of their father, a young man. Behind Eve the front door opened. Daniel burst into the hall and star-jumped for the camera, tongue sticking out, skinny-ribbed, his knees big lumps on sticklike legs.
Dorothy snuck a look at Andrew. His eyes were closed, head back on the pillows, his breath loud and heavy. The image on the screen cut to an outdoor public swimming pool where light blazed on the surface of the water. A teenage Michael ploughed through with a powerful stroke. They watched, mesmerised, until a few seconds later the image fizzed out in a power cut. Another pop came when Donald drew the cork from a bottle of wine. ‘May as well,’ he said, ‘seeing as charades is fucking inevitable.’ Dorothy lit candles through the house. She recited the names. One for each wick as it caught alight.
Amy sat next to a mound of broad bean husks, and a dark, glossy pile of silverbeet and plump tomatoes from the garden. Dot looked in the pantry. Rice and chickpeas. Her daughter shook the pale-brown china bowl with broad beans in it as though prospecting for river gold. ‘Never looks as much once you’ve shelled them.’
Dot pulled the tablet towards her to look at that recipe site. A cold wave broke through her as the resume bar progressed along the screen – Daniel’s web page – she hadn’t closed it down. Now the surf report was up and who knew where he had gone. The page wasn’t there. Daniel free, at large in the world.
‘Amy,’ she said, ‘is this you?’ But when she looked over Amy had gone, a bowl of pale green beans, and Hannah leaned on the kitchen table, reading her old witchcraft manual. ‘ “Widdershins,” ’ she sounded, ‘ “Widdershins.” ’
The house creaked and began to turn.
‘What, darling?’ Dorothy said.
Hannah looked at her. ‘There’s someone calling.’
Dorothy said, ‘Stop!’ And although Daniel said, quietly, from Rio, Come on, darling, that wasn’t the word, everything did.
After a fifth and final goodbye hug, Dot drove the rental car around the corner, parked it outside a university building, held onto the steering wheel and sobbed for Hannah’s small room there at the hostel, a room that to her eyes still looked empty without shelves of books, though there was the band poster she’d brought from home, the big plastic eyes on the stuffed toy puppy Hannah had had since she was a baby and her brave smile as she sat perched on the edge of the single bed, back straight and knees together as though good posture was the key to independence. Dorothy growled through clenched teeth and shook the steering wheel. There was a loud knock on the car window, and she startled. The boy was maybe twenty, with wild hair and cheeks that were rosy all the way down to his chin. She unwound the window and took her glasses off to wipe her eyes.
‘You all right?’
Dorothy wiped a sleeve over her face. ‘Yes, thanks. I just dropped my youngest daughter off for her first semester. I’m fine.’
A guitar was slung across his back. He adjusted the strap. ‘Yeah, my folks lost their shit pretty bad too. Thought you might have been robbed or something.’
Dorothy smiled. ‘Thank you. I’m in therapy.’
The young man laughed as though she was joking, then lifted his head, a response to some whistle only he could hear, and in the rear-view mirror she watched him lope over the road to his gathered friends.
At the maternity home she set up the charcoals and the glitter dust, all the art therapy doodahs, while one of the teenagers painted Jo’s fingernails and Carla gelled her hair. Jo drew a line inside her lower eyelid with kohl pencil and sighed, satisfied at what she saw in the pocket mirror. The gesture was reminiscent of a teenage Eve, only Jo was eight and a half months pregnant. Through the steel-framed windows came the kissing noises of insects in the courtyard, its gravelled surface already dried and laced with dust.
‘It’s hot today,’ said Dot. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her ribs as she pinned Jo’s ‘portrait of a future self’ to the wall next to the printing screens. The girl had drawn her whole body, no longer pregnant, holding hands with a child of about three. She’d detailed the Gothic font tattoos over her breastbone, and she was wearing her Dickies and wifebeater, and there was no man in the picture.