Across the table, Beccy whacked at her arm. “Bloody mozzies. Thank God Mum decided to just go home, she’d never stop whinging.” A cool breeze lifted the napkins in the centre of the table. Kate weighted them with her takeaway cappuccino. Beccy sighed loudly as she sat back. “God, I am so glad Christmas is over. I thought it was never going to end.”

Kate smiled. She had to agree. For the first time in days, sitting alone with her sister in the dimly lit quietness of a McDonald’s at eight p.m., Kate felt like she could breathe again. Regardless of the merry Perry Como song playing on the overhead speakers, Christmas was finally over.

After a big meal of leftovers at the Boxing Day beach barbecue with their mother’s side of the family, Kate and Beccy had decided to give in to Karlie’s backseat pleas and stopped for a snack on the drive home. Half an hour in the play area would knock Karlie out, Beccy had said as Kate unbuckled the youngster from her booster seat. And as much as Kate adored her niece, knowing she’d be spending twenty-four seven with Karlie until she moved out at the end of January, she hoped for the same.

She flipped through the Escape section of the paper. “There’s a cruise going cheap for March,” she murmured, the idea of getting away suddenly growing in appeal. “Ten nights to Vanuatu—nine hundred and seventy-nine dollars per person for a twin cabin. That’s a good deal, less than one hundred a day…Oh, it stops at Mystery Island, I haven’t been there.”

Beccy sat back in her seat and ran a hand across her belly. “Who the hell are you going to share a twin cabin with?”

“You could come with me…”

Beccy fixed her with a look that so reminded Kate of their mother. “Yeah,” she said sarcastically, “I’d just love to pump breast milk in a bikini on Mystery Island.” She cleaned up the contents of Karlie’s half-eaten Happy Meal, slipping the three-nugget packet into the larger box. “You could go with Tilly,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a chapel on board to keep her in God’s good books.”

At the mention of Tilly, Kate stiffened. After almost a week of agonising over their last interaction, it was equal parts lovely and devastating to hear her name. She wanted to talk about Tilly, let her name roll from her tongue, but at the same time, she couldn’t, especially not with Beccy, who was always commenting about how Kate was so “annoyingly tough.” “Kate left her tear ducts in utero,” Beccy would tell people, “and seven years later, I got hers as well as my own.” Somewhere along the line, Beccy’s claims had hardened Kate, made resisting the sting of tears absolutely essential.

Mustering nonchalance, Kate rolled her eyes. “She’s not as religious as you think she is.”

“Please, she’s basically the Virgin Mary.”

Kate’s throat tightened. She reached for her coffee.

“You haven’t mentioned her much this week.” Beccy pinched a ring of dark red lipstick from her straw. “Or, at all.”