great project of Enlightenment. Where ideas are not suppressed, where knowledge is not jealously guarded, that is where peace has a chance of taking hold. And so, when our every instinct is to hide a study away because its findings might be difficult, that’s when I feel fear, Richard.’

‘I’m not sure you’re wrong.’ Richard sipped at his whisky. ‘And I very much hope you’re not.’

‘But some of the most remarkable peace has been wrought from societies that see themselves as homogenous.’

William raised an eyebrow in acknowledgement. He too took a taste from his glass, a signal of a truce of sorts.

‘If you’re right, and people’s fears are unfounded, isn’t there still a way of easing them? Can’t you, I don’t know, suggest a joint study? How about offering to make your work available to your critics, to work with them in designing the next phase of the study? You don’t have to make any public statements. You don’t have to recant. They’ll say enough by themselves. You know, “we are suspicious of the data as it is currently being interpreted, and are working with Professor Harding to design a study which we hope will show how these anomalies have been generated.”’

‘They’re not anomalies.’

‘They might be. You said so yourself.’

‘It’s possible yes, but it’s not likely. You’re suggesting we spend the next ten years wasting time and money following up on the least likely of the available explanations. That’s the same as burying the data.’

‘No it’s not. It’s out there now. It’s available to anybody who wants to look at it.’

‘But nobody will. That’s the point, don’t you see? We’re all too frightened.’

‘Maybe with good reason.’

‘I never thought I’d hear you say we should be frightened of the truth.’

‘I don’t even use the word truth.’

‘Very fucking convenient.’

It was like this between them sometimes. It could turn personal without warning. Richard had never experienced it with any other of his colleagues. With them a vigorous disagreement was a sign of respect. With William it was more like being married.

‘Some people are saying you’ve changed, William.’

‘Why are using my name, Richard? Don’t you know that’s patronising?’

‘You did it before.’

‘I meant to be patronising.’

‘You’re avoiding the question.’

‘I didn’t hear a question.’

‘People are worried. That’s all.’

‘Of course I’ve fucking changed. How can that not change you? What am I meant to do, just get on with it?’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘You’ve never mentioned it before.’

‘I, it’s your business. I assumed, if you wanted to … You know where I am.’

‘I don’t want to.’

Again they both waited, holding their breath, as if not certain that silence could be trusted to take proper hold. But it did, finding its place between the sipping.

It went unmentioned. A Friday afternoon two years before. Richard was home with Elizabeth when they got the call. William’s car had gone off the road on the way back home to Eastbourne. The setting sun had blinded him as he came around the corner; he’d tried to brake suddenly, hit the accelerator.

It was the most beautiful road in the city, the last place the sun visited, lighting up the houses that hid amongst the steep dark bush, making green the water that licked at the road. The car barely sank past its roof, but that was all it took. William went down five times, trying to free his wife. On the sixth attempt he blacked out, and bystanders dragged him to the shore. He’d changed. And it would not be mentioned.

‘Are you saying,’ William asked, bringing his fingers together below his nose, his thinking pose. The knuckles on his left hand were scraped raw from the concrete. ‘Are you saying that people can’t handle this information? Is that, in the end, your thesis?’

‘I think you are.’

‘I’m saying …’ Richard thought carefully. What was he saying? He was slipping. ‘I’m saying that with information of this nature, it’s never neutral. It can’t be presented neutrally. We have a responsibility, when it comes to how we choose to present it.’

‘A responsibility to whom?’

‘To ourselves, primarily.’

‘That’s pompous.’

‘You know the problem with liberals, Richard? Their education compromises them. In the end, to be a true liberal, you have to trust your fellow man, and the educated never do.’

‘Did you see Wilson’s speech today?’

‘I heard a little on the news.’

‘He’s polling at eight per cent. That’s why I don’t trust people.’

‘What about the other ninety-two per cent? Don’t they deserve some credit?’

‘It always starts somewhere. One Nation, what does that even mean?’

‘It’s a party for those who have trouble counting.’

‘He talked about the “Asian Problem”. Did you hear that? Last night a group of skinheads put a Chinese student in hospital. He’s in a coma. It’s touch and go.’

‘You can’t make me part of that.’

‘I don’t have to. There’s already a link to your study on the National Front website…’

‘If we stopped to think how every new discovery might be interpreted, where would we be?’

‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Then walk away.’

‘That would be giving in.’

‘So give in.’

‘You driving?’

‘I’ll leave the car here and get the boat across.’ Richard held his glass out for refilling.

‘Thanks for coming.’

‘No, of course. I had to. Which is not to say …’

‘I can’t deny what I know.’

‘Galileo did. What difference did that make, in the end?’

‘He died miserable.’

‘Dying’s a miserable business. Anyway, he was miserable when he was alive.’

‘Have you even looked at the numbers?’

‘And I’d rather I hadn’t,’ Richard admitted.

‘You ever scared you’ve grown too comfortable?’

‘That’s a stupid thing to be afraid of.’

But Richard was lying. And every time he repeated it, the less convincing it felt.

THE RESTAURANT WAS too warm, and throughout the room carefully dressed couples regretted their choice of costume. It was that sort of place: quiet and expensive, with an imperfect temperature. A room where the commonplace of the wealthy and the special occasion of the middle class could mingle uncomfortably.

Luke studied Robyn, who studied her menu. Behind her, two of the dining dead sat in silence, sealed over by the already said. Luke looked again at Robyn, and for a way back into their conversation. A conversation that parenting and careers, lost sleep and ‘worries for the future,’ had cut short. Almost mid-sentence, it felt. If only he could remember that sentence. Finish it. Unlock their lives.

