When Jack’s arm falls from Victoria’s shoulders to Victoria’s waist, he uses all of his hand – his fingers, his thumb and his palm – to trace the shape of her arm.

Victoria looks as if she listens still to the people around her who speak. Her head is cocked and she nods. But her breaths grow deeper than they were, and her fingers twist and curl.

Alice has not tried very hard to not watch Jack and Victoria.

Alice has been busy of course, putting out plates and serviettes and handing around hors d’oeuvres. She has been taking heated trays from the oven and sliding cold trays in. She has been telling people that the rolls are chicken and the triangles are pork.

She has been agreeing that Rose looks beautiful, that Mick’s a lucky man that yes, it is a gorgeous ring but no, they haven’t set the date.

Alice has been listening to the people who whisper about Jack. About Victoria.

…so that’s her

she doesn’t look that old

she’s very tall
and

bit of a change from Sue.

But Alice can do all of this. And watch Victoria.
Alice wonders how it feels to be at a party a stranger to all but one.

Victoria does not toss the hair from her eyes. She does not lift her chin or bite at her lip.

She does smooth at her skirt – a fitted flowered number that stops above the knee – and she pushes her fingers through her hair then rubs one finger down her cheek. She laughs at the local jokes as if she understands. Victoria holds a glass of wine (red, but less so than her nails) and always answers ‘yes’ when she is offered more. She shakes her head at food.

She lifts the toes of her left foot, then her right, then her left again.

Alice hopes Victoria has strong heels.

And always Jack’s arm moves from Victoria’s waist to her shoulders and back to her waist. From time to time, he leaves a kiss in the space between Victoria’s cheek and Victoria’s ear.

The kiss is not long, but it lingers and even from a distance Alice sees that Veronica swallows and presses her fingers hard against her neck.

Alice counts the people who have arrived. Ninety six. And she knows eighty two.

It put Pip off his search.

The little boy’s grave.

1972-1983.

Black with gold inlay.

And the father’s name scratched out.

He wondered how he had not noticed it before. This little boy’s grave. With the father’s name scratched out, but its shadow left behind. And Pip stood in front of it for some amount of time between three minutes and a year, his hands in his pocekts, the autumn sun on the back of his neck and the gentle shuffling sounds of the other kids’ whirligigs whistling through his ears.

A parrot.

A crow. Two. Three.

A lorikeet.

Cars at ten kilometres an hour.

Pip needed to make his decision today and so he tried not to see the mother dressed in purple and black, her back hunched and her shoulders curled as she cursed the rising sun which lit the shadow of the name. The name etched more deeply into her heart than into the stone.

The sound of her frantic scratching ripped through the drying grass. The sound of her sobs dripped from the trees. And the stench of her anger gave life to his own, so that once again it snaked its way out of his bones and coiled itself around him head to toe, and wound itself in and out of the days that would come to make up weeks that he would come to waste on deep breaths and sharp words and bitten fingernails.

And the search he thought today would end had only just begun.

Her clothes are the polyester which is always bought under flouro lights and which, even with the crowded aisle between them, Nina can feel grating her fingertips. The blues of her top and her pants do not quite match each other, but with only a little more grey either could match the clouds she insists are clearing.

When she speaks, she leans in to the woman next to her, but she never lowers her voice. She says, for example, ‘that must be the air conditioner making that noise’. She talks about the traffic at the Cross Road intersection, under the underpass, past the Showgrounds and over Greenhill Road. She says ‘bumper to bumper’ a lot and ‘imagine doing this every day’.

Nina closes her eyes against the woman, but if she keeps them closed too long she will fall asleep. She opens them again.

The woman wears no foundation, mascara, eyeshadow, but her nails and her lips are red. When her mouth is open, her lips are full, but when it is closed, they are thin. So thin they are barely a line and without the lipstick you might not know that they’re there. She wears thick gold earings and a diamante-clustered owl above her sagging breast.

Nina’s head has started to thump again. Her chest is tight and her ears have started to ring.

