‘I think so, ja. It stores bile. For later use.’ She handed her discharge forms to the woman behind the reception desk. ‘I’d prefer not to store my bile,’ she told the receptionist.

The woman nodded noncommittally. ‘Could I see your medical insurance card? We don’t seem to have it on the system.’

‘You guys photocopied it when I came in,’ Helena said.

‘They must not have entered it. Do you mind?’ She stuck her hand out.

‘Not at all.’ Helena fished in her backpack – she didn’t do handbags – and finally retrieved her wallet containing the card. The woman generated a bill and Helena paid the shortfall amount that went over the deposit she’d already paid. Trying not to wince, Petra bit her tongue. This wasn’t the place or time to discuss her mother’s finances.

‘Wasn’t that a nice old man?’ Helena said as they stepped out to the road. ‘I hope he’s going to get better.’

‘I thought you were embarrassing him. I thought he was going to get angry.’

‘I know you did, love.’

The full set of assumptions and prejudices Petra had learned growing up in South Africa didn’t translate here, so she’d got used to being wrong about people. Chalk it up to affirmative experience. She changed the subject. ‘How do you feel? Was it sore?’

‘Fine. Really. It was just like a dentist appointment.’

‘Yeah, except with abdominal surgery. We’re over here. Suki lent me her car.’

‘I could have taken the bus home, you know,’ Helena said. ‘Or walked.’

‘I’m not that bad a daughter. I wouldn’t expect you to walk home after surgery,’ Petra said, fishing for affirmation she knew she’d get.

‘You’re a lovely daughter. The best daughter I could ever have.’ Despite all the changes in her life – her father first walking out on them, and then shacking up with Helena again once Petra had left, then dying on her; Helena’s teaching studio burning down; the insurance failure; moving here at her advanced age – Helena’s love remained constant, and it was in these ritual exchanges that she proved it. As much as Helena prided herself on being free-thinking and unconventional, she knew the importance of saying the right thing at the right time. Petra was twenty-nine years old, but her mother’s trusty refrain felt as comforting as if she was eight years old and having Vicks rubbed on her chest.

Helena winced when she bent to get in the car – Suki’s little racing-striped mint-green Abarth was particularly low to the ground, and Petra remembered who she was here for. She drove carefully through Leamington and out towards Warwick. It was a short way, no more than a half-hour stroll on a better day.

‘Did you get to see them doing it?’ Petra asked. The gall-stone drainage had been performed under local anaesthetic. Petra had looked it up – acute cholecystoenterostomy was meant to be a quick in-and-out. A small incision, a stent, drain the stones and any infected fluid – Helena’s gallstones were small enough to drain, but plentiful enough to be extremely painful – bung up with painkillers and antibiotics, and away you go. Next customer, please.