Your friends are at the house.' I sit up, straight. 'Who'? 'I don't know. Weird people. The Sullivan girl, whose father got the Gosford police to pick you up.' 'Siobhan?' 'And another one who's making cups of tea for everyone, and keeping the boy who's telling Luca fart jokes away from the girl who says he's "the last bastion of patriarchal poor taste".' 'Justine, Thomas and Tara.' And the drug fiend, Jimmy, is keeping Mia calm and the Trombal boy's rung about ten times. I don't like his manner on the phone.' 'You won't like any guy's manner on the phone.

City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.

But then Froi looked back to where his work lay unfinished and it made him sad because there had been something about the touch of earth in his hands that made him feel worthwhile.

Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.

You go shake your foundations, Will. I think it's about time I saved myself.

But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.

What is it? A prize or something? No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.