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looked more beautiful. It was over, she said; she’d been clean the whole time, she said, and, still believing her, I passed it on. They reconciled. I was wracked with strong ambivalence seeing, even momentarily, my brother so vulnerable. A week later, a friend of mine spotted Baby in Sunshine with her other ex – the one who’d picked the first fight with my brother. I confronted her. At first she denied it, then she stopped short. It was impossible to go anywhere in a Vietnamese enclave without being noted – she understood that.
    â€˜Okay,’ she sighed. ‘I went there.’
    I didn’t say anything.
    â€˜I heard …’ She paused, reconsidered. ‘Him and his mates are planning an attack. A big one.’
    â€˜On who?’
    â€˜Johnny. My ex. And all the rest of his friends. Your friends too – the brothers.’
    We were in her car, on our way to pick Thuan up from somewhere, and she spoke straight ahead, into the busy windscreen.
    â€˜You know this? You gotta tell them.’
    â€˜I don’t know.’ She frowned, chewed at her lower lip. ‘I know him. He just wants to be the big man. That’s all it was, I just went there to ask him to stop all this.’
    â€˜What’d he say?’
    She glanced over at me, and there was a small, strange crease around her eyes I hadn’t seen before.
    â€˜He said he’d think about it.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    She drove on a while, then, as though resolving some internal question, she swung her head from side to side. ‘Big T, he wanted me to beg.’
    All my life I’ve been told I’m not very good at reading people. There is, I think, some truth to this. Baby, in particular, was so changeable that any attempt would usually be offside and out of step. But in that moment, I was inspired by an intense insight to say nothing, to sit still and let her ravelled thinking tease itself out. In my concentration my face must have lapsed into a frown.
    She looked over, cringed slightly. ‘I guess you already know,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
    â€˜Do you wanna pull over? Talk about this?’
    â€˜I would love that.’
    She pulled into a petrol station and parked by the air pump. Again, I waited for her to speak.
    â€˜You’re sweet,’ she said nervously. She tilted the rear-view mirror down and checked her face. Then she told me how, when she’d gone back to plead with her ex, one thing had led to another. Not like that. But she still wasn’t sure how it had happened.
    â€˜What happened?’
    She paused. ‘I don’t want your brother to think I’m a slut.’ Her voice was small but quickly hardening. ‘That’s what he called me last time.’
    We sat in silence as the car ticked. Slut. The word led me to the image of her bent over a wobbling suitcase, pants scrunched down to her knees. Sand and salt on her wet skin. The lie of the bikini on her body.
    â€˜Yeah but you did fuck him, didn’t you?’ I could feel my heart throttling my ribs as I thought this, and then, unbelievably – as I said it. Now the new word – the new image it called up – landed heavy and wet between us.
    Baby jutted out her jaw. She jerked her head in my direction but didn’t look at me. ‘You can’t … Look, it’s not like I’m going out with you .’
    â€˜Right.’
    â€˜You can’t talk to me like that.’
    â€˜Right. It’s not like he’s my brother. Like the last time you fucked around, who was it that patched everything up for you?’
    She inhaled sharply. She said, ‘I screwed up.’ Then she turned to me, her face gone cunning. ‘But what’s the deal with you two anyway? What sort of fucked-up thing is that?’ Her skin was clenched tight around the eyes, her jaw muscles working her thoughts. ‘I don’t even know why he lets you follow