‘This is our stop,’ the woman says at the Grote Street market stop and, it must be because she’s assumed that the woman would be with her until the last North Terrace stop, that Nina only now sees the shopping bags.

The smell was lunches past. The besa bricks were dully white and the dusty flowers were silk. The fluoro lights were evenly spaced. Blu-tacked posters listed irrelevant rights.

If it had not been for following the squeak – his right shoe, after he lifted his heel and before he lifted his toe – he would not have timed his walk, and he would not have known that each door was fifteen steps from the next.

Not all of the doors were closed but all of the beds were made. Televisions flickering in darkened rooms, and all of them too loud. Brisbane versus the Crows.

A woman knitting, another with a book. A visitor with a cup of tea wrapped between her hands. A man asleep in his chair.

Photo frames in rows or clusters of threes on shelves and window sills and bar fridges and televisions which stood on four sturdy legs. Photos of people who echoed each other, but whose names could only now and then be dredged from between the holes of crumbling brains.

And then in a room at the sunroom end, a woman. Her chin lifted. Her mouth lightly open and her eyes lightly closed. A younger woman, one he’d never seen, bent over her, putting lipstick on in dabs.

‘There you are, love, gorgeous again…they’ll be here soon’. Her voice was round and strong and yet to let her down. He was seven steps past, but he thought of turning back and of wrapping her in his arms. She would not smell of voilets or cashmere bouquet or even Oil of Ulan. Her skin would not be paper thin and her eyes would not be pale. There would be no weight between them.

Somewhere down the corridor, a baby cried, another door closed.

He used the stairs because he could, went down them two at a time, then jumped the final four, pinned the number in, made sure the lock of the gate was clicked.

But still, the wanderer’s alarm followed him back to his car.

They shared both the cigarette and its figure, passing it one to the other, pinched between finger and thumb by one, scissored by the other.

All of them – the cigarette, the brunette, the blonde – long, straight and increasingly lined.

Each deep drag thinned.

They had, like everyone else in the line, suitcases at their feet. Padlocked zips and ribbons (one gold, one red) wrapped around the handles. They wore, both of them, tight jeans, high boots and jackets that weren’t tasselled or denim, but could have been.

Cars drove up, boots popped, people got out, gave quick and cursory hugs, lifted suitcases in, doors slammed, cars drove off.

Like everyone else in the line, the women glanced at their watches, checked their phones and hunched their shoulders against the cold. They spoke, but not loud enough to be overheard.

Their car, when it arrived, was loud and black, or perhaps deep blue. Its tyres were rimmed with silver and its windscreen wipers were fast. The boot popped. Nobody got out.

The blonde woman, the last to hold the cigarette, looked right, looked left, then twisted to look behind. She looked to the right again. Frowned as she took one last drag.

A short beep from the car.

The blonde woman pressed the butt against the pole she had not leaned against, twisted her hand to look at the ashed end of the cigarette, then, using her thumb, she pushed the butt into the pocket of her jeans.

She pulled at the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it to the car.

‘She wouldn’t be quite so annoying if she wasn’t quite so short,’ she said.

She scratched her head and pulled her hair behind her ears in the way that she always did. He looked down at the table and closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink.

‘Like the cardigan she was wearing was a perfect fit, except for the sleeves, and so she’d made a cuff which was four rolls thick.’ She cleared her throat and he knew that if he looked up now he would see her biting her lips.

She blew on her cup of tea. Had her blows always been so loud?

‘At least four rolls.’

Pip put his cup down, picked up the pen, pulled the newspaper closer, began drawing a moustache.

‘And she giggles when she can’t reach things,’ she said.

She took a sip which became a slurp.

Pip added glasses to the face he had moustached.

‘And I don’t mean suitcases on the wardrobe or cobwebs on the cornice…anyone can get a stool and reach those kinds of things.’

Devil’s horns. A moustache, glasses and devil’s horns.

‘But no, she can’t reach the salt.’

Snot drips out of the nostril.

‘Can someone pass the salt she says and then she giggles. Every. Single. Time.’

