‘How will you know what to do with everything? What if you chuck something that I need?’

Lena’s face relaxes, which makes everything easier. ‘I won’t. I promise. Anything important I’ll keep for you to look through later.’

‘This is the problem! You can’t see.’ Nic’s heart is racing again, the blood flooding her temples. Lights shudder behind her eyelids. ‘It’s all important! Why would I have it otherwise?’

‘What about the newspapers in the hallway? They’re digitised these days, you know. Anything you want to find in those papers, you can look it up online.’

Like she’s an idiot luddite! There’s no way Lena can understand that the stacks lining her hallway are not about finding anything. She could never tell her brilliant niece about the night she went to pub trivia with Lala from work and blazed like a fireball through the TV and Music categories and everyone was cheering for her but then it was Current Events and she didn’t know a single answer except who the prime minister was, and even then she was wrong, not in her answer, but in excitedly leaning forward to write the answer, because everyone else knew it was only there as a joke question because of the recent political turmoil. That she thought she was smart for knowing the PM’s name when even the slurring, cockeyed bloke with half his teeth missing cackled at the question. Even him in on the gag while she’s earnestly filling in the form.

How can Lena, whose brain is like a miracle and who goes every day to a place that literally exists only to create and share knowledge, possibly understand?

The social worker comes back into the room with a cardboard tray holding three styrofoam cups, a teabag string dangling from each. ‘How’d we go, ladies?’

‘I think we’ve come up with a plan,’ Lena says.

‘Wonderful. Let’s hear it.’ The woman puts cups in front of Lena and Nic.

If she could reach without too much pain she would knock the boiling water all over the desk. ‘The pain is very bad,’ she says instead. ‘I need to lie down.’

‘Of course. As long as you’re happy for Lena to fill me in, we should be able to do without you.’

‘You okay with that, Nic?’

Of course she isn’t. Doesn’t matter, does it? She nods.

The social worker mumbles into her desk phone and in a few minutes an orderly appears and wheels her from the room.

‘It’ll be all right, I promise,’ Lena says as she leaves.

My arse it will, Nic thinks. My fat arse.