Mrs O’Malley pulls the door behind her and steps outside. ‘Not in front of the child. You didn’t get the note, then?’

Note or no note, how dare this woman go into my house and take my boys?

‘Your front door was wide open this morning. You had me worried.’

Breathe, swallow, restraint. ‘Yes, I can see that.’ I bring my thumbnail to my mouth and tear the quick with my teeth. Need to pull this back. ‘It won’t happen again. I’m sorry.’ This last word visibly softens Mrs O’Malley, who opens the door wider so Tommy is fully visible, so beautiful, lost in his own world, dunking biscuits and drinking milk. ‘Such great concentration.’ She speaks low and nods in his direction. Have I missed something? ‘It’s the Encyclopaedia Britannica and he’s enamoured with Australia and the marsupials.’ Has she told him about bushfires burning them alive? And why is my son allowing himself to drink milk from another animal? Have I not told him often enough? Why have I not run to him and engulfed him in one of my hugs, squeezing the breath from him? Mrs O’Malley gestures at me to come into the living room and sit on the rustling couch, which looks like it’s still wrapped in the plastic covering it was delivered in decades ago.

‘Tommy was very hungry this morning, Sonya.’

I nod solemnly like I’m giving this some consideration. Need to present some level of respectability and remorse.

‘I had a migraine last night.’

‘You certainly were out cold this morning.’

I blow on my scalded palm.

Mrs O’Malley gets up to plump the pillow on the single armchair, then trails her fingertip over the mantelpiece, collecting imaginary dust. The room is dimly lit, various shades of brown, stifling, redolent with an old-lady smell of TCP, stale potpourri.

‘I’m happy to mind the boy and the dog for as long as you need. I have spaghetti bolognese for later.’

‘Tommy doesn’t eat animal flesh.’

A crease on Mrs O’Malley’s forehead actively furrows deeper, a worm making a groove in the centre of her already deeply lined face. Smoker’s slits frame her thin mouth, which is outlined in a plum pencil, made to look bigger than it is. Powder is catching in all the ravines, her rouged cheeks giving her the appearance of one of my childhood Pierrot dolls, which used to come alive at night, dancing and whispering diabolical instructions that I could never quite remember the following morning, although a feeling of being complicit lingered. My father kept putting them back in their ‘proper place’ on the shelf in my bedroom after finding them stuffed in pillowcases under the bed, face down. He told me they were my friends and how could I do that to my friends?

‘He told me you don’t let him have milk.’ Mrs O’Malley interrupts my musings.

‘Cow’s milk? Disgusting. What mother in her right mind…? The calves cry themselves hoarse.’

She flicks a crumb off her forearm. ‘What does he eat? He’s small, isn’t he?’