And now the other one.

‘Like she thinks it’s funny having arms that short.’

Earwax! God, how long had it been since he’d drawn wax dribbling from ears? Twenty years? At least.

‘She could wear heels,’ she said. ‘No-one needs to be that short.’

Pip put his pen down, picked up his cup. It wasn’t the one he liked. It was all right for coffee, but not for tea.

‘Heels wouldn’t help her to reach the salt,’ he said. He brought the cup to his lips. The tea had cooled enough to drink.

She looked down at the things he had drawn, then up again.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean.’ She scratched at her head again. ‘And do you have to swallow like that when you drink?’

He put the cup down, picked the pen up. The next time they had this conversation Pip promised himself that he would say you’re only five foot two.

When Victoria rings – already she knows the number by heart – Jack is at the laundromat.

He calls it the laundrette.

Jack’s voice softens the ette, and Victoria pictures him. His shoulder is holding the phone up to his ear and he is lifting wet denim out of the washing machine. His shirt is tight, button undone, the curve of his neck is exposed. He has not shaved today and tomorrow he will need to wash his hair.

Victoria holds her phone tightly in her hand. She closes her eyes and she imagines that he leans in and leaves a kiss on her cheek, before his lips brush hers. Because – in her mind – he has not shaved, his cheek scrapes – but gently – across hers. And then he holds his fingers at the back of her neck.

His fingers are feather-strokes.

Victoria thinks of telling him all of this and more, but she does not. Instead, she opens her eyes, she sniffs, she clears her throat. She licks her lips and she scratches her head.

They talk.

‘I couldn’t stop thinking of you last night,’ he says.

‘I know.’ She giggles, stops herself, laughs.

She had gone to bed with her phone on the bedside table. She had turned off the lamp and watched for the glow of the telephone as his messages arrived. The sound of the phone was turned down, because it was too harsh in the night, made the house seem lonelier than it really was.

She had sent her final text at twelve. I’m going to sleep. Goodnight.

She had stopped texting, and he had too, but she had not stopped thinking of him, of the place where he was. A house with the lights turned down, the music up. She pictured him drinking beer, although with her, he had only ever drunk wine. She imagines that at parties, he spends his time leaning against the kitchen bench watching the flow and the ebb, that if she were there, they would leave early, and they would take the long way home.

She does not tell him any of this.

Victoria can hear the steady thrum of the machines at the laundromat. Laun-drette. Zips click against the dryer’s steel tube. She sees, in her mind, waist-high tables in the middle of the room. Square and sparse, laminated brown, they promise ordered piles of washing. Clean and dry. She wonders what Jack folds and what he irons. Are there things he doesn’t iron, but hangs all the same? Jeans or pants or shirts. Does he put his clothes on a chair at night or leave them strewn across the floor? And then she wonders: what does he do with his shoes.

They talk some more and the dryers drone.

Victoria thinks of the warmth of the laundry when the dryer has been on. She thinks of the laundry windows in the house where she lived as a child. They dripped with winter condensation and the panes were painted white. She used her fingertip to write boys’ names at night. I love Stephen, I love Charles, I love Pip. And then she flattened her finger out to wipe their names away. Before anyone else could see.

She puts the phone in her other hand, wipes her palm down her jeans.

She writes Jack on the pad she keeps by the fridge. The pen is black, the pad yellow. She draws a flower near the J, and then a star. Another flower, another star. And then she thinks I’m nearly forty years old.

Jack is telling her of his bike ride home as the sun came up, of seeing the car door just in time. She gasps, then laughs where she should, but she is thinking he stayed out all night. She has forgotten that it is something people do.

He tells her more of the story, then laughs. At the place where nobody got hurt.

His laugh makes her close her eyes again. She runs her fingers through her hair, her hand down the back, then the side, of her neck. She opens her eyes to listen.

He is working tonight, but not tomorrow, so perhaps they could catch up.

She says I can’t get a babysitter, not now and he says yes, I know, as if he really does, and there is a small moment before she says do you want to come here.

