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He holds up the puppy. ‘I couldn't get Haggis out of my mind. So, unless Daniel has already got another puppy.' He holds the thing up.

Sam comes forward. Amis tosses the puppy half a metre. The boy frantically catches it.

Amis is already looking at Helen. He's downcast. ‘I've overstepped the mark.'

On the back foot again, she says, ‘We'll have to ask Dad.'

‘Quite right too.'

The little girl with big eyes. Amis reaches into his coat pocket and pulls it out. A cheap plastic marionette. He gets the strings untangled and makes it jiggle. It is fun, the broken dance. He holds it out towards her. She wants it. But she won't take it. She knows about the gingerbread house.

‘Mr Armstrong, this is really too much. We can't.'

Shut up, Helen, I'm working here. He turns to her. Smiles. ‘With my kids, I know, you can't give one without the other getting something too.'

‘We really can't.' Closed. Her defences are up. Suspicious now. No one's this nice.

Nice boring answers, Amis. Always walk to the door carrying your plausibles. ‘Confession. My neighbours were giving puppies away. And I would like you to let me try to sell you a very good insurance deal. I did do the spade work. Sorry. Poor joke.' But it wasn't. It was rather good.

She smiles.

Amis looks down at the marionette, hanging limp. The little one is watching it.

Helen says, ‘This is the most complicated sales pitch I've ever seen.'

‘I'm a complicated fellow.' He smiles the truth at her. He gives her Amis. It surprises her.

The marionette is snatched from Amis's hand. She's taken it. Amis is almost disappointed. Thought maybe she was a tougher diamond.

‘Friends?' he says, demanding his blood price.

She doesn't smile. She shakes her head. No. I'll take your present but I won't like you.

Pure uncomplicated amorality. And hair smelling like apples.

Helen asks Amis to help with the Christmas tree. It lies in the centre of their loungeroom as if chopped there. Three days until Christmas and no tree.

Amis takes charge. Like the dad. Sam, bricks. Frances, keep the puppy safe. Helen, you take that side. They lift, easy does it. The crown bends at the ceiling.

Helen pants. ‘Put in the bricks.' A branch twists at her chest, pushing back more blouse.

Sam races in to plop bricks into the bucket surrounding the base of the tree.

Amis is jovial. ‘You are making me work for this. Any wood needs chopping? Painting? Any other thing needs attention?' He makes sure he isn't looking at her. No lascivious smile to give away the innuendo. He feels her check though. He says, ‘And on the other side, Sam – to balance it.'

He heads for the bricks. Stops to scraggle the puppy's ears. Eager beaver, dying to help.

Helen smiles at the boy, bursting with maternals. She turns to catch Amis watching. He doesn't avoid it. He wants the Daniel gossip. To feed on the crisis and feed it too. ‘It must be very difficult. Having to hold this shower, right now.'

‘What do you mean?' She's gone hard again.

Amis swerves. ‘So close to Christmas.'

She relaxes slightly. But she's not panicked. Not like Amis expected.
She says, ‘Samuel, before we collapse here.'

Is she tough or doesn't she know where he is. He watches her. ‘Shame Daniel can't be here.'

She looks back, shaking her head. Not getting it.

Amis says, ‘So I can lay things out for both of you. Given your success in life, you might want to consider Life Assurance too.'

The boy puts the last brick in. It feels like enough. She lets go of the tree. ‘He's very busy, Mr Armstrong.'

The boy takes the puppy. ‘I'll show you outside.'

The girl jumps to follow but turns back and says, ‘Don't you hurt Mummy.'

‘Frances!' Mum aghast.

Apples runs off.

Helen is stuck in the corner of the fake bay window, trying to push branches. Amis steps to cut off her movement. Says, ‘Let me help,' as he pulls branches aside, and starts to move back.

She steps forward and Amis moves back into her path. ‘Oh.'

They stop. Sweat on her chest. Full breasts, panting slightly. Tiny beads of blood where the pine needles have jabbed her chest. Just a little prick.

‘Sorry.' Amis steps back.

‘Thank you.'

‘My pleasure.'

