The Glad Shout

by Alice Robinson

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

After a catastrophic storm destroys Melbourne, Isobel flees to higher ground with her husband and young daughter. Food and supplies run low, panic sets in and still no help arrives. To protect her daughter, Isobel must take drastic action.The Glad Shout is an extraordinary novel of rare depth and texture. Told in a starkly visual and compelling narrative, this is a deeply moving homage to motherhood and the struggles faced by women in difficult times.

Release date: February 26, 2019

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

1

Jostled and soaked, copping an elbow to her ribs, smelling wet wool and sweat and the stony creek scent of damp concrete, Isobel grips Shaun’s cold fingers and clamps Matilda to her hip, terrified of losing them in the roiling crowd. The grounds of the stadium-turned-Emergency Relief Centre are still marked with turf paint. Within hours it will no doubt turn to mud, but for now, as families surge up through the bleachers, the playing field still looks pristine. Floodwaters have not yet breached the sandbags outside, but there is water in the street and it’s rising.

In the din of the crowd, with Matilda wailing in her ear for a drink, Isobel stands with Shaun in the cavernous space behind the stadium bleachers, where overpriced merchandise and greasy food were once sold during games. The generator is still working and the lights are on but Isobel knows that won’t last. Thankfully, the stadium has been built on high ground; an imposing structure, its design had caused quite the kerfuffle when it was first proposed before she was born. Some folks had argued that it would cast too long a shadow over the houses and apartment blocks on its south side, by the river, but it went on to get built anyway.

‘We made it,’ Shaun says too quietly, and Isobel is touched by this weak attempt at optimism. He tries to smile at her but fails, the expression twitching off his face. Around them people shout, clutching at the sleeves of ragtag officials: volunteer aid workers and medics in the dingy scrubs of the big city charity hospitals, some sent by their workplaces, others here of their own volition to help. If Isobel wasn’t so dazed by it all she might cry at the sight of them – the comforting solidity of their professions.

Shoulder to shoulder, the workers move through the crowd, already looking exhausted and frantic, trying and failing to instate some kind of order as more and more people stagger in.

Shaun slides an arm around Isobel’s shoulders and they sag together, dumbstruck and dripping, with Matilda pressed between them. Now that they’re in the light Isobel notices a gash along one of Shaun’s angular cheeks, rough-edged and congealing.

‘Oh shit, you’re bleeding,’ she says. ‘Sweetheart, you’re really badly hurt!’ The collar of his shirt is soaked, thick and brown. In a train of thought she will cringe at later, furious with herself for being so naive, Isobel wonders fleetingly how she will go about getting the blood out of the fabric.

She tries to touch him, but he shivers out of reach. ‘Hang on,’ she protests, ‘come here will you, and let me look. How did it happen? You might need stitches on that.’ She can feel the tension in Shaun’s arm as she takes his elbow firmly in spite of his resistance.

‘I’m fine, Issy,’ he says, shaking her off. ‘There’re loads of folks here way worse than me. We should see if we can be useful.’

‘But, wait. You’re covered in blood, Shauno!’ Glancing at Matilda, she lowers her voice. It takes all her effort to quiet the shrill. ‘Let’s just sort you out before we go running into this particular burning building. Please?’ But he won’t meet her eye and she is suddenly afraid, has been frightened for hours of course, but the fear surfaces more strongly now, like a rising pulse. ‘Shouldn’t we see about registering ourselves, or something? What should we do? What do we need to do?’

Shaun bobs and ducks to keep her from touching him. But after a moment, he seems to think better of it and turns back, surprising her by cupping her face and tenderly smoothing back the long tendrils of hair sticking to her forehead in the heat. He often switches gears like this: quickly, mind over matter. Isobel finds it endearing, how hard Shaun works to overcome the deep instinct to shut down and pull away.

