FIVE

No lights at the row, no TV. The inside of my fridge is warm already in the fuggy night. All over the estate, the sound of the Park’s ute engines charging phones and batteries. I get my Holden going to give my mobile a boost too. There’s a petrol bowser up at the food store that will keep the cars moving for a while. Encoding. Decoding. And here we are, healthy as horses. The animals around us squawk their mysteries and we’re none the wiser.

Without any lights, the night takes over. Owls and magpie geese hoot overhead. Turkey birds scratch up the bush. Wallabies and wallaroos thump all over. Something in my cupboard chews its way into a packet. Let them have it. Let them clean me out. Anything fresh will be mouldy by morning. Even the critters in my yard have come alive. Baby rock-rat Rocky is suddenly grown up and trying to eat his way out the door of his cage. I crouch down level to the pen and fumble with the latch. Don’t even have time for a ‘Hey there, fella’ before he bursts out at my face, bubble eyes glinting in the moonlight. He leaps away and off across the yard, squishes his fat body through the chicken-wire fence and away. No more Rocky. The others are excited too. Without electricity, the whole world has been returned to its proper darkness. Wallamina doesn’t get stuck in the corner. Princess Pie stops making her baby noises and lets out a proper caw, black as the night.

I get the candles going in my flat and hunt out the cupboards and all my hiding spots with a camping lantern. Find a bluebird earring by the bathroom cabinet, but nothing to drink. Sit on the cold bathroom floor and wait for the shakes to start. They don’t. My head is cool as tiles. People start arriving at the gates, wanting to get into the Park. Those of us left in the row come out blinking in the blaze of the hired utes and cars. Ange dashes around, growling orders. The people on the other side of the fence call through the wire. Can they speak to Blondie the python, or Kermit and Miss Piggy the rainbow lorikeets, or Bernie the crocodile? The police and army are too busy explaining to the rest of the country why they can suddenly talk to their pets. They don’t have time to keep the Park safe from every nut-job wants to come in. Angela uses up the juice on her mobile trying to hire extra security for the fence. She starts up one of the Park vans to charge her phone, then makes another call. When she talks to her dad, her accent comes back and her whole voice changes — harder and sweeter at the same time, a boiled lolly. Only a few hours later, white utes with roo lights and bull bars jump off-road and bounce up the gravel past the tourist cars, toward the gate. One takes out a low tree with a sick crunch. The men who get out are built like brick shithouses, wearing loose T-shirts with slogans like ‘Hunt the Grunt’ and ‘Game on’. They station themselves at the gate and the fence.

‘Piggers,’ Ange tells me.

‘Never thought I’d see the day.’

‘They’ve organised. Call themselves Land Patrol now. They were all Dad could get. Also …’ She rubs her face, mashing the tired back in. ‘They’re infected.’

‘They’re sick?’

‘Apparently it’s okay. This disease likes to be within spitting distance. Make sure Kim —’

‘I won’t let anything happen to our girl, Ange.’

Next day, Angela throws Kim out of the car on her way past. We go into my unit and stare at ourselves in the bathroom mirror, check our eyes for sick.

‘You look pretty, Granny,’ Kimberly tells me, standing on the toilet lid.

Eyes clear and grey, skin a bit pink. Fresh bandage around my throbbing hand. Even my head feels sure — a faulty compass come right. ‘I scrub up, don’t I?’

We pull our ranger shirts over our nighties and head down to the fence. The tourists are still at the gate, clumped around their cars.

‘Who are they?’ I shout at one of those pig hunters. He turns his head, a bit slow. Even at a distance I can see he’s sick. Red eyes blazing in the pearly light.

‘They want to come into the Park,’ he yells back.

Nice cars, burnt people guzzling bottled water like there’s no tomorrow. It’s hot and getting hotter.

‘Southerners,’ I tell the guy. ‘Come up from the cold to talk to the animals.’

