It’s gone 8 p.m. and fully dark when Mark knocks on Karen’s door. He’s nothing more than a shadow in the gloom. The street lights are sparse – one at the junction with the highway half a kilometre away and another, slightly closer, at the junction with Victoria Road. Once night falls, the only real light comes from neighbouring houses, each one sitting on its half-acre block, strands of gum trees between them and Karen’s place. The block behind her house is vacant and the place on the left already in darkness, the truckie who lives there either on the road or early in bed. The artist who lives on the right is awake, his house ablaze with light, but thanks to the shadow of the trees even that nosy git would struggle to see a man arriving, much less name him.

He can hear the TV on inside, the upbeat voice of a male presenter, the lift in volume as an ad break kicks in. He knocks harder and this time she hears him; the TV goes off, he hears her footsteps approach. She opens the door, stands silhouetted behind the screen, the light behind her. He steps forward and she opens the screen door, a smile travelling from her lips to her eyes.

‘Hello, you,’ she says. She waits until he’s closed the door before she reaches her arms up around his neck, and he pulls her close, kisses her. They stand like that, entwined, close, warm, kissing for a minute before he pulls away, strokes her hair off her face, sees the swollen cheek and eye, the red mark that will bruise to blue and purple.

‘That fucker,’ he says. ‘I should fucking kill him . . .’

Her smile fades. ‘Please, let’s not talk about him,’ she says, turning away so he can’t see the bruise. He pulls her back, close to him, and she leans into his chest.

‘You have to leave him,’ he says.

‘I know.’ Her voice is muffled against his shirt.

‘Why don’t you leave right now? You can stay in my caravan at the workshop. I’ll take you there, right now, and then you can decide what you want to do in the morning.’

She looks up at him. ‘What? Stay there with you? The two of us? What about Vero?’

He hesitates; that’s not exactly what he’d meant.

She sees the indecision in his eyes and steps back. ‘Not so easy, is it,’ she says, her voice not bitter, just resigned. ‘Look. It is what it is. I’ll be OK. I just needed some company tonight, that’s why I texted. You don’t have to fix this, I just didn’t want to be alone.’ A thought occurs to her: ‘You didn’t bring your car, did you?’

‘No, course not,’ he says. ‘I left it down the road at Blair’s. I need to see him later.’

‘I thought he was leaving?’

‘Yeah, tomorrow morning. But someone told Dean Wilson that we found opal, and Wilson started hassling me at the pub about selling it to him. Must have been Blair, mouthing off.’

‘But you haven’t been finding anything . . .’

‘Yeah, nah, I guess Blair was big-noting himself. And then Stewie Charles had a pop at me. Pulled a knife, threatened to kill me . . .’

‘Oh my god!’ She looks at him, eyes wide. ‘Are you OK? Did he hurt you?’

‘I’m fine. Some cop broke it up.’

‘Was Todd there? In the pub?’

Mark nods. ‘Yeah. Halfway pissed already.’

‘I figured,’ she says. ‘He’ll be there all night. He always feels like shit after we have a fight, gets pissed. He’ll be apologetic as hell tomorrow. I’ll be OK.’ She pauses, steps closer to him again, pulls his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans, runs her fingers along his bare stomach. ‘Todd won’t be back till late, if he comes home at all. He usually sleeps it off in his vehicle. Why don’t you stay for a while . . .’