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A warm sensation seeped into my veins. “My pleasure.”

She shot me a smile, then turned to head down the driveway. “Wait,” I called, hating to see her leave.

She stopped and turned back.

“When do you want me?” I blurted out.

She grinned in response to my question, and I realized how it might be misconstrued. I rubbed the back of my neck. “That is, I mean, when do you want me to come round to start the fire refurb?”

“Ah,” she said, nodding in exaggerated understanding to take the mickey out of my misspeaking. “How about this weekend? If you’re free, of course.”

I shot her a wry smile, shoving my hands into my pockets. “This weekend it is.”

She gave me a wave, then bent down to pet Dave. “See you later, Dave T Dog.” She glanced back at me with a grin. I liked that nickname. It was like Dave’s gangsta alter ego and made me imagine him in big, old-​school sunglasses with a chunky chain around his neck.

I watched her as she walked down the drive, across the street, and to her front door, standing there with a soft smile on my face.

18

Nisa

I STRETCHED MY arms over my head, attempting to straighten out the multitude of cricks no doubt brought on by my list of tensions. Number one, husband buggered off and found a new woman and now having a baby. Number two, I inadvertently (and stupidly) started a small fire in my house, necessitating a trip to the hospital for both me and my poor neighbor. And three, my bloody car was dead. Rona had had to give me a lift into work this morning. The tow truck driver had at least gotten my car to the garage though, so that was something. I was still waiting to hear what the damage would be, in financial terms.

Kerr’s friend Greg was taking a look at it personally, which filled me with confidence. It occurred to me that being reassured by a recommendation from Kerr Murdoch was not something I thought I would ever experience. I also noted that my feud with Kerr was no longer on my mental list of woes. In a short forty-​eight hours he had become what oddly, but definitely, felt like an ally.

I stood from my chair in the break room. Time to go and check on Anna before I got on with the afternoon’s tasks. Just then my phone started to ring with a call from my dad. I hesitated, but then figured I’d better answer so that he didn’t keep trying me when I was in the middle of work.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hi, Nisa!”

“What can I do you for?”

There was a beat of hesitation, and my mother’s muffled voice was apparent in the background. It was quiet but I just made out her concerned voice saying, “Ask her how she is.”

“How are you?” my dad asked, sounding rather formal.

I smiled. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Mum’s muffled voice again. “No, ask her how she is specifically after the fire!”

He cleared his throat. “How are you after the fire, specifically?”

I suppressed a snort. Mum giving Dad instruction to call to check in wasn’t something new. Neither was her being in the background prompting him on what to say. I also knew for a fact that they had the exact same dynamic when he had to speak to the doctor about something. She would book the telephone appointment and then sit in the background and prompt Dad on what to say, even about his own bloody symptoms. It was a mystery whether he would be able to manage this task at all without her, or if he would be perfectly fine and it was all part of a tactic to appear incompetent so that his wife would do everything for him. Perhaps it had started off as a cover and then he had actually become incompetent over the years due to never exercising his own initiative. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

Mum delegating this sort of task to him was no doubt her way of trying to take a load off herself by getting him to do some of the tasks she was making her way through today. But then she felt she had to guide him through his allocated task while she undertook whatever she was doing (I imagined she was currently doing some housework in the background), so that in turn rendered the delegation pointless because she was pretty much still doing it all herself anyway.

It was a little unusual that she sounded concerned though. Normally it seemed that she just expected me to get on with everything with a stiff upper lip. Perhaps enlisting Dad to call wasn’t her taking the load off herself but rather her shying away from the task because she found it hard to show that she was worried about me. And it did lift my spirits a little to know she cared.

“I’m totally fine, Dad. No need to worry. I’d better get on now because I’m at work.”

He sounded relieved that he could now end the conversation and get off the phone. “Great stuff. See you soon, sweetheart.”

“Bye, Dad.”

I sighed affectionately, then set off for Anna’s room. I found that I looked forward to finding ten minutes to spend with her. She seemed to be making progress and was able to tell me a bit about what her house looked like, though she still couldn’t remember where it was. Her more lucid moments were still interspersed with very muddled ones, indicating that her delirium was still at play. But those more severe episodes of confusion were less frequent now.

“Afternoon, Anna,” I said as I pulled up a plastic chair to sit next to her.