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counterproductive, it’s been our downfall – because all we’ve done is train the enemy to become a strategist. The unavoidable consequence of going to war with something is that the opponent will strive to survive, and more than that, it will learn from you. The irony being that the prey ultimately ends up smarter than the predator, and wins the battle.’
    ‘The virus knows all our tricks.’
    ‘More than that – it knows to change its spots and keep evolving. By fighting disease so aggressively we’ve effectively programmed it into a continuous cycle of mutation. It’s a vicious circle though – in the sense that the losers who do survive will then adapt and come back stronger.’
    ‘Running around and around, chasing tails.’
    ‘The circle of life, they say. Better than running frantically to a standstill.’
    ‘The hippies were right all along then – give peace a chance , even in the most fundamental sense.’
    ‘And we picked a fight with biology, the biggest guy on the block.’
    Denny shifted in the seat, bringing her knees up.
    ‘The further we get into this,’ she said, ‘the more I realise my mother was right. She always shook her head at the new ways, even at education to a point. She’d say we try to learn too much. We want too much. She’d make me kneel in the dirt, the sun would be beating down and the flies thick in the air, nothing beautiful around us – dried grass and weeds, beer cans and rubbish – but she’d put her fingers to her heart and then to her ear, and then to her eye. I was meant to hear the birds and feel the sun on my skin and the warm dirt under my knees. I was meant to see the Australian sky. She’d nod as if that’s all I needed, nothing more.’
    Denny sighed. ‘And I took no notice of her, of course. I thought she was stuck in the past. Holding me back.’
    ‘I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself; if this is any indication of the past, well it’s easy to see why we’d want to get out of it.’
    ‘Not everyone wanted to get out of it.’
    For a while we didn’t speak. My throat was dry and my head full of thoughts.
    ‘Rohan’s snoring,’ Denny said, ‘– you can play now.’
    For a moment we were both still, making sure he was asleep. I had the feeling Denny knew his patterns as well as I did. The way he dropped quickly into a deep sleep, and then after an hour or two he stopped snoring and was more likely to wake. She knew this was the time to play.
    Having an audience made my fingers thick and clumsy; more so because it was Denny. She closed her eyes and leant back as I checked the guitar was in tune and fiddled around with some notes and chords.
    ‘What do you feel like?’ I asked.
    ‘Whatever you play well,’ she murmured.
    ‘Great, no pressure or anything.’
    I played some modern stuff, mainly because I thought back and realised she would have only heard me pick out depressing old tunes. I wanted to show her I could play contemporary music – even though I took out most of the emphasis and slowed the tempo. It flowed though, and more than anything that’s what I wanted, to ease out the rhythm and go with some runs and have her lost in the undertow of it. I wanted to impress. Her approval came in the way she breathed.
    Too often I botched a note because I lifted my gaze and fixed for too long on the dark shadows of her face.
    As it does though, the music soon had me, and I didn’t plan the next song or have reasons. I played whatever came to my fingers and let the lyrics rasp from me. Time slowed and nothing mattered and the steeliness thrummed through me.
    I felt her voice before I heard it: it travelled electric up my spine and lifted every hair on my body. She lifted her head and opened her eyes. Her voice was tentative, but undeniably good – a little bluesy, as I’d expected it would be. It didn’t benefit from the muted volume we had to maintain and I resented Rohan for every rule he imposed and most of all this one; if I wanted to