been her fault Amy was so ill when she was born. They were still only inches away from that having happened. She let the fear in, sweating, and then it passed.
Dot was going to make coffee when Grace came out of the bedroom, pulling at the sticky tabs on the sides of her nappy. ‘Morning, darling,’ she said.
Grace dropped the nappy on the floor and walked on, naked. Dot picked it up and found a plastic shopping bag for it and tied a knot in the top and shoved it to the bottom of the kitchen bin, past the scrapings of last night’s salad and spaghetti. She went back to the veranda and saw Grace walking straight towards the pool. ‘Grace,’ she called. The child sat down on the edge and tipped herself forward and disappeared.
Under the water Grace sat cross-legged on the bottom of the pool, her face a surprised O, her body shimmering and pink. She was all Dot saw, just sitting there, chubby and wavering, as she lunged through the heavy water to reach her. Grace was easy to grip onto and they emerged together. Dot sat her on the edge and scraped herself out to sit next to her. Grace’s chest moved up and down. She was breathing. Dot clambered to her feet, her body very heavy, and lifted her daughter and held her upside down. She was breathing normally. There was nothing else to do. A towel was draped over a deckchair and she swaddled Grace in it and carried her to the veranda where they sat on the painted wooden floorboards, breathing. Dot’s eyes stung from the salt water. She wiped away the blood that ran from her calves, mixing with the pool water and threading down over her veined feet. Behind them the house was quiet.
‘The thing is,’ Evelyn said later from the pool, where she was breast-stroking lazy, sensual laps, ‘if you don’t get Grace’s behaviour under control she’s going to take it into kindy and school, and she’s going to have a real problem making friends.’
‘But she’s only like that with me.’
‘And you’re OK with that.’
‘No, but I am too tired to do anything about it.’ Jesus damn it. The baby was fine now, she wasn’t meant to play that card. Dorothy called over to the veranda, where Andrew had the baby on his hip. ‘Does she need a feed?’
‘How are you two going?’ Evelyn was giving her The Gaze, and Dot wondered how they had come this far. The urge to tell her sister about Daniel’s latest postcard was physical in her mouth, as though the words themselves were made of pebbles or candy, but she restrained it, knowing Eve didn’t like to hear news of him from her. His postcards, from Paris now, arrived like bullets in the post. Randomly, sometimes not for two or three months, then one a week, even two in a day, short notes, funny, pissed off, a simple update. Often the messages were so cryptic she doubted her ability to decipher the handwriting: Dozen oranges hurled at me today. Frank would approve. What mattered was not so much the message as the sending. From the other side of the world, speaking and dreaming in a different language, he still thought of her.
‘What about teaching?’ Evelyn asked.
‘Maybe. One day, yes. I mean, we need the money, but then we’d have to pay childcare and it basically costs as much as I would earn.’ She had a gut feeling that Amy wouldn’t be her last baby; babies were what she wanted, and Andrew too, but paying for them was the trick. He had vowed to get out of the polytech’s caretaking division and find an art gallery by the end of the year. Even if he sold a painting. Just one. ‘Evie,’ Dot said. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’
Her sister leaned her chin on her arms, which were folded over the edge of the pool, ghostly legs kicking slowly far beneath her. Water slicked her hair back from her face and you could see she was older, lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Evelyn and Nathan lived in the eastern suburbs, with a sea view, in a bigger house. It was the way things were. ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘Nathan’s been so angry since his father died.’
‘Really? I haven’t seen it.’
‘Well, I know Andrew’s got his mood issues.’
Dorothy lay on her stomach, propped up on an elbow, close, and reached the other hand into the