Margaret looked to her right and then her left but she was alone. It had been hard to get here. Every day. There was never a moment when she could remember, with anything like comfort, the time before she wasn’t alone. She tried, thinking that it would help her adjust to the new aloneness. But she still did this. Went into rooms talking to someone when there was no one in the house. Looking to her right to share a laugh and then the startle of no one being there and then the look to the left before she realised she was alone. Like, really alone.

40

40

Dinner went well. Afterwards, they sat around for a few hours talking about the news. Heidi talked again about the need to do something. It was hot and the oceans were getting hotter, and they all nodded and none of them wanted to say that anything they could do seemed pointless in the face of it. But if they had, Heidi would say that’s what everyone had thought about nuclear weapons and the ozone layer, and she’d be right. Then Ash cut up some plums that had come off a friend’s tree and put them on a plate like boats in a harbour. People’s eyes started to droop, and Heidi reminded everyone it was a school night. She and Bisi and Ash went home, walking up the driveway carrying the reusable bags they’d brought the plums and the salad and the bread in. Margaret stood in the cool night and watched them walk away for as long as she could see them and looked up at the sky and watched the trees moving in the breeze and went inside and she was alone again.