But, still, though he had spent yesterday loading a giant street bin full of someone else’s useless shit, and he would do the same today and tomorrow, still, if Dad’s stupid, embarrassing clothes were here he would fall on them like they were laced with morphine. And this tool in his hand? This beaten-up, useless, worthless fucking thing he’d not given a single thought to until it was in front of his face? He would hold on to it until the day he died and if anyone ever tried to throw it away he would use it to bash their smug, sensible brains in.

NIC

NIC

Nic is woken by a text from Michelle asking how she is, texts back that she’s great, thanks for asking. Your lovely kids have been taking good care of me, she adds, meaning it but also knowing it’ll grate Michelle’s cheese to think of them all together.

They are lovely kids, aren’t they? Michelle writes.

Nic flicks back some love hearts.

But are you doing better?

Thumbs-up.

Thumbs-up returned.

This is as warm an exchange as the two of them have had in years. They’re not estranged, but not not estranged either. Michelle will never forgive Nic for inheriting Mum’s house; Nic will never forgive Michelle for moving to Queensland. But they both love Lena and Lena loves them both and so, for her sake, they attempt civility and occasionally even warmth.

Nic finds it funny that she has so much in common with her workmates who’ve been through bitter divorces. They swap stories of biting their tongues in front of the kids rather than let them know their parent is a piece of shit, of having to make polite enquiries about the health of the person who ruined their lives.

Of course, it’s Michelle who would find Nic’s inclusion in the divorced parents club funniest of all. Michelle is fond of calling Nic an Old Maid; has said, devastatingly, that she’s been one since puberty. To Michelle this is the ultimate burn. She had her first boyfriend at eleven, first pregnancy scare at thirteen, first marriage proposal at sixteen. Nic, meanwhile, drifted through most of her teens happily unaware that boys or sex or babies or marriages might have anything to do with her at all.