‘That was different. Your mum took her away and it hurt. I missed her, but I knew she was okay. I knew she was safe. Like you and your little ones, Will. Those kids, I know you miss ’em, but they’ve got their mum and their dad and that. They’ll be all right and so you can … can … You can think about them without …’ She threw her hands up, grimaced, stopped the motion short of a full arc.

‘It’s okay.’ He was afraid she’d burst a stitch. ‘Forget it. It’s okay.’

‘It’s not. I should’ve … I’m not good in a crisis. Never know the right way to help.’

‘You do, though. You did.’ He took a breath, sat across from her. ‘Remember the story we used to love, me and Lena? The one about you getting suspended from school?’

Flicker of a smile. ‘You’d beg for that one. Funny kids.’

‘We’d beg for it the way Haymish and Taylah beg to rewatch Moana. You were our hero, Aunty Nic. You were who we wanted to be when we grew up.’

‘Pity my heroism peaked at twelve.’

‘Bullshit. You stuck up for us all the time when we were kids. Remember the nit incident?’

There was a head lice outbreak in fourth grade, and when the teacher lectured the class about it she stood behind Will and said that long, dirty, messy hair made a perfect nest for nits. His hair was down below his collar because he wanted it to be like his Dad’s, and it was dirty and messy because he refused to wash or brush it more than once a week, but he didn’t have nits and when he told Mum and Aunty Nic what happened they went bananas. Yelling and slamming fists. Mum started writing an angry letter but then Aunty Nic had the idea to borrow a nurse’s uniform from a work friend’s sister and march up to the school herself. And she did it! Mum called the school, said her sister the nurse had kindly offered to do a factual presentation on head lice and the principal let her. Aunty Nic up there all prim and proper, explaining how nits love shiny, clean hair and then, with the teacher’s help, she inspected all the heads and found nits in nearly half and none of them were Will’s.

‘That was your mum, egging me on. Never would’ve had the guts otherwise.’

‘Only time the two of you got along was when you were defending me or Leen. But listen, point is, you didn’t have to do that stuff but you did. Do you remember the other day, what you said to me about Haymish? How he’d always remember I stuck up for him? That’s me and Leen. We always knew you’d have our back.’