Needless to say, they didn't come back for several weeks. When I arrived home that first night with groceries I heard a noise out in the back garden - I went out there to see the door in the garden wall hanging open. The chooks in the chookhouse were in a hubbub, as though recently disturbed. Jose - imposter Jose - was gone, and that was when I knew Lacey and her family wouldn't be back for a while. There was no need for the imposter, now, and she had disappeared, like a shadow lately run off to catch its body.

I tried to run through the situation, get a hold of my head. If I was going to be on my own for some time I wanted to be sure of what I knew, what was clear and sure. I didn't sleep that night again but my thoughts were coherent and, I felt, important. My question that first night was about Jose, how I knew that imposter Jose was an imposter. This seemed the most important thing right now - like it would become crucial when Lacey and her family returned, if I hadn't managed to find the real Jose. By dawn I had figured it out: it was about emptiness. Imposter Jose didn't like emptiness, hated the blank wall, the empty t-shirt. Real Jose, on the other hand, acted like emptiness was fine, was somewhere to be. And if emptiness multiplied, fine. It was almost like she came out of that - that didn't make sense, but it was her air, not something to gnaw on or be killed by.