The fella leans forward to peer at the people. They straighten up like kids at school waiting to be picked for the sports team. Must be about fifteen cars out there, packed to the gunwales. ‘All got pink-eye,’ the fella yells.

‘I had that one time,’ Kim shouts back.

He pulls his mask aside. He’s good-looking. Dark, like my Lee. In different times I might have told Ange about him.

‘Not like this. Get up close and you’ll see.’ He points to his own eyes, squinting with red. ‘Once you’ve got it? You have to be tough. Keep your head or you’ll be a lock-in who won’t leave the house. Either that or some crazy who waits outside a zoo to talk to an elephant. These are people who will have whole conversations with their dogs, you know.’

‘I want to talk to a dog,’ Kim tells him.

The man straps his mask back on. ‘No, you don’t. My hunting bitch was a tough, mean, fighting machine dog that didn’t take shit from nothing. But what she had to say once I knew what it was she was saying —’

‘What’d she say?’ Me and Kim at the same time. Snap. But the guy turns away. A tall woman my age starts waving her arms around, trying to get our attention.

‘How did you get in there?’ she calls.

‘I work here.’ I point at my shirt. ‘I’m a ranger.’

‘Can I take a photo?’

I shrug. Why not? Lift Kim up so she can be in it too, and the woman snaps away with her phone. Then we wave them all goodbye and go back to the row, where the TV sits dead and the backyard bandits just want to eat and eat and eat. Me and Kimberly check each other again for symptoms. She pulls down the saggy bit under my eye and peers in.

‘It’s pink!’

I look for myself. ‘That’s just how eyeballs look, mate.’ We check hers: the same. I smooth the wrinkles out of our shirts while Kim has a cold shower and then I brush the nests out of both our hair. Mine ripples silver and gold. Don’t even need any makeup. We’ve only got Weet-Bix with water and sugar for breakfast, crackers and spread for lunch — even that dog kibble and birdseed is starting to look good — but I’m feeling stronger than ever.

We’re late to do the feed. The day is already blasting. A hair-dryer wind down the empty bush tracks to the enclosures. No one minds, except the animals, and all they can do is clamour at the cages when we come through dishing out kibble and dried bugs and seed. The zoo train sits at the café station. I know it’ll be dead, along with all the other electrics, but we climb up anyway, try the button. It doesn’t even chug. It’s tough to get around the Park without the old train. Plenty of Park utes around but they’re locked up, and Glen’s always on the other side of the park with the keys. We scoop our buckets and go on foot, like the other rangers do. The Park roads bend and shimmer in the heat. Me and Kimberly hit up every dinky solar water fountain along the way, wetting our hair and our arms and guzzling the water that doesn’t get chilled anymore. We fling still-cold fish over the fence at the stinger station, shove mouse mix through the wire at the food store, and push seed, defrosting mice, and kibble through the wires on death row. Then we head up to the dingoes. Take the cooler route through the jungle walk — wooden walkways that flex over the powdery blue creek. We spot turtles scooping through the water, in and out under the border fence. The turtles’ way. By the time we burst out the other side at the dingo enclosure, it’s so hot only Mister and Buddy rouse themselves from the shade. They drag their bones back under the trees, barely a wag of hello. I call and crane my neck for Sue, but she doesn’t come out from wherever she’s hiding.

‘Remember to tell the other rangers, Kim. They better check on her later.’

Kim nods importantly. We hold sweaty hands back through the Park. Her ranger top hangs from her like a dress. She refuses to take it off.

By dusk, more people have arrived at the front gate, camped along the bamboo-edged road that leads from the highway into the Park. They want to see the animals, and the Patrols are wearing thin. The good-looking guard hits the air around him, ducking away. Tears off down the road — the fine, hummingbird wings of a micro bat flickering over his head. Another guard doesn’t come back from his dinner break. Ange rings the cops. They never arrive. She joins me and Kim outside the row, ripping at a nail and watching the perimeter fence. The hot day melts into gloopy night, the air heavy all around us. I put Kimberly in my bed and find some juice boxes, warm in the fridge. Angela sniffs hers, sips.

