Isla looked down at the steps leading to the front yard and tried to remember if she’d trodden on the wrong tile yesterday. Maybe she’d brushed a crack with the tip of her sandal. Her new sandals were too big and they made her feet heavy. She wished she had been more careful.

‘There you are,’ Daddy said, standing at the door behind her. He looked like something was hurting in his head. He crouched down and pinched her cheek. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Good girl.’

She reached out and he tipped his head forward to let her move her hand across his short hair. She felt his soft skin and his hard bones.

‘Got to run,’ he said.

‘Are you going to put the roof on today?’

He laughed. ‘Maybe.’

‘Hope it fits on right.’

‘Me too.’

Daddy turned to wave at the gate, like always. She waited on the verandah till he turned the corner. Bay Street was very quiet now. She finished her toast and wiped her fingers on her pyjama shirt. Three doors down, Mr Blunt was out on the footpath with his shears, snipping at his hedge. He would have no hedge left before long, Mandy always said, and then he’d need a new way to stickybeak at all the neighbours. But you had to go easy on him because his wife was dead.

‘Has he gone?’ Mummy shouted from inside the house.

‘Yes,’ Isla shouted back.

‘Good. Come inside.’

Isla found her mum in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her wet hair was loose down her back and her dress was only zipped up halfway. She was looking at an envelope full of money: different sizes and colours of notes.

‘What’s that for?’

Mummy patted the space next to her on the bed. ‘We’re going to do something together today.’

‘I don’t want to go shopping.’

‘That’s not it.’ She patted the bed again. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down beside me?’

Isla did not move. She had a bad feeling, looking at Mummy on the bed.

‘How would you like to go in an aeroplane?’ Mummy smiled in a pretend way. ‘What do you think?’

‘Is Daddy coming?’

‘No, darling. Just us.’

Isla tried to speak but the bad feeling was big in her neck. Her mum stood and reached around to pull her zipper up at the back, turning in front of the mirror to look at herself sideways. She wore her yellow sundress, patterned with daisies, the one Isla had always liked. Today the daisies were stretched wide over her belly.

‘I picked out a dress for you to wear,’ Mummy said. She helped Isla climb out of her pyjamas. ‘A special dress for a special day.’

Isla lifted her arms up and her mum put the dress over her head, buttoned it at the back and stood her in front of the mirror. She knew this was one of the dresses that Andrea Walker had grown out of. It was red and white and it made her feel like Andrea was here in the room, showing off about school and her two-wheeler bike. She didn’t like looking at herself in the dress. She wished her mum was going to work, so she could go to Mandy’s for an ordinary day, wearing her swimmers and a hat.