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some of the rape survivors. He rubbed his hands up and down the front of his polo shirt, leaving light sweat stains. ‘I’ll start by asking if anyone here in the group knows me? If you know my wife?’
    I was confused. It was great. I hadn’t felt anything but nausea and boredom in all the sessions I’d attended, so this was a novel start to the night. The group members looked at each other. Looked at Aamir. Aamir shrugged again.
    â€˜No? No? You don’t know me? You’ve never seen me before?’ Aamir’s stark black eyebrows were high on his sweating brow. He did a little half-turn, as though members might recognisehis back, the little tendrils of black hair curling on the nape of his thick neck. His wife wiped her face with her hand. No one spoke. Anthony examined the man’s face.
    â€˜I don’t think they underst–’ Megan chanced.
    â€˜My son Ehan was abducted one hundred and forty-one days ago,’ Aamir said. He went to his chair and sat down. ‘One hundred and forty-one days ago two men in a blue car took my eight-year-old son from a bus stop on Prairie Vale Road, Wetherill Park. He has not been seen since.’
    He paused. We all waited.
    â€˜You don’t know me, or my wife, because there has been little or no coverage of this abduction in the media. We’ve had one nationally televised press conference and one newspaper feature article. That’s it.’
    Aamir was a lion wrapped in a man. The woman across the circle from him, who’d been in a bank hold-up and now suffered panic attacks, was cowering in her seat, pulling at her ponytail. Megan opened her mouth to offer something, some condolence, some segue back into the normality of group sharing, but Aamir raged on, a spewing of well-practised words with which he had assaulted anyone who would listen since his son disappeared.
    â€˜If Ehan was a little blond-haired white boy named Ian and we lived in Potts Point, we’d still be all over the national news.’
    â€˜Oh, um.’ Megan looked at me for help.
    â€˜We’d have a two hundred thousand dollar reward and Dick Smith flying a fucking banner from a fucking blimp somewhere. But we’ve had nothing. Two days the phone rang off the hook, and then silence. I forget sometimes that he’s gone. Every night at eight o’clock, no matter where I am, no matterwhat I’m doing, I think, It’s Ehan’s bedtime. I have to go say goodnight. ’
    Megan widened her eyes at me.
    â€˜What are you looking at me for?’ I said. The sickness swirled in me.
    â€˜Oh, I wasn’t.’ Megan snapped her head back to Aamir. ‘I wasn’t. Sorry, Frank, I was just thinking and you were in my line of sight and –’
    â€˜Are you a journalist?’ Aamir turned on me. I didn’t know how I’d been brought into the exchange until Megan buried her face in her notebook. The same thing she’d done when I signed on to the group.
    â€˜No,’ I said. I looked at Aamir. ‘No, I’m not a journalist. My girlfriend was murdered. I’m the only other person in the group who’s here for murder-victim support. That’s why she’s staring at me. She wants me to say something hopeful to you.’
    â€˜Our son wasn’t murdered,’ Reema said.
    â€˜Well, Megan sure seems to think he was.’
    â€˜I never said that!’ Megan gasped.
    â€˜Your girlfriend was murdered.’ Aamir sunk back down to his seat. He was so far on the edge of it I didn’t know how he was upright. He hovered, legs bent, inches from me. His huge black eyes were locked on mine. He knew his son was dead. And he was angry. White-hot-flame angry at everyone he laid eyes on.
    â€˜She was murdered. Yes,’ I said.
    â€˜What was her name?’
    â€˜Martina.’
    â€˜And what happened after she was murdered?’ Aamir asked.
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜What