Come on, Anna. Be better than this. Do better than this. I felt like I’d failed at everything else here. And now was I going to just opt out by leaving him waiting? Wondering? At the very least I could acknowledge what he’d done for me. Respond so he knew I’d seen it. So he could have some closure.

I put my thumbs on the screen, typed into the message window. Was Nassim watching my typing dots, wondering what was coming? I wrote and erased, and wrote and erased, and in the end, it turned out the only thing to say to him was what I had already said, but this time, in response to everything he had just said, it meant what it was supposed to mean. I wrote it, paused, looked at it, and then pressed send.

I’m sorry Nassim. I’m sorry I wasn’t better. I’m really so sorry.

I watched as Nassim’s typing signal came up for a moment, just a moment, and then it disappeared. And then nothing else. No more words. There was nothing else for us to say.

Tears welled in my eyes. Basil put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You okay?’

I stood and threw his hand off. ‘For fuck’s sake, Basil.’ And I yelled at him right there in the street. ‘Why the fuck are you always everywhere I am? Don’t you have a fucking life?’ And I tried not to see his poor shocked face as I turned and walked back inside the clinic.

Half an hour later I was sitting with Bette in the old car in the doctor’s surgery car park. The engine had caught only once, briefly, as I turned the key, and then it had died, not to be revived again. Bette sat and waited, as though it was only a matter of time before I solved the problem for her. I wanted to yell at her, to tell her to stop being so useless and come up with a solution herself, to act, somehow, at something, anything. I was shocked at myself. At the violence inside me. I put my head on the steering wheel and tried to breathe.

There was the sound of a knuckle rapping on the window next to my head. Leonie’s face was there, and when I opened the door she said, ‘Car trouble?’

‘Yes.’ I could see Basil hanging around behind Leonie, holding bags of shopping.

‘Well, I’m heading your way now, but I’ve only got the ute – so I could take Bette. Basil’s bike is in the back. He can ride home later. But you’d have to find your own way. The dreaded bus. Maybe you kids could hang out for a bit.’

Leonie stood and went around to help Bette out of the car. I felt defeated. My voice, when I spoke, sounded weak and thin to my ears. ‘But I have to go and study,’ I said.

Basil leaned his head into my window where Leonie’s had been. ‘Don’t go and study,’ he said softly, and he put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Come on, I’ll cheer you up.’ And he held out his hand to me. ‘I’ll give you a dink,’ he said.