“No! That’s like…like blasphemy.”

“Aren’t you doing philosophy? You should know it’s not that.”

“I said like, oh, pedantic one.”

“Oh!” With more enthusiasm than she thought she was capable of, Frazer leant forwards. The last vestiges of her hangover were starting to fade. “How’s your lit lecturer?”

Redness coloured Jemma’s face, and she looked around frantically. “Shh!”

“Little sis, you’re sleeping with your lecturer. I will not shush.”

“And where were you last night, since you weren’t at Uncle Jay’s birthday? Drunk? Sleeping with some poor receptionist? Wait, I forgot you’re terminally single—were you knitting?” Studying her face, Jemma’s eyes lit up. “Or were you actually, finally, on a date?”

Frazer’s gaze dove back to her sushi, too late to hide the flinch. Jemma cackled.

“Knew it—who’d you sleep with?”

The strange thing was, she’d been thinking of her night with Cora, not about Lauren.

* * *

“I’m sorry.”

Cora rolled her eyes for the fourth time now. “Stop.”

“I really am sorry.”

Engulfed in a bean bag was how everyone should live their life. Especially after having spent an entire work day hung-over and ill, avoiding your husband-slash-boss, and trying to pretend everything in life was fine and dandy.

The fact that there was a very large glass of wine in Cora’s hand made it all a bit better.

“Lisa, I understand. It wasn’t that important, and you have nothing to be sorry for. Is your mum better?”

On the couch, looking much more like a put-together adult than Cora did, smooshed into the bean bag, Lisa pushed her fringe back so that the black strands stood in spikes around her face.

“Not really. Dad’s trying to get a visa in, but it’s been denied again, and all she does is ask for him.”

“It’s still being denied? How?”

Lisa flopped her back against the couch. “Yeah, I’ve sent the paperwork from the doctors with the certificate; hopefully they’re going to allow a compassionate visa. Sometimes I wish my parents had managed to get married before they’d left Vietnam. Then we all would have qualified as refugees together and this wouldn’t even be an issue.”

Cora was well familiar with Lisa’s ongoing battle against the red tape layered over Australian immigration laws that had kept Lisa’s father in Vietnam while the rest of his family was here. Her mum had come over as a refugee when Lisa had just been a toddler, but for some reason, her father hadn’t qualified. “Could he at least visit?” Frazer asked. When money had finally become less of an issue, her father had been able to visit a few times.

“He’s waiting to see if he can get the compassionate visa to stay first. For now, we can really only get enough money together for one more trip.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lisa gave her a shaky smile. “Don’t be. It is what it is. Maybe Mum’s Alzheimer’s will disappear and Dad will get a visa. Then life can resume, and I can be their kid again.”