At night the place begins to look a bit more like I remember it, and Griggs suggests that we stick around because this could be the time when people I might recognise come out of hibernation.

We stand by the fountain on Darlinghurst Road and for a moment I get a glimpse of who I was back then. Tagging along behind my mother on these streets, our feet dirty, but our dresses so pretty. I wore a white one, once, someone’s old communion dress that we had found in an op-shop and I thought I was a princess. Suddenly, for one incredible moment, I remember something. That my mother smiled at me in wonder that day and said, “Look at my beautiful girl.”

He had been away from the Jellicoe Road for a year and, when he finished his final exams, he came back because he had promised Narnie he would. Along the way he saw their ghosts—planting the poppies, waiting for him at the general store, planning their tunnel, grieving for their dead. But living in the heart of Narnie was the only home he had ever had. Deep down he knew he wasn’t enough to keep Narnie alive for the rest of her life. But he could try.

“Promise me…” he said to her at her door, his heart aching when he saw Webb’s soul in her eyes. But then he stopped himself. No promises about death or keeping alive. That had been Tate’s job when Narnie seemed so fragile over the years. It sounded weak coming from him.

“Promise me that you’ll never go looking for Tate. Whatever you do, don’t go looking for Tate.”

“Promise me that you’ll never ask me that again,” she’d replied, her voice strong and clear.

He shook his head. “She’s not Tate anymore, Narnie. She’s someone else and that baby…”

“Promise me that one day we’ll bring them back here, Jude.”

He could tell her now what she’d find, because he had gone looking himself. In the city, the Tate they knew was gone. Lost to them. Lost to herself. But Narnie stared deep inside him and he remembered what brought him to this place now. This girl, standing on the side of the Jellicoe Road like an apparition, promising him a richer life than he ever dreamed of. And he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t hold it back until they were in her room, tugging at each other’s clothing, breathing each other’s breath, tasting each other’s grief.

“Promise me…promise me…” he said between gasps, bunching up her skirt, removing anything that got in their way. The need to be inside her, connected to her, made his body shudder just at the thought of it. She clutched him, her fingers digging in like she needed to gather parts of him to act as her own second skin for the rest of her life. He had never heard emotion from Narnie before and now…now it was so loud, so gut-wrenching that he wanted to cover her mouth with his hand. To hold everything within her. But Narnie had held it in for too long and her rage, or pain or grief or love, pierced his ears and he knew that, no matter what, he’d never be able to block it out. That he’d never want to.

Then when it was over, she gathered him into her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life.

That she had wanted to be dead all those years while her brother was alive. That had been her sin.

And this was her penance.

Wanting to live when everyone else seemed dead.

Chapter 23

“Taylor Markham?”

I look up at the boy standing in front of me. One or two of his teeth are chipped and his skin looks rough with broken capillaries. It’s not acne but it looks raw and painful. He is small and wiry and his eyes have that intense wild look that I’ve seen on many of the faces at the soup kitchens and food vans. This kid, younger than me by at least two years, looks like some kind of Charles Manson copycat. I stare at him for a moment, totally at a loss because I know it’s not Simon. But then it hits me and my heart picks up a beat of excitement.

Not because he means something to me but because he is proof that I existed. He lived in the room next door to us. Him and his mum. She’d leave him with me sometimes and the rest is a blank.

He knows I can hardly remember him. He has that disgusted look on his face you get when someone forgets your name. “You’re supposed to be dead,” he says flatly.

The shock of his words makes my blood run cold and I can feel Griggs tensing up next to me. The kid is fidgety, like he’s either on something or just coming off it. I look at his arm and see the bruising from the needle marks and he catches me looking but there’s no expression on his face. He’s numb to the world.

I stare at him. How can you just forget a person completely until the moment you see his face again? Who else is back there lurking in my head?

“My mother? Have you seen her?” I ask.

“Around. But not for a while.”

“How long a while?”

“Don’t care. I’ve got to be someplace,” he says, and just like that he walks away.

I stand staring, my mind full of a thousand thoughts that I am so used to shoving into locked drawers. But this time I let those thoughts stay no matter how bad they may be.

Sam. I don’t quite know where the name has come from but it appears on my lips like a sob and I run after him. “Sam!” The sound of his name stops him and for a moment I see a flash of something like vulnerability.

“Go,” I say. “Wherever you have to be. But meet us later. At the McDonald’s.”

He knows which McDonald’s because we’ve been there before.

“My shout.”

We wait for hours and then he’s there. He totally ignores Griggs and sits down opposite me.

I don’t know what to say to him and I don’t really get the sense that he actually wants to talk to me but he doesn’t move.

“Do you want something to eat?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Maybe a Big Mac.”

I look at Griggs who keeps on staring at the kid like he doesn’t trust him for a moment.

“Jonah?” I say. He gives me one of those looks that say, I’m not going anywhere, but after a moment he reluctantly stands up.

“Would you like fries with that?” he asks Sam sarcastically.

“Large Coke.”

“Same,” I say.

We’re left alone.

“How come you thought I was dead?” I ask, staring at him the whole time, not really wanting to hear the answer.

The kid shrugs. He scratches a scab on his finger and the crust falls on the table in front of us. “Do you have cigarettes?” he asks.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“For later.”

I shake my head.

“Have you got ten dollars?”

I nod and we don’t speak for a while.

Griggs returns and sits down again. Under the table, I squeeze his hand.

“Sam’s mother worked with mine,” I tell Griggs, almost conversationally. “I used to look after him.”

Griggs nods.

“I don’t think he actually understands what you mean by ‘work,’” Sam says. “Do you, dickhead?”

“Maybe we can go outside and you can explain it to me,” Griggs says to him quietly.

Not now, Griggs, I want to say. I can tell it is going to kill him to keep his mouth shut.

Sam concentrates on the food and wolfs it down almost in three mouthfuls. I take small bites of mine.

“I need to find her, Sam,” I say when he seems to be finished. “It’s really important. Maybe your mum will know.”

“Eve? She’s a fruitcake. It’s like everything’s fried up there, do you know what I mean? Every time I ring her it’s like, ‘Sam, can you lend me twenty dollars?’” He puts on a whining voice. “‘Can you buy me a case of beer? Can you buy me some ciggies?’” He looks at me intensely. As if a thought has just occurred to him. “And she never pays me back. She’s a waste of space and she keeps on having these fucking kids.”

I remember Eve now. She lived totally for the guy she was with and Sam was the number twelve priority in her life. Sam was a pathetic kid, so tiny and needy. His nose was continually running and he was always getting bashed up by older kids in the area. The one thing about my mother was that she never formed emotional attachments to men, so I never had to suffer the consequences of her relationships. Sometimes when we were walking along, I’d see her looking in the distance as if she was searching for someone. I think now that she believed that Webb could have been out here and it’s what kept her around this place for so long.