On Saturday morning I wrote an email to Jess, then several emails to Jess, then trashed them all. The last address I had for her was gmail, and I didn’t know if it was still active.

I couldn’t describe the part of her I missed, or the part I had lost long ago, or adequately wish her well. I couldn’t edit out enough apology to get the balance right. Some things run their course. That was what had happened to us.

There were days when I could have given her more thought, more time. Regret. Here was another one perhaps finally starting to take its proper shape, and that was fine by me. I was ready to put a name to it.

But Jess getting married – I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. It kept coming back like a new idea and I pictured the day, and me erased from her history. She would have a service in a garden with her sisters as attendants. She would make her parents happy. Jason’s best man would tell the story of his friend talking about this new player at touch football, and how quickly she had captivated them all. The bride would beam, sit there and beam in the way she had always wanted to, shelving for the evening her own regrets about a few wasted years. Jason would give her a ring that would fit her finger.

There was a knock at the door just after ten. I was deep in a patch of wallowing and first thought it was Jess, come with a forgiving version of home truths and a wish to tell me face-to-face where her life was heading. But it was Mark.

He was wearing a crumpled non-black Westside Walk volunteer’s T-shirt with the sleeves torn off. He had a sizeable new acne cyst over his right eyebrow. ‘Mum said you wanted the lawn done again.’ He said it as if the idea caused him wry amusement. On all sides the grass was straw-coloured and quietly struggling not to die. Growth was not a priority. There were a few new stalks, but they were mostly weeds.

‘It’s more to do with the trees around the back,’ I told him, realising this was Kate sending him my way for the talk I’d agreed to have. ‘All the bark and dead leaves on the ground that could be a fire hazard. I’d like to get that all raked up in case there’s a bush fire.’

‘No problem. Where do you want it to go?’

I had no idea. I was making it all up on the spot. ‘I thought I might get your input on that.’

‘Really?’ He made a noise that might have been a laugh, or a nervous tic of the type invented by journalists in the interests of painting a better word picture. ‘Well, you could put it with the grass clippings for now, but you probably need a plan for all of it, since it’s still a fire hazard sitting there.’ He looked over towards the previous week’s pile of dried grass. A bush turkey had scratched through it for bugs and one side of it was strewn across the nearby ground. ‘Are you up to composting it, do you reckon? That’d take a bit of effort.’ The delivery was deadpan but the cracked smile was back. This was the rapport Kate thought we had.

‘Enough effort to pile it up in something, then walk away and leave nature to take its course? Yeah, it’s a bit much.’ I was working on keeping the rapport up near the high-water mark. ‘It’s probably something I’d outsource. Is it within your areas of expertise?’

‘I wouldn’t say that, but the landscaping guy down the road’d probably sell you one of those green plastic things they do it in and he could tell you how to do it. After that, you know me, I’m a gun for hire.’ Also said with a delivery as dry as the grass.

A warm gust of wind blew in, sending leaves cart-wheeling along the rutted driveway and flapping the stretched front of Mark’s shirt.

‘So where does all this money go to? This money you earn as a gun for hire.’ It was his mother’s question, jammed into the conversation at a point where it didn’t quite fit. I told her I’d try, and this was it. ‘It doesn’t look like it all goes on T-shirts.’

He looked down at his shirt front. ‘Hey, I had to work for this. I had to rattle a tin. I had to shake loose change out of people for all these charities. It got my class out of school for an hour. Or in my case the whole morning.’ He was implying there was a story there, of him wheed ling his way around the system again.

‘So what do you do with it? The money?’

He looked me in the eye, as if I wasn’t to be trusted. ‘What are you? A spy for my mother? Most of it goes on bourbon and hookers, the rest of it I waste.’