He says, ‘I’m really sorry, Issy, about the house.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she says, because it feels too much to say more, a thing so large she can’t fit it in her mouth. ‘What could you have done? The important thing is that we’re okay, isn’t it? Matilda’s fine!’ But there’s a thread of tension in her words, the knowledge that having the house has been a boon, a privilege they’ve enjoyed when so many others have been less lucky. She wants him to sit down and wrap her in his arms again, but he’s restless now, jazzed up by all the commotion and the adrenalin from the storm. She can feel the static coming off him, raising the hairs on her arms.

‘We should have been warned!’ he says suddenly, and she understands that the words are not meant for her, not really. ‘I just knew something like this was going to happen.’ He covers his face and peers out between fingers. ‘Look at all these poor bloody people.’ She should do something to comfort him, but she doesn’t want to talk about what they could have done differently, what they should have known. She wants to get them somewhere they can lie down, a burrow, somewhere they can hide away in the dark as if hibernating and pretend all of this isn’t happening.

The loudspeaker crackles overhead but no messages arrive. The cacophony in the space is deafening. People sprawl bleeding on makeshift stretchers. Others weep together and move dazedly through the crowd, shouldering each other, carrying sodden suitcases and garbage bags full of clothes and half-drowned animals in their arms. A man close by has a rooster tucked into the crook of his elbow. A little girl lies curled against the wall with her head on the ribs of her dog. An elderly woman with pink hair drifts past carrying a gilded birdcage. Inside it, budgies trill with alarm. Hurrying to keep abreast of her, an adult daughter hefts a heavy-looking oil painting in an ornate silver frame, screaming in the faces of those who dare brush against the precious object. Both of the daughter’s eyes are purpled with bruising. Broken nose, Isobel thinks instinctively, shivering. But it’s the relic that chills her. What a thing to save. Another, angrier, part of her is jealous; she has brought nothing from home but the clothes on her back.

Isobel turns to point the painting out to Shaun, but he’s pulling away to crouch down beside a teenaged boy sitting slumped with his back up against a concrete pillar. The boy’s T-shirt is a bloody wad of fabric pressed to the deep gash above his eye, the wound ragged and welling, an open zipper. The hollows of his naked collarbones brim with rust. With his chest bare, it’s easy to see how shallowly he’s breathing; one side of his torso is violently bruised, darkened to the colour of liver where the bones must be cracked.

‘Can I help you, mate?’ Shaun is murmuring. ‘That’s a nasty cut you’ve got there. You alone? Got anyone with you?’ Isobel notices the way Shaun sways, the slight tremor in his hands revealing the extent of his own blood loss.

He says, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Where’s me brother?’ the boy croaks anxiously, head lolling on a boneless neck. ‘I need somethin’ to drink.’ One of his eyelids is drooping oddly, making him look drugged. Shaun takes the boy’s shoulder and looks around for a medic, but there’s no one, just a sea of limbs and steam and luggage. Isobel calls Shaun’s name but he ignores her, turning back to the boy.

‘You’ve lost a lot of blood there, buddy. Here,’ in one movement he has the blue and white striped shirt from his shoulders and is rolling it up for the boy to press against his wound, ‘put lots of pressure on that.’ He takes the swollen crimson sponge of the boy’s own T-shirt and holds it dripping at his side.

‘I want to go home,’ Matilda interrupts, taking Isobel’s cheeks in her hands to commandeer her attention. The little girl drags on each syllable, making Isobel wince. ‘Mummy, I need a drink.’

‘I know, baby,’ Isobel turns circles on the toddler’s back. ‘Soon.’ She can see Shaun’s ribs outlined through the back of his sweat-soaked singlet as he kneels. From behind, he looks younger than forty, rangy and awkward.

