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actually—oh, you were joking.’ Isaac glanced at Chloe and gave a mechanical fake laugh. ‘I’d forgotten about jokes, after six months with my parents and their friends. Thank you.’ He accepted a drink from Joy.
    ‘Here’s to your return, Isaac,’ she said. ‘We’ve missed you.’
    ‘Yeah, the place’s been real quiet without you,’ said Nick, propping his feet on the coffee-table. ‘No one swinging on the chandeliers, no one sliding down the banisters singing Mary Poppins songs.’
    ‘No farting competitions in the cubby,’ Pete contributed, then hid his face in his orange juice.
    Isaac sat deadpan among these lies. Chloe watched him for a reaction and caught a minuscule flash of amusement behind the bottle-bottom lenses. ‘When you’re all finished,’ he said, sitting forward. ‘Are you finished? Can we be serious now?’
    ‘We’re never serious,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s a point of pride.’
    Isaac raised his glass and began, ‘You-all may not’ve noticed my absence—’
    Nick screeched an imaginary bow across some violin strings. Joy said, ‘Oh, Isaac.’
    Isaac silenced them with a hand. ‘—but I’ve certainly noticed not being here every Sunday and four or five evenings in between.’
    ‘Hey, this is a real-for-true speech,’ said Pete.
    ‘Thanks, Nick, for all those tasteless postcards, and Joy, for all those little notes keeping me up to date. And Pete, for your Finnish letter—I appreciate the … the
hard work
that went into it.’
    ‘He actually got that sent off, did he?’ said Chloe, then went quiet. Isaac turned from Pete to her and she knew what was coming. She screwed up her face.
    ‘And thank you, Chloe, for your usual enigmatic silence—’
    ‘I wrote heaps, actually; I just didn’t get around to sending it.’
    ‘Bullshit,’ said Dane and Nick at once.
    ‘Sorry, Isaac.’
    ‘It’s okay. The wound will heal in time.’ He waved his glass around at all of them. ‘It’s good to be back.’
    ‘Good to have you back, mate,’ said Dane, and they all clinked glasses and drank.

    Janey stood at Chloe’s door against a burst of winter-morning sun. She stumped in. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ She threw herself onto the couch, stared accusingly at Chloe.
    ‘What. Cuppa?’
    ‘Yer. About the Jerry Street Child Care Centre.’ Having made her entrance, Janey hoisted herself up and followed Chloe into the kitchen’s harsher acoustics. She was all black-legginged legs, with a tiny snarled black jumper like a wisp of some kind of mould around her shoulders and arms.
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘It’s two doors away.’
    ‘They make a racket, do they?’
    Janey went to the fridge and stared in. ‘Yes, well, it depends which way the wind blows. Like the trains, you know. But on a lovely, sunny day like today they’re all out, and it’s like … I don’t know, it’s like—’ she closed the fridge door and leaned one hip against the bench ‘—some terrible old movie, you know?’
    Chloe laughed. ‘
Which
terrible old movie?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know, one where, you know, his true love’s died—maybe he’s murdered her, himself—and he walks away and there’s the sound of children playing and the tissues come out all over the cinema—’
    ‘Everyone “blubbing”—’
    ‘Yeah. Like that. It’s awful, just the noise of them. It gets to me.’
    Chloe’s eyes roved to the calendar. Janey saw, and squinted at it too. ‘What is it—the seventh? Oh. Well, at least there’s a reason
why
I feel awful.’
    ‘Dumped,’ said Chloe, ‘by a wave of hormones.’
    ‘I still do feel awful, though. Really
black
. Everything seems like a
bad idea
.’
    ‘Even coming round here?’
    ‘Yeah. Dumping my hormones on you again.’
    ‘Better than sitting at home blaming yourself for them.’
    ‘It feels better, now. In the end, though …’
    ‘In the end, though, it is better.’ Chloe crossed the kitchen and put her arms around her.
    Janey’s hair, as she laid her