LENA

Lena had stayed all day at Kylie’s napping, playing with Lacey and ignoring her phone. Ty brought out the Jim Beam around four and by the time she thought about going home she was drunk enough to laugh at the fact she didn’t have one. Wasn’t so funny on Saturday morning when Kylie and Ty both had to go to work and she had to decide which site of misery and failure she should return to.

The idea of talking to her brother about a sex tape while hungover was unbearable and so she caught the bus to uni, collected the notices from her pigeonhole on the way up to her room. She’d decided sometime the previous day that she would defer, go back to Brisbane for a bit. Even so, reading the letter threatening to cancel her fellowship and accommodation subsidy got her blood up. Other people skipped loads more classes, were allowed to make up exams they missed. Some never went to lectures at all. Prided themselves on it! Evidently slacking was for people whose parents could pay.

She spent the morning working her way through the online forms to withdraw, emailed the accommodation office to give notice she’d be leaving before the end of the exam period, texted Annie to let her know she was alive, would meet up for a drink soon. Then, still at her desk, upright and business-like, she called Mum. Told her everything. Not about Josh and all that, but the truth about the house, how bad it had been in there, what it had taken to clean up. How awful it was when Nic came home.

‘You should’ve told me, Leen,’ Mum said when she was finished. ‘I would’ve come. I’ll come now. Tomorrow.’

‘No, that’d make it worse. No offence, but you know it would. The two of you …’

A sigh. ‘We rub each other the wrong way, yes, but we don’t abandon each other. And it’s really not right that she’s got my kids dealing with all this. Not right at all.’

‘The thing is, she didn’t want us dealing with it. I insisted and then Will turned up to help, and … I should’ve listened when she told me to leave it. I should’ve let the social worker handle it.’

‘Taught you too well, my girl. Never abandon family.’

‘We did, though. When we moved. Abandoned Nic. Abandoned Will.’

‘Oh, Leenie. That was a bad time for all of us.’

‘When wasn’t?’

Mum made a sound that might have been a laugh. A very small and quick one. ‘I needed to get you away from Sydney. Get you a fresh start. And Will agreed, wanted that for you, too.’