‘Think we’ve got some sort of humanitarian responsibility to feed them?’ she asks me, staring out at the cars. ‘Tania’s doing a diploma in development. Said that.’

‘We should be scabbing off them, more like.’

Those tourists are burning their headlights like they’ve got all the power in the world. Dashing around the bush that spans the Park to the highway, chatting to every little furry thing they can. Their hysterical laughter, sobs and gasps bounce off the trees. The gruff shouts of the few remaining Land Patrol when the tourists get too close to the fence. Tired and hungry, they cook up sausages and fold them in bread — the sweet stink of tomato sauce on the smoky air. My stomach groans. Tonight’s staff dinner was packet noodles off little camp stoves up at the aquarium. Everyone too fucked to do a proper meal. The fence people retire into their tents and swags and vans; us back to our dark houses and the stink of rotting, mouldy fridges and hot linoleum. Just before sleep I remember that I never got an eye on Sue in the dingo enclosure. Can’t remember a time when she hasn’t come out to say hello.

My phone rings. It’s so dark in my little flat that the brightness flares, and it’s a moment before I can make out the name on the screen: my Lee.

‘Go outside,’ he says.

‘You alright?’

‘Just go outside.’ I open the front door, stick my head out. ‘At the fence.’

Outside is all lit up with hot stars and a fat moon sliding toward the horizon. I go down the short path at the front of the row and peer along the exit road to the fence where there’s a figure — and I know. When you’ve birthed someone, you recognise them in any light. He has a way of standing: wonky, but graceful as a dancer. Such a shock when he shot up out of his pudgy baby skin and grew bones like wings, all angles — and that grin. Lee has a way of ducking his head and peering up at you through his hair with his bright, black eyes.

‘Baby boy,’ I say into the phone. ‘What the hell?’

‘Saw your photo, you’re internet famous. Come to the fence.’

‘I’ve got Kimberly.’

‘Even better.’

I go back inside to haul Kim out of my bed and onto my hip. She’s boiling hot, smells like dribble. Barefoot down the warm road I go, unable to keep the smile off my face, even though I know it’s best not to encourage him. Because if you give him an inch. My baby. My boy. My little man. Stranger with my skin standing on the other side of the fence. Lee is thinner and taller than I remember, dark stubble sketched over his chin. Mirrored sunglasses, and the slow grin below them a heartbreaker. His voice has changed too. The vowels flattened, like dogs in trouble. He’s been on the heroin by the sounds of it — maybe got off it in time to kick the habit, but not so quick it didn’t knock his voice for six. That voice twists my guts, wrings them dry, but it doesn’t make any difference to know.

‘That’s your daddy, isn’t it?’ I tell Kim. She buries her head in my shoulder and peers out through a gap in her hair.

Lee turns his grin on her. ‘Hello, Possum.’ She hums with uncertainty and clings tighter. In her house, Lee’s name is said in spite. Even six-year-olds can spot rotten love. She mumbles something.

‘What’s that, Angel-face?’

‘I’m not allowed to call you Dad.’

‘What about Uncle Lee?’

Kimberly giggles. ‘Uncley!’

Lee nods in my direction. ‘Let me in, Mum.’

I look along the fence. The few piggers that are left stand at the gate, all serious now there’s fewer of them.

‘I already bribed them to talk to you,’ Lee says. ‘Nothing left.’ He spreads his hands to show me all he has: a thin body, a faded blue backpack, ripped jeans, and a love-worn singlet with ‘Che’ written on it.

‘You shouldn’t go too near those fellas, Bub. Or anyone.’

‘Let me in, then.’