She is only half out. She hasn't stepped away. Amis looks at her face. Her lips. Quite close and stopped for him. Then she steps through and goes to the centre of the room. She takes a deep breath with her back to him and then turns, bright and innocent, and looks back at the tree. But she's flushed.

Amis risks. He says, ‘I hope he takes care of you, Helen.'

‘He does.' She answers too quickly.

He meets her gaze. It's all sympathy, calling the lie a lie.

‘He does.' Weak. And she doesn't even know where he is. ‘Look, I won't stay.' He steps to her and lays his hand on her shoulder, his thumb touching where her pectoral starts to become breast. The tiniest innocent squeeze and he's past her and in the hall. ‘Can I leave you my card?'

‘Yes.' She hasn't come out. She's getting herself together.

He lays one of his fake business cards on the dresser by the front door. ‘I am going to sell you some insurance one day, Mrs Longo.'

He opens the front door and turns back. He looks down the hall where he can see all the way out to the children playing in the garden with the puppy. He could live here.

The doctors didn't believe Daniel. With three of them working in a tag team Daniel had also begun to doubt.

‘In what way are they persecuting you?'

Daniel was on his side of the interview desk. ‘Not persecuting. Except for Blyte. The bank, Sheridan, Brian...' Daniel didn't even want to consider the next person on the list. Found he couldn't say her name, so he skipped it. ‘I think that's more ... a loss of faith.'

‘And Amis Blyte?' asked the kindly lady doctor or psychiatrist or whatever they were. None of them wore white coats. They looked more like high school teachers. State school teachers, nearing retirement. When Daniel didn't reply, she repeated it. ‘Why is he persecuting you, Danilo?'

Daniel looked away again, shaking his head. Every time they called him Danilo, he knew he wasn't among friends. He smiled. He needed to get out of here. He said, ‘Maybe he's not.'

‘And you haven't met him?' said the skinny one. He reminded Daniel of his first metalwork teacher.

Daniel said, ‘Maybe he doesn't exist.'

They had moved on quickly from do you know what day it is, which he'd done reasonably badly at: ‘Very close to Christmas.' And who is the current prime minister of Australia. ‘Julia. Her husband used to be a hairdresser.' When he asked if they could steer away from Geography as it wasn't his best subject, they'd asked more specific questions about why he thought he was here and he had tried to calmly list the pressure he was under and the actions he'd taken that might make it look to outsiders (and his wife) as though he were crazed. He was sane enough to give the answers that would get him out.

The third doctor, whom Daniel was having trouble placing in his
imaginary teacher common room, asked, ‘Have you ever conjured up, in your own mind, what he might look like?'

As opposed to conjuring it up in someone else's mind?

She went on. ‘Does he look anything at all like your father?'

‘No.'

‘No, he doesn't look like him?'

‘This is not about that. No.'

They nodded at the last doctor. She'd impressed them. The man on the end looked at his watch.

The kindly one, maybe home ec. or drama, said, ‘Let's have another discussion later, Danilo.'

‘I'd like to talk more about your father next time,' said number three, the deputy principal perhaps. ‘Would you think about that?'

Daniel nodded. He didn't want to think about that. He thought he should have answered yes. The unseen Blyte looks like my dead father. They might have been pleased and let him go. You're damaged, son, but like the rest of us. Go and pay a psychologist and talk about it for a few hours every week.

An orderly led Daniel along a corridor. There were shifts of orderlies with lots of keys.

Daniel had trouble walking. They'd taken his shoelaces and his tie and belt. He had to hold up his pants with his good hand and shuffle along the corridor like one of the zombies out of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

They got to one of the heavy doors with the big glass viewing panels. It was like a medium-sized hospital ward with beds and men lying and milling about.

The orderly said, ‘Listen, you're not gunna hurt yourself anymore, are you?' He was looking at Daniel's various wounds. He'd picked up a few extra scrapes from the police that morning.

‘No. I'd rather not.'

‘I can get the nurse to give you something. And I can put you by yourself or with the other blokes in the ward.'

Daniel shrugged. He wondered whether they'd already given him something that made him feel flat. He had a headache.

