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when she would bring his dinner out to the shed, and hand it over in return for Colin’s trousers. Colin counted down the days until the month would be finished and the Welfare Officer would make his visit, and the only company he kept was with his dreams.
    * * *
    Mostly he dreamed of Gino, and at first they were dreams of the past, real like the dream on the ship; yesterday wrapping itself around him, come back to keep him warm. But then he found, by thinking about it hard enough, in just the right way, at just the time sleep was coming on, that he could take the dreams to other places; places that might be the future, for all he knew. For four nights in a row the trick worked. He dreamed of the beach Gino carried in his wallet, and the colours were even more brilliant, and the sun hotter, and the ocean clearer and cooler than any picture could tell. Some dreams they talked, and others they swam or caught fish, and some they did all three, and when he woke in the morning Colin felt stronger, and the farm felt less real, and he became more determined to wait it out.
    On the fifth night he did nothing different. He lay on his stretcher and let his mind move away from the room. Without trying to lead it, because that always woke him, he found the space inside his head that could suggest direction. Deep slow breaths that felt like sleep, but controlled; not so awake that he could invent the pictures, but awake enough to accept them, when they arrived. The beach came and Gino walked towards him and waved, the way he always did, like all day he’d been waiting for the same dream.
    ‘Looks like a day for swimming,’ Gino said, stripping to his underwear.
    Colin joined him and soon they were in the waves, as perfect as ever, and too clear to be imagined, because Colin had never seen a beach like this in all his life. Gino swam out past the lastof the breakers, the same as the day before, and Colin, who even in his future dreams was no swimmer, stood in the shallower water and watched him.
    But this time was different. Colin felt it in his stomach, even before he noticed it with his eyes. Gino kept swimming, farther and farther out until his head was just one more dot of darkness in the sparkling dips of the ocean. Colin stood helpless, watching Gino leave his dream, salty tears running down his face and feeding the ocean.
    ‘I shouldn’t bother with crying if I was you.’
    Colin turned to see a boy about his age, with red hair and white skin, and a voice that seemed to belong somewhere else, although he couldn’t place where, standing beside him.
    ‘It’s easy for you to say,’ Colin replied, wiping away his tears.
    ‘Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,’ the boy replied, but before the conversation could go on, there was the morning crashing against the door, and Colin was awake.

THREE
Dougal
    C OLIN stood before the house, feeling the numbness spreading through his feet. The wind was colder today, and it mocked his thin white legs as it passed. He wanted to run, the same as he did every morning. Turn and run, and keep running, put this place behind him. But he didn’t. Six more days he made it, before the Welfare Officer called. He stood and waited while before him the house he was forbidden to enter filled with stomping and groaning, then spewed out Mr Sowby.
    ‘What ya standing here for Pommy boy?’
    He swayed on the verandah. Colin stood his ground.
    ‘The fence I told you to fix last night, what the hell sort of job do ya call that? The cows are out. Yer bloody useless. Well? What are ya waiting for? Don’t just stand there. Go and bring them in. There’s milking to be done. What are ya waiting for?’
    ‘My trousers.’
    ‘My trousers,’ Sowby mocked, and it amused him enough for his cough to become a laugh, and the laugh to become a cough again. ‘Take them then, have your bloody precious trousers. Andhurry up, you’re milking alone this morning.’
    Said as if that was something special, but it