‘You’ll have to camp out, just for tonight.’ My heart smashing itself against the fence. To talk to your baby through wire! ‘I’ll get my swag from the cupboard and throw it over. It’s comfy. In the morning we’ll tell Ange. Maybe —’

He looks away, laughs. A bitterness to his smile where there used to be honey. ‘There’s got to be another way. The piggers said this fence is electrified, but I can’t hear it.’

‘It’s been cut,’ I say before I can jam my fist in my stupid mouth. Lee’s sunglasses sparkle, catching light from I don’t even know where. I try to backtrack. ‘You’ll never get over that razor wire.’ We all know it’s too late. Even Kim knows, and she’s a kid.

‘There’s the turtles’ way,’ she puts in. Lee comes up closer to the fence. Touches it tentatively. It’s true. The power’s off. ‘What’s that, Sunflower?’

Kimberly sits up and brushes some hair out of her face. ‘The turtles go in and out under the fence. They go under the water in the creek, and when they come up, they’re in the Park.’

‘No kidding?’ Lee smiles at her and she smiles back, and there it is. They smile the same.

‘She’s just talking about how we feed the turtles. I’ll get the swag.’ I move to leave but Kimberly writhes out of my arms and takes a step toward the fence.

‘What about crocs?’ Lee asks, crouching to her height.

Kimberly shakes her head vigorously. She’s an authority on crocodiles now. ‘They’re not allowed in the creek. The rangers tell them to keep out!’ She looks up at me to confirm. I know the bit she’s talking about. A swimming hole up the road. It’s beautiful there. A small waterfall crashes between the banks.

Lee pulls his blue pack on his back. ‘Guess I’m a turtle, then. Do I look like a turtle?’

Kimberly nods solemnly, her thumb drifting up to her mouth.

‘Lee,’ I call. He’s gone. The bamboo has replaced him. Trunks thick and speckled orange as the necks of giraffes. ‘Shit, what’ll I tell Ange?’ Lee appears again, his smile catching the moon.

‘Hey, Mum, what happened to your hand?’

I hide it. ‘Caught it on some wire. Be careful, love —’ He’s off into the dark.

Back in the bed, Kimberly slumped into an open-armed sleep beside me, I think about him slipping into that water. Remember going there to smoke doobies with Graham, how the rock pools glow at night with some inner light that comes up from the sandy bottom and shows the fish going about their business. Glowing.

I get up, sit at the kitchen table and pick through my ashtray for butts, blazing the cool smoke again and again in the dark. The idea of Lee underwater won’t leave me. I see his body fight against the current made by the little waterfall, then under the submerged fence. For a moment he is lost in the shimmering blue. My son is just another boulder, a shadow or a weed. He’s trapped down there. Caught on the wire like Sue the dingo, except that Lee can’t breathe. I suck smoke. I won’t let him stay like that. I see the surface on the other side buckle — his beautiful nose cracks through. He makes it. Lee always makes it. Something about my son: he’s a free boy. He’s been a free boy like that since he was born. How something so pretty could come out of two ageing rev-heads like me and Graham, with scraps for hearts. I passed Lee to his dad, and Graham said, Why doesn’t he look like me? I heard he’d look like me. It hurt to laugh. Did he think Lee looked like the farmer next door? It’s true, though — Lee doesn’t look like anyone. He’s got Graham’s hair and his black-as-a-burrow eyes. He’s narrow like I used to be. But the look he wears about himself, the air that comes with him into a room, the light in his eyes that isn’t from anything but his own insides: that’s free. What’s it like to be free? Ask him. He’ll say things like as a bird, or freedom is something you can touch but never hold. He’s always talking like he invented inspirational postcards. I guess when you don’t have steady love, and you don’t look after your children, and you don’t have a house or a job — even keeping a date with a woman is a bit too hard — you can act free. Lee doesn’t mind. Lee doesn’t mind about anything. He lights up a room. He could light up a coal mine. He even made Angela happy for a second. We helped them to buy the campervan. They were going to have Kimberly and take off across the desert to the coast. Ange grew up overseas with buckets of money but real strict boarding schools, the lot. She saw Lee’s bare feet and smelled his particular scent — sun sweat, lemon juice, and smoke — and she reached out for freedom. For that weird beauty that’s worth more than money or guts, even in this part of the world. They were supposed to be having a break when they got pregnant, but Lee didn’t mind. He said, have the baby and we’ll live at the beach and rent a house from a friend, and I’ll get work in a kitchen. He didn’t add that, not long after Kimberly was born, he’d take off without either of them.

