But then there was the reason he came. Lena. Seeing her would slow his plummet, maybe even reverse its course. For all the shit memories he had of Sydney, he also had plenty of good ones, and most of them featured his sister. Not her alone; the four of them. As a family they were the kind of happy you didn’t realise was rare until it ended and you got a taste of what life was like for most people, most of the time. They were an ordinary, squabbling over the TV, struggling to pay the bills, annoying the shit out of each other at the dinner table, really, really, really fucking happy family. They loved each other and a lot of the time liked each other as well. It was a miracle unnoted until it was over.

He could never get that back, obviously. But maybe something new and almost as good, now he and Lena were free, independent adults. No Mum hovering anxiously, no Rick the Dick forcing himself into their space, pretending to get their decades-old family jokes. Just the two of them against the world. It could be great. A fresh start. Exactly what he needed.

LENA

LENA

Salvation arrived at 8 a.m. in the form of a bright yellow skip bin taking up three car spaces on the road outside the house. Within an hour of signing the delivery docket Lena had cleared the house of eighteen bursting-at-the-seams bags. Drop in a garbage ocean, but a boost all the same to see the speed with which it was possible to get rid of stuff once there was somewhere to chuck it.

She had just hauled the second non-functioning vacuum cleaner of the day into the skip when the road moved beneath her feet and black spots appeared on the yellow steel. She closed her eyes, eased forward until she could press her head and palms against the skip, and waited for everything to stop moving.

She breathed in metallic tang, breathed out the sickly sweet fruitiness of ketosis. Lou had taught her to recognise the smell, celebrate its achievement. It meant her body was cannibalising itself, using its fat stores to survive. Problem was that she needed to do more than survive today. She needed to complete another ten hours or so of hard labour. Also, she didn’t have much in the way of fat stores left after nine months of eating lunch like Annie (miso soup, sashimi, garden salad without dressing) and skipping dinner because who can afford it when you’ve spent fifteen dollars on a frigging tasteless lunch salad? Eating like a rich girl while still being a poor one had not only helped her become as thin and wan as a model, it had taught her a lesson that extended into every aspect of life: If you get used to wanting less, you’ll always have enough.