Oli asks, ‘Would you like me to take one of all of you?’

The man hands her the camera and slots in next to his wife. Hoists one of the boys onto his lap. Oli takes several shots.

‘Thank you!’ the man beams as he flicks through the images. ‘These are great.’

‘No problem,’ she murmurs, before setting off toward her apartment. She plugs her earbuds into her phone, then FaceTimes TJ and Chelsea. ‘I hope you’re both ready for a long night. We’ve got a new launch story.’

MONDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2015

MONDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2015

Nicole is living less than an hour away. With a child. It makes Alex sick to think about it. She always used to assume she would have kids herself one day, in that faraway adult life that she occasionally thought about. She and Miles even talked about it a few times, but after Evelyn died she could never picture it. Monsters don’t have children.

At work she is Allie. A few months ago, a guy from marketing asked her out for a drink, but she just stuttered an excuse and pretended to answer her phone. She’s avoided him ever since, waiting for him to finish in the kitchen before she gets her lunch from the fridge. He tried to talk to her again about two weeks later, but that was the day Laney, her co-worker, emailed her the photo of Nicole. Alex almost vomited all over her keyboard. It was Nicole, but she was going by the name Natalie. And there was a little girl in another picture, a girl called Evie with the same last name: Maslan. Alex remembered Nicole talking about an author she liked with that surname.

In the office bathroom a few hours later, Alex vomited for real. After wiping her face with a wet paper towel she returned to her desk, head exploding with the past. She reopened the email attachment and read an article about the environmental program in Crystalbrook. Alex’s workplace is connecting the Crystalbrook community with an inner-city workplace and arranging for a group of staff to go to the Dandenongs for a sustainability excursion. Alex will be the project lead.

Nicole looks different in the photo, but Alex has no doubt it’s her. Her eyes are the giveaway.

Alex copied the photos to her desktop, printed them out after hours and took them home to her tiny apartment. She stuck them on the bedroom wall next to the photo of herself with Evelyn and Nicole at the Paradise Street house. In the weeks since, she has spent hours lying on her bed, staring at them.