She heard the ambulance pulling up outside the gate and walked a brick-paved path to meet it at the front of the house. The baby had fallen asleep against Skye’s shoulder. She continued to rub his back, cooing something tuneless under her breath. Stevie explained the situation to the ambulance attendant and asked where the baby would be taken.

‘Straight to PMH. Lucky you found him when you did.’

Skye pushed past him into the back of the ambulance before he’d finished swinging open the doors and settled on the seat with the baby tight in her arms. She cut the man off before he could voice his protest. ‘I’m a nurse, I’m going with him.’ She swung defensively to Stevie as if expecting to be challenged by her too.

Stevie shrugged. ‘Good idea, you can tell me what the doctors say.’

Skye held up a hand as the doors were closing. ‘Look in on Mrs H for me, Stevie, make sure she’s okay, yeah? And call me: I want to know what’s going on here—none of your secret police business.’

Easier said than done, Stevie thought. This was out of her jurisdiction; she’d be lucky if the local police confided in her at all. She pulled her blonde ponytail through her fingers as she watched the ambulance speed away, and tried to remember which police division covered the Peppermint Grove area, pondering the likelihood of knowing anyone in it. No names sprang to mind.

As she stepped out of the front garden gate, a small colourful object caught her eye. She squatted down to take a closer look and found a silk-covered button. Making a mental note of its location she reminded herself to point it out to the police when they arrived.

It had been about fifteen minutes since her call and there was no sign of them yet. A dark slit appeared in the venetians of the house next door. Perhaps Mrs Hardegan was anxiously waiting for the police too? Skye had asked her to check up on the old lady—surely a quick word wouldn’t do any harm?

Rows of peppermint trees bordered the wide street, filling the air with a minty odour cut through by the tang of the sea to the west. Mrs Hardegan’s was one of the few untouched houses left in the area, most having been extensively renovated or knocked down and replaced by modern concrete monoliths and elegant reproductions such as the Pavels’. Her Californian bungalow was characteristically squat with tapered columns supporting a heavy front veranda, and a gabled roof with winking leadlight windows. Stevie detected the smell of camphor before the front door was even opened.

‘Where have you been, boy?’ the old woman demanded. She wore a simple linen dress enlivened with screen-printed green fish and secured with a tight leather belt. She stood ramrod straight, her bright, level eyes fixed unwaveringly upon Stevie. Stevie may have been wearing workman’s overalls, but she didn’t think her gender was that ambiguous. She began to explain. ‘Mrs Hardegan? I–’

‘We’ve been waiting here for days. What’s wrong with the smudgin’ fullets these days, why so long?’

It took a moment for Stevie to realise the woman’s peculiar speech must be the result of the stroke Skye had mentioned. It might also explain why she’d been unable to call the police herself, getting her son and Skye to do it for her.

‘I’m a friend of Skye’s, Mrs Hardegan.’ Stevie consciously slowed down her usual rapid-fire speech. ‘She asked me to look into the Pavels’ house for you. She said you hadn’t seen them for a while and were worried about them. I am with the police, but not from Peppermint Grove. The Peppy Grove police are on their way.’

‘A lovely boy, but the others are useless, quite useless. You’d better come in, have a cup of tea and tell us what’s going on.’ Despite the oddness of her speech, she had the cultured pronunciation of another era, almost English but not quite. Newsreel ABC.

Mrs Hardegan turned and clasped one of the bookcases in the dark hallway. As she eased herself down the passageway, Stevie noticed one leg lagging slightly behind the other. Seeing no sign of a Zimmer frame or stick Stevie instinctively reached for the woman’s elbow, but the well-intentioned gesture was shrugged away with an impatient scowl. On the wall above a bookcase, a black and white photo of a young Mrs Hardegan caught Stevie’s eye; the hooked nose was unmistakable. She was dressed in the uniform of a wartime RAN nurse—it figured.

Mrs Hardegan led Stevie past several closed doors to a lighter, self-contained room with kitchenette at the back of the house, where it appeared she did most of her living. Recycling was sorted and stacked in tidy piles on one of the benches. The surfaces of the kitchenette were clean; soapsuds popped on the drying plastic dishes spread across the draining board. The single bed in the corner of the room was made after a fashion, the lumps disguised by an intricately embroidered cotton counterpane. Stevie found herself wondering how long it had taken the old lady to make the bed, how frustrating the disability must be to someone who probably required everything around her to be shipshape. Every free surface of the room was crowded with various arts, crafts and sewing paraphernalia: crushed tubes of fabric paint, bottles of varnish, glue, jars of bristling paintbrushes. A wooden contraption, like an old printing press, stood near one of the windows. It would be used for screen-printing, Stevie guessed. Several bright cushions of the same fish design as the old lady’s dress were arranged in a precise line down one side of the bed.

An open door led into a bathroom. Stevie glimpsed a toilet and railed bath before Mrs Hardegan moved with surprising speed to close it.

‘Bloody Japs!’ The mechanical voice made Stevie whirl towards the source, a parrot, hanging in a dome-shaped cage from a ceiling beam toward the back of the room.

‘Hello, who’s this?’ Stevie said as she approached, resisting the urge to poke a finger through the bars. The parrot stared back. It had bright black eyes and a beak similar to its owner’s—it could probably shear a finger with a single snip. Bald in places, its patchy arrangement of feathers looked as washed-out as a favourite summer shirt.

‘Captain Flint, our feathered friend,’ Mrs Hardegan said.

The tea was made with only a few minor mishaps—Stevie given three lumps of sugar when she asked for none—and settled by Mrs Hardegan on a tapestried footstool in front of a high-backed easy chair next to the window. One side of the Pavel residence was visible from this vantage point and the binoculars resting on a shelf nearby were no doubt used for further surveillance.

Difficulties of expression do not necessarily mean difficulties with understanding; Stevie knew that. But to be safe, she explained what she’d found at the Pavel house as slowly and as simply as she could. She cringed at the patronising sound of her own voice, so like the manner in which some people talked to her seven-year-old daughter, Izzy, but could think of no other approach. She would tread softly until she could work out the extent of the woman’s brain damage.

But the hooked nose wrinkled when Stevie described the unkempt Pavel house and the blue eyes dampened when she mentioned the abandoned baby. Some of her doubts about the old lady’s comprehension were put to rest.

‘When did you last see the Pavels, Mrs Hardegan?’ Stevie asked, speaking more naturally.

Mrs Hardegan leaned back in her easy chair, tented her fingers and looked sincerely back at Stevie. ‘About twenty years ago.’

Stevie’s raised hopes took a dive. ‘Did you know them well?’

Suddenly the elderly woman’s face twisted and she stamped her feet on the linoleum floor, the force of her anger surprising Stevie. ‘We can’t tell you—it’s all our fault!’ Tears spilled down the old lady’s cheeks.

Stevie got up from the footstool and placed a calming hand on her shoulder only to have it dashed away with a string of unintelligible words. She looked helplessly around the room, wondering what to do next. This meeting was going nowhere fast—she shouldn’t have even tried, should have trusted her instincts and not become involved at all. Damn you, Skye. What if she caused the old lady to have another stroke? She spied a box of tissues on a work table crammed with sewing paraphernalia. Stevie offered the box and Mrs Hardegan swiped at her eyes. ‘Can’t help it ... can’t get out. Trapped...’ she said, tapping fiercely on her temple.