She’s felt this one other time, her body knows, recognises this feeling of being alone in space, plummeting. Fifteen—old enough to wear a junior bra and shave her legs and walk home from school on her own and do her own laundry and cook dinner for the family three times a week. Fifteen, yet younger somehow than thirteen-year-old Michelle, who already had a proper bra and her periods, who had used her birthday money on a perm, who had been sneaking around with a much older boy and, now she’d been caught, let rip, screaming at Mum about her hypocrisies, all the men whose places she stayed over at, creeping back in before the girls got up, as if they didn’t notice she was wearing yesterday’s clothes and stinking of smoke and you know what else! Nic did not know what else. She had not noticed the day-old clothes or the smoke or the creeping. And while she was still taking in this new information and what it might mean, Michelle screaming, Imagine how Dad would feel if he knew! And Mum screaming back, Why do you care about how he feels? He doesn’t give a shit about you. When was the last time you heard from him?

Michelle, sobbing: He’s just trying to protect us. When he comes home he’ll—

Grow up, Michelle! I’m the one who protects you! Me! He left us with sweet fuck-all. I chased down the money he was owed and bought this house for you girls. You’ve got no idea the kind of things I had to do! No idea. And who do you think buys your food and clothes and shoes and everything? Who pays the bills? Me me me me! He’s a worthless piece of shit and it’s about time you girls realised that.

You’re a liar. He loves us.

Mum stormed into her bedroom, came back with a cardboard box. Dumped its contents onto the floor: so many envelopes, thick and unopened. Nic sat on the floor, sifted through them. Every one addressed to Dad in the correctional centre. Some in her neat, precise handwriting. Some in Michelle’s impatient scrawl. Older yellowing envelopes in the round, careful, childish hand of someone just learning to write. She remembered doing that: making neat pencil lines with a ruler, painstakingly copying the letters from the paper Mum had showed her, erasing the pencil lines and blowing away the rubber shavings. Wanting it to be perfect for him, to cheer him in that awful place.

I’m sorry, Nicky, Mum said, rubbing her shoulder. I should’ve said something earlier. He started refusing delivery years ago. I couldn’t bear them coming back with a big government stamp on them so I just … I stopped sending. Kept them in case …