‘The listing,’ she says. She bunches her stop sign and drops it. ‘We should celebrate the listing. It’s a big deal. You’d better give me some of that. Just a small glass.’

Lacy eats half her pizza, and most of her wine is still in her glass when it’s time for Cedar to go to bed. It’s Friday night so his light stays on for reading, though we know he’ll be asleep in minutes, book tented open on his chest.

She claims her usual armchair, slips her ugg boots off and draws her legs up under her. She sets her glass on the side table between us, picks up the remote and flicks through the channels to HGTV. Beachfront Bargain Hunt is wrapping up an episode at Dauphin Island, Alabama, with the purchasing family exploring a fort. They have a baby in a BabyBjörn and a daughter Cedar’s age. The baby is gripping the father’s index finger and jerking his hand up and down. The father’s shirt is soaked with sweat. He’s laughing. Lacy stares at the screen, saying nothing. I ask her if she’s ever been to Alabama, if she caught the explanation about the glossy black anchor the family stopped to take a look at.

‘You’re probably going to have to google that,’ she says, without looking away from the TV as the credits roll. The baby is chewing the fabric of the BabyBjörn, soaking it in spit.

The opening titles of Barnwood Builders come on screen, and the baby is gone. Lacy picks up a cushion and holds it against her chest, her hands overlapping. She wears her Novotny grandmother’s wedding ring on her right hand, and her left hand finds it and twists it.

I move my left leg for the first time in a while and the muscles jump to guard my knee.

I must make a sound, because Lacy says, ‘You okay?’

She reaches a hand across, touches my arm, just with her fingertips.

Out in the night, somewhere down the street, a car door shuts, an engine starts. A bird flaps its wings and pulls itself from the tree outside our lounge room, beating a retreat from the noise.

The paperwork needs no checking but I check it anyway before taking it to Ellen. Once she and Rob McCord have each signed both copies, Ellen’s will be slipped into an agency folder and I’ll take it back to her, with Rob’s business card and mine needlessly tucked into the appropriate slots on the front. It’s just how we do it.

Down the hall, the bathroom door is open a crack and Cedar’s electric toothbrush is buzzing away on the other side of it. It’s close to 11 a.m., but Lacy will still sleep through it.

When I push the bathroom door open a little further, Cedar is standing at the sink, waving the toothbrush around like a wand – to change the frequency of the buzzing – while humming a melody, with the brush providing some kind of bassline.