Nic stops in the park where she found the bonnet last time she passed by. It feels so long ago. The jacaranda is in flower, serving its annual reminder to the slippery dip and swings that they are inferior installations. Small, hard and dull. Unable to regenerate or surprise. She positions herself in front of the bench, slides the crutches forward and eases back. The seat is lower than she expected and she lands on her tailbone with a thud. Pain is everything and then becomes only something. She can’t stop looking at her pale, chalky nails. Kon swiped off the chipped polish with an alcohol pad when he saw how much it was bothering her, but this is worse. Like when she had bubble gum stuck in her hair as a kid and Mum cut it out and then evened out the cut until she looked like a cancer patient. She remembers the deep, low-down sick feeling she got when she saw strips of her own raw pink scalp, the queasiness of touching flesh that should be untouchable. She’d wanted to rip her own head off to stop that sick, creepy feeling. Wearing her Tigers beanie helped with the dis-ease, but they wouldn’t let her leave it on at school and she would never, ever forget what it felt like to have to sit in that already hostile room, feeling the awfulness of it all sink right into her head through the unprotected raw skin.

Her nails are naked now the way her head had been naked then. Her mind flashes to the mole rat Facebook meme that was popular a couple of months ago. Did the mole rat feel like this all the time? Nauseated by its own disgusting bareness? Nic tries to shut her mind off from the horror, but it’s useless. The shuddering is well underway. Only thing to do is to force herself up and set off again.

She makes her way to the corner and the universe rewards her efforts. Gifts strewn all over the nature strip: two pine chairs with woven cane seats, a squat footrest covered in pink and black polka-dotted fabric, a single-shelved bookshelf with Disney characters dancing over its sides and back, a cardboard box filled with glasses, coffee mugs and who knows what else. In her distress and haste she forgot to bring any bags, but never mind. Except for a couple of mugs, she wouldn’t be able to carry any of this on her own anyway. Not in this state. She’ll need help. Will might do it, if she can get him out from under the Betrayer’s influence. Or maybe she could get her hands on a trolley. Wouldn’t need the crutches if she had a trolley to lean on. Yes. She would push on towards the housing commission flats near the supermarket. There were always trolleys abandoned there.