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The diarist's sense of loss reminded Adam of his parents. He could not help drawing a link between their death by fire and Amber-Lee being taken by water, the latter as retribution for his former negligence in losing Amber-Lee to the flood. But now he wondered if the drowning might also not have been another punishment, almost immediate, for wantonness in the car. They had been trapped by rising waters in what was usually a salt flat. They had decided to wait. There was giggling. Black cockatoos screamed excitedly. Adam remembered the windows of the car getting fogged. He remembered being in the back seat. He remembered flesh, Amber-Lee's and his, and the abrupt loss of both their virginities. Then the water came up. And she was washed away and then his parents were incinerated.

Adam caught himself staring at the barely lit stained concrete wall across the corridor in front of his desk. He knew this was not a good thing to do. He closed the journal and put it in the bottom drawer of his desk and reminded himself to do what that doctor had suggested. He would keep busy.

The large box was new. It might be easy and would clear a whole shelf. Adam pulled it forward with difficulty to read the label. It was heavy. He had to tilt it forward.

‘Joan Arc. 1 Dolphin Street. Oceania? Not even a postcode!'

The box began to tip further towards him and Adam tried to push it back, but a pin supporting the front right of the shelf snapped, swinging the shelf and box forward. Adam jumped back as it crashed onto the floor with a woody crack. The corner of the box was crushed. The floorboard under looked broken too.

Jane sat at Paul's computer using Gopher to go through lists of topics like-minded people around the world wanted to share. She was delving into a category called
Terrorism Made Easy.

Paul sat at the kitchen table nibbling a Big Mac and looking in agony at the ten sticks of dynamite sitting on the coffee table. ‘Can't we burgle the post office, like we did the museum?'

Jane ignored him, selecting
Bombs,
but scrolling past
Do it Yourself Thermonuclear Devices,
and options for
The Controlled Explosion.

Paul said, ‘I'd hate, you know, to see someone get hurt.'

Jane had found something that looked about right.
How to Make a Bomb when You Don't Own a Shed.

There was a knock on the door.

Paul jumped up and leapt in a couple of directions while not leaving the table.

A key was inserted in their front door.

Jane scowled and killed the computer screen.

Paul lunged towards the dynamite, cracking his thigh into the table edge on the way through. He grabbed it and thrust it into his takeaway McDonald's bag, turning to smile as his mother came through the door carrying a washing basket.

‘Paul! Oh, I didn't know you were home. Takeaway food, really!'

‘Mum. I didn't get a chance to answer the door.' Paul limped to Jane and gave her the McDonald's bag. She put it carefully in the bin under the computer desk.

Paul's mum put down the washing basket, took out a casserole dish and headed for the fridge. ‘I thought you'd be at the university. Studying occupational therapy can't be easy. I'm still not sure what an occupational therapist does, but now you're studying it, I've begun to notice that they're everywhere. It's not going to be overcrowded by the time you finish is it?'

Jane folded her arms in Paul's direction.

‘Ah, Mum?'

She turned from the fridge with a patient exasperation, and went to him. ‘Don't I get a kiss. You too old to kiss your old mother now you're at university?'

Paul pecked her on the cheek and she patted him on the head before grabbing the washing basket and humming her way to the bedroom.

Paul turned to Jane. ‘I've asked her not to come.'

‘Get the key.'

Paul's mother was stacking Paul's ironed t-shirts and jeans in the
wardrobe, trying to avert her eyes from the tousled bed.

‘Mum, I don't think it's a good idea for you to have a key to the flat.'

‘How would I get in?'

‘I'd let you in.'

‘No. This way is better, Paul. I can make sure you're all right, without being a bother.' She began picking up dirty washing, careful not to come in contact with any of Jane's things. ‘That's why I got the extra key from Mrs McGready in the first place.'

‘But Mum ... can't you check with me first?'

‘I can't. Your phone line is always busy. Oh, you're still grumpy about that package aren't you?'

‘I ... was going to take it there myself.'

