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Neighbourly Watch, the community arm of Nation First, which runs extortion rackets, squeezing distributors and farms alike for hush money. If one of the Non-ethicals is trying to forge new territory, you can bet NW will be interested. Either way, it’s a provocative act to set up where the Ethicals used to be — and a warning they have their eyes on the inner city.
    â€˜Take me through Fishermans Bend,’ Gail says abruptly. ‘Everything you saw and heard and smelled.’

4
    I sleep late. Monday being my day off, I do nothing except a load of washing.
    Lunchtime, I realise the light on my answerphone is blinking. It’s my younger sister, Helen, asking me to meet her this afternoon at the Neighbourly Arms, a tavern in the business sector of the CBD. No ‘how have you been?’ preamble and no goodbye, just a terse message and a hang-up.
    It’s the only contact she’s initiated in five years. A handful of years before, in that first rush of fear when infertility became linked to Divine punishment and the necessity to atone, my family had scrambled to be ‘saved’. I’d declined the offer to join them. Then Helen married the enemy.
    I stare at the phone, and can’t suppress the tiny voice inside that whispers hope of reconciliation.
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    I arrive at Lord Place on foot. Being something of a bastion for things traditional, its various clubs and bars are popularwith the Nation Firsts, and weeknights the area is awash with political wheeler-dealers and Neighbourly Watch officials. Hypocritically, the Neighbourly Arms is the only city establishment with an exemption on Blue Laws days — the local slang term for the city’s reinstated Sunday bans on alcohol, trading and fun in general. For Helen to ask me here is unkind but not surprising: it ensures she’s the one on safe ground.
    Located halfway down the bluestone square, the shuttered cottage exterior of the tavern makes it look like a tacky reconstruction; in fact, it’s one of the oldest buildings in the city. Helen’s sipping a glass of something through a straw at one of the outside tables, a wine keg with stools around it. Perched on a stool, she tugs self-consciously at the hem of her skirt.
    I don’t bother going to get a drink; I have a feeling this is going to be quick. I seat myself across the keg from her.
    Neat as a pin in matching pastels, she eyes my sneakers, black slouch jeans and hoody, and gets an irked tilt to her mouth.
    â€˜You look well,’ she says. (An improvement on last time’s ‘Get out of my life’.)
    â€˜You too,’ I lie. To me, she looks strained and pasty.
    â€˜It’s Mum and Dad’s thirtieth wedding anniversary on Wednesday. Just in case you were planning to put in a surprise appearance, I’m here to say don’t.’
    In goes the barb. Pierce my heart .
    She produces a card with pearly bells and glitter onit, and hands me a pen. ‘They just want to know you’re alive.’
    I’m seeing in tunnel vision, the pen a long way away. My hand reaches out and does the writing: Much love on your special day, Salisbury. It hands back the pen.
    This is what leaving home at sixteen and coming out as a gender transgressive did to my family relations. At first, my parents hoped for contrition and atonement; then, when they abandoned their Presbyterian traditions for the Saviour Nation church, they wanted me to have my ‘difference’ baptised out of me.
    Helen puts the card in its envelope and slips it into her handbag, then manoeuvres delicately off her keg stool.
    â€˜So that’s it for another five years?’ I ask.
    She doesn’t answer. Her eyes drift from mine to the tavern entrance. I follow her gaze, and see someone standing there watching us. Her NF politician husband, Michael, shoehorned into power by his Saviour Nation flock.
    My sister always knew the kind of life she wanted was marrying and making lots