Skeletons. A ruined town. The endless possibilities of emptiness. His son was lapping it up. This was what Lorcan wanted. He needed to sell this to Dylan as he was sure Nee was a lost cause. As soon as the Perth carnage had blown over, she would want to return. But he had plans. He had lost their first house but he would build another. Bigger and better. He would make a life out here for them. Until such a time they could return. She had given him six weeks, twelve at the most. He was banking on a lot longer.
She still blamed him. And she was right. He had overstretched on their investments and paid for it, the mortgage on the five-bedroom house bought at the market’s zenith, crippling them. It had always been too big for them. Merely a statement of false affluence. When his career had peaked.
Now they were on this adventure. He knew his parents – and especially hers – saw it as a selfish pursuit. Taking a huge risk with a young child. But they didn’t know the other factors. And Dylan wasn’t that small anymore. Give him a tablet and he could find anything he wanted at the touch of the few buttons. Which was riskier than anything they might meet out here. Plus they had taken plenty of medical supplies, bandages and ointments, an inhaler even though none of them suffered from asthma, numbers for emergency advice, coordinates and directions to the nearest doctor and hospital even if they were an hour away. Plus it was the school holidays. They had six weeks before Dylan was due back and he could teach his son a lot in that time. How to erect a shelter, how to source water, survival techniques he had studied online and built himself a little manual of. He felt prepared. Prepared to show Nee that he knew what he was doing.
‘Are we there yet?’
This wasn’t Dylan of course, but Nee. Another jab for him to prove he was in control.
He peered out the window. None of the buildings looked suitable. Sweat prickled at his hairline despite the air con blasting at full tilt. He had thought that having the choice of any building would be exhilarating, almost an out-of-body experience where he would float above the town and find this rough diamond in the midst of the rubble. It wasn’t proving to be the case. They were all extensive fixer-uppers.
Turning at the far edge of town he drove back to the crossroads and followed the dead boomer’s nod to go right.
‘Have you got an address?’ asked Nee. She wasn’t looking out the window anymore but staring at him as if he could materialize their house from thin air.
‘Pick one,’ he replied.
‘Pick one?’
Her dark eyes narrowed, the delicate Thai features contracting into something vicious. It gave the impression that she was in pain. But Lorcan knew that she was considering all the angles before committing to a response. She avoided long, drawn-out domestics, if possible. One wound, provided it was deep enough, was sufficient.
‘Any one?’
Lorcan was glad of the interruption from the back seat, the childish fervour dispelling the growing mood in the vehicle.
‘Any,’ he replied, turning towards his son who was leaning into the front seat between them like a dog. And just as eager.
‘What do you mean, any?’ asked Naiyana. ‘Which one did you buy?’
‘I didn’t buy any of them.’
‘What—?’
Lorcan jumped on the grenade before it exploded.
‘It’s called adverse possession.’
‘What is?’
‘It’s an old common law right we inherited from the Poms.’ He could see on her face that she was lost so he continued. ‘If a house is abandoned, we can take it, make some improvements and if… when… we meet a series of requirements we gain title to it.’
He smiled at her. It wasn’t returned, her lips drawn tight. Dylan was watching both of them.
She waved her slender hand across the expanse of the front windscreen. ‘There isn’t much to hold onto.’
‘There will be.’
A curl of her lip told him she doubted it very much.
‘So we move in and just take it over? Like an army?’ asked Dylan.
‘Exactly,’ said Lorcan. He kept quiet that they would need to hold onto the property for twelve years before they could claim title. That was a long way down the line. The main thing, according to the law, was to hold exclusive, uninterrupted and adverse possession, meaning that the owner had not given them permission to move in. Which they hadn’t. And there was no one around to dispute with.
In the end the kangaroo gave them a bum steer. Turning around and passing the crossroads once again, he spotted it. The best of a bad bunch, the red brick slap-dashed with white lime or paint that had faded over time but still stood out from the rest. A bungalow with the roof caved in on one side. But there would be time to fix that. Out here it didn’t rain very much. Which, of course, presented a big problem in itself.