‘Shauno, c’mon!’ Isobel hisses again, louder this time, twisting to see if she can locate a water fountain. The space is so tightly packed with bodies dripping and in various states of undress that she must avert her eyes or be overcome by the churning movement. Seasick, her gaze is drawn down, and for the first time she notices that her feet are bare, pale and wrinkled, the skin like soggy paper. One of her toenails has ripped away, showing a disc of bloody raw flesh. She vaguely remembers wearing her old canvas sneakers to prepare the house as the storm came on, but has no recollection of removing them. Now that she has noticed it, the toe starts to throb something shocking. She fights the sudden impulse to pull up her top and shrug her pants away, to study the landscape of her body for more hidden injuries waiting to ambush her.

‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ Matilda asks with her brow furrowed, and Isobel understands that she must be crying without knowing when it started.

‘Nothing, love. I can’t find something, that’s all.’ She sobs even as she tries to dry her face, thinking of the old sneakers she’s had forever around the house, even with the holes over the little toes in the canvas, they were that worn in and comfortable. Gracelessly hefting Matilda on her hip Isobel takes Shaun’s shoulder. A woman with two-tone hair like a platinum skunk passes by. She’s weeping too, her nose gone all pink and glistening.

She catches Isobel’s eye and wails, ‘I only got into a flat last week, and now look what’s gone and happened. Can you fucking believe it? Last week. I just got done moving in!’ Isobel starts to answer and then realises that the woman is talking to someone else, a friend coming along behind her on crutches, and is relieved to be off the hook. Nearby, a young woman in a torn nightdress is cradling a small baby in a sling and grappling with the arm of an aid worker as he weaves through the crowd. Isobel tries to get the man’s attention, but the other mother gets there first, red-faced and beside herself, almost as frantic as the baby. She tries to reason with the man while her baby screams, drowning her out.

‘I’ve got a three-week-old here!’ the mother is crying. ‘What am I meant to do? You get me on a train, okay? My parents are just over the border. They’ll be so worried about us! They’ll be worried sick.’

‘Priority goes to critical cases first. You must know that the hospital’s done for?’ the worker says, studying his clipboard while trying to shake free. ‘There’s blokes on ventilators being brung in here when they shouldn’t! Look, it’s not me making the rules alright, but you’ll have to line up. Go over there; you’ll be assigned emergency supplies real quick because of the baby.’ Isobel tries to see where he’s pointing.

‘But my family’s so close!’ the young woman insists. ‘They’re just right there.’

The worker jerks his arm from her grasp savagely, giving an angry little snort. ‘They’re saying the whole Eastern bloody seaboard’s been hit!’ The mother’s face crumples and he blinks furiously, as shocked by his words as she is. ‘Sorry,’ he chokes, staggering away. ‘I dunno what I’m saying.’

‘Wait,’ Isobel tries, but the crowd has already closed around him. Left alone, the mother sags. Her baby is crying so hard it’s no longer making noise. Isobel tries to think how she might help, but before she can so much as form a coherent thought, Matilda starts grizzling.

‘I farted, Mum. I think I need a big poo,’ Matilda hisses urgently, drawing her eyebrows together, looking so serious that Isobel can’t help but flash a quick grin. ‘Then,’ the child goes on, ‘after that, alright, okay, I need something to eat, if you don’t mind. And a drink yeah? A drink is what I want as well.’

‘Oh, you do, do you?’ Isobel chuckles in spite of herself and glances around. The other mother is nowhere to be seen. ‘Alright, baby.’ Her own mother, Luna, hadn’t been able to stand it when Isobel and her brother Josh said embarrassing things, used to blush all down her neck, conveying the sense that the children – even in the quiet privacy of their own home – were upsetting the smooth operation of the adult world.

‘Mum!’ Matilda wails. ‘I can’t hold on!’

‘Sorry, do you know where the toilets are in here?’ Isobel asks the person closest to her, a woman clutching the arm of a gangly pre-teen – another mum will understand. ‘They must have bathrooms?’