‘You weren’t thinking of staying for dessert as well were you?’ Robyn asked. Not a question but a reminder; of a dozen conversations like it. Fifteen dollars for ice-cream. We can buy ice-cream, perfectly good ice-cream, for a tenth of the price. We’ll eat it on the couch, in front of the heater, once Alicia is in bed. Hokey pokey from a plastic tub, with the television on, and the thousand needles of jobs undone for company.

‘Dunno. See how I feel once I’ve eaten. You ever tried pheasant?’

‘Twenty-eight dollars. I think they’re quite small.’

‘Good, it’ll leave room for dessert. White or red? I’ll order a bottle.’

‘Just get yourself a glass. I’m fine.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’

Luke hadn’t intended it to be this way. He had made an effort to leave the buttons unpressed, but they just went right on ahead and pressed themselves. He knew he should apologise, before her special look, a duo of bewilderment and accusation, set for the evening.

‘Can’t you just for once relax and enjoy yourself?’ Luke heard his voice rising to a fight and marvelled at its will. This was the truth. He simply could not help himself. ‘Happiness isn’t like saving for your retirement you know. You can’t set it aside, to be enjoyed at some later date. It doesn’t pay interest.’

Robyn accused him of having a temper, of speaking without thinking, and she was right. But so was he, that was the problem. So was he.

‘Keep your voice down,’ she told him.

‘Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just saying a glass of wine won’t kill you, that’s all. I wanted tonight to be special. Okay? Sorry.’

Luke smiled. She smiled back. He mistook forgiveness for a willingness to compromise.

‘So, red or white?’

‘Luke, I’m pregnant.’

The world stopped; every possible feeling rendered useless, clumsy, inappropriate. Luke recognised this state. Back then, the first time, he’d put it down to ignorance. Yet here he was again, with three and a half years of fatherhood to draw upon, still blank. All he felt was the lack of feeling. He smiled, as one must, and waited, and when that didn’t work, he tried to think the emotion to the surface.

Another child. You are going to be a father again. You love your child. Your child has changed your life. You are happy. You are truly, strangely happy.

‘Say something then.’ Robyn looked at him, anticipation crinkling to concern. ‘You are happy aren’t you?’

‘Of course I’m happy.’

‘We discussed this. We said how it would be nice for Alicia to have a little friend to grow up with.’

Luke couldn’t remember this. He certainly hadn’t used the phrase ‘little friend’.

Luke looked across the table. Tears were forming. She was vulnerable, devastated. Instinct kicked in, late but welcome. He reached across the table, took her hand, squeezed it. Said the words and felt, to his great relief, feelings swarming forward, smothering the gaps.

‘Robyn, it’s wonderful news. Jesus, of course it is. Better than wonderful, it’s … This will change our lives. I’m just a bit surprised, you know. It takes a moment to sink in. You must have been the same.’

A mistake, of course. She shook her head.

‘Have you, did you, like were you expecting this? Had you been, like, or did you forget? Or was it a mistake? A malfunction?’

She grinned, shrugged.

‘I guess I just forgot.’ Robyn looked down as if to mark a cute, inconsequential oversight, like forgetting to turn the oven on, or misplacing your car keys. Then she smiled, and somehow it didn’t matter. Luke noticed he hadn’t let go of her hand. Wouldn’t let go.

‘You are happy, really?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I am. What about you?’

She nodded vigorously.

‘I’m surprised,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how I’d feel.’

‘You’ve just started back at work.’

‘Yeah, I know. But I can work through till Easter. They’re fine with that.’

‘You’ve already told them?’ He let go of her hand.

‘I had to check it all out, before I told you. So you wouldn’t have any worries. I’ve seen the bank too, we can just spread out the mortgage. And you know, maybe you can go for an HOD job at the college. You’ve said so yourself, how you were feeling like a challenge.’

The dead man behind Robyn coughed and brought his napkin to his mouth too late. The dead woman looked around, to make sure nobody had noticed. Luke saw a school corridor, full to bursting with the sounds and smells and bodies of ignorance, stretching out forever. He saw himself walking against its tide, heading towards an exit which he could not see, and awfully, could no longer believe in. He stopped, turned, allowed himself to be carried back towards the black hole of the classroom. Had he been alone just then, he would have cried.

‘Or maybe the steak,’ he said. ‘I fancy a steak. How about you? What do you feel like?’

‘Yeah, I’ll have the steak too,’ she smiled. ‘And I’ve been thinking about our cars. We don’t need two cars. I mean, not right away, but we should sell one, don’t you think? The school bus goes right past the end of the road doesn’t it? Yours, probably, would be best. We’d get more for yours. And mine’s fine. It still runs really well.’

‘It’s an automatic,’ Luke heard himself say, in the voice of a man who has just had the means of his execution explained to him.

‘Yes,’ Robyn agreed, happy that he should understand. ‘And it’s an automatic.’

DIFFERENT DRINKS, RICHARD found, each had their own way of turning him. Wine made him talkative, beer grumpy, whisky maudlin. All of them made him a little sick. The East West Ferry, on its last run for the night and barely with the energy left to resist the buffeting of the wind, didn’t help. The passengers crammed together out of the rain, and their smells thickened the air: Friday night drinks, wet woollen coats, perfume hopefully reapplied in the elevator, seasoned with sea spray and diesel. Richard sat on one side of a small table and tried to take his mind from the discomfort by staring out the window into the darkness. It was his wife’s birthday and he was late home. It was inexcusable, bad manners which a clumsy gift in paua would not, should not, make amends for. She deserved better. Always had.

Seeing William had depressed him. William depressed him. ‘When you choose to always be on the side of the angels,’ had been his old friend’s parting shot, ‘how do you know you haven’t just grown used to their company?’ Which he had no answer for. Doing right was hard enough, without the added difficulty of identification. But that wasn’t the depressing thing. What made him … ill was the right word, were the injuries on the face of a man who would never hit back. And the secret Richard carried, that he knew he was too weak to share.