‘I wish you'd wear more shirts with collars. They make you look more grown-up. When they weighed it at the post office, they nearly had a fit, I can tell you. It was forty-five dollars in postage. But I don't mind. A paperweight to a charity can be important.' She paused. ‘Where is Oceania, anyway?

Paul winced as the front door slammed.

His mother dusted her hands with satisfaction. ‘That's the chores done. Let's have a lovely cup of Milo, shall we? I've bought gingernuts.'

Mary was on the upstairs landing, dressed in a floral housecoat. She watched the girl from downstairs storm out of the flats. She knocked on the door of flat four. The sawing stopped but then started again. Mary knocked again.

When Harry opened the door, Mary tried to see past a dust-covered shoulder, but he stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

Mary held up an empty cup. ‘I wondered if you had any sugar, Jake?'

He shook his head. ‘You could try Adam. He might have a sweet tooth.'

‘Is he your next project, is he?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘As I recall, you convinced the last fellow who rented flat two to go into the woods and face the bear.'

‘Yes?' said Harry, folding his arms across his chest.

‘You ever hear from him after he went to Canada?'

‘Maybe he faced the bear and felt no need to revisit childish counsel. Do you ever hear from him?'

‘Maybe the bear ate him.'

‘Maybe, that's one of the risks, when a man has to do what a man has to do.'

‘And maybe you should take a bath.' Mary stomped back into her flat.

It took Adam a surprising amount of time to find a spare box capable of holding the post package he had damaged. The mysterious object inside was heavy with at least one rounded edge. It might have been a vital component of an immense factory machine, or a digger that sat un-digging waiting on the mail. He eventually found a large enough box outside the stationery storeroom and carried it with great purpose back down to his dungeon where he'd managed to drag and push the heavy lost mail item under his desk. He put the empty box on his desk and turned to see if the coast was clear.

It wasn't. Howard had followed him. ‘What you doing with that box, Adam?'

‘Thought I'd get things organised down here.'

‘They are organised. Been organised for about a hundred years.' Howard looked at the shelves then back to Adam with suspicion. ‘Could be a lot of valuable items amongst these shelves. Tell me why you left the country post office.'

Adam looked away. ‘Personal reasons.'

‘You wouldn't be the first problem that got transferred to somewhere else with a glowing testimonial.'

‘I give up, Howard. We got off on the wrong foot. Cheryl up in sorting...'

‘Sharon.'

‘Sharon. You're right. Her boobs – unbelievable. Her arse – I'd like to grab it and hold it forever. I'd like to screw her until the skin peels off my dick. Okay? Will you get off my back?'

‘Have you ever heard of sexual harassment, Adam?'

‘What?'

‘I've started going out with Sharon.'

‘Oh.'

‘Tampering with Her Majesty's mail is an offence. I'm watching you, Adam.'

‘I know, Howard.'

The Rover cruised past Milton's Pet Shop and turned down a laneway behind the GPO. Jane stopped the car twenty feet before a huge, closed roller door. Paul sat next to her clutching the bomb in the McDonald's bag on his lap, the sweat from his hands starting to make the paper soft and thin in places.

‘We'll blow this wall here.'

Paul looked at the sign on the wall.
No Parking Anytime Ever.

Jane opened her door and reached in for the bag of dynamite, but was interrupted by the noise of a car horn behind.

At the street end of the laneway a red mail van was waiting.

‘Shit.'

The mail van beeped twice and in response the huge roller door clanked and rattled upwards.

Jane started reversing out of the laneway. ‘Shit.' As their car backed out into the street, Jane realised there were four more red vans, all waiting behind the first, to go into the post office. ‘I thought you cased this place! Shit.'

‘I did. But not at five o'clock. I thought they'd be going home.'

Jane backed across the street slowly, forcing her way through two lanes of honking, brake-squealing traffic.

Paul watched the vans go in, joined by more arriving behind. ‘You'd think with computers and this electro-stuff that people wouldn't be sending so many real letters anymore. It's quite encouraging really – people still wanting the personal touch. With real paper from real trees.'

