Peter said global warming was ‘poppycock,’ a plot to destroy the coal industry. Pauline disagreed, but kept her views to herself.

She tapped on Peter’s door. ‘Would you like a cuppa, dear?’ No answer. She stood, head cocked, listening to his breathing.

Pauline strolled out to the back deck, sipping her tea, and looked down the garden to the wild scrub at the end. Over the years the trees’ limbs had lengthened, spreading snake-like across chalk-water sky.

She was weeding the dog’s grave when the young man appeared at the gate. She straightened up. A parcel delivery? Perhaps Peter ordered something off the internet. She patted her grey bob and smoothed her gardening skirt.

‘Hi, I’m Simon.’ The young man thrust out his hand.

She pulled off her glove and shook briefly, letting her hand slide away. She waited for the sales pitch. He had a friendly face at least, and wavy brown hair that lapped his shoulders.

‘I lived here,’ he said, waving to encompass house and garden. ‘As a kid. Would you mind if I look around? I’ve driven up from the city – spur of the moment.’

Pauline felt unsettled. This fellow could be a scammer of elderly people. A housebreaker, even, for all she knew.

He noticed her frown. ‘My parents were the Bakers?’

‘Ah yes, we did buy it from people called Baker.’ She calculated. ‘Must be 30 years ago. Oh, alright, come inside. I’ll make tea.’ She led the way up the path.

‘I’m glad I caught you.’

‘I don’t go out much,’ said Pauline.

Simon hesitated. ‘I’ll get my kids. They’re in the car – just be a sec.’

He was off before she could say anything. She couldn’t object to children, she supposed. Simon reappeared with a plump boy of about twelve, and a girl of eight or nine. ‘This is Dion,’ he said. ‘And little Emily.’

‘I do hope the children will be quiet, my husband is ill.’

‘They’re a little stir-crazy,’ Simon admitted.

Pauline flicked her lighter at the hob and put on the kettle. She sliced a cake she’d baked for Peter. It was a little stale, but would have to do. In the back of the freezer she found ice-cream. She licked her thumb.

Simon gazed around. ‘I love what you’ve done. So different when we lived here – all pokey little rooms.’ He held up his phone, the flash flaring. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

Pauline was taken aback, but it’s what young people do, isn’t it?

Dion flumped into Pauline’s recliner and tore open a packet of chips. He and his sister were immediately on their devices, stabbing and scrolling. Pauline stooped to retrieve her knitting, which had slid to the floor. The kiddies looked tired and pale, dark flannel patches under their eyes.

‘It smells the same,’ said Simon. ‘Isn’t it funny?’

Pauline wondered what he meant. She smelled only lemon wax, and something indefinable. She missed the tang of woodsmoke, after they replaced the combustion heater with gas.

‘Smells,’ said Simon, sliding his phone into his pocket. ‘How they stir up memory, bring back the past. A kind of resonance.’

Pauline decided to ignore it, and handed out dessert bowls. ‘Dig in.’

She opened the doors to the back deck. There was a faint tintinnabulation of windchimes and the fragrance of vegetation. She and Simon wandered out.

‘I remember when I was a kid,’ he said, gesturing toward the bush. ‘There was a gang of us. We’d play in the gully, along the rock platforms. Pretty dangerous, I guess, the stuff we got up to.’ He chuckled, nodding toward the slumped children. ‘They’ve never had that experience.’

‘Dad,’ came the girl’s whiney voice. ‘I don’t like this, it tastes funny.’

‘That’s not polite, Emily,’ said Simon.

Pauline shrugged. ‘I don’t expect guests.’ She glanced at the patio table with its ring of empty seats. ‘We’d often have dinner parties, or fire circles outside when our children came up from the city. It’s only me and Peter now, and he’s bedridden…’ She shook her head, looking away. An ache was starting behind her eyes. When would she be rid of these people?

Simon followed her through the house. She opened doors on unused rooms; bland, motel-like. Their children never lived here. They’d left home before she and Peter bought the place.

‘This was my room.’ Simon was jigging, hands on hips. ‘I kept a blue-tongue lizard. I’d cuddle her. She’d catch bits of liver on her tongue. Mum wasn’t too impressed.’

Pauline nodded, her social smile aching in her cheeks. She vaguely remembered a lad skulking in the background when they looked at the house all those years ago.

‘Your children,’ said Simon, ‘do they visit often?’

‘Our daughter’s working in London. The son’s in Darwin.’ She showed her empty palms.

They padded back to the loungeroom, where Simon’s kids were still hunched over screens, lips pursed in concentration.

‘It’s time you kids went outside,’ Simon said. ‘Give me those.’ He snatched their gadgets away. The children’s faces were pink with disbelief. ‘Now take yourselves out and explore.’ He pushed them into the garden.

‘They aren’t used to being outside,’ he said to Pauline. ‘Our flat’s tiny. They go to the park, but there’s nowhere wild, like this.’

‘Will they be okay?’ Pauline was twisting her wedding ring. She often feared some visitor, or repairman might harm themselves and sue.

‘Yeah, of course. They need to learn – to be by themselves, to cope. It builds resilience.’

He’d read that in a magazine, thought Pauline.

‘And how are your parents, the Bakers?’

‘Mum passed away some years ago.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear.’

‘Dad’s hoping to retire soon. They weren’t the same after they sold the place. It was their dream home.’

