'What's funny?' said Pin, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed. - Helen Garner

'The devil's everywhere,' he said. 'Not just at Brunswick one day and somewhere else the next. He's everywhere.'

The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall.

And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring.