He presses the send button and his fingers are shaking. Like always, he regrets the pressing of send, but he doesn’t care. Mohsin the Ignorer is in his way, and he shoves past him and just walks out. Except he can’t go home because the enemy is in the house and there is no way he’s turning up at the Union. Ned and Stani have probably got the police out after him anyway. But Tom doesn’t care. They can go to hell. Everyone can. If Georgie wants her beloved brother staying with her, she can forget about Tom.

He fights the urge to go back to his old flat. He just wants to get wasted and not think so much. Except the more time goes by, the more he despises his ex-flatmates. All they’d be is a reminder of what a soft cock he was all that time he lived with them. How they stole from Stani. How they used to boast about pissing on the toilet seat if they knew it was Justine or Francesca’s turn to clean it at work. How they didn’t tell him about Jimmy’s pop. He remembers the note Jimmy Hailler left in his family’s post box two years ago. Don’t know what to say, Mackee, except if I had to wish for anything at the moment, it would be that this hadn’t happened to you and yours. With all the shit in Jimmy Hailler’s life, he would have wasted his one and only wish on Tom. Yet one year later, when the only person in Jimmy’s life died, Tom was nowhere around. What a piece of shit he was.

He goes back to their old house next door to Mrs. Liu, where some other Tom is living with his dirty family, not knowing that just around the corner is a catastrophic event that’s going to change everything. Tom wants to knock on the door and warn the poor bastard. That it’s all make-believe what they’re doing in there, playing happy families. It’s all coming to pieces. Any minute now. He begins pulling out the dead flowers from the potted plants lining the brick balcony, and one smashes on the ground and he hurls the pieces across the front lawn. Then someone calls the cops. Probably thinks he’s trying to rob the place. It’s my home, he wants to shout, and they end up bringing him in, maybe because he throws a punch when one of them puts his hand on his shoulder.

Siobhan Sullivan’s father is the head of the cop shop in Newtown and he doesn’t say much and writes nothing down.

He looks at the details in front of him and looks back to Tom.

“This where you used to live?” he asks, because he’d know. He knew every single detail about Siobhan’s friends. It’s why she’s in London still. So she could escape.

“You want me to take you home, Tom?” he asks.

Tom shakes his head.

“Who are you staying with?”

He doesn’t respond. Why can’t he just walk off the face of this world without Francesca turning up to hospitals, and Georgie living around the corner and Siobhan Sullivan’s father now having a tail on him?

“Are you staying with Georgie Finch, Tom? Are you staying with your aunt?”

He nods. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk. He just doesn’t have the energy to.

“I’ll get one of the boys to drop you off, Tom. How about that? Maybe we can talk tomorrow after you get some sleep. You look like you need some sleep, mate.”

When he gets in, the house is quiet, but his father comes out of the study. The cop car would have awoken him.

“What happened?” he asks, and Tom can’t see his face in the dark.

“Fuck off,” he says, walking up the stairs.

He dreams of his footy team. Someone’s chanting the Tigers’ theme in his ear, but there’s no image. A dream with the sound but no picture. And then he realizes that it’s his phone. His hand reaches out to the bedside table and he mutters a hello.

“I don’t have much credit left so you’re going to have to ring me,” he hears a voice say.

“Tara!”

And then she hangs up.

He dives for the light but then remembers that he doesn’t have credit and he trips out of bed, desperate to get to a phone. He flies down the stairs and bursts into Georgie’s room.

“I need your phone.”

“Get out, Tom!” he hears Sam say in a strained voice and he steps back outside again, taking deep breaths.

Yes, everyone, he’ll say. Sam and Georgie are having sex these days. Pretty embarrassing all round, but that doesn’t stop him from knocking again.

“I really need the phone.”

It hits him hard in the face, and he fumbles to catch it and flies up the stairs again.

He goes back to his mobile, searches for her number, and then begins to dial.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I just walked in on Georgie and Sam doing the deed.”

He doesn’t know why he says that. Maybe because the shock of it has just hit him.

“Justine and Frankie want to know why you didn’t come into work this week,” she says.

“Have you spoken to them?”

“No. They texted. Siobhan too. Something about her father arresting you.”

He can’t believe these girls. Separated by the Timor Sea and the Indian Ocean and they can still keep each other informed at the speed of lightning.

“I just needed to know you were okay,” she says.

“I’m okay.”

“Good.”

“So how are things?”

“I’m not talking to you, Thomas, so no small talk.”

Shit, she’s calling him Thomas. But how can such a snippy voice do crazy things to his blood flow?

“Fair enough.”

There’s silence and then he sighs, because he needs to know.

“When I rang you that night I cut my head open, what did I say?”

“Nothing.”

“No, really. I need to know.”

He’s begging God that he didn’t make a fool of himself. Not with her.

“I didn’t declare my love for you or anything like that?” he asks in a ridiculous jocular voice.

“No, you didn’t.”

Relief.

“So I rang and said nothing?”

“Nothing at all, Thomas.”

He can sense she’s about to say something and it seems like hours rather than seconds.

“Nothing? Are you sure?”

He wants to ask what made her say the words “Talk to me, Thomas. Talk to me.”

“You cried,” she says, her voice so gentle it kills him. Tara Finke doesn’t do gentle. Tara Finke does practical, or abrupt, or furious, or passionate. But the gentleness in her voice undoes him.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. This will cost you a fortune, so you better go.”

Say something, he tells himself. Don’t let it end this way.

“Are you going to write or are you going to spend the rest of eternity ignoring my e-mails?” he asks huskily.

“I don’t ignore them. I just choose not to respond to them and if you ever write me another one like today’s, where you go on about oblivion and stuff, Tom, I swear to God I’ll come back there and show you oblivion. And I’ll make sure it hurts. Stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself. You just piss me off, honest you do.”

She hangs up.

He feels shock at first. Perhaps a bit of anger. He’s stunned. But his heart’s hammering with hope. In Tara Finke language, that conversation was progress.

If he can still piss her off, then it’s a whole lot better than indifference.

Georgie’s felt it coming for days now, ever since she received the e-mail from Joe’s girl. Ever since she discovered that Dominic coming home doesn’t mean the end of the pain. She puts the blanket over her head and just wants everything to stop, but Dominic is there, or maybe Tom, and she’s trying to explain but then she realizes that it’s like one of those hallucinations. It’s like she’s explained it, but she’s in the same spot and she’s explained nothing.

“Georgie.” She hears Dominic’s voice from the door, then knocking and walking in, and she realizes it’s Tom who’s been with her for a while, asking her if she’s okay.