Then Paul saw the geeky-looking guy from their flats. The one they'd nearly run over outside the post office the day before. He was coming from the GPO.

Jane said, ‘Okay. New plan. We hijack one of the mail vans. Drive right in and demand the package. Force the driver to show us the lost property room or whatever. We'll need guns. Machine guns would be best.'

Paul said, ‘That's the guy from our flats. I'm pretty sure he works in the post office.'

Jane said, ‘It'll take too long to get machine guns. We could get some gaffer tape and tape the dynamite to your chest, like a plane hijacker. Do exactly what we say you arseholes or Paul blows everything up.'

‘That guy works there. He might have a key.'

Jane looked over in time to see the pet shop door close.

The balding man was at the counter when Adam entered. Adam guessed he must be the boss. He looked up and said, ‘Can I help you?'

‘I was after Evelyn. I mean looking for ... um, there was a thing about my canary, that I wanted to know.'

‘I know a lot about canaries,' said the man.

Evelyn came from the back and said, ‘Not more birdseed!'

‘Oh, no. Got lots of that. Ha. More birdseed. I um wanted to ask your advice about what we were discussing, about Chris, my canary.'

Evelyn nodded and the boss went away.

‘I was wondering about what you said about Chris's eating problem.' Adam took a breath. ‘Do you think he could be lonely?'

Evelyn nodded seriously and looked to the computer. ‘Yes. It's very likely. Birds like company. They shouldn't be left alone. It's cruel really, unless you're home a lot with them.'

‘I don't think it's fair on him. You know, if you enter into a relationship, even with a pet, you have ... enormous responsibilities.'

Evelyn got the CD-ROM of
A Compact Disc Compendium of Useful Information for the Owner of Pet Birds.
It had a cluster of zebra finches on the cover. She studied the computer screen.

So did Adam. He was trying to find her e-mail address. He couldn't see it in all the clutter of writing and pictures on the screen.

‘Do you want a companion or do you want to breed?'

‘Me or the canary?'

She blinked at the screen then swivelled her long neck to look up at him. ‘The canary.'

‘Yes, silly joke. Of course.'

She read from the computer, ‘The hen should be in her breeding cage some time before she is introduced to the cock.'

Adam gently bit the side of his cheek. He found it helped him concentrate.

Evelyn read, ‘He should on no account be placed in the breeding cage without preliminaries.'

‘Oh no. That wouldn't be right.'

‘You should get two cages, so they can view each other, so she can “gradually get used to his advances”.'

‘So you really let them fall in love?' asked Adam.

‘Of course. For life.' She looked at Adam with a radiant smile.

He smiled back and she became more businesslike. ‘Although, for birds and animals, of course, love isn't really correct. It's instinct. They get in season and they mate, in season.'

Adam tried, ‘Whereas people?'

Evelyn smiled an ethereal smile then and Adam thought his heart had seized, but she shook it off and headed towards the birds at the back of the shop, ‘We've only got one young hen. A bit highly strung.'

Adam followed.

The hen, the only one in the store, leapt and fluttered about her cage. She flapped her wings wildly, leaping at the side of the bars, sending feathers and a light dust everywhere.

‘Shh shh shh. Settle down. Ooh, she doesn't like you,' said Evelyn.

‘No. Well, she doesn't have to like me. She has to like Chris.'

‘Shh now, shh,' whispered Evelyn trying to comfort the canary, which had now leapt to the bars at the back of the cage where she hung on with her claws, while her head rocked wildly trying to see them behind her.

‘Is she all right?' asked Adam.

‘Look, why don't you buy her, and if she doesn't settle down, you can bring her back.'

‘Oh. Um, okay. And can I keep asking your advice?'

‘Of course.'

‘You're good with animals, but birds are your favourite aren't they?'

‘Yes. I dream about them.'

‘Dream?'

‘Oh,' said Evelyn, as though wakening. She seemed embarrassed to have shared too much. ‘So, will you take her?' She headed back to the other side of the counter, all business again.