Inside, I throw a clean t-shirt at him. ‘This one’s yours. You’ll want to borrow my car to get there, I guess.’

‘Feels necessary,’ he says, pushing the shirt off his lap onto the couch.

I stop folding. ‘This is the first time you’ll have driven since the crash.’

‘That’s occurred to me.’

‘Maybe Mark should drive. If you freak out when you drive past . . .’

‘I won’t. I’m okay.’

‘You’re not, but if you can promise not to destroy my car that’d be great.’ I look at my watch. ‘Do me a favour and go get the kids before dinner? They rode their bikes down to the creek.’

He clicks his tongue and winks in a way that I take to mean yes. Since his promise to do his bit around the house, Charlie has stepped up. He’s even made a pot of lamb curry for tonight’s dinner. And though I know the kids won’t eat it (and so I have, in anticipation, bought supplies for a separate meal), I see his effort for what it is.

While I’m setting the table, Mark calls out that Petey has no clean pyjamas, although of course he does. Petey runs naked down the hallway, squealing in delight. At this sound of fun, Woof bounds towards him, thundering through Sarah’s doll party, scattering the smiling lovelies across the floor. Sarah screams in outrage, alarming Beau, who darts into the kitchen to sit next to Joanne at the kitchen bench in time to hear her moan to me again that she is hungry, ‘sooo hungry, Mum’. Charlie raises his voice over the noise to ask me if he can borrow some cash until his next dole cheque arrives. And for reasons I can’t quite explain, none of this bothers me terribly much. I see it, hear it, and decide that I’m not going to address any of it other than Joanne’s hunger. I kiss the top of her head as I walk past her.

As predicted, once we’re seated at the table, the kids deem the curry disgusting.

‘It looks like Woof’s dinner,’ Sarah says.

‘Hey,’ Charlie says.

Sarah laughs. ‘Like dog food!’

I stand up to make the Plan B meal but Charlie gestures for me to sit back down. ‘I’ll do it.’ He looks at Sarah. ‘And you’ll help. You’re old enough to cook.’

‘There are sausages,’ I say. ‘Frozen peas, corn –’

‘We’ve got this,’ Charlie says, and begins telling Sarah a story about Bali as they head into the kitchen together. The other children, having for the first time in history decided that making dinner might be fun, follow them, Woof at the rear. Which means that Mark and I are, blissfully, left alone at the table to eat and drink. We lift our glasses and clink in recognition of this.

I hear laughter coming from the kitchen, and then music. Charlie has moved the radio dial away from the news. Sarah recognises the song and loudly sings the words she knows. ‘This is a good curry,’ Mark says, and I agree.