It is a question, not an invitation, but he says yes.

The beat of her heart has slowed.

She hears the kids outside, in the yard. There are loud shouts between them. Screams. Silence. Laughs.

Jack says I could cook. His is an invitation, with a tiny question mark.

There are other people at the laundromat. She can hear their voices, but not their words. They laugh strangers’ laughs.

Victoria thinks of Sunday nights. She thinks of washing dishes and wiping the table down. Of readers to be read and homework which should already be done. She thinks of ironing shirts and handkerchiefs.

Five of each.

Every week.

Jack says can you hold on a minute, I have to get some more coins.

Victoria thinks while she waits, if I have to wash his clothes, what load will I put them in? Whites? Colours, kids? Colours, hers? Sheets and towels? No, no, no and no. But would his be a load of their own?

Are you there? Jack asks. Sorry about that. I never bring enough coins. He laughs although there is no joke.

His voice is deep and his laugh is smooth.

Victoria closes her eyes. She reaches for the feel of his hand on her neck, and for the memory of feather strokes.

It is Thursday which makes it five days since anyone addressed her directly by her name. She does not count letters which come in the post, her husband’s endearments – honey, love or hon - or people who ring and begin by saying is this Mrs so and so? Of course she doesn’t count mum.

The calendar code for unaddressed days is red. She marks the days one by one at ten past ten which is a more random time than it seems. She counts, although she knows. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. It is the record since, six years ago, she first began to count.

And then she writes:
I leave pink smudges on white coffee cups and plastic spoons. I drink capuccinos and lick my lips between sips. I carry a black handbag and always have the right change.
I have had jobs – six – but never a career. This matters to me much less than I suppose it should. If I’d had another daughter, she’d be called Amber, Scarlett or Rose.

The phone does not ring. She thinks: perhaps it is time to record the silence as well as the noise. And then she thinks: I would use a golden pen to mark silence on the page.

She writes some more:
My husband brings me duty free perfumes. I store the bottles in the bathroom vanity. He seems not to notice that most of the bottles are more or less full.

She thinks, but doesn’t write: Except that he never brings the same one twice.

She writes:
When I am seeking comfort, I eat plates of noodles with grated parmesan cheese.
And then she writes:
Noodles and spaghetti are variations on a theme, but I would never eat spaghetti with soy sauce.

She thinks of the shopping which must be done, the washing which must be hung. There are two birthday presents to send and she will write love from gran on one. She is not sure what colour she will use.

She writes again:
It is eleven o’clock and I have heard: a kookaburra; a willy wagtail; the neighbour’s cat in the roof. She uses a different colour for each and then goes back to black. Last night: an owl; a rat; and possums danced on the roof.

She looks at her watch and then checks it against the clock. It will be her last entry for today: I want to poison the rat, but not the possum. I’m not too fussed about the cat.

The cake – banana – was soft and light when they poured it into the tin. They have used the proper sugar – caster – and sifted all of the flour. Nina closed the oven door, Ethan licked the spoon, they shared the bowl.

If there is a doorbell when they get to the house where Nina plans to deliver the cake, Nina will ask Ethan to ring it. Ding Dong, she will say when he presses it. She will remember to comb his hair before they leave and she will change his shirt, but not until they have put the icing on.

She begins the clearing up. She crunches the egg shells before she puts them in the bin, has one last lick of the bowl.

‘My name’s Nina,’ she will say, then smile. ‘I live two doors down.’

The girl will stay behind the security screen at first, but Nina will speak again.

‘We’ve heard the baby,’ she will say, and then, to reassure: ‘it’s nice. You don’t hear too many babies or kids. Not around here. Not during the day.’

The girl will open the security screen and hold it with her right arm. The baby will be cradled in her left and dressed in white. The girl’s eyes will be tired, but she will smile. A soft smile which doesn’t show her teeth.

Nina will not tell the girl about the view from upstairs in Ethan’s room. Green knickers and pink sheets on the line. Geraniums in pots. And every morning, the girl on the garden bench, a cigarette, a piece of toast and a cup of tea.

