She thinks of the envelope Wendy left. Some memento of Aunty Jessie, probably. A little piece of the past.

Do you remember your Un-ty Jessie? she whispers to Cooper.

9

Avril

Parrots screech, busying the morning air, as the four-wheel drive turns into the long driveway bordered with a windbreak of Bushy Yate. Avril frowns. This time last year, she and Coop tried suspending brightly coloured nylon kites from tree to tree. They’ve also experimented with strands of bells, streamers. But nothing keeps the twenty-eights away from the mandarins, and in a few months they’ll be demolishing the stone fruit and almonds, too. She draws the line at stringing up fishing line, like Murray next door does, criss-crossing the strands into a lethal web. She doesn’t want to strangle the parrots, only to keep them away from the fruit.

It doesn’t matter now. Fruit fly will claim what the parrots leave behind.

Her nine-thirty isn’t here yet, thank god. There’s time to let the stale air out of the treatment room, bring in fresh towels from the dryer, light the burner and add some oils—sandalwood and lemongrass, because Ewan doesn’t like the girly stuff. By the time he arrives she has made a cup of instant coffee, resisted a cigarette and eaten two macadamia-chocolate-chip cookies.

She watches him get out of the car wincingly, not the way she’s shown him.

Ewan, she calls from the verandah, swing your legs around first, remember!

A palm up to acknowledge and he shuffles towards the house, pinched and cold in the short sleeves he wears year-round. He’ll never remember.

He’s not in a chatty mood today, and Avril is relieved. She doesn’t encourage conversation about Cooper with her clients, but Ewan sometimes persists, as though he has special rights. Perhaps he does. She’s known Ewan and his spasming thoracic paraspinals, his reactive left sacro-iliac, longer than she’s known some of her friends.

She feels his skin begin to relax under the warmth of the wheat pack resting on his back.

How have you found the new stretches? Managing?

A muffled grunt from beneath the towels: Yeah, fine.

She does the translation: Haven’t done them. Uh-uh. Not once. He’ll never do them.

In spite of the soft rolls of overindulgence in the way, it’s easy to find the trigger points close the spine, out through the rhomboids. She applies pressure, easing off when she feels the grainy knots of muscle fibre release. Ewan’s involuntary moans rise and fall in response to pain.