Pressing his lips against her temple, he says, ‘Whatever, Luce,’ humming the words into her skin. ‘Whatever’s right for you. I’ll be here.’ He pauses, then pulls back so he can look at her face. ‘But are you sure?’ he asks. ‘I mean, it’s a clean slate again, isn’t it? You could try something different this time. Smaller, or whatever. I’ll support you no matter what, but are you sure you want to go the rest of your life without them at all?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lucy sighs. Then, ‘No, actually, I do know. I’m not really sure of anything at all except for the fact that I hated them so much, Jem. I just hated them and I don’t think I can stomach them again.’

‘Fair enough,’ Jem says, smiling, it seems to her, a little sadly. ‘I mean, they’re only adornments, aren’t they?’

‘They are,’ Lucy says. ‘And if they made me feel more me or better about my body or whatever then I’d do it again, because they’d have a purpose. But if they just alienate me from myself, then what’s their point?’ She sounds so lucid, so reasonable. Is she? Jem doesn’t say anything. He presses his lips to her temple again and strokes her hair.

‘I’ll be able to run without a bra,’ Lucy muses, more to herself than him. ‘I’ll be like a child, or a man.’

‘No, Luce,’ Jem murmurs. She can feel his lips curl up into a smile. ‘You’ll be like a woman without breasts.’

Lucy smiles too.

She feels elated.

She’s so warm, snuggled against him like that. The room hums. His heart beats. Sleeping seems like a nice thing to do. She curls her toes.

‘You don’t have to make a decision now, anyway. You’ve got plenty of time to think about it,’ Jem says, somewhere far away.

Flo gazes out of her lounge room window and traces her eyes along the highway that spans the neck and cleaves the bush on the opposite hill like a part forcibly combed into boofy hair. In her mind, she follows the highway as it cuts through tracts of bush and shadows the curve of mudflat bays, as it glides through pasture studded with copses of eucalypt, edges through bland country towns, coils around roundabouts, bridges stretches of water and drifts towards the estuary of the Derwent River, which is white-capped by the summer sea breeze; towards the arch of the Tasman Bridge and the hunched skyline of Mount Wellington, towards the city that wedges itself between the rise of the mountain and the briny lap of the river; towards the hospital in the centre of that city; towards Lucy and Poppy.