from the big school and was sitting on a skateboard at the top of the slide. ‘Grace!’ The girl ignored her. The skateboard tipped forward, front wheels in the air over the steep metal trough. ‘Grace!’ Dorothy ran to the slide, legs chafing, her voice low and betraying panic, as though her daughter was an unleashed Rottweiler. ‘Get off there now. Get off!’
Grace scowled and pushed the skateboard down the slide. At the bottom it shot and skidded along the asphalt. She slid down after it, controlled, stately. ‘Jesus, Mum, I wasn’t going to do it.’
Raindrops spotted the playground as though shaken from the trees. The sky condensed. A large incongruous seabird lifted itself from the asphalt into flight, legs hanging heavy beneath it. More rain fell, and steadier, and mothers and children crowded to get out the safety gate. Sam brought the baby to the buggy and settled her in while Dot shook open the folded rain cover. She domed it over Hannah and the baby cried, as she always did, her little hands reaching for her mother from behind the clear plastic sheet, outraged that she had become removed by this layer, made blurry. Sam produced a broken umbrella from his plastic bag and held its stingray tatters over them all, pushing the buggy with his other hand as they made their way, centurions in turtle formation, through the security gate and along the street. Huddled beneath the waterproof fabric, Grace and Amy in front splashing water from the puddles, this kind man at her side, Dorothy’s heart opened and she felt she could stay outside in all weathers, walk for miles. The rain, the clear plastic, the wet leaves – all were concrete, touchable, safe.
At the front door, Dot shooed the girls inside and rocked the buggy over the threshold, unclicking the domes on the plastic cover and pulling Hannah into her arms. Sam hesitated.
‘Do you want to wait out the rain again?’ she asked.
He doffed the umbrella. ‘You did have an umbrella,’ she said, as though naming the object for the first time. She reached out and softly pinched the rim, where a spoke bobbled through the nylon. ‘Sam, thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
For a moment longer they stood grinning at each other.
‘I’ll talk to my husband about the car. You could come back and I’ll sign the forms. Make an appointment for an engine check or whatever it is mechanics do.’
‘Can we watch TV?’ Grace in the small entranceway, tracking mud over the floor.
‘Grace! Shoes off! Help your sister.’
Sam said, ‘Yes, I’ll come back. Thank you for the fruit.’
She was distracted, crouching down to put Amy’s slippers on, and when she looked up he was running through the rain, his heels lifting behind him.
‘Thank you,’ she called, and he waved, the umbrella flapping above him, shattered raindrops spraying from it, every which way.
The next day while the baby was sleeping there was another knock on the door. Dorothy shut the oven door to keep the heat from escaping, and ran to answer it. A woman with a clipboard introduced herself, waving the photo ID on her lanyard as though it were a hypnotist’s watch chain. ‘I’m from the council. We’re doing a survey about neighbourhood feeling, the sense you have of belonging in this area. Do you have twenty minutes now or should I come back?’
She ticked the 25–39 age box. Her last year in that bracket. The urgent need came over her to make the most of it. Yeah! She beamed at the council worker, wanted to throw a hand up for a high-five.
‘Are you satisfied with this neighbourhood as a place to live?’
‘What is your experience of road safety in this neighbourhood?’
‘Do you have access to physical and mental health facilities in this neighbourhood?’
‘Do you consider most of your friends to come from this neighbourhood?’
‘Can you describe for me, demonstrating with boundaries on this map, your sense of where the neighbourhood begins and ends?’
There was a mechanic’s on the back street behind the bank. And another on the edge of the playing fields by the adventure playground. Everywhere she walked now, Dot looked for those large roller doors, the open squares of darkness within, the dank air that smelled so headily of petrol, cubicle offices with glass windows like the graphed pages of Grace’s maths book, men in overalls, turning pads, hydraulic lifts, oily floors.
12. Take It to the Next Level
Driving home from the campground Andrew said, ‘I think I need glasses.’ Their children and