Lena stood and, careful not to disturb the stacks of who-the-fuck-knows on either side, made her way to the chair, an old-fashioned recliner covered in chocolate brown velour, with crocheted granny blankets draped over its back and arms. This, at least, was familiar. Aunty Nic would settle herself in here after dinner, Will and Lena or, later, Lena alone on the sofa beside her. Sometimes Nic’d start gently snoring, and Lena would crawl onto her lap and tickle her face until she woke and returned fire, tickling Lena into ecstatic hysterics. Only now, looking back, did Lena understand that the snoring had been fake.

The fluoro yellow crocheted sock velcroed to the arm of the chair was filled with a nail file, a bottle of nail polish remover, lavender polish, clear top coat and a purse pack of tissues. The whereabouts of the remote control it was supposed to hold was a mystery. At her feet was an old-school portable CD player. She pressed play and glam rock screamed into the room. She pressed stop, flipped the player open: Open Up and Say … Ahh! Poison. Ugh. When it came to music her mum and aunty were bogans through and through.

Her phone buzzed, buzzed, buzzed and she ignored it like a dripping nose. Sniff sniff sniff.

She needed a strategy. Already she’d wasted time and energy scrubbing out a fridge that was destined for landfill. She needed to take stock of her situation, plan, prioritise. From the armchair she could see the television, which sat in a cabinet almost hidden by the stuff it held. Like the back shelf of an op shop, it was cluttered with a horrifying array of worthless, dust-gathering porcelain figurines. Garishly bright frogs and wonky-eyed cats, dogs with threatening grins and yellow ducklings with creepily realistic webbed feet. Little shepherd girls reading books or weeping or bending over lambs or puppies or looking out over the rest of the miserable creatures on the shelf. A dozen or so figurines of Pregnant Mary and Mother Mary kept company with a bunch of fat Buddhas, mostly laughing but a few, seeming to understand the gravity of the situation, stared heavy-lidded at their own feet. Between, behind, in front, over and under the figurines were vases of every colour, shape and size, along with—for fuck’s sake, Nic—trophies for sports Lena was pretty certain no one in the family, let alone Nic herself, had ever played: cricket, rugby, soccer and volleyball.