‘Come on!’ Ma says as she unravels one arm from me and hauls at the Ape’s shoulder sleeve.

The crowd of raggy people is shuffling in a circle, building a wall around us.

I look up at the old woman with the greasy hair and she steps away making a path out, and tilts her head like she’s saying, ‘What yer waiting for?’ Ma and me take off up the street with the Ape staggering behind.

We stick close to the speeding cars, not the buildings, coz the doorways are full of people sitting and waiting like spiders in webs of trash.

It makes me think of Gramps’s stories about before he came to the farm. Him telling Ma I’d be safer at the farm. This is what he was warning about. Thinking about Gramps makes me cry coz he will be missing me so bad. Why did stupid Ma bring me to this place he worked so hard to get us away from?

The streets get cleaner as we walk, less junk. People dressed in nice clothes, going places, not sitting around. We pass shops, and the Ape stops to buy a fizzy drink with money from Ma’s tin. That’s not what Ma’s money is for. It’s special money for doctors or medicine or food in the middle of winter when there’s nothing left to scavenge or trade and the garden’s gone slow. It’s for family and friends. Not mean people.

Ma takes a sip like it don’t matter and offers the can to me. I shake my head, and frown at her like I’m the Ma and she’s a bad kid who’s wasted good money. Half of Ma’s hard-earned tin’s already wasted on that fat-headed man for his stupid car, when I would’ve sooner seen the Ape beat up and left in the gutter.

The Ape snatches the can back and sucks at it and screws up his face and cups his fat lip in his other hand for a moment. I’m glad his lip hurts. I’m glad Fat Head took the car back. Now when I run to the farm I know he won’t be coming after me in that stupid car. I won’t have to hear the scary whipping grass in the wide yellow sea.

We walk again for a long time, Ma white-knuckled dragging me, toe-stubbing along the concrete footpaths, till the houses get huge and gardens of flowers and hedges stretch out before us, and it takes thirty dragging steps to get past each one.

‘Get on my back. I’ll carry you,’ the Ape says to me and turns around like I’m gonna just jump up there.

‘I’d rather eat a bucket of compost,’ I tell him and keep walking.

‘Cha!’ Ma growls.

‘She shouldn’t talk to me like that!’ the Ape says.

‘We’re all tired, Danny,’ Ma says and leads me on.

After a couple more streets, she turns down a laneway and stops at a side gate. She turns back to the Ape. ‘I’ll probably have Wednesday off,’ she says, like she ain’t gonna see him till then. Finally something good’s happening. He’s gonna leave.

He nods. ‘Make her mind her manners, or they’ll sack her and we’ll be stuck with another mouth to feed,’ he says and gives Ma a kiss on her cheek.

‘Give Ma her tin back,’ I tell him.

He screws up his nose and one side of his top lip and turns away.

I run around in front of him, make him stop. ‘It’s hers and you need to give it back to her.’

‘Peony, no,’ Ma says reaching for me. ‘We’re a family now. We share the money.’

‘Then he won’t mind you looking after it,’ I say, ducking under her arm and staying put. ‘You worked hard for it. You should hold onto it.’

The Ape man smiles down at me. ‘Your Ma trusts me,’ he says.

‘Don’t you trust her? She don’t give money to people who blap her in the face, or spend it on stupid drinks,’ I say.

The Ape screws up his eyes at me.

‘It’ll probably be safer here,’ Ma says and shrugs like she don’t even care.

The Ape reaches inside his jacket and pulls out the tin and pushes it into Ma’s hands. Then he turns and strides off up the laneway.

Ma grabs my shoulders and turns me to face her and runs her fingers through my hair and straightens my clothes. ‘Why you wanna go making him mad all the time?’ she asks, and doesn’t even wait for an answer, but I’m not gonna anyway, coz I’m still mad. ‘We gonna work here, together, me and you, and when we got enough money, we’re gonna move to a place of our own. So you got to work hard. You got to show your best manners,’ she says and gives up trying to get my hair to behave. She wraps her long skinny fingers around my wrist again and stabs at a number panel on the gate with her other hand. The gate beeps and unlatches.

The house behind that big ol’ gate is maybe ten times the size of Foreman’s. It’s all made of red bricks and some of the windows are bigger than our whole shed. The windows are staring down at me, making me feel like the smallest pest to ever set foot in that garden.

‘Cha!’ I breathe and dig my heels into the soft green lawn as Ma drags me across it. We don’t belong here. Someone’s gonna chase us off at any moment.

‘Peony!’ Ma says and jerks me forwards. She pulls me around the back of the house, up some steps and into a big kitchen. The white tiles are cold and smooth on my bare feet. A fat lady stands with a hunk of bloody meat on a bench in front of her and a pile of string in her hand.