‘How can they not have roosterkoek?’ Richard Frost says when we skype later. It’s morning in Cape Town, night in Brisbane.

‘I know.’ It’s a mystery to both of us.

‘They could learn so much from you.’ He sounds confident about it, in a way I like. He’s in his kitchen, with the clock on the wall behind him.

‘I’m teaching this guy Max that handball skidder we worked on.’

‘Ai, don’t let him get too good at it. When it’s in the Olympics, we still want to win it for South Africa, remember?’

In this conversation, with one end in One Mile Creek and the other far away, I sound like some kind of success in this country. South African knowledge counts for something. But it did with Max and his family too.

‘We went down your old street yesterday,’ Richard says. ‘Someone’s burnt the paint off the gates of the place two doors down from yours. They lit the rubbish bin.’ He looks off to the side of the screen at something I can’t see. Maybe someone’s come into the room. ‘There was melted bin plastic on the ground – you know how it goes.’

It would have happened in the night, almost for certain. The guard would have passed on his rounds, and whoever did it would have dragged the bin up to the gate, poured petrol in and set it alight.

‘Anyone get robbed?’ I want the answer to be no. I want all my neighbours to be safe.

‘I don’t know,’ he says.

I can picture it, smell it – the petrol and rubbish and plastic all burning. I wonder if I’ll ever forget the feeling of waiting for the guard to come back, knowing that the rest of the neighbourhood isn’t covered. Knowing that our neighbours in their houses are feeling it too. Waiting, because on some nights the fire in the bin is just the start.

The sliding doors are behind me. The curtains are open, so they’re black on either side of my head in the image in the bottom right corner of the screen. I turn around to check them before I can stop myself.

‘There’s nothing there,’ Richard says. ‘It’s okay.’