I was still mulling these questions over when I pulled up outside my house in Glebe, the one with the small mortgage and big need for renovations. I hadn’t eaten since the rushed toast and coffee breakfast I’d shared with Glen that morning. She’d driven to Goulburn, had probably had lunch, and here I was at 2.30 p.m. with a rumbling stomach. I was stiff, too, from the driving. I pushed open the gate and brushed past the overgrown creeper that veils the front porch. I had my key out and was squinting in the gloom at the lock.

‘Stand right there.’

I whipped my head to the right. Paula Wilberforce stood on the porch near the party wall three metres away. She had both hands raised and extended straight out in front of her. What she was holding looked like a gun.

‘How do you think the dog felt?’

I wasn’t in the mood. Anger rose in me and I felt an adrenalin rush, banishing stiffness and hunger. I side-stepped and rushed her, bent low. I chopped up at her wrists and hacked at her ankles with a short kick. She screeched, dropped the gun and almost collapsed. She hopped to take the pressure off her left leg where my kick had caught her. I bent down and picked up the object she’d dropped. It was a toy gun, plastic, light as a feather. Not even a water-pistol.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’

‘I wanted you to feel what the dog felt.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘What the man felt, then.’

‘You followed me all the way out there?’

‘Sure. I told you I wanted to know how you operate. Now I think I understand.’