had their glasses warm, from the tap. Ruth picked up the brown-paper bags of bulbs from the kitchen table and peered inside. She’d been confused by the hemisphere change. She often messed up dates, Hank laughed, it was tiresome, most of their friends were used to making allowances.
‘Just last week we arrived at a cocktail party, all,’ he gestured elegantly down the front of his shirt as if to say gussied up, ‘and the host and hostess are sitting there in T-shirts and jeans, super relaxed, feeding their two-year-old grandchild her dinner. Well, are we early, we ask? No. We’re a day late. A whole day. Because she doesn’t ever pay attention.’
Everyone laughed. Hank was nervous, Dorothy realised, and the tension in her chest relaxed a little. She showed them the shared bathroom and Donald’s room, the small view across the vege garden. She had been going to put lavender in a vase. ‘Are you happy sharing? There’s Hannah’s room but we’re painting it, sorry, I thought we’d be finished by now. The fumes.’ The house must be modest, compared to what they were used to.
‘Do you have a stretcher bed?’ Hank asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
They dragged it out from under Hannah’s bed, and wiped the metal bars free of dust and a few long blonde hairs. Eve’s daughter, Louisa, had used it last, when she’d begun nursing college. Now she lived at the hostel. Getting in to classes from here every day cost too much in gas. ‘I hope you’ll be comfortable.’
‘How many kids do you have?’
‘Four, just the younger two live here and they’re off camping with friends. We’re on our own!’
‘Practice run for the empty nest, hey?’
But it was too late, she had disappeared down the hall to rescue the bulbs and chill them.
She took a pot of cottage cheese from the fridge and misjudged the lid’s grip and it fell to the floor, splattering white globs up the freezer door and over the orange tiles. Andrew would say good riddance to high cholesterol but the waste made her so frustrated. Her hand as she wiped it up looked like somebody else’s, the skin cellophane-shiny in places and spotted, the fingers red and swollen at the knuckles, the nails beginning to ridge. The bench-top helped her heave upright. That cut in the crease of her right index finger had opened up again. She ran tap water over it, stingingly. Good.
They ate outside, as the light faded, and the clustered ox-eye daisies closed purple undersides to the day. Turned out Hank had a friend here, an American screenwriter who spent summers in the suburb across the valley, where house lights were gleaming through the dusk. Dot forced herself to meet Ruth’s eye when either of them were talking but even then she quickly looked away, and everything existed flat at the front of her face: normality as a performance.
‘Where’s Andrew?’ asked Ruth.
‘Oh, he’s about somewhere, sorry, he gets a bit brusque when he’s on an illustration deadline.’ That was how he called it, although the deadlines were self-imposed.
‘He’s still in IT?’
‘No.’ He was never in IT. She let it go. ‘Last year he was made redundant. Fifty-six, you know? I mean it’s happened to plenty of people we know but it’s meant to stay in that category of things that happen to other people. Turns out we didn’t have the magic password.’
‘That’s the thing with the unexpected knocks,’ said Hank. ‘They’re unexpected.’
‘Yes. Redundancy’s pretty awful. That quiet exit.’
‘Well.’ Ruth slapped at a mosquito on her calf, and Dorothy passed her the repellent. ‘I’m sure he has his hobbies, no?’
‘He wouldn’t call his painting a hobby! I mean, he will make money from it eventually . . . it’s hard for everyone.’ She felt a constriction of guilt. ‘He has to lock himself away. Don’t take it personally.’
‘Of course not.’
‘How are your girls?’
‘Horsy. Twinsy.’
Over the hills the air was yellow, a floating yellow cloak. ‘Have you got photos? I’d love to see.’
‘Your kids?’
‘Great.’ Dorothy drank some more wine. ‘The usual teenage stuff. I spent last Saturday night driving round Hannah’s friends’ houses to find what party she was at, had to haul her out of a bedroom with some boy. You know what she says to me? “Romeo and Juliet were fourteen.” ’
‘Smart kid,’ said Hank.
‘Not by any stretch.’
Ruth smiled. ‘I remember Lee waiting up for you and Daniel to come home. She’d sit in the kitchen and run upstairs to bed when she heard the car pulling up.’