‘Yeah. I mean, she’s in the hospital at the moment. Probably for a bit longer.’

‘Geez. Poor thing. We wondered because, well, she sometimes watches the rug rats for us. I texted her the other day but she never—I feel awful now. Shoulda come and checked up in person.’ ‘She babysits for you? Here?’ Lena could imagine the straining toddler climbing one of those living room stacks, falling hard on her soft little head. And the baby? Would it even be able to breathe in that thick, dusty air?

‘At ours. The little one sleeps through and this one—ha, not that you’d know from her current feral state, but she crashes out early and stays out mostly. So it’s not, like, a lot of work for your aunty. We’re not taking advantage or anything. I trim the hedges, sweep up the leaves and that for her.’ He spread his free arm out, taking in the non-expansive expanse of it.

‘I was just thinking how neat it was out here.’

He smiled, bit of pride there. ‘Nice having neighbours you can rely on, help each other out. Not many in this street, sorry to say. Nic’s one of the good ones, but. So you just here to get some things for her or—’

‘Daddy! Stop talking! Come on come on come on come on!’

Andre laughed, waved a hand at his little girl.

‘I’m staying for a bit,’ Lena said. ‘Getting the place, ah, cleaned up for when she comes back. She’ll need a bit more room to get around.’

‘Good on you. She’s that proud of you, hey. Must be stoked you’re doing all this for her.’

‘Daddy! I need you now! Come on come on come on come oooooooon.’

Andre grinned, turning towards the stroller in the driveway and the straining child. ‘Better get this one to the play centre before she screams the neighbourhood down. But hey, let us know if you need a hand with anything. I work nights, so anything during the day. And after five my wife Mel’s home. She loves Nic, so, yeah. Number forty-eight. All right, chicken, I’m coming. See ya, Lena.’

The supermarket aisles reverberated with a child’s full-throated screams. Lena scanned the shelf labels beneath the tampons. The yellow-stickered ones, super-sized and with applicators, were almost half the price of her preferred slim regulars. The difference would buy a tub of cottage cheese and a tin of tuna. Maybe a bag of salad, too, if the cottage cheese was on special like last week.

Probably there had been tampons in the piles of stuff she’d thrown out from the kitchen the other day. There had been so many overstuffed plastic bags in the cupboards and under the table that she’d stopped opening them. What was the point when nine out of ten items went right into a different plastic bag ready to be tossed?