‘Fine.’

‘Can I lift your hair there?’

The doctor stood and lifted the feathery white hair at the side of Bette’s head to reveal the greenish-yellow remnants of a bruise and a shiny pinkish scar through the middle. ‘Looks alright,’ said Geraldine. ‘Still dizzy?’

‘No.’

‘Did you have a fall, Grandma?’

‘No, love, something fell on me. Too many things stacked up high at our place.’

‘Well, that’s true,’ I said. ‘So what was it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. A crock-pot, an iron. Something.’

‘And your wrist?’ Geraldine said, checking her computer screen and then holding Bette’s little bird-boned wrist gently between her fingers.

‘Fine.’ Bette wiggled her hand.

‘And how are we going with those exercises for your fingers? Any movement back? Tinkling the ivories again? I heard you were quite the player back in the day.’

Bette seemed pleased. ‘Oh, not really. An amateur.’

‘That’s not what I heard,’ said Geraldine. ‘People rave about you at those dances.’

‘Well. Those days are behind me.’

Geraldine had Bette’s hands in hers again, gently bending the gnarled bulbous knuckles, feeling up and down the length of her fingers, curving them, like she was playing with the hands of a baby.

‘That one there’s still a problem, that index, it’s healed a bit wrong. You should have come earlier.’

‘Ah well. Done now.’

Bette looked down at her hands, gnarled and curled and knobbly with arthritis. I frowned. I looked at the doctor, who was frowning too, at Bette. And then Geraldine sighed, huffed really, quickly expelling the moment along with the air from her lungs. ‘Alright,’ she said, ‘let’s take your temperature and look at that arm.’

The doctor quickly pressed a thermometer into Bette’s ear until it beeped, and then unwrapped Bette’s arm, making tsk-ing sounds, but ultimately approving of Leonie’s work. She picked up the phone. ‘Tanya, I’m sending Bette down to you for a new dressing and your expertise.’ She hung up the phone. ‘Alright, Bette, off you go, end of the hall, Tanya’s waiting. Nothing she hasn’t seen before, and she’s a very clever nurse, she’s all about wounds. Anna, would you have a minute to hang back?’

I almost hadn’t understood what she’d said, asking me to stay, it was so tacked-on and unexpected. And then, for a moment an irrational panic flared: she must know. She must have a doctor’s secret way of seeing a pregnancy when it walked into her clinic.

That was ridiculous, obviously, but my cheeks flared red anyway as I tried not to think about it. The door closed behind Bette and I sat down again. Geraldine waited until the receptionist had walked-and-talked Bette away down the hall and then she turned from her computer to face me.

‘So you’re here to stay with your grandparents?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been before?’

‘No.’

‘Never been before?’

‘No.’

Geraldine tapped her pen on the desk and looked out the window and then back to me. ‘So how do you think Bette burned her arm?’