Up close, the girl will not look quite so young, but still she will be young enough to be Nina’s child. If not in years, then at least in generations.

The girl will use her hip against the door when she takes the cake and Nina will say ‘if you ever need anything, if you get lonely during the day’. Nina will have her arm around Ethan’s shoulder as she speaks. He is tall enough now for that.

Nina practices her smile and the speed of her blink, lets the water out of the sink. The house smells like cake.

But the cake, when she takes it out of the oven and slides it onto the bench, is brown and cracked on top and when she tries to take it out of the tin, too much of it stays behind.

‘Stupid oven,’ Nina says. ‘Bloody tin’. She bites at her lips, rubs at her forehead, pulls at her hair.

Nina hears the baby’s cries. They are hungry cries, she thinks. Nina wants to call out to the girl ‘you shouldn’t smoke, not with a baby, not even outside’.

She pulls the window down and she can’t hear the baby anymore.

‘We can’t take burnt cake,’ Nina says to Ethan. She needs to blow her nose, and the knot in her neck is back. ‘It isn’t neighbourly.’

Ethan wraps his arm around her legs and Nina strokes his hair.

Nina makes chocolate butter icing then she and Ethan sit on the floor and eat the cake in chunks until not quite all of it is gone.

There was a new lasagne on the top shelf when Brenton got home and that made three this week.

It was from Sue.

He could see that without taking it out of the fridge. The post-it note was pink (eat by Tuesday or freeze) and the glad wrap was in a tight double layer. It would not stick to the bottom when he dished it out. The sauce would be thick and rich and the layers of pasta would be smooth.

The lasagne would not need salt or extra tomato sauce.

It was not a big dish. Most of them had stopped leaving big dishes. Still, it would be too much for them to finish. Dad was eating hardly anything and Rose never stayed for tea anymore.

That didn’t stop her opening the fridge first thing whenever she came over.

They all think I don’t do enough, don’t they?’ Rose said it about every lasagne, stew and casserole they left. She opened the fridge before she put her bag on the table, before she flicked through the notes next to the telephone. And even when there had been Mum to go and see, the fridge was the first thing Rose did. ‘They think I can’t cope, that I should do more. I can’t do everything, you know. It’s hard enough looking after Max as it is. They’ve forgotten how much work a baby is…’.

Dad had AC/DC playing out in the shed. High Voltage. It wasn’t one he normally played. He hadn’t played much AC/DC lately at all. It had been all Hey Jude in the day and Songs of Love and Hate at night.

Brenton took the parcel from the second shelf. It was a bowl wrapped in a sticky plastic bag held together with masking tape. The masking tape had grey fluff caught along the edges and a long black hair caught underneath. Christine was the only one who didn’t leave notes about how long to warm it (30 minutes in a pre-warmed oven, 180 degrees) or what to add (half a cup of milk, one tablespoon of cream to taste).

He wondered, sometimes, what her family ate. How it would be to live with someone whose voice warbled like that, whose laugh screeched even at jokes that only needed a smile.

Brenton pulled the bag away, but he did not look long at what was inside. He walked across the room and took the large spoon from the top drawer.

He held the pot over the bin.

The pot was heavy, and it was hard to hold it with just one hand while he scraped with the other. His stomach did not turn at the moist noise and the cold smell of the food, but the sound of the spoon against the clay pot was the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.

He thought of the pages of the book they had been reading to Mum. The cover was orange and blue and he had broken the spine – more than once – so the book would stay open in his lap. The paper was not quite white and rough, and Brenton had rubbed his palm across each new page. He had wanted to clench his teeth and to bite at his lip, but he kept reading. He read even when he knew Mum couldn’t hear.

Brenton stood up straight, took the empty pot and put it in the sink. He turned the hot tap on hard and flicked his finger back and forth under the water as he waited for it to warm up. Then he squeezed the detergent in then walked away.

If he left it in the sink like that, someone would wash it tomorrow after they put another meal in the fridge.