Across the table two young men were discussing the election. Even this close it was no easy matter distinguishing one from the other: the hair cut short and carefully worked up with gel, black and shining; dark confident eyes; stabbing fingers; smiles never more than a frame away from a snarl. Too young surely for the suits they wore, or the expensive watches upon their wrists. Richard could feel the line separating youth from age rising like a tide behind him. Soon it would peak and he and his generation would be discarded one by one on the shore, that the whole game could start again. Everything set back to zero.

‘Yes, but I’m saying,’ said Young Rich Man One, thumping the table, oblivious apparently to Richard’s scrutiny, ‘that she’s up herself isn’t she? Who wouldn’t be, after this long in government? I’m not saying it isn’t understandable. I’m not even saying she hasn’t done a good job, over all. History will be all right to her. But people like a fair go. They like to see people get their turn don’t they? And they don’t like people being up themselves. They want to teach her a lesson.’

‘But that’s a stupid reason not to vote for her,’ the other countered, immediately becoming Richard’s favourite.

‘People are stupid.’

‘Are you stupid?’

‘Not like that, no.’

‘So why aren’t you voting for her?’

‘Who said I’m not voting for her?’

‘Can’t stand the bitch.’

‘Democracy,’ Richard muttered, surprised by how loudly he said it. Whisky. Both men looked at him.

‘What was that?’ asked the bitch-hater, when nothing more was offered.

‘Sorry,’ Richard mumbled. ‘I didn’t mean to say that quite so loudly.’

‘Yeah, but what did you mean though?’

The inquisitor leaned forward, primed for a confrontation. Lawyers.

‘I meant, I suppose, that this is what we fight for. The inalienable right of every adult citizen to teach the bitch a lesson.’

They thought about this for a moment, clearly trying to gauge whether this old, poorly dressed man was taking the piss.

‘What do you do?’ asked the less odious of the two.

‘I’m at the university.’

He thought about this response for a moment, before nodding.

Elizabeth was standing at the doorway, a moth belting itself to confusion on the veranda light above her head. Worry had settled into its familiar pattern on her face. Richard had married a worrier, although nobody else would know it. It was one of their little secrets. Often relief got in the way of the anger she was entitled to. He hoped this was such an occasion.

‘Waiting for your present?’ Richard joked. The light drizzle made his skin prickle. Elizabeth didn’t look at her watch. Nor did she step forward to embrace him.

‘Richard, we’ve been robbed.’

Richard was caught short by the moment. A beat of puzzlement before the obvious, necessary, question.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m all right. I wasn’t here.’

‘Well when … where were you?’

‘I went round to see Judy. When you rang to say you’d be late, I went round to see Judy.’

‘Lucky you did.’

And now the hug. They disengaged, standing at the doorway like awkward almost-strangers at the end of a first date.

‘How’s that lucky?’

‘Well, if you’d been here …’

‘If I’d been here, they wouldn’t have broken in,’ she told him.

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Where’s the car?’

‘I caught the boat.’

‘You’ve been drinking.’

‘William was beaten by some protesters today. He’s all right.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Lunch time I think.’

‘Why didn’t you …’

‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

The creases returned to her still-beautiful face.

‘Well, where is he now? Is he in hospital?’

‘No, he was at his office when I …’

‘You should have invited him here. Why didn’t you invite him?’

‘I did. He’s … he wants to be by himself.’

‘Of course he doesn’t want to be by himself.’

‘He told me he wanted to be by himself.’ Richard raised his voice in contradiction, well aware volume was not the missing ingredient.

‘Well of course he did.’

‘I took him at his word.’

‘You shouldn’t have. You’re very late.’

‘Happy birthday.’

Richard took the small gift-wrapped parcel from his coat pocket.

‘Where’s the card?’ She was smiling.

‘I sent a stripper. Did he not arrive? Perhaps when you were out.’

‘Perhaps the burglar scared him off.’

‘Or vice versa.’

Richard watched her small pianist’s hands work free the wrapping. The eyes, he realised, do not age. Looking at her eyes it could be twenty-five years ago. How many gifts had he bought her in that time? When did he start letting shop assistants make the decisions? Elizabeth was a small woman, always had been, her nervous energy burning everything the world could throw at it. She had let her hair turn grey, and now mostly white. He had said to her once that women who didn’t dye their hair always interested him. It was true. And perhaps she had listened. More likely she was already that type of woman. He was lucky.

‘It’s lovely.’

‘Put it on.’

‘It’s just what I need.’

‘Well, mostly they stole jewellery.’

‘Oh. What else?’

‘Nothing much. They found some cash, in the drawer in our room.’

‘They were in our room?’

‘Why wouldn’t they go into our room?’

‘Well, it’s a bedroom,’ Richard reasoned, knowing at once he was being ridiculous. ‘It’s … I don’t know … manners isn’t it?’

‘They’re burglars, Richard.’

‘Have you called the police?’

‘They’ll be round in the morning, for insurance purposes. Or we can just make a list and drop it by the station.’

‘So what, we have to leave it all untouched?’

Elizabeth began to laugh. It crinkled the eyes first, and then her hand shot instinctively to her mouth, to keep the sound in, but still delight gurgled from her throat. It was her favourite thing, making comedy of him.

‘Oh Richard.’

‘They don’t do DNA tests for break-ins.’

‘I could do one for them,’ he grumped.

‘I’m sure they’ll appreciate the offer.’

‘They didn’t break anything?’

‘No, I don’t think so. Why are we standing out here?’

‘I don’t know.’

This time they kissed. As warm and familiar as coffee. They walked through into the house. Richard didn’t know what he was expecting, something less ordinary he supposed. He cast his eyes about, looking for some sign of the intrusion.

‘You’ve already tidied. Why did you do that?’

‘I had nothing else to do.’