‘Over there,’ an elderly man interjects, stepping between them, pulling a piece of crackling plastic tighter around his shoulders like a shawl. ‘Loos are already blocked to buggery, though, love, so I wouldn’t recommend using them per se.’ He clocks Isobel’s bare feet and grimaces. ‘Hell really is other people, eh? The blessed majority never heard of flushing you reckon? There’s buckets of saltwater right there and all.’ He breaks off, coughing or laughing, sounding damp and clogged.

Before Isobel can respond, there comes a shout, a whorl of clothes and colour. She turns too slowly as Shaun comes barrelling back into her legs and they go down together so fast she is winded by the fall, twisting to protect Matilda. The ground rears up to smack her in the back of the head, sending a jag of light across her vision.

‘Sorry!’ she gasps by rote.

Shaun staggers to his feet, disentangling himself roughly, saying under his breath, ‘Jesus, are you okay?’ but not waiting for her to answer. Pain strobes across the back of her skull, making her squint. Her hands go blindly to Matilda’s strawberry-blonde head, the round freckled cheeks and pudgy arms and legs, as if she can smooth down any bruises developing there.

The little girl pushes her away, staggers up. ‘You dropped me, Mummy!’ She sounds indignant, then scared. Isobel opens her eyes and the ceiling swims sickeningly. She turns her head to the side in case she might vomit. With her eyes closed, the wet dog stench and rank foot odour of the place are even more acute, undercut by the faint, sweet, putrid scent of shit. She has the urge to close her ears to the deafening sound of the joint as well, longing to shut out the onslaught of distressed noises, the raised voices and the weeping. What she wouldn’t give to be able to curl up in a ball right where she’s fallen and hide her face away in her hands.

My shoes, she thinks again with a pang, and some deep part of her shivers a little warning, a sense that things are slipping. Then she is being levered off the ground by strangers, their hands in her armpits as though she is a fallen toddler, to be settled on her feet.

‘You hurt, love?’

‘Well, that was a good fall. You’ll get a fair egg from that I reckon.’

But she snaps fast awake when the blurred shape of Shaun staggers back into view. Matilda screams, ‘Don’t hit my daddy!’ Then Isobel hears it – the crunch of knuckles connecting with Shaun’s cheek, wet and meaty, like a bucket of snails being trod on. With a gasp, the crowd presses back from Shaun and his attacker, leaving a clearing around them, a circle of scorched earth.

Isobel shoves Matilda behind her, making a shield of her body. The room lurches but she stays upright somehow, leaning more heavily on Matilda’s shoulder than she means to. The stranger’s mouth is moving, all yellowed teeth and spittle, as he takes another swing at Shaun.

‘Get out of it, ya fuckin’ poofta,’ the man hisses. His eyes are red-rimmed, as if he’s been crying hard. Or maybe he’s on something. ‘You reckon I don’t know what you’re up to? Well I’ve got your number, mate. I know your type! I’m gone for one fucking minute, one minute! And you’re already casing the joint, bothering people. Haven’t we been through enough?’

It’s all nonsense, this electric swaggering, this bravado. Isobel’s seen it before, the way some men will say anything to get a rise. A part of her is even sympathetic, given the circumstances. Her brother Josh could be like this after a few drinks. It was like he had all this pent-up energy needing an outlet, but no valve for release. The bloke with the chest hair even looks a bit like Josh. It’s the way he carries himself – something in the muscular compactness of his body, the coiled spring of it. They move the same way, light on their feet, individual strands of sinew in their calves visible through the skin like piano wire.

Shaun’s palms are up now, warding the man off gently. ‘Mate,’ he says without blinking, as if training his eyes on a snake. A dark bruise is already taking shape on one angular cheekbone, evening up the damage to his face.

The bloke hocks and spits, ‘I’m not your effing mate.’

‘Let’s keep moving, Shauno,’ Isobel implores. ‘C’mon, why don’t you let this one go? Let’s find a place to park ourselves.’ But he’s not listening, taking a step away from her towards the man. She can see how badly he wants to make this right, clinging to a thing he has always been good at like his own life depends on it.

