me on the school run? The mums will all be there, you could bring your flyers.’
‘Oh.’ The man bit his thumbnail. ‘We usually try to book people in to an appointment then and there. For the commission. But OK, sure. I’ll come.’
‘Great!’ The burst of sound surprised them both. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Sam.’ Mandarin peel lay scattered on the table, cottony with pith.
‘I’m Dorothy.’ She looked in her bag for the keys but it was weeks since she had taken them out and the bag was full of rubbish, receipts and bus tickets and old tissues, soft as she sifted through them. She dumped the contents on the table and snatched a tampon and a crumby, lidless lip-balm out of sight. ‘God, we’re going to be late.’
Sam pointed to the copper tangle half hidden by a folded map for the family walk at the sculpture park, a walk they had abandoned early when the sky began to draw away from her and she needed to lie down and hug the earth. ‘Keys?’
‘Thank you. I’ll just be a minute.’ In the bathroom she locked the door, but the small orange prescription bottle was empty.
The air out on the wet path came as a shock. Thin trees shimmered against the sharp sky. Sweat covered Dorothy’s body, under her bra, down the backs of her legs above the weatherproof boots that were stiff with lack of wear. She paused by the letterbox, one hand on the fence post, Hannah strapped froggily into her buggy, covered in the striped fleece blanket that was crusted in spots with old milk. It was possible Dot was going to be sick. The front door was still open but if she went to close it she’d slip back into the force field of the house. ‘Can you shut the door?’ she called to Sam, and turned away and sang to the baby a little.
‘Did you stop teaching when you had children?’ Sam asked, catching them up near the corner. Dot adjusted her step to match his. He walked slowly and time was running out to get to the school gates.
‘We might be too late for the other mums,’ she said. ‘I think we need to step it up.’
They rounded the bend of the quiet street and got onto the main road. A car passed, close and fast, and Dorothy flinched. ‘Do you mind if we –’ she said to Sam, and dropped behind him to walk on the inside of the footpath. Other people walked in and out of shops and that woman with the pink hair was waiting at the pedestrian crossing with her ferret on a lead. Still there, still crazy. The colour lifted Dot’s feet and carried her. ‘What does your wife do at the bank?’
‘She’s a teller.’
‘Does she like it?’
‘Yes, actually. She does.’
‘Do you have an iPod?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t like how if you put the ear-buds in before you turn the music on you can hear the blood pulsing in your ears. Not so much hear it as feel it.’ She made the noise, doof doof.
He looked at her and shook his head. ‘Sorry, I don’t get what you’re saying.’
‘I just need to talk.’ She really needed to breathe, too, but if she thought about breathing it would become impossible, voluntary, and they couldn’t have that. In a low voice she vocalised the words from all the text she read, advertising hoardings and car names, Trail Blazer, Supa Deal, He Wants You, It’s Back!!!.
The neighbourhood gleamed under a slick layer of rain, and the air carried damp trees, traffic fumes, dry-cleaning chemicals. They passed the greengrocer with bright buckets of gerberas and lisianthus out the front, and the Turkish café and the fetish shop and the newsagent and the local councillor’s office and turned another corner and the street was lined with parked cars and a long barred fence chained with bicycles, and reached the zebra crossing that led to the school gates. Adults milled in the schoolyard. ‘You live close,’ Sam said.
‘Yes, we’re lucky.’
Afternoons were apparently just the same as ever – scuddy clouds, leaves flipping, the community faces flushed and cheery, thick hair pitched in the wind, sturdy legs straddling linen shopping bags packed with crackers and fruit for the playground. At first the faces were strange, every one, and then the crowd began to split into individual blobs and features, animated mouths, eyes, Kate’s horsy teeth, Fleur’s freckles, people Dorothy knew. She steered Sam towards some women from the book club she had