Fair point. ‘Sorry. I just think, I think I would have liked to see.’

‘There wasn’t much to see. Just a few drawers open, cupboards, the wardrobe. I haven’t finished in our room yet, if you want to look. The policeman I talked to on the phone said it’ll be kids…’

Elizabeth’s voice followed Richard down the hallway. The bedroom door was open. The ransacking had been quick and random. On the left the dresser drawers were pulled wide open and socks and underwear spilled onto the floor, as if caught mid-escape. The drawers on the right were apparently untouched. The wardrobe door was open and a box of old papers had been hauled out into the middle of the room, tipped on its side with its contents fanning out across the floor. The bedspread was turned up on one side, marking a place where some stranger had peered beneath their bed. Not such a transformation really, nothing that couldn’t quickly be put back in place. Yet, Richard realised, something had changed. The gap between their world and the world outside could no longer be considered impermeable. One less thing they could pretend. This place, their place, had been made common.

The burglars would not have intended this. They wanted some easy money, and perhaps the thrill, that was all. They (he imagined two of them: skinny, surly, brown) would not have stopped to think of the people who had made these walls the boundary of their promises. A memory swam unexpectedly to the surface. Sitting here, on the end of the bed, holding their youngest, Julia. She would have been three. The first of her asthma attacks. He’d never felt so helpless, nor so ready to do whatever was asked of him. Somewhere inside Richard’s stomach another wall crumbled and he was sitting again, sniffing back the beginning of a tear. Reliable whisky. Elizabeth sat beside him, her small hand rubbing the top of his broad, son-of-a-farmer’s back, as if he were a child.

‘Sorry, this is … it’s not … it’s ridiculous. Look at me. It’s your birthday, we should be … come on, I’ll clean this up.’

Richard stood but Elizabeth didn’t move.

‘I haven’t checked your study.’ She spoke gently, as if afraid the news might break him. ‘They were in there, but I haven’t checked. I wouldn’t know if anything was missing.’

The mode of operation was the same. Drawers open, papers thrown to the floor as they sniffed out the portable and the valuable. Richard saw immediately what was missing.

‘There was a hard drive. Here, plugged into the back of the computer, a little silver case, with all my … you haven’t moved …’

‘Is it important?’ She stood beside him, her arm around his waist, head pressed against the side of his chest. It would have been so easy then to tell her, but this was the wrong time.

‘No, no of course not. Well, you know, work things. Back-ups mostly, but nothing I can’t … Shit. Shit shit shit.’

‘Your speech for tomorrow?’ She guessed. Right and wrong.

‘No, no, it’s fine. It’s here.’ He pointed to the computer. Just kids. That was all it was. They’d dump it. They wouldn’t have any idea, couldn’t possibly understand the importance. Richard looked down at his wife, who gave him her ‘Oh well, it isn’t going to kill us is it?’ look, which so far had proven accurate. Still, you only get to slip up once.

‘Well, happy birthday eh? I should have brought food back with me.’

‘I’ve ordered from Jonty’s.’

‘I should have done that.’

‘You’re wet through. Run a bath. It’ll be half an hour, they said. Red or white, or are you done for the night?’

‘No, of course not. It’s your birthday. Ah, white.’

The bathroom mirror steamed over, the polite thing to do. Richard rubbed a space clear and regarded his ageing body. It was a sort of punishment, this kind of truth. He wondered what the heavy feeling in his heart was, and why he couldn’t shift it. Could it be the first glimpse of that perimeter fence which must not be mentioned? A greeting. Not today, it said, but not never. Not any more.

Richard looked closer at the body he hardly recognised. It was still a shock to him, that time could grow another self and place it so ingeniously over the body of the man he felt inside. A disappointment. There was hair now, in places where hair had never grown. It encroached like weeds in a garden. His skin was patchy and put upon by gravity: too many meals enjoyed, too few steps taken. His muscles had retreated in modesty, and when he pinched a fold of flesh at his arm, it recovered only slowly. This is what it means to be alive, Richard thought. To decay. And this is what it means to be human. To watch. To be aware.

The water was warm, the world offering a gentle apology. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and saw William’s beaten face hanging Banquo-like before him. Accusing him of what? Comfort. Of becoming comfortable. There was a time when that had seemed the greatest of crimes. But he was warm and food and wine awaited him. They would lock the doors tonight. Comfort seemed not criminal but reasonable. He would hold his form a little longer. He would not fade away.

They ate in front of the fire. Good food, delivered to the door by a local restaurant, in a suburb where wise investments came home to roost. They drank good wine, a bottle he had been given by a supplier at the lab. They talked about William. Elizabeth had questions Richard could not answer, about the protest. It was her talent, to find the image at the heart of any story. She should have been a painter. Instead she taught music, private lessons, piano and voice, and said she liked it well enough. Richard never quite believed her.

The late news carried a breaking story from Christchurch, where a National Front rally in support of One Nation (although how Wilson backed away from the mess he had created) had turned predictably ugly. A rumour had swept through the crowd that the Chinese boy beaten two nights before had died. It was untrue: he still remained trapped in that modern euphemism, the critical condition, but the skinheads believed otherwise. And they danced at the news. Young, drunk, ignorant: adjectival excuses paraded before Richard but he dismissed them all. They danced. Animals.

Onlookers, sickened by what they observed, hurled insults. The skinheads hurled bottles. Windows were smashed, a car turned over, and the TV crew, with hand-held Hollywood sensibility, made art of it. A reporter barely old enough for a driver’s licence, with glasses he probably didn’t need, panted into the camera, giving a melodramatic look over his shoulder as he arrived in shot.

‘Violence has erupted tonight, as the city shows off its ugly underbelly.’

