The first time she told him this story, they were sitting on the rooftop of a carpark, watching the sunset reflect off the city. Sheer curtains of glass cut through the sky, panes glazed maple and copper in the falling light.

She held his hand and felt the chill, felt it twitching and shaking in the heat. She wanted to tell him the story before his withdrawals started and his attention turned within himself. Now, she stared straight into the lens and heard his phone chime to signal that he was filming her. She cleared her throat and spoke..

-Why? Well, my mum used to teach English at the local high school. After my dad walked out on us, she started to put Wild Turkey in her morning coffee. The school fired her two months later. She took a job at a catering company, serving arancini balls to the parents of kids she used to teach. She would take the leftover grog from the events and come home and watch old sitcoms until the glass fell out of her hand. One night on the way to a job, she drove past a travelling theatre troupe setting up for a show on a patch of grass near the headland. It was the start of summer, and the jasmine was out. Scaffolding for seats, plastic chairs, fairy lights. She pulled the car over and asked what they were showing. Romeo and Juliet. No shoes and no balcony. She drove straight home after the canapes had been served and woke me up. We made the last act. I sat there on the scaffolding, and I could barely hear the actors because the tide had come up and the water was rushing over the rocks. I looked up at her and the lights were buzzing, and her hair was blown back by the breeze coming off the water, and she looked down at me and wiped her eyes and then grabbed my hand. I watched the actors bow and then she stood up and she was clapping so hard I thought she was going to hurt herself.

The next week she struck a deal where she would stage a programme in the summer and the council would get a third of the gate. She used her savings to build a permanent wooden stand. No contribution from the council. It was her stand. It was covered in salt and the paint peeled off, but it stood there all winter while she served fucking arancini balls. In the summer, she put on her first show. And she did that for the next decade until I finished high school. By this time, the holiday towns closer to Sydney were changing, and people were asking her if she was going to sell and retire. They thought she owned the land. All the houses near the beach turned into holiday rentals. There was no parking anywhere. I could feel that something was about to break.

I went back home in the middle of last year and we were lying on her bed watching a movie when she started coughing. She pulled her hand away from her mouth and there were speckles of blood on her palm. We had a kind of funeral for her on the stage, her friends read some poetry, my aunty didn't show up. I felt lightheaded and so I walked towards the sea and when I turned back the mayor was walking towards me and he gave me his condolences and told me that multiple expressions of interest had been lodged by developers, that they were going to auction the site. This is why.

She heard his phone chime to signal that it had stopped recording. He tapped the screen and then walked over to a table near the door and picked up a small pistol, two masks and a set of car keys. He grinned and spoke quietly.

-I’ve saved it.

-We’ll post it if we need it.

-You ready?

-I'm driving.