Published by the independent Nightjar Press as one of a sequence of single-author chapbooks. Hilaire is an Australian writer of prose and poetry who now lives in London. This is an elegantly written story set in Australia concerning a life, or lives, not lived to their full. As with Helen Garner’s writing, the small details of life bring out the world of the characters. However, here, there is much that we are left to wonder about.

Dougie Blake is a retired signalman who lives with his elderly mother in her two-bedroomed bungalow situated in a small coastal Australian town. Here, the highlight of the week is a night out at the Constitutional Club. The arrival of a stranger, in this case a woman who calls herself ‘B’, on a day in late autumn sets up a tension in Dougie’s world. “B is there and not-there, and it made Dougie uneasy.” “an acquaintance… a friend…” had told B that she could get a room “at the Blake widow’s cottage”. She is not known to Dougie’s mother who lets out her own room to paying guests. Curtains twitch when B approaches the bungalow with her red suitcase and badly fitting coat, a visitor out of place and out of season.

Dougie’s mother happily gives up her bedroom to B for the week. She is pleased to have the “extra pennies”. Dougie isn’t so sure; the stranger isn’t like the “hardy young women” with “tanned calves and sunny dispositions” who travel with rucksacks in the summer. He can’t imagine taking her along to the Club as he did with the others. B is shy, and awkward, taking solitary walks along the shore in the cold wind. Dougie is unsettled by her presence, how she and his mother get along so well. He looks forward to B leaving. By the end of the week Dougie is perplexed that he finds himself worrying about her. At night, he hears strange sounds through the shared wall between his bedroom and hers. The story progresses with Dougie finding himself unwittingly drawn to this unwanted guest.

First published by Nightjar Press, 2020. Subsequently in Best British Short Stories 2021 from Salt Publishing