A dull throb pinched at Jess’s temples as she thought about how different things might have been had her mum moved in with Lily instead of her. Lily had asked first—she had a habit of making grand gestures without any thought for the consequences—and in truth it hadn’t occurred to Jess to offer until then. But as soon as her mum had said she was contemplating moving in with Lily, Jess had been forced to intervene. She couldn’t have let her mum do that. She’d never have forgiven herself. The thought of it even now—even when the possibility no longer posed a threat—made Jess squeeze the steering wheel until her knuckles ached.

Stuck in stationary traffic as another minute ticked by, Jess silently cursed work for having made her so late. She thought about all the times when Mia was younger that her mum had collected her from school and taken her to ballet, gymnastics, or swimming classes because Jess had been at work. All the times she had fetched Mia from childcare, playdates, school outings, and delivered her home safely and on time.

Jess breathed deeply, an automatic barrier slamming down on the thought that one day, in the not-too-distant future, her mum would no longer be alive.

Turning her head sideways to look into the adjacent car, Jess’s eyes sharpened their focus. The hairline, the jaw, the shape of the ears: the profile of the man in the driver’s seat teased open the lid on a box of her memories.

“What’s black and white and read all over?”

Jess is curled up on her father’s lap, wrapped in an oversized bath towel, water dripping down her neck from her freshly washed hair. She squints with concentration, can feel her forehead creasing.

“I don’t know, Daddy. That’s too hard!”

“Come on, you can do this one, I know you can. What’s black and white and read all over?”

Jess repeats the riddle in her head, determined to prove that her dad isn’t mistaken in believing she can solve it, even though just thinking about it is beginning to hurt her five-year-old brain.

“That’s easy. It’s a newspaper.” Her sister sashays into the bathroom only long enough to collect her hairbrush and answer the conundrum before swishing out.

Jess doesn’t have time to compose an appropriate retort, but she feels humiliation bleed into her cheeks and buries her face in the towel.

“OK, how about a joke instead? How does a monkey make toast?”

Jess lifts her head and smiles. She knows there is no expectation to work out the answer to a joke. “I don’t know, Daddy. How does a monkey make toast?”

“He puts it under the gorilla.”

It takes a split second for the punchline to unfold in Jess’s head and she collapses into satisfied giggles. “Tell me another one!”

“OK. Why did the lobster blush?”

Jess pretends to think, playing her role in a charade she knows makes the joke more fun for the teller. “I don’t know. Why did the lobster blush?”