Lee gets to the row hours later, half drenched, backpack covered in mud, grinning beneath those stupid mirrored sunglasses he somehow managed to keep on under water.

‘Full on,’ he murmurs. ‘That was one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had.’

Kimberly is slumped diagonally across my bed, one arm abandoned, the other clutching Hello Bear. Lee peels off his clothes and stands in the middle of my lounge room in the candlelight, naked as the day, still wearing his sunnies, and inspects his body with a torch for leeches. He’s skinny, but toned and brown — tribal-looking tattoos down one arm. There’s one leech, right up near his brown ball sack.

‘I’ll let you get that one.’ I hand him the vinegar. The little sucker lets go of Lee’s thigh and falls off, and I chuck it outside for Princess Pie to peck in the morning. Last man sat on my couch naked was Andy. It’s hard not to laugh, with Lee there in the candlelight like an ad for couches, and Andy, the old round ranger. Lee knows he’s beautiful too. My flat and the row seem suddenly shabby.

‘Shameless,’ I tell him. Chuck him an old towel. He tucks it around his hips. ‘What’ll you do now you’re here?’

‘Spend time with my mum. Get back to where I came from. Maternal energy. Quality time.’

Bullshit, but it makes me smile long after I’ve crawled in beside Kimberly, the little space she’s left.

The sun is up and bouncing off the walls by the time I stagger out in the morning. Some mosquitoes got me by the fence last night, bit the shit out of my ankles. My door is open and there’s Lee out the front of the row on a plastic chair, shirtless, wearing the jeans I hung up to dry last night, sunnies still on. He’s bouncing Kimberly on his lap and chatting up Casey and Liu, who are practically popping out of their ranger shirts. Casey puts her hand over an infinity tattoo on Lee’s bare shoulder and throws her head back with laughter. She’s an idiot, but I get it — there’s something about a fertile man. Liu hangs back. She and Lee give each other a secret smile. She’s good-looking, young, grumpy too, and boys like that. She stares deeply into his glasses and her own reflection. Lee just behind it, but he’s not quite there. He’s on the make, playing the dad, bouncing Kim on his knee, but he keeps glancing over his shoulder into the bush at the side of the road. There’s a wallaby there, crouched on its haunches in the shade of some scraggly trees, fat snout twitching. Lee looks at it and looks at it. He can’t stop looking at it. The women don’t notice, but I do.

‘See you’ve made yourself at home,’ I say.

‘Here she is.’ Lee shoots another glance over his shoulder at the animal before turning his smile on me. ‘Total goddess. Mothers are so valuable, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. And that is so sweet.’ Casey looks like she wants to become the mother of his children right there on the front path with all of us watching.

Kimberly points up the road. ‘Here’s my mum.’ Angela’s car pulls into the row. I clutch the door frame. Known her almost a decade now and she still scares the bejesus out of me. Lee’s smile for her is brilliant, though. Either he’s the best actor in the world or he still thinks she’s beautiful. Hair blazing, uniform tight in the right spots, fists clenched, eyes set to kill. Casey and Liu fade to nothing, scurry up the road to work. Kimberly has the good sense to get off Lee’s knee and take refuge behind me at the door.

‘What the actual fuck?’

‘Ange, I feel so blessed —’

‘Did you let him in?’ She turns on me.

I nod like a dumb idiot, but Lee, God love him, stands up between us.

