Nowadays our peace was broken only by wings outside the windows, the shifting of lace shadows. “We are pleasant together, aren’t we, Bettina?” my mother would say, and I would answer, “Yes.” We were homemakers; after everything, I chose to stay when restless spirits fled.

We bloom where we are planted. Don’t we, Bettina? We are content. And I was content. For a moment, pushing back my hair at the door of the library before returning my mother’s books (improving and inspiring), I smelled the ghost of oil and petrol sweet on my hands, but while I had few secrets from my mother, that was not a memory to grieve her with. It would fade.

I ran all my errands but one, and the bags swung heavy on the bicycle’s handles.

“Scott-girl!” bellowed Pinnicke, the old scalper, on the corner before the petrol station, on the road leading away from Runagate. “I found something near the traps, dingo traps, I thought I’d got its paw—you’d think it would be a paw—but come see, come see.”

I stepped down hard on the pedals, flew across the road and past the pumps, kicked the stand down quickly and darted into the shop.

“A hand!” laughed the old man, outside. “Complete with a ring!”

“Pinnicke bothering you, Bettina?” asked Casey Hale at the counter. She had cut off all her wild permed curls and her short hair was sleek. Modern.

“No, Miss Hale.” Pinnicke was quite unbalanced; it was correct to avoid him, whatever acquaintance he’d scraped with my father. No one worth knowing had liked him. I scrambled to remember any of the old books on etiquette my mother had me read to her, but they didn’t contemplate Pinnickes. I was breathing too fast. I’d hardly been acting my age.

“Bring your bike in,” she said, too kindly. “You can leave through the back.”

“No, thank you, Miss Hale.” That would be undignified. “Is there a delivery for me, Miss Hale? From the bus?” We don’t end a sentence as if it is a question, do we, Bettina? “From the bus,” I corrected myself.

She raised one eyebrow—vulgar, my mother would have said, and once I would have wished I could do it—then went through a door and brought out a white box tied with baling twine and punched with holes. From inside, small voices cheeped.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss Hale. That is all, thank you.”

I waited for her to give me the box. She gave me a long stare first. “Okay, Miss Scott.” Her tone was rude, but at least she wasn’t treating me like a child. “My compliments to your mum.”