Debra Oswald is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and author of the novels Useful (2015) and The Whole Bright Year (2018). She was creator/head writer of the first five seasons of successful TV series Offspring. Her stage plays have been performed around the world and published by Currency Press. Gary’s House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were all shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences—Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. Her television credits include award-winning episodes of Police Rescue, Palace of Dreams, The Secret Life of Us, Sweet and Sour and Bananas in Pyjamas. Debra has written three Aussie Bites books for kids and six children’s novels, including The Redback Leftovers, Getting Air and Blue Noise. Debra has been a storyteller on stage at Story Club and performed her one-woman show, Is There Something Wrong With That Lady?, in 2021.

DEDICATION

FOR DALE DRUHAN AND SHELLEY EVES

ONE

BODIES ARE VULNERABLE PARCELS, SO MUCH SOFT TISSUE held in place by bone and skin. Walking around in them is a precarious business, considering their delicate physiological systems, prone to self-inflicted damage, susceptible to blows from the outside world and blows from other people. Not to mention the risk that the body could betray from within, suddenly, unpredictably.

Paula Kaczmarek had never been the kind of doctor who ruminated on such dangers excessively. She got on with doing the best that could be done for her patients—identify their problems, offer sensible remedies, chivvy them into treating themselves a little better. No nonsense, pragmatic. But underneath all of that, she felt an achy tenderness towards every one of those vulnerable bodies.

Just after five o’clock she smiled goodbye to Jemma on the front desk and headed out the door of Marrickville Family Practice. She fished out her phone and saw two missed calls from her friend Stacey, thirty and thirty-two minutes ago. During patient consultations, Paula always kept her phone on silent, zipped inside her handbag. It was disrespectful to be distracted by a caller ID flashing up on the screen at the same moment her hand might be probing some intimate cavity in a person.

In the car park, she tried to call Stacey back but it went to voicemail. On Tuesdays, Stacey took her kids to soccer training and Paula would usually be doing a few aged-care visits at this time. But she’d visited her current batch of old ladies yesterday, so this evening she was free to drive straight home.