Matilda’s little voice rings out. ‘Daddy? What’s happening?’

Shaun says, ‘I’m not interested in fighting you, brother. All I wanna do is give you a hand. That bloke you’re with, he’s not in good shape.’ He raises his voice to address the crowd. ‘Is there a medic here? Anyone?’

‘We don’t need your help,’ the bloke growls, and Isobel sees how his hands are shaking. The boy against the pillar has his eyes half closed, rolled back.

Shaun takes another step and a low gasp travels through the crowd. Isobel sees the first cold glint of the blade and hears herself shriek as if from across the room, high and birdlike. She lunges forward, renting the back of Shaun’s singlet, taking fistfuls of fabric to haul him away. The man moves to strike again. Isobel grapples and Shaun stumbles back. They connect, skull to nose, in a clap of red-hot pain. Blood pours over her lips and chin and she swallows back the brassy, teaspoon taste of it. In the fresh racket, Isobel sees just how many people have gathered around to watch.

Then the police are through, solid and official even in their muddy boots and uniforms. ‘Get back! Get back!’

‘Stand down!’ one calls ineffectually, his acne turning scarlet. ‘Lower your weapon!’ They tackle the man with the knife roughly, and he goes down hard, bucking but ineffectual, like a sheep corralled. The knife spins away across the floor to still near Isobel’s feet. She dares not pick it up, but she can’t take her eyes off it. The fine mother of pearl handle is incongruous with the dangerously sharp point of the blade. Straight away she recognises it as a steak knife from a good quality vintage set. She would know that object anywhere. Her grandmother Karen had owned six exactly like it – an unappreciated wedding present from her embarrassingly posh parents. ‘Imagine giving steak knives to a couple of vegetarian hippies!’ she had said to Isobel. ‘What did they think we would do with them? Carve tofu? Become blood brothers together on the solstice?’

Isobel pulls Shaun away through the crowd, him in one hand and Matilda in the other. He resists, craning back over his shoulder, and her chest fills with love for this good man. He’s had plenty of practice with conflict, but he always manages to stay calm. They had loved that about him at the charity Children Survive, where he spent a lot of time after his dad’s suicide. Later, when he started volunteering with them, they had given him the most troubled kids to work with, inventing dinky little woodwork projects for them, building up their trust. It was good for those angry boys to have a role model like Shaun, someone that patient and thoughtful who also understood what it was to be hurting. Isobel has felt so conflicted about how much time Shaun has worked at locksmithing to support her, knowing he is wasting his raw real talent. Even so they barely got by. It has annoyed her, too, that he took so much time from her to give to the boys, before they had Matilda and he had to give it up. She hadn’t anticipated how complicated being married to Shaun might be long-term, that what she loved about him would put her in competition with so many others needing his attention.

When they’ve put some distance between them and the fight, Isobel lets Shaun have it.

‘Pull your bloody head in!’ she spits, so angry that her vision is jerking like there’s a tubelight dying overhead. ‘You can’t save every hard-luck case that turns up here! It’s us you need to be thinking about. We’re the ones who need your bloody precious help.’

She can feel the words pouring out of her, and a part of her knows that she’s been waiting to say them for ages, that the anger is more than simply a response to what’s just gone on.

‘You’re an adult, aren’t you? It’s pathetic. Really, I can’t believe I have to spell this out!’ She ushers them around knots of people in uneven rows on the ground, all of them groaning and beading sweat, waiting for medical help. Someone screams, bloodcurdling and high-pitched, and Isobel sees a shoulder at an odd angle being forced back into its socket.

‘Don’t you get it, Shauno?’ But it’s only just dawning on her, too, as she takes a bottle of desal water from the boxes being handed out, making sure Matilda also gets one. ‘We’re hard-luck cases, now.’

