Or if it was longer away, the day he came home, it might be even better. Because good things come to those who wait. And if she waited, then the day he came home might be when she had finished high school and was wearing a straight black skirt that stopped at her knees and black shiny high heels and a white shirt with a sheer collar and short, puffy sleeves, and Daddy would say, Who is this grown-up beautiful young woman? And Nic would say, It’s me, Dad! I’m just off to my job in an office in the city, and he would pretend to nearly faint with amazement but it would be pretending because of course he recognised her with love’s gaze and of course he wasn’t surprised at her city job because he always knew she was smart and would make something of herself.

Or maybe one night—any night! Maybe this one!—she would fall asleep like normal but then a racket would wake her and she’d stomp into the living room to rouse on her mum for being so noisy and there he’d be, a beer in one hand, ciggie in the other, like he’d never left. He’d say, What are you doing up at this time? And even though her heart would be bursting she’d be so so so so cool and she’d say, Some noisy bugger woke me up, and Mum’d say, Nicole! Language! and Dad’d laugh and say, Can the noisy bugger get a hug or what?

She spilt all this out to Steve as they sat with their backs against a wooden playground fort, her sipping the beer he’d given her, him halfway through his third already. He was silent, listening, and when she was finally done he said, Geez, I’d love to have a read of those letters, Nicky. Catch up on all the stuff you done before I knew ya. And even though he never mentioned the letters again, and the few times she thought of giving them to him without his asking, her whole body cringed with embarrassment and so she never did. Even so, every time she looked at the little box after that a wave of love washed over her.

The wave still comes when she looks at the box now, but it’s polluted by the pain coming from the plastic bag nestled at its side. The ordinary, standard-sized white plastic shopping bag containing all that is left of the brother who never read the letters but made her believe he wanted to. It was the worst thing she owned and the most important, this pathetically small and crumpled bundle of ‘personal effects’ deemed worth keeping by the people who cleaned Steve’s flat after he died. (Crime scene cleaners they were called. As though being fatally weak and sad was a crime.)