He grimaced at another smell. ‘She needs to be changed.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘You coming outside later on?’

‘Why?’

‘To help.’

‘Brendan rope you into doing that again?’

Sidney sighed. It made his wife laugh.

‘He can say anything and you bloody jump like a mongrel dog, Sid. Stand up to him.’

These words next to his daughter’s ear.

‘Come keep me company?’

‘Maybe. Might just watch TV after I get her down.’

‘You reading to her?’

‘Yes,’ she said, sounding like a chastised teenager. ‘I love her too, you know. It’s not just you in this.’

He let them be, shutting the door on the smoke and his family. He spared one last look in at his daughter and regretted not telling her that he loved her dearly and thought of her always and that he would take her away from this place, the three of them, and they’d live somewhere cleaner, free from smoke. But of course he couldn’t say it. He knew it would never be.

FOUR

SHARON WORNKIN

Her son like a minister before the crowd. They were engulfed in his gestures; watching him, waiting, like he would lead them to some deep revelation, that he’d burden them with meaning. Him with beer in hand, smiling. He lifted his glass, raising it as high as his arm could reach, and held it there. The crowd leaned forwards. He tipped the glass, let the beer fall to his lips, and miraculously started drinking without spilling a drop. They watched while he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, veins in his neck. The cheers erupted so loudly when he finished they startled her. Peter cupped his hand around his girl-friend’s waist, who laughed along with the rest and stared at her man with clear adoration.

Sharon looked down at the beer in her hands, the frosted glass beading water. Had she ever looked that way at Roger? Look at how Cassie Cahill looked at her son. He kissed her, pulling her hips forwards to press against his own. The room roared again. Onlookers not invited to celebrate her son’s eighteenth were pressing at the edges. The Newbury pub was always noisy, but rarely like this. The walls that odd maroon colour; the place smelling of beer and wet carpet. Of old farmhands come straight from work. Cow and hay and sweat.

Sharon moved to the edge herself and rested her beer on the table in front of her between sips. It was an odd thing, this celebration. She hadn’t felt close to her son in years. The edge of the rabble felt about right, about where she should be. She felt like she was watching an episode of Neighbours, on the couch––impossible to reach through the screen.

She’d tried. She really had. The last few years she’d sought to coax him out of whatever teenage shell he’d ensconced himself in, but he just didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Mum wasn’t necessary. Hadn’t been for years. She sipped at her beer, tried not to dwell on it.