It’s Xavier. It doesn’t suit him at all, does it? What was his mother thinking? Xavier is far too elegant a name for a man who “places bets on the doggies” and loves beer and “the footie season” and tomato sauce and dreadful right-wing talkback radio.

We have nothing in common, obviously. Not like you and I! Remember the plays we saw, the books we shared, the—well.

Did we like the same books? I might be making that part up. Sometimes the details become a little hazy. I couldn’t tell you, for example, whether you liked tomato sauce or not. Did you?

While I was having my shower this morning, I was thinking about how just last week Alice said to me, “Frannie, when will I stop being shocked that Gina isn’t alive?”

I was full of grandmotherly wisdom about how “time heals,” but I understood.

It was the same when my dear, silly Barb lost their father. She must have said it a million times: “But Frannie, he ate a mandarin that morning. He was fine.”

Because how is it possible for your husband to eat a mandarin at eight a.m. and be dead by ten a.m.?

And how is it possible to watch your best friend hop into a car and then for you to never hear her voice again? (And goodness, that Gina had a loud voice!)

And how is it possible to believe your lovely fiancé isn’t still gallivanting around Queensland when a letter full of love and jokes and a pile of snapshots arrives the day after his coffin is lowered into the ground?

Your mind resists death with all its might.

Oh, Phil, it’s completely foolish that I’ve kept writing back to you all these years. It’s become one of those habits I can’t seem to break. Writing to a memory.

Someone was screaming.

“Mum! Stop it! Make it stop! Mummy!”

Alice was catapulted up and out of her bed and was walking rapidly, blindly, down the hallway, before she woke up properly, her mouth dry, her head fuzzy with interrupted dreams.

Who was it? Olivia?

The hysterical screams were coming from Madison’s room. Alice pushed open the door. In the dark, she could just make out a figure on the bed thrashing about and screaming, “Get it off! Get it off!”

Alice’s eyes adjusted enough to make out the lamp on the bookshelf next to Madison’s bed. She switched it on.

Madison’s eyes were shut, her face screwed up tight. She was tangled up in her sheets and her pillow was on her chest. She batted it away.

“Get it off!”

Alice took away the pillow and sat down on the bed next to her.

“It’s only a dream, darling,” she said. “It’s only a dream.” She knew from her own nightmares how Madison’s heart would be racing, how the words from the real world would slowly infiltrate the dream world and make it fade away.

Madison’s eyes opened and she threw herself at Alice, pushing her head painfully into Alice’s ribs and clutching her tightly.

“Mummy, get it off Gina! Get it off her!” she sobbed.

“It’s only a dream,” said Alice, stroking back sweaty strands of hair from Madison’s forehead. “I promise you, it’s only a bad dream.”

“But Mummy, you need to get it off her! Get it off Gina.”

“Get what off her?”

Madison didn’t answer. Her hands loosened and her breathing began to slow. She burrowed herself more comfortably into Alice’s lap.

Was she falling back asleep?

“Get what off her?” whispered Alice.

“It’s only a dream,” said Madison sleepily.

Chapter 26

“Auntie Alice! Auntie Alice!”

A boy of about three came running into Alice’s arms.

She automatically lifted his compact body up and whirled him around, while his legs gripped around her hips like a koala. She buried her nose in his dark hair and breathed in the yeasty scent. It was intensely, deliciously familiar. She breathed in again. Was she remembering this little boy? Or some other little boy? Sometimes she thought it might be easier to block her nose to stop these sudden frustrating rushes of memories that evaporated before she could pin down what exactly it was she remembered.

The little boy pressed fat palms on either side of Alice’s face and babbled something incomprehensible, his eyes serious.

“He’s asking if you brought Smarties,” said Olivia. “You always bring him Smarties.”

“Oh, dear,” said Alice.

“You don’t know who he is, do you?” said Madison with happy contempt.

“She does so,” said Olivia.

“It’s our cousin Billy,” said Tom. “Auntie Ella is his mum.”

Nick’s youngest sister had got pregnant! What a scandal! She was fifteen—still at school!

You’re really not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you, Alice? It’s 2008! She’s twenty-five! She’s probably an entirely different person by now.

Although, actually, not that different, because here she came now, unsmilingly pushing her way past people. Ella still had a gothic look about her. White skin, brooding eyes with a lot of black eyeliner, black hair parted in the middle and cut in a sharp-edged bob. She was dressed in a long black skirt, black tights, black ballet flats, and a turtlenecked black jersey with what looked like four or five strings of pearls of varying lengths around her neck. Only Ella could pull off such a look.

“Billy! Come back here,” she said sharply, trying unsuccessfully to peel her son off Alice.

“Ella,” said Alice, while Billy’s legs gripped harder and he buried his head in her neck. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” If she really had to pick a favorite Flake, it would have been Ella. She had been an intense, teary teenager who could dissolve into hysterical giggles, and she liked talking to Alice about clothes and showing her the vintage dresses she’d bought at secondhand shops that cost more to dry-clean than what she’d paid.