Dave froze with the basketball in his hand and stared at the hoop like a sniper. Sweat beaded his forehead in spite of the arctic winter wind. He waited for the right moment and then hurled the ball like a missile. It slammed straight through the hoop and bounced hard onto the concrete driveway. Dave raised his arms in grim victory.

‘Fifteen in a row,’ he barked. ‘That’s a record. Your go.’

He hurled the ball at Nickie so hard that she almost doubled over.

‘Dad!’

‘Oh, sorry, sweetie! Are you okay?’

‘What’s up with you? You’re acting like a psycho.’

Clarity slapped Dave in the chops. His daughter was right. He was taking his frustrations out on her, and he’d turned an innocent game of shooting hoops into lethal combat. ‘Maybe I am. I’m sorry.’ He gave her a hug. ‘I’ll chill out now.’

She wrinkled her nose and wriggled free. ‘You stink, Dad. You’re all sweaty.’

Dave chuckled. ‘What’s a bit of bodily perspiration? Come on, give your old dad a hug.’

Nickie giggled and tried to escape his grasp as he chased her around the driveway. ‘No! Gross!’ She laughed and squealed like the teenage girl she almost was. Her shrieks were so high-pitched that Dave had to stop himself from wincing. A mate of his with a fifteen-year-old daughter had warned him to get used to it—or, failing that, invest in a good set of earplugs.

‘My goodness!’ exclaimed an elderly lady who’d just appeared in the next garden. ‘I thought someone was being murdered.’

‘Oh, hi, Mrs Morgans. Sorry about that.’

‘Yeah, sorry, Mrs Morgans,’ said Nickie.

Dave checked for a can in Mrs Morgans’s hand. She didn’t have much strength left in her wrists and Dave was her official can opener—which was fine, except she kept pretty odd hours and she’d been known to wake him at 5 am with a tin of sardines. But today she was only carrying pruning shears.

She waved their apologies away. ‘My girls sounded like banshees. You should have heard them.’

Dave was rather glad that he hadn’t.

Mrs Morgans bent down to prune her wisteria and disappeared behind the fence.

Dave watched as Nickie lined up a shot. She’d make a handy basketballer if she chose to play. She’d undergone quite a growth spurt lately, and she now towered over all the other Redbacks, except for Tom McDonald, and according to Evanthe she was feeling self-conscious about her height. That was part of the deal at her age, of course, but still, poor kid. She just needed the benefits pointed out to her.

‘You’re lucky you’re taller than the boys. Maybe you could play for Australia one day?’

But to Dave’s surprise Nickie didn’t look cheered. She looked the opposite, if anything. Without any of her usual gusto she threw the ball apathetically and it dropped to the ground well short of the hoop.

Dave blinked in surprise. ‘Nick? Are you okay?’

‘What if I don’t stop growing? What if I end up like some kind of giant? I don’t want to be as tall as you—I’m a girl.’

So Evanthe was right. She usually was.

‘You won’t grow as tall as me,’ he assured her with more confidence than he felt. But her face was still clouded with worry and memories of his own puberty came flooding back. Hadn’t he spent hours trying to get out of swimming lessons because he thought he was too skinny and bony? He found himself writing a cheque that he couldn’t cash. ‘I promise you won’t grow as tall as me.’

‘Thanks, Dad …’

But her smile was still listless and she made no attempt to resume the game. It seemed like there was something else on her mind. Dave thought he was probably supposed to guess what it was, but, as established multiple times, there was Buckley’s chance of that.

‘Is there something else, sweetie? What’s up?’

She hesitated.

‘Come on. You can tell me.’

‘Do you think I’m pretty?’ she asked finally.

‘Of course you’re pretty.’

‘Pretty enough?’

‘Enough for what?’

She looked down and twisted her foot on the ground self-consciously. ‘Enough for boys to like me.’

And there it was, the burden borne by little girls all over the world who didn’t look like Barbie dolls. The anger that Dave had so recently quashed rose and filled his chest again. ‘No, don’t fall for this. This is exactly why I wanted you to read Snugglepot and Cuddlepie instead of Cinderella.’

She looked up at him with a ‘huh?’ expression.

‘Those stories are a conspiracy against little girls. Think about it, Nick—all these princes falling in love at first sight before they’ve exchanged so much as a word with the princess. Don’t you think that’s pretty shallow?’

Nickie looked like she’d never thought about it, but Dave had been thinking about it since the night he’d first read Snow White to her as a toddler. As soon as he’d tucked her in and turned out the light, he’d registered his protest with Evanthe.

‘Doesn’t it concern you that the prince falls head over heels for Snow White when she’s in a coma? You can only assume that the bloke has no interest in her conversational abilities. What kind of message does that send to Nickie?’

‘Oh, David, it’s just a story—you’re taking it too seriously,’ Evanthe had chided him. And when he’d gone out and sourced little girls’ books that focused on female independence, she’d accused him of being too politically correct.

He’d ceded to her superior knowledge as a woman, but even now his hackles rose. Why was the hero always a prince? There was probably some poor bloke with a heart of gold scraping up the horse’s shit—but would Snow White notice him? Of course not! Resentment flared again. How many times had he heard women, both real and fictional, ask despairingly, ‘Why can’t I just find a nice man and settle down?’ Because you don’t want a nice man! Because nice men are always too tall or too short, or they’re not rich enough or in the right job, or they don’t have the right kind of laugh, or they’re instantly dismissed as just ‘not your type’. Because, given the choice, women who claim to want a nice guy will always go for the arsehole.

Dave took the ball and threw it with such force that the hoop rattled and shook. Nickie was looking confused and he struggled to calm himself, mustering a smile. ‘I’m just saying, there’s a lot more to life than appearances. You need to remember that, sweetie.’

Her eyes inexplicably filled with tears. ‘You think I’m ugly.’

‘What? No! You’re beautiful.’

‘You think I’m ugly and no one will ever like me.’

‘Sweetie …’

Dave reached for her but she burst into sobs. ‘I don’t want to play anymore.’ And she turned and flounced off.

Dave was floored. What just happened? ‘Nickie, wait—’

But she’d already disappeared into the house, slamming the door behind her.

As Dave hovered helplessly, Mrs Morgans popped her head back up over the fence and regarded him with sympathy. ‘You don’t know much about women, do you?’

Clearly not.