‘Everything okay?’ I asked Mum. ‘Bette alright? Did you two fight?’

‘No. No. The opposite. I think she wants to harass the clerk in there. Or something. You know. Hear what they have to say about Danny first-hand. Stand up for him a bit. She’s never really had the chance to be that kind of parent before.’

‘Better late than never, I say!’ said Basil, both enthusiastically and inappropriately, and Mum turned and looked at him properly. ‘Basil,’ she said. And she held her arms open for a hug from him. Basil actually looked a little awkward, so Mum grabbed him and drew him in and said, ‘What, too cool to hug your old aunt?’ And then she held him out from her so she could get a better look at him. ‘You look so much like him,’ she said, and he looked at his feet and scuffed the dirt with his shoes.

‘So what’s your plan, Cathy? With Danny?’ Leonie asked. Basil and I grew instantly quiet.

Mum looked awkward. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I can –’

‘He’s still in there, Cathy,’ Leonie said. ‘He’s still him. You just have to look a bit harder. Spend more time. But he’s not lost. He’s there.’

Mum nodded stiffly and Leonie put a gentle arm briefly around her shoulders, and then began to move all my things from the boot of her car into Mum’s back seat. Finally Bette came back outside, looking tired, but changed somehow. Determined.

‘We can’t see him now, they don’t know when. But his lawyer is with him.’ She stood up straighter and looked around at all of us. At her family. ‘Coffee somewhere before you go?’ she said.

But Mum put her arm around me. ‘I don’t think so, Mum,’ she said. Bette looked crestfallen, but Mum said, ‘I just need to get my girl home. She needs a bit of looking after. And her boyfriend told me this morning that he is missing her terribly.’ I snapped a look at Mum – she had spoken to Nassim?

Cathy stepped forward and embraced Bette. ‘I’ll come back, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’ll come back soon, I promise. We’re gonna help you out, okay? Leonie’s going to start things off, and we’ll come down when Anna’s finished her exams.’

Bette stepped forward and hugged me tightly. ‘Goodbye, you wonderful, brilliant girl,’ she said.

Leonie and Mum shared an awkward hug. A friendship there, definitely, but built from circumstance and difficulty and loss. Too much similar pain, and the styles of dealing with it too wildly different. I wondered if lightness might be something they might find together, if things might change from here on in. Leonie turned and hugged me then, not an awkward hug at all. ‘Good luck with all your medicine stuff, kiddo,’ she said. ‘Let us know how it all goes, hey?’

‘I will,’ I said. There was a look between us that I took to mean she was happy we were niece and aunty now, and that she wanted me to know that I had her in my life now, forever. At least, I thought that was what it was, and the possibility of it filled me with such happiness. But of course exchanging words to that effect with Leonie was simply unthinkable. ‘I’ll definitely let you know,’ I said, with as much warmth and meaning as I could muster.