“I’m making tea,” I said. So Trevor, in that Pavlovian, Maritime way, got comfortable.

“You know that thing you said about me bullying your mom,” said Trevor, as I placed a steaming mug in front of him. “That hurt my feelings.”

I sat down across from him, filling my own mug from the teapot. “I apologize for that.”

“Someone tell you that?”

“No,” I said.

“That Paki across the street?”

“I was just being a bitch,” I told him. “Trying to upset you. I’m really sorry.”

“You were talking to Bestlife,” Trevor decided, nodding. “You wanna talk bitches. That bitch in the front office had it in for me from day one.”

“I don’t like them either,” I said. “We’re not using them anymore.”

The moment after I said this, blood rushed into my face. At first I didn’t even know why. Wait, I thought, as my brain caught up to what my nervous system had already realized. It wasn’t actually true we weren’t using Bestlife anymore. Because I hadn’t cancelled them yet. I’d been intending to, after Eleanor Mallon’s call, but I hadn’t had the chance. Kelli was still booked for baths, two afternoons a week. Meaning someone from Bestlife should be arriving — when? What day was today?

“You all right?” said Trevor. “Tea go down the wrong chute?”

I put my cup down and started nodding, coughing. I waved a hand in front of my face.

Trevor got up and poured me a glass of water from the tap. I took several long, uninterrupted gulps so I could think. Kelli started Gorsebrook yesterday. Was it yesterday? Yesterday seemed like months away. But it was yesterday. And yesterday was . . . a Tuesday. Therefore today was Wednesday. Meaning today was not bathing day. Mondays and Thursdays. Those were Kelli’s Bestlife afternoons. Which meant no one was coming until tomorrow. There’d be no one till tomorrow afternoon.

33

The silent hours dragged. We could have been on the moon, it felt like, or in an underground bunker with all of civilization nuked to smithereens above our heads. No one came to the door all day. My phone, wherever it was stashed, didn’t ring once, and neither did Trevor’s. Sometimes a car would honk in the distance. Sometimes we’d hear a muffled neighbour calling to another down the street. Once, a couple of dogs on leashes got into it briefly, and we were all startled by the sound of their frantic, feral yelps and snarls tearing up the afternoon silence. Trevor and I went to the window and stood beside Kelli to look. Eventually the dogs got yanked apart, tense human apologies were exchanged, and things became quiet again.

With Trevor in control of the house, he could now do and say what he liked and what he mostly wanted to do was rhapsodize about Irene. There was an element of compulsion to this process — of self-soothing. If he could convince me of their happiness together, of their mutual devotion, he could believe in it fully himself. He wouldn’t have to yell and bluster anymore. He would banish all doubt from both of our minds. My job — or should I say my function, since “job” makes it sound as if I had a choice — was to sit absorbing this onslaught of bullshit until, essentially, it wore me down enough to at least pretend I agreed with it.