A young man staggered into shot, uncommonly thin, as so many of this type seemed to be, his shaven head showing off every bump and imperfection. Like all forms of nakedness, it revealed only uncertainty. The stretched scalp brought to mind the feel of uncooked chicken skin. The boy’s teeth were crooked. Attractiveness amongst skinheads was a rarity, as it was amongst politicians. Nature had done this angular fellow few favours. A rash of pimples high on his forehead had been incited further by the razor, and his eyes were too small to ever charm. Yet now they gleamed as he leaned forward into the camera, pulsing with his moment of power.

‘Fucking wonderful isn’t it?’ he asked the world, the opening of his sentence bleeped out by an alert editor.

‘What’s so wonderful about this?’ the reporter asked. The skinhead paused, as if suspicious of a trap. His face wrinkled in confusion.

‘It just fucking is isn’t it? Fucking nips deserve it.’

‘Seannnneeeey!’ A scream of recognition from another Fronter, as he hurtled past, pursued by two policemen.

‘White power!’ returned the interviewee, his clenched fist raised in triumph. Then it all became too much for him, and he started to giggle uncontrollably, a small child overwhelmed by the world’s attentions. The camera swung back to the reporter, who for a moment also appeared lost for words.

‘This is Andrew Collins reporting live from Christchurch, a city tonight coming apart at the seams.’

Hyperbole, of course. Richard knew this. And yet little drops of sweat formed on his brow.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Just a little warm, after that bath and the wine, I think.’

‘Shall we turn this off?’

‘Yes, let’s. Where’s the remote?’

The room blipped to silence and the walls became solid again. But for Richard there was no comfort to be found.

SIMON HATED THE bus. He was supposed to love it. He told people he did. He remembered once using the words romantic and real. In truth it was dirty and slow. Full of other people.

A boy new to the trench between first shave and manhood sat across from Simon, his eyes flicking open and closed. The obligatory lines ran from pocket to ear phones, wrapping the world in warmth and safety. The manchild wore a thick green army coat, faded and carefully frayed. Simon remembered the age so well, how tightly one clung to anything that could be shown to fit, how the smallest accessories formed the frame over which your personality slowly crept. He remembered the friendship books which at some stage were all the fashion, in a world without Bebo. Favourite food, favourite drink, favourite saying, favourite song … How he’d worked at getting his lists just right.

It was early for a boy of that age to be heading home. Out the window through the rain-pocked darkness, Simon saw teenagers huddling in bus shelters, waiting to be transported into the city, where they would drink and swear and flirt and fight, piss against walls and goad the old who would call them scum under their breath before hurrying by. He wondered if the boy across from him – who Simon had named Nigel, after a schoolmate who fifteen years before had owned the very same jacket – saw them too. If he wished to be with them, or if he had better things planned. It seemed unlikely, out in these suburbs. A three-word conversation with his parents, he supplying only one of them, then off to his bedroom. PlayStation and masturbation; beneath the surface nothing changes.

The bus stopped. Simon swung out the back door, called out his thanks to the driver. The cold had a personality tonight. It came in from every side, anxious for attention, and spat on you if you dared to turn away. It suited Simon. Southerlies, he had found, were the very best weather for dreaming.

‘Hi there, stranger.’ Amanda met him at the doorway. Simon wondered if she knew how much he liked it when she did that. He tried to do the same, when he remembered. He loved her, he was sure of it. He loved the way her face lit up when he looked at it, and the way she took his projects seriously, and trusted him to do the same. He loved the fact that if he’d had a tail, she would have made it wag. He loved the way she loved him. That was the simple, precarious truth.

They kissed. It started off as a peck but at exactly the same moment they both changed their minds. He dropped his bag and felt the small of her back, the rise of her arse. She pulled him closer still.

‘You hungry?’

‘I should eat,’ he told her.

‘Excellent. I’m starving.’

Simon was the cook. It was a fair and sensible arrangement. He earned less, because he worked less, which was his choice. And he was better in the kitchen. They had competed, and he had won. Or she had let him win. He knew that was possible.

Simon opened the fridge, grabbing whatever came to hand. He piled the meal-to-be on the bench, in the space between the dishes he had meant to wash this morning and the broken breadmaker, which his mother had given them as a wedding present, on the day she finally realised they would never marry. Amanda stood against the stove.

‘How was your day?’

‘Good.’ He bit the end off a carrot and spat it into the compost bucket. ‘Want one?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Slept in,’ he told her.

‘Of course.’

‘But I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much.’

‘Work on the screenplay?’

‘Thought about it. Like, thought about the screenplay, not about working on it,’ he clarified. He had reached the end of his twelfth draft, which he and Amanda had agreed in advance would be the last. But now, looking at it, he wasn’t sure it was finished. ‘How about you?’

‘Um, good and bad, a strange day. Richard was being strange.’

‘Normal strange or strange strange?’

‘I don’t know. I think it’s new. I think he’s pulling back, like he’s having second thoughts about the whole documentary.’

‘But he’s signed up, right?’

‘You can lead a horse to water…’

‘I’ve never understood that. I always thought getting the horse there would be the harder part.’

‘What do you know about horses?’

‘I’ve seen horses. They’re big. I can’t imagine leading them anywhere they didn’t want to go.’

‘He’s keeping something from me.’

‘Everybody holds a little back, even from themselves.’

‘So what are you keeping from me?’

‘I’m the exception. You’re keeping me from the knives though. Move.’

‘Something important. I keep thinking there’s something I’m meant to be picking up, so that when the documentary’s finally made, and then it comes out, it’s going to make the whole thing redundant.’

‘That sounds like paranoia to me.’

‘Maybe. I saw a man get beaten today, by protesters.’

‘Did you try to stop them, or did you film it?’ Simon wasn’t criticising, but from the wrinkling of her nose he saw he had left room for the possibility.

