-Okay, he said, and he felt like this situation was moving much too fast for him, like he was falling; and he felt like he was about to p.i.s.s himself.

-I'm pregnant. To you.

-Oh.

-And all this stuff. It's virtually killed my parents, Mia said, and her eyes started to water. But she continued. They're going to help me. I just want to tell you one thing. These lies you've told about Charlie, trying to get him implicated in that sick s.h.i.t you did. When your child is born, I will bring him to the jail to visit. If his uncle Charlie is in jail, he's the only person he will be visiting. Ever. It's up to you.

Abdullah grabbed the pad and pencil. His heart was beating, not so much fast, but hard, making his hand tremble. Mia looked so good. She was big. He didn't know about pregnancy, but he doubted she could get much bigger. She seemed to have put on a few kilos on top too. She looked good but. He did know that he wouldn't be able to fully grasp this situation now. It would have to wait until later, in his cell, when the blood had cooled. Alone. But nevertheless he tried.

He wrote on the pad: IS It a BOY.

-Yes. He's a boy.

He wrote under his previous letters: CaN I See HIM.

-Think about what I've said, Abdullah.

Mia left. She'd changed. So f.u.c.kin' much. He'd changed her. Changed her into something much stronger than the thing he'd changed into. It was a weird situation. He felt bad, but good; full, like he could burst. Burst into tears or something. And it was good to have a full head in here. You could lie there and lay it all out above you. And pick through it. And try things on in your head, and see if they felt right.

FORTY-ONE.

Whitey opened another beer, his fourth, and drank off a good third in one slug. It wasn't touchin' the sides though. He'd been workin' it off - sweatin' it off - as soon as it hit his liver. It seemed he couldn't get anyone to help him move his stuff from Brunei to the new joint for all the p.i.s.s in the world. So he'd started moving it - and drinking all the p.i.s.s - himself. He didn't have much stuff to move, and this was a good thing, he supposed, but it was a little depressing. Twenty-seven years of stuff all fit into two trips in the Commodore. He could leave the handbrake off and lose the lot. Ah, well. Together they'd get good stuff. Eventually.

They'd rented a little house, half-house really, in Mt Druitt. It was a private rental, not Housing Commission, and this alone made him feel free. But even more, it was a fresh start. And with everything in her name they wouldn't have the cops knocking on the door looking for the old White scapegoat. He drank off another third and finally felt the effects as he surveyed his new home. He'd have a couple more and then do something with his stuff. Before she got back.

They'd decided that he'd sell - just to friends - to make a little extra cash so he could stay at home and study for his distance education HSC. He'd looked over the booklets they'd sent him. There was a whole bunch of s.h.i.t he didn't understand, but he was looking forward to it in a way. She'd be able to help him with some of the stuff anyway. He was also pretty sure that if he finished the course, he'd be the first one in his family to get his HSC. Not that any of them would ever know about it. But still, it made him feel good to think about it. And of course there was someone else - someone special - who would be proud of him, and that was the best part of all.

Whitey shoved as much of his stuff as he could into the built-in wardrobe, and the rest he piled in a corner of the spare bedroom with his furniture. Her stuff, that her mum had given her, was much nicer. He'd get rid of all his old junk when he got around to it. But for now it could be shut up behind the spare bedroom door.

She came in with some groceries. She always had some sort of treat for him lately when she'd been to the shops. A Kit-Kat or Smarties. It made him a little uncomfortable, because he supposed she wanted him to do the same for her, but he just never thought of it when he was out. And the only shops he really went to were bottleshops, and he was pretty sure she wouldn't appreciate a can of bourbon and c.o.ke that he'd end up drinking at least half of.

-Ya didn't get that stuff from Greedos, did ya? Whitey said, helping her get the bags onto the bench.

-No. Don't worry. I promised I wouldn't go there. I know how you feel about it, she said in mock frustration.

-Cool. Like a beer, babe? he offered, grabbing another for himself.

-I'd love one. It's so f.u.c.kin' humid out there. And if you've got some gear ready, I'd love a cone too.

-Sure, babe. I just mulled up earlier. Whitey stopped pouring her beer and went to get the bowl and bong from the lounge room cabinet.

After his second cone Whitey began to feel the tension tingle out of him. For some reason he'd been anxious for her to come home. This would be their first real night in the house together. He'd stayed the night she'd moved her stuff in, but he'd spent the last two back at Brunei Court, convincing himself that this was the right move by boxing up all his stuff. There was no turning back now. He was all here. But he needed her presence to make it real, he guessed. And as her expression suggested right now, she was reading his thoughts.

-So. How do you feel? All right about the whole thing?

-Yeah, Whitey replied. It's all good.

-It'll be weird, though. When the baby comes. Us living together now. Won't it?

-I dunno. Why? he asked and grabbed his beer.

-Will she mind you bringing it, sorry he or she, here?

-I dunno, Nat. I doubt it. She knows we're together.

-Yeah, but now we're living together, you know, it's - -Look. I dunno. It's her problem if she's got a problem with it. She reckons she doesn't. That's all I have to go off.

And Whitey believed Sonja. She really didn't seem to have a problem with him seeing Natalie. She'd seemed happy for him when he'd told her - the day she'd come to tell him about the baby. And when he'd gone to see Sonja the next day to say that he wanted to marry her - that he still loved her - she'd hugged him, but didn't kiss him, and said that it was not what she wanted. And Jesus, it hurt. He'd had to become like a wild animal, masking a trauma with normal, or normalish, behaviour. He hoped that this move would help bury it.