She expects him to turn contrite, but his teeth are clenched so hard he can hardly get the words out. ‘Do you really think I don’t know that? I’m not stupid, Issy!’

‘I didn’t say you were!’ They square off. It annoys her that he’s so much taller than she is, that she has to crane up to meet his eye. ‘I’m just asking you to think about us.’

‘Okay, alright, fine. And I’m asking you not to give me a bloody dissertation on bloody hardship! Trust me, I’m well and truly intimate with suffering. I’ve seen and experienced enough to last me a lifetime, thanks.’

Isobel snorts. She’s not listening to that; it might be true, but she has no patience for one-upmanship and she won’t apologise for her privilege again. She doesn’t know where she gets the strength, but she turns and pushes on through the masses of people until they find a vacant spot along the far wall where a pile of flattened cardboard boxes have been discarded beneath the darkened counter of a fast food stand.

‘What were you thinking?’ she picks up, rounding on Shaun, emboldened by the privacy afforded by the small amount of breathing space. She doesn’t care that Matilda is listening. ‘You could have been killed! You could have gotten us killed! Even Matilda.’ She sounds nastier than she means to and runs a hand through her hair to gather herself. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

Settling the little girl down, she leans back with her hands on her hips to crack her spine, surprised by the tears that well up instantly, like her anxiety has been trapped there between vertebrae.

Shaun twitches, and for a moment she thinks he might fight back, but he looks down at Matilda instead. The sight of their three-year-old sitting hunched with her knees pulled up seems to jog something in him, and he softens. Matilda is murmuring to herself, and Isobel wonders what she makes of all this, whether what they’ve been through has ruined her now in some way.

‘What can I say?’ he says.

‘Sorry would be a good start.’

‘Oh, Issy, love, there’s blood in your hair.’ He reaches out to touch her and she flinches away. ‘Tell you what, I’d kill for a bag of frozen peas myself.’

He smiles weakly, showing his boyish dimples, but she’s not letting him off that easily. His voice drops.

‘Look, I am sorry. ’Course I am. I’ve been a royal idiot.’

He helps her pull her shirt over her head to staunch the bleeding from the head wound where she fell. They stand face to face like that for a moment before he takes her in his arms. She feels him crying, a dry kind of sobbing that goes through his arms and legs.

‘I dunno what got into me, love!’ His voice cracks.

Again, she hears the punch. ‘Shh. Stop talking.’ They’re both trembling so hard now that she can hear his jaw clicking. Soon her knees go weak. All of a sudden she finds herself sitting; Shaun is lowering her down. Taking his face in her hands, she kisses his dry lips to show him how much she loves him. It’s a small punishment, too: a reminder to him of what’s important, what he’s compromised.

They sit together a while. She presses her hands between her knees to still them, and hangs her head.

‘I’m so tired,’ she murmurs, feeling leaden and suddenly realising that her body and its workings have become foreign to her, as though every part of her is borrowed. Shaun leans his cheek against her sternum and pulls Matilda onto his knee.

‘I’m sorry for frightening you guys,’ he says quietly. ‘That’s the last thing I’d want to do ever. You know that, right? It just gets to me … all these people.’ Isobel gives his leg a squeeze. This is what had drawn her to Shaun in the first place – his kindness, his enthusiasm for helping others. She can’t fault him that.

‘It’s okay, Daddy,’ Matilda says with only a slight wobble. ‘You just have a good heart, I know that.’

Isobel meets Shaun’s gaze over their daughter’s head, and they both have to look away fast to keep from losing it. Crouched in silence, Isobel turns her back to the room. Soon her eyes are closing on their own, coming together before she can stop them. In the darkness, she feels her grief surging up. Their house!

