SPLINTS OPENS AN eye as I step over him. It’s not quite light but not dark enough to be night anymore. I stand in the bathroom under the heat lamps and stare at my face in the mirror. There are dark shadows under my eyes, matching three-quarter moons. I look like you. I flick the lights off and head for the kitchen.

Splinter wanders out at the smell of toast. He licks my toes and twitches his eyebrows at me. I hold out the crust and he takes it gently from my fingers, his lips smacking softly as he chomps down. His tail swings in a circle of happy; he’s never been a side-to-side wagger. You’d say, joking, He’s too lazy to even wag properly, but the circle always makes me smile, his helicopter tail. Sometimes I imagine if I could just make him happy enough he’d fly. I give him the rest of my toast.

I STARE AT the back. Sleeping Beauty’s garden. The grass is growing higher around the back shed. The grass is growing higher full stop. If I don’t get out there soon I won’t even be able to open the door to the little metal toolshed. I light more mosquito coils and the incense that makes Splinter sneeze, and stick them in some jars and slide them out the back. I close the door again and go sit on the front porch. Splints leans against me with a sigh.

The plant in the hanging pot I stole is dying. I forgot to water it. I look out across the yard. Most of the plants look half-dead again. We’ve had no rain in weeks and the whole space looks wilted. Everything needs watering and weeding. Things need to be tended to be kept alive, even in winter. I look at the chair next to me: the cushion looks dusty. It’s not even been a week since I tidied up out here but everything’s looking tired, like it’s too exhausted to keep up the lie.

I water it all again anyway.

SATURDAY. THE WASHING’S done. The front yard’s clean and watered.

Saturdays used to be fun. Sometimes. Those nights when you’d change your clothes, slip your feet into inappropriate shoes and we’d head straight down Cowper, you laughing as we dashed across Napier Street, with your high heels threatening to snap, and down the lane to the pizza place. We always sat upstairs, taking the booth closest to the fire in winter. We’d both have pizza and you’d have a cocktail.

I liked the less fun nights too. Just me and Splints. We’d call ahead so the pizza was waiting. When it was Rafa with the neck tattoo working downstairs he always let me bring Splints in while I paid. The same order every week wherever we ate it: one margherita with olives and a salami special.