The mother and child might have been sheltering there, they were so still, when the kitchen door clanged at last and the slow, flat steps sounded on the path. The steps grew fainter, until they could not be heard at all, and Ida thought that her mother would smile now and give her the second biscuit. Even Marge was relieved, it seemed, singing in the kitchen a song she would not ordinarily have chosen: “K-K-K-Katy.” She sang this only when she was unnerved, because it was disrespectful; Kate was the name of Ida’s mother.

“… the only g-g-g-girl that I adore,” Marge sang.

Ida looked warily at her mother, who smiled at last—almost with complicity—and reached toward the plate.

The singing suddenly broke off. “Oh!” said Marge. “Oh, Madam!”

As her mother started up, Ida had once more the impression that the light changed. There was barely time to reach the doorway before Marge appeared there.

“Oh, Madam, please come!” she was saying. “That woman…” and they all hurried after her into the house.

The kitchen was orderly, the table cleared, instead of the scene of carnage Ida expected. You wouldn’t have known the woman had been there. But where the shoes had lain, and the doll, there was nothing at all—just the shiny green speckles of the linoleum.

“Rosie!” Ida howled in rage and horror. “Rosie!” Rosie, at the moment, was shuddering along Woollahra Road in a hessian bag, jostled by a pair of shoes. Appalled, the child flung herself round to be comforted, and as she did so it occurred to her that now her mother would get really, terribly angry—even worse than over the business of the hose, angrier than Ida herself.

But her mother seated herself at the table, where the strange woman had sat, and lowered her brow on her propped hand. She did not utter a word.

FORGIVING

“Lucas,” she said, crossing the lawn and sitting down on the grass beside him, “they will never forgive us for this.”

He was smoking a cigarette, the other hand gripping his wrist around his bent knees. “What we have to say to each other,” he said, “is more important than going to a dinner party.” He spoiled the resounding effect of this by asking, “What did you tell them?”

“I said that you were sick and I had to stay with you.” She sat sideways, and the folds of her skirt almost covered her bare feet. “I don’t think they believed me—I’m not much of a liar.” She thought she saw his eyes widen, and flushed. She tore up a few blades of grass and rolled them between her fingertips. “The grass is quite damp,” she said. “Perhaps we should go inside?”

“No,” he said. “It’s pleasant here.”