‘But look, maybe we don’t have to go through it all right now.’

‘I don’t think we have to,’ Paula said quietly.

‘No. But of course, I mean, yeah, we can, anytime, if you need to or—well, if either of us needs to—down the track. But tonight I reckon we should have a break.’

Paula nodded and Anita reached across the table to squeeze her hand.

‘You look so exhausted, P. Your eyeballs are lolling out of their sockets.’

‘In an attractive way, I hope.’

‘Gorgeous. Hey, I’m sorry for dragging you out for quirky Japanese cinema when you’re so tired. You should’ve told me to fuck off.’

‘No, no, I’m glad you dragged me out,’ said Paula. ‘But I now need to fuck off to bed.’

‘Yep. I’ll sort the bill.’ Anita jumped to her feet, switching back into her hyper mood. ‘I’m prescribing you a big dose of sleep. You need to be ready to heal the sick and save lives tomorrow.’

Anita waved away Paula’s proffered cash and darted over to the cash register. Paula watched her chat to the Japanese waitress, doing a little floorshow to describe the movie they’d just seen. The waitress was baffled at first, but eventually she was smiling and laughing.

Paula found herself consciously drinking in the sight of Anita being her awkwardly delightful self with the waitress. Paula did that a lot now; she was determined to store moments, images, scraps of the people she loved in some part of her brain that might not be infected with bad things.

NINE

ANITA SOMETIMES IMAGINED A WILDLIFE DOCUMENTRY AS she observed the journalists and TV crews outside the court buildings. One moment, the media would be hanging around as solitary birds or in groups of two or three, pecking at their phones, swivelling their heads to survey the area, waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, someone from a high-profile trial would appear on the footpath, and the journalists and crews would swoop in, flapping around the person like a flock of pigeons encircling the remains of a discarded hamburger.

For a regular individual caught up in a juicy trial, the walk to the entrance of a court building must be unnerving, the media pack shuffling with them every step of the way. The legal bods were fine, of course. They strode through, safely zipped inside their lawyer costumes, holding big white folders like shields. But the people fronting the court system for the first time were clearly overwhelmed, faces pinched against the questions being squawked at them, clinging to the advice they’d been given about not responding and not hitting out at the cameras in their path.