Anita’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a building with a real estate agent at street level, down the quieter end of King Street but within easy walking distance to live music or a tattoo parlour or the cinema, as required. Sometimes she wondered if it was time to move out of Newtown, away from the clog of cars and buses that left a grimy coating on every surface. Then again, the area was never boring, with plenty of weird shops and businesses giving it a spirited go, but without the hipster self-satisfaction of other inner-city suburbs. And there were always, reliably, fascinating humans wandering along the footpaths, laughing raucously and dodging their way between the cars to cross King Street.

Anita’s apartment was tidy enough not to be embarrassing, with compact furniture that suited the small space and bursts of colour from textiles she’d bought on her South American travels. Even so, there was something provisional about it, as if Anita were camping here, making the best of it while she waited for her life to move into gear. The friends had always chosen Paula and Remy’s house as the properly homey place to hang out, so it felt odd to invite Paula inside for more than a quick visit on their way somewhere else.

Anita made them toast and mint tea, while Paula stood over the rubbish bin in the kitchen, taking the tags and stickers off all the Kmart underwear as if that was an important and urgent task. On this night, any activity either of them did felt inappropriate, ridiculous, obscene. Ripping off tags was as good as anything to be doing.

Anita wondered when they would really talk. Probably not tonight. They—Paula, Anita, Stacey—had always been good at talking. But this was so overwhelming, it crushed any speakable words out of their throats.

The three of them had met as twelve-year-olds on their first day at Parramatta High School. Even though various clusters of school friends had crumbled and regrouped, the three had remained a strong unit. In the years since, circumstance had sometimes frayed the connections—Paula’s impossibly long hours as a medical student, Anita’s three-year stint in London, Stacey’s move to a remote property off the communications grid—but the threads between them never snapped.

Paula was always the strongest, no question. Even when her husband Remy was terminally ill, it felt as though Paula was the one supporting Anita through the process, demonstrating how to manage it graciously, when to talk openly, when to joke and when to sit silently with the awfulness of it.