Really. Look after yourself, sweetie. Don’t work too hard. Try to get some sleep.

A kiss on the cheek, a squeeze of the arm, real and warm. Avril leans into it, wishing everything else would just stop for a minute. She sees the envelope on the table.

Oh, you had a visitor last night. Wendy Casley? She left this for you.

8

Laura

Lunchtime, Cooper. Steak and lentil burger and a double-cream shake.

Martine leans in, pats the pillow lightly, before she hooks up one of the liquid food packs that push calories into his body. Same little joke every time.

A memory of Cooper and his mates. She’d caught them in the pantry once, after school, their cheeks stuffed with Twisties, their fingers ringed to the tips with Burger Rings and Cheezels. Leftovers from a party. Some game was going on, how many packets they could get in their mouths. All of them laughing and coughing gooey orange spittle. Disgusting little critters, Jarrad declared when she told him, the biggest grin on his face.

She looks at the feeding tube. Force-feeding—that’s what it is. High-protein, high-calorie. Nutrition is one of the things his recovery depends on. Healing cells are ravenous, insatiable.

A pat on Laura’s shoulder as Martine leaves. A smile meant to encourage but it’s more like a grimace. A small regretful twist of the mouth that reminds Laura of her mother. She fights the urge to grimace back.

Her mother. If Kathryn were here, could see her grandson like this … Kathryn, who’d always mollycoddled Cooper when he was little. Be careful, Cooper, come back, sweetie, don’t do that, be careful, don’t jump on the trampoline with Twisties in your mouth. It was not long after she died that he’d joined the service. Dropped out of uni to become what he’d told them all, at the age of five, he wanted to be when he grew up. They hadn’t been related—her mother’s death and Cooper’s decision—but Laura had always been aware of how scandalised she would have been. Kathryn had been thrilled when he’d enrolled in Engineering, like his grandfather. There was security in Engineering. Respect.

Laura sighs. Somewhere she has a photo of her mother and Aunty Jessie at an exhibition opening, the two of them posing for the camera with old-fashioned champagne glasses in their hands. They stand in front of a piece of her mother’s that Laura always loved—faceless, stringed hair, body curved like a cello. Aunty Jessie is caught mid-laugh, an arm around her mother, expansively gathering her in; Kathryn is stiff, spectacularly ungatherable. Critics often described Kathryn’s work as passionate, brave, but her face … there it is. Be careful.

What’s got into her today? Sitting here in silence, in a glaze of remembering, when this is what matters, all of this, the weight of now.