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eyebrows and a bushy moustache stared back at him from the top of the pile he was holding. All around the man were pictures of cannons, soldiers, images of battle.
    Ben was holding money. A lot of money. He had never in his life seen a single one hundred dollar note. Now he clutched a wad of the green bills. He smelt it to see if it was real but he had no idea what money was supposed to smell like. He flicked through it with his thumb. The pile of cash was four or five centi­metres thick. How many hundred dollar notes would fit into a four-centimetre tall pile? Three hundred? Five hundred? Ben calculated it in his mind.
    Could he really be holding $50,000? He glanced around and stood up to look in the bag, which lay twisted and open on the workbench. There were fifteen or twenty identical piles of cash in the bag and on the floor.
    Dad and Mum never had spare money, even for shoes or haircuts. One of Dad’s favourite sayings was ‘Money makes the world go round’ but most of the time their world stood still. Ben had missed out on the science excursion on sand dune ecology a week earlier because they didn’t have the fifteen dollars. But now they had lots of money. Why wasn’t it in the bank?
    A noise out front. Ben grabbed the sports bag and stuffed thick blocks of cash back in, carefully watching the door and window. Fear roared through him, making him clumsy. He tried to close the bag but the zip was broken.
    Dad said something to Mum. Ben’s throat closed. He jumped up on the bench and reached high, trying to shove the bag back into place, but he wasn’t tall enough. He took steady aim and threw the bag onto the wide timber slat but it fell back into his hands.
    â€˜Where’s the boy?’ Dad called to Mum, his voice very near to the cabin now. Mum said something about Ben moving furniture.
    He tried again, throwing the bag up onto the timber slat that ran across the roof beams. The bag held, but one end hung down, revealing the money. Dad’s footsteps sounded on the gravel near the cabin door. Ben jumped down, giving the workbench two tremendous shoves into position next to the wall just as Dad walked in. Ben breathed hard, guilt painted across his face in sweat.
    â€˜What’re you up to?’ Dad said, propping just inside the door. ‘Decorating?’
    Ben took a slow breath and said, ‘Yeah. I tried moving things around but I reckon it all looks best where you had it.’
    Dad studied him for a few seconds. Ben took long, slow breaths.
    â€˜Can we go outside?’ Ben asked.
    â€˜What for?’
    â€˜Explore . . . see the creek.’
    Dad looked at him. ‘You sick? You never want to go outside.’
    â€˜Yeah, but . . . there’s all this nature.’
    Dad eyed him, walked to the table, grabbed his keys. ‘I’ve got to go out.’
    â€˜Where to?’ Ben asked, an awkwardly long time after his father had spoken.
    Dad shook his head and looked at Ben, puzzled. ‘You’re a weird bloke.’ He headed for the door.
    Ben breathed out slowly and hope flooded in. He wished his father out of the cabin with everything in his soul.
    Dad stopped in the doorway and turned, clicking his tongue like he had forgotten something. He looked up into the open roof space.

Dad walked slowly to the back of the cabin, looking up, squinting to be sure that he could see what he thought he saw. A bag hung from the roof beam, a wad of cash lolling out like a tongue.
    Ben crabbed sideways toward the door.
    â€˜Hey!’ Dad called. It didn’t sound like ‘Hey, you found my bag! I’d been meaning to tell you about the hundreds of thousands of dollars I’d hidden in the roof.’ It was more of a ‘Hey, you have about a second and a half before I explode like Vesuvius.’
    Ben stopped.
    Dad turned and lunged at Ben, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. He marched Ben to the back of the cabin and