MEG: I don’t understand. Mum has a great story she tells once a year or so. About growing up in a country town. About all her brothers and sisters and her parents. How one day she realised she was expected to stay at home forever and look after them. She knew then she had to get out. So she packed her bags and got a train. She was eighteen, I think, or nineteen. She left. Like that, in a minute. She never went back for eight years. They wouldn’t speak to her. She got married and they came down for the wedding and stayed a couple of days. Then you saw them once a year if they were lucky. When I was born, maybe twice a year. She never writes, never rings. They could die and she wouldn’t find out for months. Isn’t that wanting to abandon someone? Wasn’t she pulled away? Did you stay?

JIM: Life was so much harder.

MEG: You got out. You packed up and hit the road for years. You tell a story too. You got out. You were pulled away.

JIM: It was money. It was bread. Work. The world was full of people walking around the countryside looking for something to eat, all thinking about the day they could stop walking. We all did it. Your mother did it. When we met we thought about it together. We lived in rubbish tips. We shared rooms with other people. Everyone did. And we all planned. We planned our time. We waited. We stuck to our plans like the Bible. And we’re getting there. That was a time of complete madness when we think back. There was no order, no plan. We got through one day, then we got through the next, then the next. My plans were for me, but your mother… hers are for all of us. You have no idea how hard she has stuck to them, how she has fought to get where we are. And her plans are the way we have to go. It’s as if she can see into the future. We have to support her, follow her, stick to her plans.

MEG: I want to be certain like that.

JIM: And you are so important to your mother’s plans.

MEG: But I’m not.

JIM: I wish we’d said no to that play.

MEG: If I’d played volleyball I’d still feel like this. I don’t think you should have given in all the time. I think you’ve been cheated.

JIM: No.

MEG: I don’t think anyone should give in for the sake of peace and quiet. I won’t.

JIM: I’d like you to promise to be patient. Just a bit longer, a few more years, let things take their course.

MEG: If we don’t get up early we’ll be in a lot of trouble.

JIM: Good girl.