My daughter is born in the bathtub on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. She’s tiny, with a tuft of dark hair sculpted into a mohawk, and she comes out clenching her fists. I like that she’s a fighter. We’re going to get along just fine.

The umbilical cord slices easily—I use the sharpest kitchen knife I can find. I place her on my chest, feeling her heart thump against mine. Already, we’ve been through so much together.

I’m sorry, Faith, this isn’t how I wanted it to be.

She’s slick with fluids and a chalky wax that looks like cream cheese, and I do all the things you don’t think you really do until you become a mother—inspecting her eyelashes, stroking her hair, breathing in the unexpectedly earthy smell of her, counting her long, slender fingers.

Maybe you’ll be a pianist one day.

After a while, I guide her searching mouth to my breast. She gives a half-hearted suck and scrunches up her face. All the books say this takes time, but the rejection still hurts. Her feeble cries grow louder, and she opens her eyes. They’re glassy and unfocussed, murky like a polluted pond.

I thought you’d have blue eyes.

It’s getting dark when I wrap her in a towel, yank the shower curtain closed and unlatch the door. My bare feet, sticky with blood, make a popping sound on the tiles as I walk to the kitchen.

The phone on the table is buzzing. It glows in the early evening gloom, illuminating a set of house keys and a parka slung over the back of the chair. A quick glance at the screen reveals there have been eleven missed calls and a text.

Where are you babe? Call me x

I can’t worry about that now. I bathe Faith and dress her, humming as I choose the smallest onesie from the pile locked in the trunk under the bed.

I was right to keep them.

We’re waiting for Jack when his keys rattle in the door. He’s chatting on the phone, loosening his tie. It’s not until Faith’s wavery cry ricochets around the room that he stops talking, his eyes zeroing in on the bundle in my arms.

I hold Faith up, like a trophy. Jack’s so surprised—it’s better than I ever imagined. After years of disappointments, our daughter is finally here. But he’s no longer looking at her. He’s looking at the vibrating phone on the table, the young couple on the screen grinning up at us. He’s looking at the bloody footprints, dried on the tiles. He follows them, his footsteps quickening.

Not the bathroom, not the bathroom.

He rips back the curtain that hangs still and ghostlike around the bathtub. A woman’s hand is dangling over the rim. It’s limp and pale, with long, piano-playing fingers.

‘This’ll do.’

Mont glanced through the window at the long weeds and twisted gums shrouding the riverbank as Franks swung the car around. Franks reversed a bit, then pulled on the handbrake and cut the engine.

Mont reached for his tobacco pouch. He’d been dying for a drag, but Franks had a rule about not smoking in his car. He could be a weird prick.

Franks got out and stared across the weeds at the brown water sliding past. ‘Still fucking hot,’ he said. He reached into the car to flip the lever for the boot.

Mont threw down his half-smoked cigarette. He walked around to the boot and looked down at the panicked eyes of the guy making noises behind the duct tape. ‘What did the boss say he did?’ he asked.

‘He didn’t,’ said Franks. ‘Grab an arm, would ya?’

Together they heaved the guy out of the boot and dropped him onto the weedy dirt. With his hands and feet bound, he could only buck about on the riverbank like an injured animal.

Franks pulled a heavy chain and a padlock out of the boot. The noises the guy was making grew more high-pitched as Franks began wrapping the chain around his ankles.

‘Reckon the river’s deep enough here?’ Mont asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘What if the level drops? You know, like if there’s a drought or something?’

Franks stared at Mont. Mont shrugged and Franks turned his attention back to the guy on the ground, who was whimpering. The guy’s gaze was fixed on Mont, who slid his own away, looked at the river instead.

‘What do you reckon it’d be like living somewhere like this? Out in the country?’ Mont asked.

‘Fucked,’ replied Franks. Mont heard Franks grunt as he locked the chain.

For a moment, Mont pictured himself in a big chair on a verandah. No boss telling him to meet Franks and do a job. No chains or guys bound up in the boot of Franks’ car.

They rolled the guy to the edge of the bank, Mont sweating in the late afternoon sun.

‘You take his legs,’ said Franks as he grabbed the guy by his armpits. The guy jerked and screamed behind the duct tape as Franks and Mort rocked him back and forth, gaining momentum. They let him go on the third swing. The guy briefly soared above the river before curving downwards and plunging into the water.

Franks stayed on the riverbank, watching.

Mont’s phone rang and he saw the boss’s number. ‘Yeah?’

‘Haven’t done that job yet, have ya?’

‘Just finishing up,’ said Mont.

A beat of silence, then, ‘We’ve fucked up. You’ve got the wrong guy.’

‘Shit.’

‘I need ya to do the job on the right guy.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘You’re with him.’

Mont pocketed his phone. He could see Franks staring towards the spot where they’d thrown the guy in. The splashing had stopped.

Tomorrow he’d buy a big fucking chair for that verandah.

‘Shit, shit, shit, I think I left the iron on!’

‘Marie, you are joking?’

‘How many times, mum? If we miss the plane…’

It was a three-hour drive from Singleton to Sydney airport, and a 7am flight to Bali meant leaving at an ungodly hour. Twenty minutes down the road was hardly the time to remember the iron.

‘We have to go back. It’ll be okay.’

The holiday had been planned for years - postponed initially because of Tim’s melanoma, then put off indefinitely thanks to COVID. Tim barely had a day off through the pandemic, and as he made a hasty U-turn, Bali seemed to be slipping out of reach once again. He snarled under his breath.

‘Excuse me?’ snapped Marie. Silence.

Tod had been hiding in some bushes in the front yard from shortly after midnight. Work was hard to find in Singleton, and Tod and his mates had been supplementing income from part-time jobs with petty shoplifting until Christina had raised the stakes, stealing jewellery and a laptop from a couple of nearby houses.

‘There’s always a window left open somewhere, especially in the big places. And leave your phone at home, otherwise the cops’ll know where you’ve been.’

It all seemed too easy, and when Tod heard that the Griffins were heading to Bali for a month, the perfect opportunity presented itself. He didn’t tell anyone – he needed the money for himself.

About quarter-to-one there was action – doors opening, the car being packed – and twenty minutes later they were gone. Tod waited a while, partly out of fear, and partly because he didn’t have much of a game plan.

It was a huge house – a renovated pub, complete with a basement cellar that had been brilliant for Marie during the lockdown for storing files from her legal practice. Inside, Tod had no idea where he was going, or even what he was looking for.

He decided to head for the second floor, but at the top of the internal staircase just about crapped himself when he saw headlights stream through the window and Tim bolt out of the car for the front door. In a panic, Tod fell halfway down the stairs, picked himself up, and headed back in the direction of the laundry with the broken window. Footsteps seemed to follow him - he found an unlocked door and stumbled down a short staircase into a maze of cardboard boxes. Nearly lost his manhood on the corner of a box on the way down, but the cartons made the cellar an excellent hiding place. Torchlight briefly flickered among the boxes, then it was dark, and the door closed above him. Safe.

Tim jumped back into the car.

‘Bloody iron wasn’t even turned on.’

‘Damn. Sorry.’

‘Lucky we went back though…, the cellar door was open.’

‘Shit. Did you lock it?’

‘Yeah, used the combination lock.’

‘Shit. I’ll make it up to you in Bali, I promise.’

‘MUM…, get a room already!’