‘Can they spare you at work?’

‘They’ll have to.’

‘Are you sure this is a good time for you?’

No, she is not sure. She doesn’t want to be in Sydney, where there are empty hours to fill and people she hasn’t seen in a decade. She wants to sleep and work and hide.

‘I’m sure,’ she says. ‘It’s about time.’

Rain falls hard over London as the sun comes up. Isla lies on the surface of sleep, refusing the dreams that want her to be four years old again, walking through rooms that are familiar but not home. She starts the day, dresses herself. Her dad’s voice is loud and scared in her head, playing on a loop, acquiring a strain of panic. She makes coffee, tells herself she does not need anything stronger. She is over-thinking this whole thing. He is not lying.

2

Sydney, 1966

Mandy supposed Steve must always have opened his gifts this way. A ham-fisted rip-and-crunch of the paper; a quick kiss and a ‘thanks darl’, and that was it. No ceremony. No comment on the way she’d lined up the stripes on the gift wrap. He did appreciate the gift itself, mind, so long as it was something practical that he could use or wear, that wasn’t too different from anything he already owned.

Nothing new there, except Mandy found it aggravating this year, and wanted to thump him. She knew she was being unreasonable. Why would he notice the paper? He was the same man she’d been married to for seven years. And it was daft that she’d done that with the stripes. She’d become a woman who was uptight about gift wrap. How had that happened?

She sat beside him on the bed and turned her gift from him around in her hands. A bigger box than she’d expected. She picked at a piece of tape with her thumbnail and peeled it, slowly, free of the gift wrap. She did the same with the tape at the other side of the box.

‘Why don’t you just rip it, Mand? We’ll still be here for New Year’s at this rate.’

She gave him a look. ‘I feel like taking my time.’

Turning the box onto its side, she reached her hand under the wrapping and managed to slide it free, without any tearing of the paper or damage to its hollow structure. Steve picked up the paper, as if to crush it, but thought better of it and put it back where it was.

‘A watch!’ She hadn’t expected that. ‘You got me a watch?’

He sat up straight, arranging the pillows behind him, and smiled. ‘Let’s see it on you.’

She fixed the tiny buckle and turned the watch so its face was centred. It was designed for a woman with bony wrists. A frail, skeletal woman who couldn’t lift the weight of anything bigger. It made her arm look huge and muscular. She hated it.

‘There. Fits nicely. Just snug,’ she said. First lie of the day: ‘I love it.’ Second lie: ‘What a nice surprise.’