‘I broke in, Ange. I found a weak bit of fence and thought I’d come say hullo. And now I’m here …’ His gaze is taken again by the wallaby. Makes a choking sound in his throat — the animal hooks away.

Angela stares at him funny. She leans in. ‘Take off your glasses.’

My turn to step between them, knowing what I’ve known since I first saw Lee in those stupid specs. Kim is on me like a limpet, dragging me back. ‘Lee was just leaving, Ange,’ I call. ‘He was just —’

‘Take them off.’

‘These?’ Lee tries to smile. ‘They’re supposed to reflect souls. I met a yoga teacher out east who told me —’

She rips them off his face, drops them on the dirt, rears back.

‘Lee?’ I ask. He looks over at me with eyes like paint. Pink paint.

‘My dad’s got pink-eye,’ whispers Kimberly.

Ange is so mad she forgets he’s diseased. Shoves him hard, and he staggers back. ‘Did you know you were sick when you came here?’

‘If you could hear them —’

‘Tell me, you little shit.’

Lee rubs the back of his neck. Glances with flaming eyes into the bush again. ‘You got some great animals in here, Ange.’ We all stare at him, mouths hanging. ‘I mean, talking to a ghost bat. What a trip, right?’

I wait with Lee inside the row while Angela paces around out front, yelling into her walkie-talkie about another emergency contingency. We’ve got so many emergency plans now you can’t even breathe unless it’s part of a spreadsheet. Kim is with us because she’s hugged Lee and might be infected too. I try distracting her at the table with the scrapbooks and pencils, but Lee is more interesting than our sanctuary. He’s on the couch, staring with bloody eyes at the corner where the front window meets the display cabinet. I keep all my memories there, photos and everything.

‘Hear it?’ he whispers. I listen. The bush mutters in the hot wind outside. ‘Hear it? They’ve been here. Right here. You can’t smell them or anything?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’

Lee looks up at me. ‘Mice, Mum. They’re in there, talking with their fur — and I can tell you what they’re saying.’ He points to where the wall has buckled in the wet-season rains, left a cavity, a broken tooth of plaster. ‘They’re hungry as.’

I grab his red-and-tan packet of Brumbies and roll myself a smoke with shaky hands. Kimberly stares at Lee like he’s a bird from outer space. ‘You’re scaring your daughter —’

‘Nothing to be scared of. They’re just hungry.’ He cocks his head and listens again. Rolls himself a cigarette too. ‘The smokes block it a bit. Dull the senses. It’s intense, you know?’

Outside on the porch, Wallamina decides it’s feeding time again. She butts her head at the door. Balances on her tail and tries to thump the glass with her rear legs but misses. Lee sinks back into the couch.

‘Holy fuck.’

Kimberly’s been told to not go near him. She edges closer. ‘What’s Wallamina saying, Dad?’

Lee stares at the animal. ‘It’s like acid. Has Kim had acid?’

‘What do you think, Lee Bennett?’

‘Okay, it’s like I can feel everything. I can hear … everything, the taste. The smell is awful and it goes for, I don’t know, days and great, great distances.’

‘The smell does?’

‘Yeah, and it’s bright, even in the dark. And my skin. I can read every movement. Every muscle. Can you imagine?’ Me and Kimberly shake our heads. Lee whispers, ‘And they can too.’

‘Who?’

‘The animals.’

‘They’re sick too?’

‘They’re always saying stuff. We just, you know, didn’t get it.’

Kimberly hops around like she needs to wee. ‘But what’s Wally saying?’

‘She’s saying …’ Lee stares at the wallaby through the glass, the cigarette blazing in his fingers. ‘Nah, it’s too hard.’ Kimberly goes and pokes him in his bare shoulder. I know that poke, and it hurts. ‘Okay. Okay, wait. She’s like, she doesn’t want to be outside. But she doesn’t want to be inside neither.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

Lee sits up a bit. ‘She’s pretty messed up, and it’s not just that she’s mentally … you know, mental. There’s something wrong with the vibe of this place, something wrong with all the animals in this park. I mean, it’s a zoo, right? They’re all in cages.’

