Ann stubs out her cigarette on the base of the church's baptismal font. She's expected for lunch at the Delahuntys'. The wife is her old English teacher, the husband a policeman-turned-milkman. Both like a drink. Just like her father. Not much else to do in the country, she thinks. Not back then, anyway. 

 

She remembers the old dentist's chair on the homestead's large veranda. She didn't think so at the time, but it now strikes her as faintly sadistic, or at least fetishistic. Like the small glass cabinet in the house, containing an antique revolver, handcuffs, a badge and other police paraphernalia. 

 

Not that guns ever bothered her. Dad made sure she could shoot, starting her off with an air rifle before progressing to a .22 and then a .303. He'd always kept a rifle, even when they moved to the city. During one of his drunken rampages through the house he'd wave it around, threatening to kill this that or the other, even her brother. 

 

Up the dirt drive to the large, Federation-period home. Grand by Wheatbelt standards. She stops, switches off the engine and gets out, the heat hitting her hard after the air con. And the flies, always the flies.

 

Anne sees Mary and Rob standing on the veranda, at the top of the stairs, to welcome her. She wonders if she looks older in the same way they do. Their smiles are like grimaces, in that peculiar country way.

 

Mary is first down the stairs, arms open.

 

"Anne! You've hardly changed!" 

 

Her embrace is warm, her scent a mixture of petunia, Aerogard and sweat. Anne hugs her back. 

 

"I was thinking the same thing about you," she lies. 

 

Parting, Anne turns to Rob, who shakes hands with her in his accustomed stiff, formal manner. Once a policeman, always a policeman. 

 

"Anne," he says gruffly. 

 

"Rob," she replies, deepening her voice, mimicking his stern manner.

 

But they're both smiling. It was an old game, in reality Rob is the more affectionate and sympathetic of the couple. He'd also been closer to their son, Dan.

 

"Come on, let's go inside," says Mary. "I haven't forgotten you're vegetarian. But you do eat eggs, right? I hope so, as I've made a frittata and salad with tiramisu for afters." 

 

Thank goodness Mary has avoided the cliché of a pavlova. Anne nods, and they enter the cool darkness of the house known as Agnus Dei. 

 

The first thing Anne does is sit down at the piano she spent so many of her teenage years playing. Schumann's "Der Dichter spricht," one of Dan's favourites. Rob turns away. Mary starts to cry. Anne stops halfway through. Dissonance hangs in the air, unresolved.

 

Anne looks up and out the window. Dust, granites, dry grass, a few sheep and horses roaming freely. Beyond that, distant hills, the piercing blue sky. 

 

"I think we should eat," says Mary. 

 

Will Yeoman is CEO of Western Australia's peak body for the writing sector, Writing WA.