The kitchen cupboards were filled with cookbooks. It was like a history of food trends: The Women’s Weekly Cookbook, Campbell’s Easy Summer Recipes and Margaret Fulton cookbooks Lena remembered from childhood, along with Microwave Cooking With Style, 50 One-pot Meals and In the Kitchen with Rosie: Oprah’s Favorite Recipes. A bunch of low-fat and heart-health books, high-fibre, Mediterranean, low-carb, organic. Some were very recent: paleo and keto. In between were more timeless collections: Italian, Cantonese, Potatoes and Pasta, Vegetarian and Vegan, Soups, Desserts. There was one, still in its plastic wrap, written by an Instagram diet guru Lena had told Nic about only a month or so ago. She imagined her aunt going straight from their lunch together, finding and purchasing the book. Did she think, as she handed over her credit card, about how she’d invite Lena over and surprise her with Caris’s clean-eating feast? Did she think, I’ll just have to tidy the kitchen a little … Did she imagine the two of them in this room, eating slices of Paleo Apple Spice Coffee Cake, their laughter echoing in the clear, empty space that surrounded them?

She bent and wrenched open the oven. You couldn’t see its walls or racks. Couldn’t see through to the back. Enough paper in there to burn down the neighbourhood.

People have died of sadness, Lena knew. Was this what it felt like, just before?

Will, she texted, how have we gone all these years and not known our aunty is completely and utterly batshit crazy?

Speak for yourself, he replied. I’ve long known EVERYONE in our family is batshit.

I’m serious tho! There’s a stack of books on feng shui and home decorating stashed … wait for it … behind the DUNNY!

That’s hilarious

It’s devastating

Devastating but hilarious

Our family motto

TWO

WILL

WILL

Will woke to the stench of stale piss mingled with fresh bleach and the sound of men grunting, boots stomping, meaty hands slapping steel bars. Opened his eyes to light designed to stop you having a single second more sleep than legally mandated. For a woozy moment he thought he was back in prison.

The moment passed, his head cleared, and he knew he was in a forty-five-dollar single room out the back of a Mackay pub. It was his third morning waking to the eye-watering Queensland sun blitzing through the broken venetians and the racket of FIFO workers using the shared bathroom across the hall.