Came into town on a load run, flatbed with a giant bullbar on it, built for roos and cattle and now wasted on a town full of roundabouts. Drove the roundabouts the way I drive everything, which is to assume the town will get out of my way. No blinker. Didn't look. Second one in, straight across the nose of a little yellow HiAce with doilies in the window.

Bullbar went in like a battering ram. Took the front quarter out, headlight glass across the gutter, kept going down the flank — metal on metal, paint off the door in one long screaming stripe. The van spun a quarter turn and stopped and the bloke sat there with both hands on the wheel, white as a rag.

I got out. Didn't kill the engine. Stood there looking at the damage like it was the van's fault. "Reckon you're in the wrong lane, mate."

Yellow HiAce. Lace doily under a ceramic pot on the dash. Little solar panel on the roof that had nothing to do with anything. And him climbing out all shaky in a soft grey hoodie, hair in his eyes, saying "oh — yeah. Yeah, no. Sorry. Sorry."

vanNEET. That was the name on the rego, and it stuck, because it was exactly what he was. Forty-odd. Pretty in a way that had clearly never been told about itself. Fine wrists. Soft mouth. Folded up small.

Walked the side of it, ran a flat hand down the scratches to the back door, hunkered, looked at the tie rod. "She'll drive. Pulls left, don't fight it." Straightened up. "Get the details done. I'm ringing a tow."

"Um." His hands were going. "I don't reckon I can afford —"

"Not coming out of your pocket."

Got the form out of the glovebox, put it on the tray. He wrote, shaky, and his face went all at once, the way it does when the adrenalin turns around. "It's my house, though."