Laura was mellow with wine and the Margaret River brie that Gideon had brought over. She could already tell he liked an audience. I haven’t heard of him, she said, prompting.

Wouldn’t expect you to. I came across him light-years ago in my student days. He didn’t have the panache of the Three Hs: Huxley, Haldane and Hamilton. But at a time when biologists were flummoxing about, trying to iron out the wrinkles in Darwin’s theories, Allee persisted with the idea that animals were fundamentally cooperative beings, not aggressively competitive, as Darwin et al. would have it.

Was he right?

Ah. Well. Gideon grinned, tapping his chin. Evolution isn’t as simple as that, Dr Ellery.

So you named your cat after … an optimist.

Ha! A pacifist, too, a conscientious objector in the First World War. Not many of those around then.

Gideon settled back in the chair. Just a good bloke all round, I reckon, ahead of his time.

Laura smiles at the memory. Her neighbour—retired biology teacher, conservationist, reader of the classics, cook. A good bloke all round.

She releases the metal clamp on the esky and the room becomes oily with the smell of childhood, of Sundays at Grunnie’s little house in Fremantle. A peek under the foil: chicken, gravy, onions. Allee-Cat yowls, stands against her leg, his paws stretching up to her thigh.

And who asked you to dinner?

There’s a note inside, barely legible. She puts on her glasses and holds it under the light.

Laura,

Any change with Cooper?

Will knock on your door on the weekend with a bottle of red—a new Merlot from Mt Barker. Nice. In the meantime, some sustenance. As Sancho says in Don Quixote: All sorrows are less with bread. The fact that it’s said to a donkey shouldn’t make it any less true. Or so I hope.

Gideon

Half a stick of French bread is wedged between the foil and the esky wall. She breaks off a piece and puts the chicken casserole in the fridge.

The bread is sorrow itself, a lump in her mouth, expanding. She gives herself a good shake. What’s she got to be sorrowful about? It’s good news. Good. Signs of elevated responsiveness. It means Cooper might be coming out of the coma. She should be celebrating.

Allee-Cat rolls at her feet appealingly, purring loudly, still intent on chicken.

She’s doing it again, trying to hold her heart steady in her chest. Cooper was struck on the head by a piece of roof timber. The MRI, CT and EEG aren’t showing anything to suggest permanent brain damage but nor are they explaining his coma. The doctors are hopeful but the truth is: they don’t know. And that’s only part of Cooper’s problems.