A memory, sharp and bright, of walking this way to pick up Lena and her friend on a stifling summer afternoon. Lots of afternoons, wasn’t it? She’d walk around after work to collect Lena and the other girl, bring them home for fish and chips and ice cream. She couldn’t remember the girl’s name. Short and broad-shouldered with thick little legs, looked at Lena with total adoration in her wide-set eyes, which made Nic love her. Saw herself in her for that reason and more, if she was being honest.

For one, Nic had lived in flats like those as a kid. Another suburb, further from the city, but same deal: besser block, outdoor walkways that begged you to lean too far over, to splat yourself on the concrete below, leave others to wonder if it was an accident or what. Inside, vinyl sheeting over chipboard, walls so thin you heard every fuck and fight and fart from next door. Carpet that’d give you nasty burns if you forgot your life and rolled around like a kid on it.

Her bedroom had been nice, though. Her half of the bedroom, at least. Michelle was neat to the point of ugliness. Would rather a blank white wall than blu-tacked posters that might unstick at the corners when the humidity was high. Rather a bed made like in a hospital room than one with colourful pillows and friendly fuzzy faces. Sometimes Nic would attempt to interrupt the blandness, poke a single pink feather into the edge of Michelle’s mirror or thread a gold-sequinned ribbon around her bedhead. Michelle never commented, just plucked up the bit of beauty and tossed it in the bin in the corner. Nic would go to the bin and rescue it, find a place on her side where it’d feel properly appreciated.

When they moved into the Leichhardt house Mum threw out nearly all the decorations Nic had up around her room. She said it was a clean start. A home all of our own, girls! She said they could choose to paint their room any colour they liked, and for weeks Nic and Michelle fought bitterly about that. Pointlessly, too. There was never money for painting. No energy or will. The walls stayed the same dirty cream they’d always been. Nic could have painted it any colour she liked once Michelle moved out. She doesn’t remember why she didn’t. Nor why she didn’t paint Mum’s room after she died. It didn’t matter, though, because there was so much else to see. Who thought about walls?

Now she had to because they were all you saw when you walked in. Walls and floors. Naked, old and grubby.