‘Of course I tried to stop it. Well, we. We tried to stop it. Did stop it, actually.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Me and Greg.’

‘I hate the sound of that you know.’

‘Now who’s being paranoid?’

‘Who were they beating?’

‘The professor I told you about. You know, the whole IQ thing.’

Simon remembered being told, but not what he’d been told, which was not uncommon. He nodded.

‘Right. He okay?’

‘Pretty frightened.’

‘Arseholes.’

‘I thought you were on their side,’ Amanda said.

‘We got any mushrooms? Turn on the TV, I want to watch the final speeches.’

‘You hate politics.’

‘No, I hate politicians. There’s a difference.’

‘Decided who you’re voting for?’

‘A number of times.’

‘You’re useless.’

‘Yet ironically, very good at it.’

‘That’s not irony.’

‘I need a fork.’

‘You’re holding one.’

‘I know, it was a joke. Alanis Morrisette. You used to love her.’

Amanda scooped a handful of grated cheese and rammed it into her mouth, speaking through chews.

‘I was using that.’

‘I don’t like cheese in it.’

‘Yet you … No, let’s not.’

‘You piss anyone off today?’

‘Five, so far. Turn it up.’

While he prepared the meal, Simon kept one eye on the television. The small flat was open plan. He’d grown up in a house of walls, where kitchen, dining room and lounge each served different, separate functions. Now he found it impossible to imagine such an arrangement. Did his parents never want to turn the stereo up loud and listen to music while microwaving dinner and talking to their spouse who had cleared a space on the only table and was tapping on the laptop? His attention drifted back to the television.

Peter Wilson, political chameleon, survivor – even charmer it was said, by those who’d got too close – and these days leader of the One Nation coalition (dubbed One Last Crack at Power by the newspaper cartoon that morning) smiled serenely at the screen. His delivery had grown smoother over the years (and slower too, pointed out the wags, as his support base each election grew harder of hearing) but the message hadn’t changed.

‘New Zealand is facing a crisis…’ Wilson purred.

‘How can he seriously do this? He knows it’s a load of bollocks…’ Simon began, but Amanda, sitting on the couch, her back to the kitchen, raised her hand in protest.

‘If you’re going to commentate …’

‘I was just …’

‘I thought you weren’t meant to get excited in the evenings.’

‘I’m not excited, I just …’

Politics was Amanda’s obsession. Later, when the speeches were over, she would want to unpack them all. But now, during the action itself, distractions were intolerable.

‘… during this campaign we have been attacked by cowards, who would use labels like racist as a way of avoiding the issues. But I ask you this. Is it racist to love your country? Is it racist to have a core set of values around which you wish to see a stable, prosperous society constructed? My challenge to those who have made this battle personal is to return to the issues. Let’s see the facts debated. Throughout this campaign I have asked them to provide me with their model of a flourishing society which does not ask of its citizens that they adhere to a shared set of values. And have they done this? No they have not. And why not? Because no such society exists.

‘People have accused me of being anti-immigration, but that’s as cheap as it is inaccurate. I – we – are the most vigorous proponents of immigration of any of the parties contesting tomorrow’s election. But we are saying, hang on a minute, let’s be smart about this. Let’s use immigration to further our own aims as a society. This is our sovereign right, to ask of those who come to live here that they come prepared to work with us towards our shared vision. We welcome those of every race, colour and creed with open arms, and ask only in return that they embrace this country which has offered them such hospitality.

‘Immigration is a gift we offer to the world, not an entitlement. Should you be allowed to travel here and then go straight on a benefit? No, of course you shouldn’t. If a friend cooks you a meal don’t you at the very least offer to help with the dishes? Is it reasonable to keep known terrorists from living amongst us? Of course it is. Is it reasonable to expect immigrants to be proficient in our language? Again, yes. Is it reasonable to say to those who earn criminal convictions within their first twelve months in this country, “You are no longer welcome here?” It is unreasonable not to. It shows a lack of pride in who we are, a lack of belief in the values which still make this the greatest country in which to raise a child.

‘We thought very carefully about naming our coalition, and in the end One Nation was chosen because it is what we aspire to be. Individual, diverse and free, yet united in a single vision. Tomorrow, when you go to cast your vote, I urge you to consider this. Why would you give your tick to a politician who is not passionate about defending all you hold precious, who does not wish to honour the very values our parents and grandparents fought for?’

Simon wondered how Wilson did this. Was it possible that he was as cynical as it seemed, that this was just a game to him, an exercise in pushing buttons? Winner takes the seat and the salary, the status and the perks, and in the end this paltry end justifies its means. Or was it something Simon found even harder to understand? Did the words Wilson spoke feel like truth to him? Truth, as fragile as the life of the Chinese student on life support, whose condition, according to the radio he’d heard blaring from the newsagent beside the bus stop, was worsening.

Simon ate his dinner slowly, a small portion, carefully measured. Beside him Amanda shovelled. He’d been the same, before the beginning of the experiment. Now he was losing weight. She teased him about it, but there was nothing he could do. No sugar after three o’clock. No caffeine. No snacking after dinner. A single glass of water before he went to bed. Two hours exactly, between his last meal and sleep. It wasn’t always this strict. But nights like this, cold nights with excellent prospects, it was wrong to take risks.

‘We could watch Letterman.’ Amanda curled up beside him on the sofa, her cheek against his shoulder. They’d bought the couch at an op shop. He’d seen it from a bus window and texted her. Simon breathed in the smell of her. The TV flickered blue in the dark room, told stories on her face. He checked his watch.

She understood. Her face slackened in disappointment, but she understood. Her mouth half opened, and she tripped on a word. He looked down at her. She did understand, didn’t she?

‘Hey, Simon.’