The orderly unlocked the door and the men looked up mostly with
a vague hope which turned to disappointment when they saw it was another inmate. The orderly said, ‘You want, I can make a call for you. Only cost you ten bucks.'

‘No, I think I'm all talked out.'

It was nothing like
One Flew Over.
It was more like a late night at casualty. As an experienced inmate explained many of them had voluntarily come in for assessment, sometimes prompted by parents or partners and sometimes when they recognised the signs that the Black Dog was taking over and they needed their medication upped.

Daniel thought he might be starting to relate to that. He sensed the bottom of the well and not knowing where to find the light. Action had kept such thoughts away. Daniel was an emotional shark. He needed to keep moving, not brooding. He'd picked that trick up from his dad.

A youth with bandaged arms lay on the bed next to him. He'd admired Daniel's injuries and asked, ‘What did you do?' Daniel had to think a while before he said, ‘I'm a businessman.'

A television was on in the little day room.

Most of them went elsewhere to eat. They had plastic knives but real forks. Daniel turned the fork, considering that more damage could be done with that than the usual butter knife. Dinner was a roast, possibly pork and vegetables boiled to tastelessness, followed by damp apple pie with cold custard.

Daniel tried to sleep. He dozed, aware when the television was turned off. A nurse came around giving out medicines at one point. Daniel asked for aspirin. They turned the lights down to one third.

Daniel woke to see an old man sitting in a chair by his bed. He was in an old suit. He was watching Daniel. He said, ‘Catatonia.'

Daniel said, ‘Sleeping.'

‘Cat a got ya tongia.'

Daniel stayed lying down. He closed his eyes. He said, ‘When I was young we used to visit my father in a place like this. Heathcote.'

‘They had no right closing that place down. Free tobacco in the old days.'

‘I remember the beds. And a goldfish pond. In the grounds.'

‘Way back we used to make lamps. They'd give us these coloured
bits of plastic and we'd weave them around old flagon bottles. Empty unfortunately. Put on a lampshade and hook up a light globe. Therapy. If you weren't mad when you started you were when you'd done a few lamps.'

Daniel wondered whether the old man was really there. He looked nothing like Daniel's father who was younger and never wore a suit. Danilo's mother had divorced Danilo's father and moved herself and the kids back to Melbourne where her family were. And she'd met someone else and they'd had a good life and lost contact with his father until he sent a letter when Danilo was fifteen. ‘Coming good. Getting rich.' And when he turned seventeen Daniel returned and re-met his father as Daniel and was apprenticed and...

Daniel said, ‘Is it so bad, being mad?'

He was surprised when the old man answered. ‘What makes you think I would know? No. I'm pullin' your leg. I'm usually all right until I get on the grog and I forget to take my meds. It's like being on one of them hypnotist's shows.' He clicked his fingers. ‘You wake up and you can only tell by the looks on everyone's faces that you've been a chicken or Elvis or maybe wanked off in public. Only you can't remember.'

Daniel smiled.

But the old man lost his humour. ‘Other times. Most of the time, I just feel sad. I feel unhappy and so lonely.' He started weeping.

Daniel sat up. He looked for someone to call. There were mumbles and the faint smell of farts but no one to call. ‘Hey, it's okay.'

The old man started sniffling.

Daniel leaned over and patted him on the shoulder.

The old man said, ‘I've got a bit of a hard on. I don't suppose you'd give us a tug.'

Daniel took his hand away. ‘No. No thanks.'

‘I'd tug you.'

‘No mate. Go to bed.'

He got out of his chair with difficulty, but he picked it up and dragged it to the other side of the next bed where the young bloke was sleeping and he sat staring at him.

Daniel thought he probably shouldn't sleep.

But he must have because he woke with a start. An orderly with a beard was shaking him.

‘Come on. Time to go.'

‘Now?'

‘Change of plan. You're needed at home.'

Daniel sat up. ‘What?'

The orderly headed back to the door.

Daniel went after him holding his pants up and only realising in the corridor that he'd left his shoes by his bed.

‘What?'

‘Trouble with your kids apparently.'

‘What? What's happened?'

‘They didn't tell me.'