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somewhere, perhaps fallen off the back of some other driver’s truck, like the plastic pots.
    In the cold spring when it was done, when Bob said it was done, Villani was heading for sixteen, marginally shorter than his father.
    Now he looked at what had once been a burrowed, bumpy landscape covered with little silver tents, then with hair-transplant plugs, and said to himself, ‘Looking good.’ The sight filled him with pleasure, with joy even.
    He went around the dam, the dog came up, muddy-pawed, and they entered the shade by the path once wide as a street, now narrowed to a track. From the time the trees were head-high, every time he walked the forest he heard new bird calls, saw new groundcovers spreading, new plants sprung up, new droppings of different sizes and shapes, new burrowings, scrapings, scratchings, new holes, fallen feathers, drab ones and feathers that flashed sapphire, scarlet, blue, emerald, and soon there were tiny bones and spike-toothed skulls, signs of life and death and struggle among the arboreal mammals.
    ‘Lots of little buggers in there now,’ said Bob one day. ‘Echidnas, bandis, God knows where they come from.’
    The walk took almost an hour. When they got back to the house, Villani said, ‘We should’ve done something about the understorey a long time ago. Well, got to go. Long day tomorrow.’
    Bob raised a hand. ‘He’ll be here in a minute, hang on.’
    ‘See Luke some other time.’
    ‘Give him a chance. Don’t often get two of you here.’ He rose. ‘Come. Got two new horses.’
    They walked along the horse paddock fence. The ten-year-old Cromwell had sensed they were coming, stood near the trough with his rough head over the wire.
    ‘Having a little rest, Crommie,’ said Bob. He fed the horse something, stroked his nose.
    ‘What was the last payday?’ said Villani.
    ‘Third at Benalla, that’d be…a while. Still, got a run or two left in him.’
    ‘Encourage them to have a race for ten-year-olds,’ said Villani. ‘No more than four non-metropolitan wins. A level playing field.’
    They went into the stable, a long building, doors open at both ends, cracked and pitted concrete floor, twelve bays. It smelled of manure and urine and straw. Two heads looked at them from adjacent boxes on the left.
    They stopped at the first one, a big animal, colour of rust. ‘This’s Sunny,’ said Bob. ‘Red Sundown, six-year-old. Bought him off Billy Clarke at Trenneries, three hundred bucks, he’s got this leg. Only had the six runs but he’s out of St Marcus.’
    ‘If he can’t actually run, he might as well be out of St Peter,’ said Villani.
    ‘I’ll fix him,’ said his father. ‘The lawang.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘Oil. From a tree in Indonesia. Costs a fucking bomb.’ He fed the horse something out of his cupped hand.
    ‘What happened to magnets? Last time it was miracles from magnets.’
    ‘Lawang’s better than magnets.’ Bob moved to the next horse. ‘My baby. Tripoli Girl.’
    The coal-dark animal was skittish, jerked its head, white-eyed them, backed off, toed the floor. Bob showed his palm, closed his hand, opened it, took it away, turned his back on the horse.
    ‘Cairo Night out of Hathaway,’ he said. ‘Cairo won two, maiden by ten lengths. He bled and then he came back and run terrible, they gave up on him after a year or so. Just produced the four fruits.’
    ‘All duds?’
    ‘Bad luck early, badly handled, that’s the way I read it.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘Cheap. Cheap. Dollar Dazzler.’
    Tripoli Girl was nudging Bob with its silken head, moving it from side to side. He turned, kept back from the horse, extended an empty hand. The horse nosed it, looked at him. He offered the other hand, opened it slowly, Tripoli nuzzled into it, found something.
    They went back to the house, shoes disturbing the dry mown grass. Bob fetched two beers, a VB and a Crown. He gave Villani the Crown. It cost more than the VB.
    ‘Said he’d be here around