When the floor was mopped and the poo was gone and the breakfast dishes stacked and dried and put away, Bette put the kettle on. ‘Thank you, dear,’ she said, sitting. ‘You didn’t really have to do all of that, you know.’

I let that pass. Obviously someone did.

Bette poured tea, and I said, ‘Grandma, would you mind? I have some things I need to do,’ and she waved me away with a flapping hand. I took the brimming cup into Mum’s old bedroom and placed it on a box, closed the door behind me, as much as I could, and sat on the edge of the bed. I sat. I just sat.

What was I doing here?

All that movement. All that momentum.

To find myself here. Here.

In my mother’s old life.

16 January 1996

The day before that day

Cathy remembered it like this.

She had been sitting with Becky in her bedroom trying to decide whether to smoke. Ridiculous, in hindsight, but there it was. They were discussing her new bedspread – a light blue crochet cover from Miss Shop at Myer that Cathy had saved up for and ordered in, and that had looked all vintage hippie-cool in the magazine but then somehow managed to look just too country-style and dowdy on her own bed. But that was what she had really been thinking about: whether or not to smoke.

Becky had come over to watch her try on her new bathers. Cathy had seen them in Miss Shop and they’d reminded her of a photo she’d seen of Winona Ryder, so she brought her mum back with her and pleaded and Bette gave in and bought them for her. They had low-waisted black bottoms and a red tartan bikini top. Cathy wasn’t quite sure what look she was giving off with them, or what it might mean. But Winona had got Johnny Depp when she was only seventeen – Cathy’s age – and when he was a grown-up-and-gorgeous twenty-six. Cathy certainly wasn’t trying to turn the heads of the local seventeen-year-old boys. In any case, even though it hadn’t lasted between Johnny and Winona, the tartan top made her tits look nice, so that was something.

‘Will you be allowed out in that?’ Becky said, when Cathy had got them on and was striking various Dolly-cover poses around her bedroom.

‘I dunno,’ said Cathy brightly. ‘What if I don’t ask?’

Cathy was an expert at doing what she liked, despite rules and opposition.

The window was open, not only because it was so damn hot, but also because Bette had been through the house in her usual neat-as-a-pin, nothing-out-of-place cleaning whirlwind and Cathy’s room stank of Domestos. It was the perfect smoking moment really – it was dark outside, Becky was over, and Cathy’s parents were out. But whether to smoke or not was actually a difficult question now because smoking had been cool, but it seemed like maybe it wasn’t cool anymore; it was right on that edge where Cathy couldn’t quite tell. Madonna smoked in Desperately Seeking Susan, which they had watched last night with the girls at Jennifer’s retro film night, but Cathy also read somewhere that Madonna didn’t like smoking, that she was just posing.