Kimberly folds her little arms across her chest and glares at Lee, just like her mum would.

Lee squints at Wallamina. ‘And she’s obsessed. Obsessed with that corner over there.’

He points over to the bit where Wallamina gets stuck.

‘That’s just the bit where she gets stuck,’ I tell him.

‘Nah. Nah, she reckons there’s something there.’

‘What?’ Kim whispers.

‘Some other wallaby.’

‘But there’s nothing there.’ Kim turns to Wallamina. ‘There’s nothing there. It’s just a corner.’

‘There’s another wallaby there, she’s sure of it. Look, I don’t get it either. I don’t really know what they’re going on about most of the time.’

‘What about Princess Pie?’ Kimberly points at the crow, who is listening to the ground, one ear cocked for grubs.

Lee shakes his head, his hair flopping like black fingers over his eyes. ‘It’s just the furry ones for now. But I heard some people are bad cases. Talking to the birds and reptiles, insects even.’

‘If I was sick, I’d talk to all the animals!’ Kim flings her arms to take in the world, then sneezes. You wouldn’t think that much mucus could live in such a little body, but there you have it.

‘You wouldn’t want to be in here for long,’ Lee tells her, while I wipe her face with bits of toilet paper. ‘I thought it’d be great, but they’re all institutionalised. Messed up in the head. Outside the gates the animals are free. I met these great chicks who said they were going to the coast to hear the southern whales sing. I should’ve gone with them. They said if you get underwater you can understand the words. Tell you the meaning of the whole world. How blessed would you be then?’

The coast, the coast. Always promises of the coast. Kim is hooked. ‘Can we do that, Granny?’

‘Don’t think your mum would like it, do you?’

Kimberly shrugs and goes to press herself up against the screen door, where Wallamina and now Princess Pie have gathered. Me and Lee roll Brumbies and sit in silence. If everyone wasn’t so shitty with us, it’d be nice, like a party.

‘Nothing yet,’ Kimberly reports every two seconds, then goes back to testing the animals like microphones. ‘Hello? Hello? Wallamina, can you hear me?’ Wallamina, meanwhile, is beside herself, can’t handle the barrier of the screen, hops in circles, strikes out at the crow, wants skin and food and whatever. Lee keeps himself turned away from her antics. For all his hoopla about bonding with them, he seems pretty keen to keep the glass door closed — the whole row like a furnace at this time of day. Spends the rest of his ‘blessed’ time hiding out on my couch under a blanket of smoke.

Angela comes back into the flat like she’s part of her own stampede.

‘Too late,’ she announces. Her mouth twisted and sore. ‘Casey and Liu went straight up to the rangers meeting, and Casey hugged everyone there. Our quarantine is broken. We’re all exposed. Are you even listening to me?’

‘Sorry,’ says Lee, turning from the back door, shaky hand through his hair. ‘It’s that wallaby. She’s … intense.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Ange sets in on Lee: irresponsible and selfish and dangerous and not fit for nothing. Arsehole. Sociopath. Dickhead. Never going to see Kimberly again.

‘What does it matter anyway?’ Lee mumbles. ‘She’s not …’ He stops. They both glance at Kim, like the girl will go pink-eyed and animal-crazy before us. Kimberly gets nervous under their gaze. Sniffs her snot and pulls her thumb out of her mouth. Pulls Ange down to kneeling so she can wrap her arms around her mum’s hard shoulders.

‘Are we going to get pink-eye like Dad? I mean, Lee?’

Angela sits back on her heels and puts her hand to Kimberly’s forehead, holds her gaze. ‘I don’t know, kiddo. We’ll have to wait and see.’

‘If Granny gets it, she’ll be able to talk to the animals for real.’

Angela turns her hate face on me.