Pauline didn’t comment. She and Peter got the place cheaply. It was a foreclosure, common in the nineties. People were up to their eyeballs in debt. Interest rates were sky-high, seventeen percent. It happened then and it will happen again, Pauline thought, only on a larger scale − what with the prices people were paying!

‘We moved back to the city,’ Simon rambled on, ‘to be closer to Dad’s work. I missed the place pretty bad. I’m renting. Was saving for a house – but gave up.’ He grimaced.

‘Let’s go and check on the kids,’ said Pauline nervously. ‘I will have to say goodbye to you soon…my husband.’

The children’s laughter trilled. The girl came belting around the agapanthus, eyes glazed with excitement. She flung herself at her father’s legs, nearly toppling him. ‘Whoa there!’ gasped Simon.

‘Dad, it’s awesome!’ Dion came thumping up, waving a grass tree spike. ‘There’s statues everywhere! Nudie rudie!’

His father ruffled his head. ‘Love to see you running around.’

Before they left they all used the bathroom. Pauline waited in the hall. The children took an age. She worried about the medications, but decided not to say anything.

She was relieved to wave them off. They’d made a mess, a plume of talc powdered the vanity. She wiped chocolatey smears from doors. Kids! She wasn’t used to them. There was a grandchild – but she’d hardly seen her.

She expected to find some damage in the garden, and sure enough – one of the birdbaths was lying in a jigsaw of jagged pieces. She picked up a shard, turning it over, smoothing the old ceramic, remembering when they found it in the nursery. Peter had put it together – upside down at first. She wondered if it could be repaired, but saw it was impossible.

She told it all to Peter, whispering outside his door. ‘They can come back all they like, but I shan’t be letting them in again.’ Her teacup trembled in her hand.

She dreaded that the family might return, and began to lock up at night. A good idea – the neighbouring houses were holiday lettings now. They were lit up on weekends, and the sounds of parties drifted over, the boom of music.

If the family did return, she told herself, she would feel obliged to serve hot soup. It was chilly in the afternoons. She parted the curtains and peered toward the gate, but no-one ever showed.

She imagined Simon driving up the mountain, chatting to the kids, pointing out landmarks, as the car ascended Lapstone Hill. The car was fuggy with the smell of chips and the boy’s big runners. Yet there was light around the family, she thought, a warmth surrounding them in the capsule of the car.

With spring came carolling magpies. Scruffy brown youngsters stalked the lawn. Down in the gully the trees’ limbs were beseeching, yearning up. She paused in her weeding, hand to her chest, a fidgeting inside of her, like the scrape of dry leaves, as though she was embodying the build-up to summer. Opening the doors to Peter’s room she breathed in the scent of jasmine. She smoothed the bedspread, plumped his pillow. ‘The bush is as dry as a chip,’ she whispered.

It was the she-oaks that undid Peter. He slipped on the needles and fractured his hip. In those days he would sit outside, white hair blinding in the sun. So still, she thought, like one of their statues, but lit from within. Waiting on him was difficult, but what could one do? They’d been married for 50 years.

Pauline was pruning the azaleas when a laugh rang out. She straightened up and listened. It sounded like a child, and seemed to echo from the gully. Simon’s family flashed into her mind. Was it the children? Fear feathered through her.

She picked her way between the rocks, where garden cascaded into bush. Her sandals slid on she-oak needles; she gripped branches for support, arms trembling with effort.

‘Dion, Emily!’ she called breathlessly.

Was she unfriendly to Simon and his kids when they visited? She could invite them to tea. Surely there were biscuits. But she stopped herself. How silly she was being. There was no-one around.

Sinking down on a log in a patch of flattened grass, she tried to catch her breath. Hadn’t been in the gully for years. A chip packet, freshly torn, was scrunched amongst the leaves. She gazed up, and a drift of gum blossom dusted her head. A white cockatoo raised its crest, and bent to beadily observe her. The air was dry, electric. No sound but the thrum of insects.

Gathering a handful of fallen leaves, she thought of the fire circles they had in the old days, when her grown-up children would visit. They’d huddled around the capering flames, faces glowing. The gum leaves Peter added hissed and fizzed, releasing their essence. Strange, she could smell it now.

Pauline jerked awake, levered herself out of the sofa. The air in the room was misty. She lurched forward in a spasm of coughing. From the back deck she could see creeping smoke. Simon’s children! They’ve lit a fire and run off. The trees were tarnished in yellow light. Fire burns faster uphill, she remembered, and embers fly ahead. An urgent crackling arose. She scurried through the house, a handkerchief over her nose, and burst into Peter’s room.

Fire would be licking the weatherboards, flitting across the roof. The trickster fire. But she wanted, needed the fire. She unclenched her fist, and was surprised to find the lighter, usually kept in the pocket of her skirt.

After the dog died, then his fall, Peter had not been the same. He used to walk their staffie first thing every morning. Ruby’s muzzle greyed; her muscular shanks thinned. Pauline kept her alive on lamb stews, the boiled meat smell infusing the house. They buried her out near the front gate, where the dog would wait for them to come home, her whole body writhing with pleasure when they arrived.

Sometimes she could still catch Peter’s scent – sweat, cigars, damp wool. Her hands smoothed the empty quilt, as though to find his body’s indentation, to feel his warmth. In her ears were the sounds of crashing trees, the pulse of sirens. Yet, she felt calm. She pressed her face into the quilt, and inhaled.