Now here’s a conundrum — an issue that’s possibly going to divide up opinion considerably. It’s a bit like those cricket reviews that get sent up to the third umpire. Spectators and those at home watching on television get to see the replays ad infinitum, sometimes ad nauseum, and at the end of some of those contentious decisions one is never actually sure who is right and who is wrong — that is, was the catch taken cleanly or did it hit the grass first. The batting side (and its army of supporters) sees it one way; the fielding side, the other.

And so with this issue too. For confidential reasons, all parties have been given fictitious names. So, to begin: There’s Jack and Jill Rowling who are across-the-road neighbours of the Brooks (Ashley & Glenda, son and mother; Ashley being late 60s; Glenda, ninety-something).

Jack Rowling is Ashley’s age or thereabouts and Jill loves baking, so Glenda is given a home-baked cake every week. Jack & Jill live in a neat spacious house and are currently bringing up their granddaughter, Naomi, who lives with them.

Naomi is eight and (as with the case of divided opinion vis-a-vis the cricket above, she is perceived either as “a real cutie” or “a brat of the first order”, depending entirely on the point of view.)

The Rowlings visit the Brooks regularly and Jack, in particular, has been of tremendous service to them, driving his car endlessly to do various errands. The Brooks have no doubt that as neighbours, they have hit the jackpot. The Rowlings are the neighbours you want to win in a lottery.

So what is that little grain of sand in the system that’s somehow helped to introduce into this utopian relationship, first a tiny hint of friction with the potential to derail all further smooth operation? I’ll tell you. It’s a tiny grain named Dustin.

Dustin is the Rowlings’ only son and he is the father of Naomi. Some — in fact many — would agree he has not handled his life well. He has, by degrees, turned into the horror that no parent wants to claim as a product of theirs, to paraphrase Jill. One time Dustin was engaged in a public outdoor altercation with his father when Ashley Brooks marched across the road to intercede and copped a blow on the chin for his efforts that had his late-60s legs desperately seeking stability because, as has been ingrained, dignity is a man on two legs after being struck, not one scrabbling on all fours in the nearby ditch struggling to rise.

Then followed the trips to the police, several AVOs or restraining orders first taken out (from fear) then cancelled (out of parental love), a period of incarceration (for Dustin who allegedly threatened to kidnap his own daughter, although that statement sounds weird only because there’s too much complex detail in this short space to make it comprehensible.)

Anyhow, at the bottom of all this erratic behaviour lay an addiction to the drug commonly known as ice. So, following a series of increased threats and violence, Jack approached Ashley and Ashley in his generosity said, “Call my sister, Amy. She has a large place. Maybe you could hide the girl and Jill out there for some time till this dies down”.)

And therein lies the crux. Has Ashley, in doing so, crossed a fine line? A moral line? By implicating his sister, bringing her into a situation she may want nothing of, without her permission and without any prior notice? Her home, as it turns out, isn’t exactly that large or that free ... it has people living in it. More importantly, the incident has now introduced a freeze in discussions between brother and sister.

An awkwardness hangs like an ugly backdrop that for now, as Amy says, isn’t easy to shove aside. It’s simply annoying. I guess that’s how, sometimes, unwitting involvement is brought about.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.