‘Yeah.’ Don’t do this, he wanted to say, not tonight. The conditions are perfect, you know they are. But that would be starting an argument. That would set his mind spinning. That would ruin everything. Amanda rubbed her hand across his belly, moved in closer. The hand passed low, a cool finger edging beneath his jeans.

‘I know it’s important, I’m not saying it isn’t, but I just … I don’t know, today was weird. I’m feeling weird.’

‘The conditions are perfect,’ Simon pointed out. Not arguing. Staying calm, detached.

She sat abruptly, turned on him. Still Simon believed he could avoid this.

‘I think this might be hurting us,’ she told him. The sentence carried the weight of a long deliberation.

‘It isn’t. I wouldn’t let it.’

‘When was the last time we had sex?’

‘Saturday afternoon,’ he replied, without hesitating. He’d been careful not to let it slip away. They’d warned him, at the clinic, and he’d been careful.

‘Between the shopping and the rugby,’ Amanda said.

‘We didn’t hurry,’ he countered.

‘No we didn’t. We left plenty of time.’ But that too was an accusation. He could feel his calm coming away at the edges. It would take only one purposeful tug.

‘Don’t you see what’s wrong with that?’ she tugged.

‘What? Was there something wrong with it?’

‘There’s something wrong with making an appointment to have sex.’

‘It wasn’t an appointment.’

‘You wanted to get it out of the way, so it wouldn’t interfere with your evening.’

‘And I was right. It was the best one so far.’

‘The sex?’ she provoked.

‘No,’ he replied, knowing now that he was trapped. ‘The dreaming.’

Amanda bit her lip. He looked at her, and wanted to hold her. Should have held her. Didn’t.

‘Look,’ Amanda told him. ‘I know we agreed at the start that this was a really interesting project, and I know that sometimes my projects take over my life too, but it’s just, well, I’m finding it really hard. I just want sometimes to be able to relax with you. It’s not that I mind it sharing your life, Simon, I just mind it sharing our bedroom.’

‘Two more months,’ he told her. ‘Max says I should be there in two more months. And once it’s automatic, I won’t …’

‘But you’ll still be looking forward to it won’t you? It’ll still be the highlight of your day.’

‘Not really,’ he lied. She was better at picking lies than he was at telling them, but he felt obliged to keep trying.

‘Yes, really,’ Amanda said. ‘Look, I’m sorry to be complaining, because I know I said I wouldn’t, but just lately, I don’t know, it’s not how I thought it would be. I mean, think of it from my point of view. I don’t think I want to be having sex knowing that you’re looking forward to finishing it, so you can go to sleep and do your precious dreaming.’

This was unusual. They didn’t talk about sex. Neither of them had a taste for that sort of analysis. She was right about the dreaming. Precious was exactly the right word. Lucid dreaming was the official description. He’d seen an ad for the clinical trials being conducted at the university. He was a perfect candidate, apparently. Remarkably relaxed, unusually open to suggestion. The compliments had pulled him in.

After the first partial success, he’d needed no other reason. Dreaming and knowing you’re dreaming. Directing the dream. It was an unimaginable thrill. He wasn’t there yet. Not entirely. The experience was still variable, too dependent upon falling asleep in exactly the right conditions. And he could feel there was more, even though the research team had stressed there was no way of knowing how far it could be taken.

‘Could you ever imagine it getting to the point where you never wanted to wake up?’ Max had asked him, at the last interview.

‘No, shit no. I mean it’s fun and all that, but you know, you still have to live, right?’ Simon replied. And Max, being a man, didn’t realise he was lying.

Simon slid across the couch, pulled Amanda close. Kissed her. She kissed him back, then changed her mind.

‘No, don’t,’ she told him.

‘I don’t want you do it just because you feel you should. That’s the point.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are. You’d rather be dreaming.’

‘It’s too late now anyway,’ he told her. ‘I won’t be able to. I’m too agitated.’

‘And that’s my fault?’ she asked.

‘No, it isn’t. It’s, it was the whole political thing, and you know, tomorrow. Anyway, it isn’t a fault. You’re right. It can’t become an obsession. I’m sorry.’

He moved towards her, but again she pushed him away.

‘Let’s just watch.’

They sat together, side by side, eyes on the screen, while the problem between them decanted.

‘Love you,’ Simon told her.

‘I know you do,’ she replied. She took his hand and squeezed it. He closed his eyes, imagined he was flying. Asleep, and flying.

ALICIA WAS ASLEEP. When Luke tried to sleep in a car, it made him vomit. Luke left Robyn to unpack their child, while he walked on to unlock the front door. It was an act he’d carried out a thousand times before. His system was on automatic, cut down to the lowest level of alert. Today he had tried to explain to his Year Thirteen biology class that this was anything but normal. That for the majority of its short life span, the Homo sapiens had lived out its existence in a state of high alert. This state of comfort we mistook for emptiness was in the end a fleeting anomaly, a miracle of the history of curiosity and timing. He hadn’t convinced them. He hadn’t convinced himself.

Then he heard the noise, just as he reached the front step. Instantly his pulse quickened and his eyes dilated. Adrenaline, the wonder drug. Luke turned back, father and protector. Robyn, child in her arms, looked up, sensing his alarm.

‘What?’ she whispered.

‘There’s someone in there,’ he whispered back.

‘Are you sure?’

Luke edged back towards the car.

‘Give me your cellphone.’

‘I don’t have it.’

‘You always have it.’

‘I left it recharging. What should we do?’

Luke stopped. Again he was blank. There should be an answer. He knew that. But this was the sort of man he was, even in times of crisis. A blank man. How such a quality had survived the ages was a mystery to him.

‘Get back in the car.’

‘Get Alicia in the car.’

‘Where are we going to go?’

‘Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. We’re insured. We’ll go away, come back. Find we’ve been burgled, ring the police.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Robyn told him. He agreed with her. It was. It was also his very best idea.

‘So what do we do?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps we should …’

She left it there. Something had happened behind him, something more important than finishing a sentence. Luke turned.

A young man. Tall and solidly built, but no more than a teenager, a face not so different from those Luke confronted every day. He wore a simple uniform: jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, basketball boots. He stared Luke straight in the eyes, only the glass of a sliding door between them. Luke raised both hands, to show he meant no harm. A fog of fear descended. There was him, and there was this boy, and there was time, caught on the point where their eyes met: stretching, stuck. The boy did nothing. Not Mäori, Luke thought, lamely rehearsing his description for the police. A Pacific Islander. Luke took a step backwards.

‘What are you doing?’ Robyn hissed at him.

‘Get in the car. Get Alicia in the car,’ Luke hissed back.

‘You’re not just going to let him get away are you?’ Robyn challenged. ‘Look, his bag’s full. That’s our stuff.’

‘I don’t give a fuck about our stuff,’ Luke told her. ‘Just get back in the car.’

‘No,’ Robyn told him. ‘Here, hold her.’

He’d never seen Robyn back down, not once. Now she thrust Alicia at him, and Luke had no choice but to take her.

‘Robyn, don’t.’

She strode forward. A brave act, all their friends would later pronounce, and Luke would take on the chin the implied accusation. Coward.

Inside the intruder froze. Just run, Luke wanted to shout. Make for a window. She’s not that fast. You’ll be fine.

The border between tragedy and comedy is broad and liquid, a river of possibilities.

‘Get back, lady,’ the boy warned. The sound of his voice was a jolt, confirming as it did the difference between a window and a television screen.

‘Drop your bag,’ Robyn returned. In Luke’s arms Alicia came awake, and furiously blinked her sleepy eyes, trying to make sense of this strange dark scene.

‘What’s happening, Daddy?’ she asked.

‘Nothing, it’s okay,’ Luke told her.

It wasn’t. The boy stepped towards the door. Robyn did the same. The door was locked. She wrenched at it but it did not budge.

‘Unlock the door!’ Robyn screeched, experimenting now with full-blown hysteria.

Alicia began to cry.

‘Unlock my fucken door!’

Luke did nothing. He simply watched the scene unfold and thought to himself, ‘I am doing nothing.’

The boy could have still escaped. The light was poor. He would never have been identified. He didn’t have to do what he did. There was a clear and simple choice available to him.

He smashed his fist through the deadlocked door. Glass showered over Robyn. She cowered. Luke put down the screaming child. The boy kicked at the door. Luke ran towards his wife. The door flung open. The boy barged out, swinging his heavy bag, knocking Luke to the ground. Luke scrambled to his feet, his eyes on his daughter. The boy cut left.

The way ahead was clear. A child, a driveway, the street, freedom: but the boy cut left. He hurdled the low fence bordering the vegetable garden. There was a loud crash as he ploughed into the glasshouse which night and grape vines had conspired to make invisible. There was nothing more. No movement, no sound. Alicia did not cry. Robyn did not shout. Just a bewildering silence.

Then a groan, long and low. Followed by a frightened:

Robyn looked at Luke, still expecting more of him than he could deliver. She walked past him and picked up their daughter, offering her soothing noises. Luke understood that further inaction was now inexcusable. He looked about for a weapon but nothing suggested itself. Slowly he moved towards the scene of the glasshouse collapse.

The boy lay on his back, clasping his ankle. Even in the half light the bleeding was obvious, a thick dark stain seeping through his fingers.

‘Robyn,’ Luke called. ‘Get the outside light on.’

He took another tentative step forward. The boy did not move.

‘Okay, don’t move. I’ll come round through the gate.’

Light flooded the scene. The boy was on his back. He looked up, terrified.

‘I’m bleeding man. I’m fucken bleeding.’

‘Robyn, call an ambulance!’

‘What about the police?’ the voice came back.

‘Ambulance!’ Luke insisted.

‘Is it bad?’ The mention of an ambulance had clearly frightened the boy. Luke looked more closely at his face. Fifteen, he’d say. Not one he recognised.

‘Move your hand, let’s take a look.’

The cut was deep, but not, as Luke had first feared, an artery. Already the blood was beginning to congeal.

‘Okay, you’re going to be okay. It’s not too bad. Here, just put some pressure on this. Just keep pushing down. You hurting anywhere else?’

The boy shook his head. Robyn’s face poked over the fence, her expression shadowed like a puppet world ghoul.

‘They’re on their way. What’s happened?’

‘Cut an artery,’ Luke lied, wanting only to be rid of her.

‘Right. Good.’

‘I’ve called the police,’ she added, as if to make certain her position.

‘Get inside,’ Luke told her. ‘Take Alicia inside and stay there until they arrive.’

Get out of my sight. Robyn looked doubtfully down at the two of them.

‘Don’t let him get away,’ she told him.

Luke looked back at the boy, whose face was drained of all expression. Frightened and waiting.

‘Sorry mister.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘I didn’t know it was your house,’ he tried to explain.

‘And that would have made a difference would it?’

‘You teach my cousin.’

‘Oh. Who’s that?’

The boy thought for a moment.

‘I probably shouldn’t say. I saw you at the rugby once. You were running the sidelines.’

‘Good memory.’

‘He says you’re okay.’

It wasn’t, Luke imagined, calculated, but still it hit its mark.

‘Okay, cousin of my mystery student,’ Luke whispered, ‘I want you to listen very carefully. In a moment I am going to scream out and you are going to run away. Your ankle is okay. The bleeding has almost stopped. Just make sure that when you get home you clean it well. Do you understand?’

It took a few seconds, before the boy understood.

‘Thanks mister.’

‘Don’t do this again, all right? It was a stupid thing to do.’

‘I won’t.’

It was a lie. They both knew it was a lie. But they could pretend.