‘He thinks you’re a joke. You know that, right?’

Sharon said nothing.

‘He said so to Cass. Well, if not to her then in front of her. He thinks you’re a cow. That he said verbatim. He said you were like a cow running to the back of a ute giving out hay.’

What to say to that? Peter’s words sat in the air like claggy glue. She wondered where he had learned to be so venomous. Guessed it was on her again. He hadn’t been taught any different.

She sighed. No wonder her son thought the way he did; what he thought was true.

Her father had scooped up the chicken bodies in a wheelbarrow, their matted red feathers clumping together, mottling like fallen leaves. Like you could step on them, play with them, throw them in the air. He had showered, and then wheeled the barrow down the street to the butcher, Mr Oxley. He’d asked her to accompany him and she’d refused.

So now here they were, Sharon and her mother, seated in the lounge room watching television. Her mother had a hot water bottle on the small of her back. She sat forward, clasping her hands together, wincing.

‘You want something to eat? I could make you something.’

Sharon shook her head. Then, softly, ‘I don’t know why you just let him hit you.’

Her mother kept looking at the television. The screen, without the lights on in the room, coating her face in muted colours.

She said, ‘It’s easier.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sharon . . .’

‘What do you mean, it’s easier?’

Her mother sighed, held her hand to her back, repositioned the hot water bottle.

‘You’ll understand when you’re older.’

‘Mum,’ Sharon said. She looked at her mother, willing her to turn her eyes. ‘He shouldn’t hit you.’

‘I know, sweetheart.’

‘You should say something then.’

‘That’d just make him madder.’

‘The cops’d help?’

‘No,’ her mother said. ‘They wouldn’t.’

‘They would. Why wouldn’t they?’

‘They’d come over here and at best they’d talk to him about it. And he’d act all sorry for a little while. But then he’d drink; he’d get mad. He’d look at the other blokes around him and how their wives are so far up their arses and he’d come home wild again. No.’

Her mother was crying now.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘I shouldn’t say arse.’

‘Mum––’

‘I’m sorry this is how it is, sweetheart. But this is how it is.’

She did turn then. The look she gave; Sharon never forgot it. In later years, when she thought of her mother she saw that look, that face only. Fraught with pain, world-weary. But more than that. It was broken.

Her mother said, attempting a smile, ‘It’s best you learn now, sweetheart. You stand up for yourself, you’ll only get shoved back down. Best never to stand up in the first place. Now. Let me get you something to eat.’