How could she have let this happen? Let it get so she doesn’t recognise one of the things in an instant. Shouldn’t even need an instant, should know with her eyes closed and in another room—out of the house even—what each of the things is and where it lives.

Tears tickle her cheeks but she cannot move her arm to wipe them away. Hasn’t this already happened? The crying and the wanting to wipe the tears and then the flashes going off inside her head and the learning that moving is not a thing she is supposed to do. If she does her brain will cancel her consciousness. But if she can’t move her arms, maybe she can flop her whole body over so at least she’ll be on her belly and might have a better view of the forgotten thing. Upside down and sideways of course it made no sense. Nic tells her body to roll and it does and the flashes are red and when she next remembers she was trying to see the object better the room is dark and she can see nothing except inky shapes.

She wakes with the light and right away she knows she is looking at the Princess Diana 1983 Sydney tour souvenir tiara. A morning like this one, the rude brightness making her squinch her eyes. Mummy singing, We’re off to see the princess, the princess. We’re off to see the princess, and the princess will see us as she arranged Nic’s hair in the kind of elaborate looped braids that she was daily envious of other girls for having, that she had never considered for one second her own mother could make. Mummy’s hair was freshly blonded and pushed back off her face with a black velvet ribbon. She wore blue eyeshadow and pale pink lipstick and a high-necked white lace shirt. You look like a famous lady, Nic said, and Mummy laughed and kissed her face and she felt like a girl on TV.