Oh, why hadn’t they tried harder to chase her brother down when he left? Isobel laments for the millionth time, a well-worn groove of regret that has only become more fervent as the years have passed, her impulse shifting from the desire to bring Josh home to a longing to escape alongside him. What if she had actually dredged up the guts to follow Josh to Tassie before it militarised? What if, what if. There’s no point looking backward. She stayed. Anyway, going had never really been an option; after Josh, she just couldn’t do that to their mother. And she’d only met Shaun because she kept close to home. She wouldn’t trade that for anything, no matter how hard things have become.

Even knowing this, being certain of it, she still feels her shadow-life at her back, coloured by her longing, the grief over Josh. Would he know what has happened here in the city? Would he be wondering about them?

Just as she’s dozing off, Shaun leaps up again, sending Matilda sprawling. The child gives a startled mew, like a kitten being kicked.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ Isobel is up in an instant, her heart is going so fast she thinks it might ignite.

‘Jesus!’ Shaun mutters, examining the wet patch through the legs of his jeans. He squats down to Matilda. ‘Sorry, baby girl. That just took me by surprise is all! Are you okay?’ His voice drops even lower, but it’s mock-serious now. ‘Did you wee on me on purpose because I got into a fight? Are you trying to teach me a lesson about behaving, little lady?’

‘I couldn’t hold on! It just came out on its own,’ Matilda whispers. The shame in her slumped shoulders, her downcast little face, puts a skewer through Isobel.

She heaves to her feet, thinking that this must be how people feel when they’re dying a slow death. Isobel so badly longs to be kind, but her voice comes crisply.

‘C’mon, then. Never mind, sweetie. Let’s go and see if we can find a place to get cleaned up.’

2

Isobel knows to keep quiet even when Luna drops her down into the bath too fast, the water so hot on her skin her breath catches.

‘And why wouldn’t I be angry?’ Luna is busy saying to her friend Margot with the phone wedged against her neck. ‘It was his idea for me to stay home with the kids all this time, and then he goes and says I’m too involved with them! Reckons I’ve been neglecting him!’ Isobel lifts her chubby little legs to inspect their pink undersides. Josh is playing games again. She can hear the pop of guns and the tinny electronic music. Luna’s fingers knot in her hair, rough her scalp. Shampoo rolls into Isobel’s eyes but even before she can lift a hand to wipe them, water comes crashing down over her head. She gasps and splutters, tasting suds.

‘Stay still,’ Luna barks. Then into the phone, ‘Oh, God. The really sad part is that we were quite crazy about each other. I guess that’s why we went and started a family in the first place.’ Stiff as sea sponge, the washcloth scours across Isobel’s throat and down her back, leaving faint grazes.

‘There. Done,’ Luna grumbles, scraping Isobel’s hair back with her long, elegant fingers. ‘Lovely and clean, hey?’ She laughs at something Margot says, but when Isobel turns to look, her mother is leaning her forehead against the tiles, eyes shut, listening to sounds Isobel can’t hear.

‘Thanks, darling, I will,’ Luna murmurs into the receiver before clicking it off. She gives herself a little shake and reaches for a towel, but the rack is bare. A tiny puff of air goes through her nose. Isobel tenses at the familiar sound. The exhaust fan is broken and steam fills the room, curling over the ugly brown tiles. Luna gets up with forearms dripping. Her long orange hair hangs stringy and unwashed, like seaweed at high tide. She puts a hand on the doorway to steady herself. ‘Wait here. Don’t move.’

Isobel watches her mother recede down the narrow hall, the swish of flannelette.

Through the small second storey window of the bathroom, Isobel has a view of the semi-circle bay. The evening sky over the water is beautiful. Distant gulls swoop like flecks of dust. The bathwater has stilled and is cooler now, the sky over the industrial stretch of roads edging the water has gone grey behind the glass. Isobel hears the lap and sigh of the bay, a constant, like breathing. She plays quietly with her yellow duckies and plastic cups, waiting for Luna to return with a towel. She scoops and tips and squirts the water happily. Then, just when she tires of the game, she catches sight of the new tube of toothpaste glistening on the far rim of the bath, full and fat, a slu. . .