She hadn’t replied because doing so would legitimise his outright lie. Now she lay in her barren bed and stared at the space where her side table used to be. She’d bought it at a garage sale on Catherine Street three summers ago. French Provincial Style, the man had said. Nic was going to ask if it was the odd shape—round top balancing on a single leg which split into three curved feet at the base—or the crackly beige and blue paint which made it French Provincial Style, but the man was sweeping his hand over the top and saying, Antique Finish, Freshly Varnished, Rustic Charm, and she felt stifled by his words and his closeness, his stale cigarette smell. She started to turn away and he said, Belonged to my mother, may she rest in peace, and then Nic saw everything she needed to about the table, saw the decades of magazines and school notes and electricity bills, the wedding and christening invitations, the cups of tea left to go cold while the nappies were changed, the homework finished, the dinner cooked, the phone answered. Saw it cleared of everything but a vase of fresh flowers once a month and then the slow pile up of leaflets and letters and bills, petals dropping, water turning thick and brown. Saw the children’s birthday parties where it was dragged in to sit next to the kitchen table and hold the plastic cups and plates. Saw the not-quite-faded texta marks layered over the not-quite-buffed-out cat scratches. She paid seventeen dollars while mentally telling the deceased woman she knew it was worth a hundred times that. She carried it home, a fifteen-minute walk taking almost an hour, changing positions every few minutes: arms stretched wide embracing the round rim, then chin on top, hands gripping the leg, then hanging upside down like a chook in a window, the table banging her shins with every step.

At home she’d stripped to her underwear, let the sweat air dry, while she searched for the perfect place for the table. It hadn’t taken long; there was an easel in her bedroom, displaying a painting she’d bought at a different garage sale several years before: a little girl in a yellow dress holding a white vase holding a red rose. It had been painted by the woman who owned the house, which was being cleared out because she had been moved to a nursing home. Nic knew the woman who owned this table would have loved the painting of the girl, and the painter would be happy to know that her little girl had found a friend in a much-loved old table. The boxes that had been next to the easel were happy, too, being snuggled up more closely with their mates further along the wall.