‘Maybe we won’t get sick?’ I suggest. Lee bobs his head in agreement. Got to keep positive. There’s a yellow sticky note above my bed says, ‘Wake with a smile, run a mile, do it with style, love all the while.’ You can see where Lee gets it from.

No one wants to go near Lee. His burnt eyes and the way he keeps staring off into the bush. Muttering. They open the gate and shout at him to hurry the fuck up. Last I see, he’s wandering down the exit road, blue backpack dried stiff with mud. When he passes the big Jurassic Park gates he thanks the guards. They nod at him because, except for the dickhead part, he’s not really a sociopath or all those things Ange said. He’s a free spirit, and a polite one — I taught him manners, and who has manners these days? Every time I see the back of him, I think it’s going to be the last. He’s always going off to do stupid shit. Once he hitched across the country without a wallet to see if he could get by on being nice — he could. Next I hear, he’s rocked up to an office in the city wearing a borrowed suit, pretending he works there to prove corporate society is a machine. Lord only knows what he’ll get himself into now he can talk to the beasts. He turns left up the highway, toward the city — a miniature figure, hazy in the dry-season light. A mirage of heat blurs the bitumen. Ange lets me watch until he’s gone, then she’s at me like a terrier. Usually, she doesn’t get up in my grill when Kim’s around. She’s so furious she doesn’t even clock her little girl there on the couch with her thumb jammed in her mouth, staring at the dead grey TV. I forget my rules too. Roll myself another from Lee’s tobacco pouch while Ange gets it out of her system. When she takes a breath, I come clean to her about how he got in, the turtles’ way. Her walkie-talkie crackles. She tells Glen to jam an extra bit of fence down in the water so nothing can get in or out — a job my ex would once have done. Glen and Angela mutter to each other over the radio, bicker and consult.

‘I can’t risk infection,’ she tells him.

‘You’ve been around Lee, so if you’re infected, you’re infected,’ Glen shouts back through the static. ‘We need you up here.’

Angela doesn’t want to leave Kim with me, and I can’t blame her. I pack the smokes away and fix Kimberly a snack, like that will make Angela’s mind up for her instead of the fact that she’s got no one else — she’s stuck with me. When she’s gone, me and Kim try to do some scrapbooking. She turns to the ripped-up cattery page that I taped back in. Throws her plate of Vegemite and dry crackers on the ground. The plate is plastic, but her food goes all over my nice clean floor. While she’s busy crying on the couch, Wallamina pushes her busy nose through the crack in the screen door and hops right inside for a free feed.

‘Look at that,’ I tell Kim. ‘Wally is saying: “Wowsers, this is my lucky day. People say ducks are lucky, what about wallabies?!”’

‘I don’t care,’ shouts Kimberly.

I usher Wallamina out again — clumsy hops over the linoleum — and go to sit with Kim on the couch.

‘Remember what you’d ask the animals if you could talk to them?’ Kimberly unearths her face from between the cushions. She looks overheated. ‘“Hello, are you my friend?”’ I tell her. ‘That’s what you said.’ She nods slow. ‘You know what I’d ask them? I’d ask them what they want. Most of all out of everything.’

‘What would they say?’

‘Which one?’

‘Dingo Sue.’

‘She wants Buddy and Mister to give her all the bones.’

Kimberly wipes her nose on the back of her hand. I get her more squares of toilet paper and she fills them. ‘What do you want, Granny?’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I guess I want it to be Christmas time again. When everyone’s here. Your dad and your mum and you.’

‘And Grandpa?’

‘I don’t know. We could invite some of the staff. Andy. And Mona. I’d make something on your mum’s barbecue, like lamb chops, and we’d sing “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes”. What do you think about that?’

Her thumb is back in her mouth. She gives it a satisfied suck in answer. Stares out with flushed cheeks and glazed black eyes to the backyard, where Princess Pie is stabbing the ground with her beak. One wing out to keep Wallamina at bay. The insects fizz and flick through the trees. The murder birds start screaming.