-Okay. Sorry. I'll drop it. I know you don't like to talk about it. It's just - I dunno, weird, Natalie said.

-Life's weird, he replied with a shrug.

Natalie had pretended she was okay after she'd been a.s.saulted. And she had convinced even herself until the f.u.c.kers were caught. She agreed to go ahead with the charges. Nothing would stop her doing that. But all the fear, the confusion, the mistrust of people, and of herself had come back. Meeting the other girls, despite the shock of what they'd been through, had helped. The sick thing they had in common bonded them, and went a little way towards the healing. If there was any. The prosecution team had been as understanding as they could be, but what they couldn't do was take away the fact that the p.r.i.c.ks were there, and were free to look at the girls and talk to their solicitors and act as though they were humans who deserved fairness. The Rape Crisis women were there - and they at least knew fully well what the girls were experiencing. Seeing those pigs. Not only in court, but on the telly, and in the paper. It seemed like it would never f.u.c.king end.

In her statement she'd given Whitey's name, and the defence solicitor had tried to use the fact that she'd had a relationship with him to demonstrate that she was involved with criminals. It was mute. The f.u.c.kers had nothing. No real defence, and nearly got what they deserved. That is, if they get f.u.c.ked in jail.

After it was over she went to see Whitey. He'd heard about it and was pretty freaked out. But he didn't ask her too many questions, and listened to what she did tell him without a hint of the macabre interest that a couple of her other friends had shown. They'd hugged, and he held her for a long while. It was the first time she'd let a man touch her since the rape. She kept thinking about him. How he was, in his own strange way, and as much as a man can be, a feminist. He had none of the macho showiness or stupid s.e.xual innuendo that the other guys she knew threw around. He was sensitive about what she'd been through, but didn't dwell on it and constantly ask her if she was okay. He'd once told her that he'd grown up without his dad, and had had to help look after his little sister. Maybe, she thought, the experience had done something to him. Given him an understanding that, she was sure, he was unaware of, but one that she could feel comfortable with. She'd started to visit him more often, and found herself feeling much stronger about him than she ever had before. Before she was a.s.saulted. The fact that he'd just broken up with a girl - who he'd gotten pregnant - did give her some anguish, but she'd decided she needed Whitey. He was the man who could help her get over this and have a life again. And she thought she could help him.

-Hey, Nat said, I saw Tennille today. You know, the girl from my court case. She's just started back at her old job at the cinema and she said anytime we want to see anything she'd let us in for free.

-Cool, Whitey replied. This was much more comfortable than talking about Sonja. Anything you wanna see?

-I dunno. Maybe we could just go down and check what's on. I like her. She's heaps cool, Tennille is.

-Sure. Whatever you wanna do, babe.

So they finished their drinks and had another cone each to prepare themselves for the crowds at the cinemas. They were about to leave when Nat stopped and asked him the inevitable question.

-I just want to ask you one thing, Patrick. And then I swear I'll drop it.

-What?

-Is there any chance you would want to get back with Sonja after the baby's born? I mean, have you really thought about it?

-f.u.c.k, Natalie. Yes. Yes, I've thought about it. And no. There's no chance. She made that clear.

-She made it clear. But what about you? Will you want to get back with her?

-No, Natalie. No way, he said firmly.

But he had to harshly cut and quickly shape the words from the truth. Because the honest answer to her question was f.u.c.k yeah. In a western Sydney second.

OUT WEST.

FORTY-TWO.

Whitey parked his lorry two streets away from the school and legged it the rest of the way to the gate. It was futile to try and do battle with the polished four-wheel drives that congested the street Plumpton Primary was on. Wednesday was his day to pick up his daughter, to spend some time with her.

The bell the children had been hanging out for since lunch sounded, and the clamour to exit began. Whitey mooned around at the gate, aware of his maleness. He couldn't remember parents crowding the gate of the school when he was a young bloke, but it seemed the custom now. Kids, not all that anxious to be enclosed into the family off-roaders, began their games cut short by the end of their lunch break.

-Spot the b.l.o.o.d.y Aussie, isn't it? said a guy standing next to Whitey.

Whitey smiled and nodded at the guy - initially comforted that he wasn't the only bloke there picking up his kid. He looked in the direction that the guy pointed. At the multiculturalism that was truly at work in a game of handball. The kids were intent on the ball and its trajectory inside the hand-drawn court, perfectly oblivious of their variegated ancestries.

-There was none a that goin' on when I was a nipper, the guy continued. I never even seen an Arab or a Nip 'round 'here when I was growin' up.

Whitey smelt the sweetness of the guy's beery breath, and a pang of envy sped through him. He wished he was able to be drunk at three in the arvo but he couldn't risk a middy because of his job.

He saw his daughter coming towards him - a tiny version of Sonja. She was hand-in-hand with her best friend, Tuyen. The western suburbs his daughter had inherited were unlike the ones Whitey had grown up in. The Commission estates Whitey had known were being sold off and levelled and transformed into uniform manors. There was a drive to be middle cla.s.s in the west that was lost on Whitey but he did hope that his daughter would learn some of it. Not so much so she would have material success, but so she would have an understanding of how her world operated. There was little hope for Whitey and the bloke standing next to him; they'd be left behind. Even the once benevolent government was cutting their ilk loose into the increasingly free market economy at every opportunity. Not that any of this really bothered Whitey. I'm a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he thought as he hugged his daughter h.e.l.lo.

They piled into the cabin of the truck - off to drop Tuyen off and get a free feed at her family's Vietnamese restaurant.

end.