THE SOUNDS of Christos blowing his nose and hawking up his lungs in the shower woke her. Five past five on the alarm clock. She rolled over and went back to sleep.

It was getting light when he woke her again with a kiss. He mumbled something about leaving early for his shift, a bushfire threat in the outer suburbs.

Sidney left open the doors to the bedroom balcony, and the bathroom. She gazed dreamily at the treetops and powerlines while she sat on the toilet.

Stepping into the shower, she turned on the water. A glob of phlegm clung to the glass door like a uvula. On closer inspection, there was a string of blood inside, which reminded her of an insect fossilised in amber. When Sidney was a kid, Auntie Stella had relayed graphic details to her and Faye of Uncle Colin coughing up blood while he was dying of cancer. An image of what that might have looked like had stuck in Sidney’s memory. She sucked in her breath and backed up hard against the wall. Christos probably just cut himself shaving. She lifted the handheld showerhead from its cradle and hosed the mucous, stepping out of its way as it slimed across the floor and down the drain hole.

‘Firefighters have stopped the spread of a bushfire in Melbourne’s outer north,’ said the radio news presenter. ‘The blaze was out of control earlier, closing the Hume Highway in Campbellfield. There is currently no threat to communities, but the Metropolitan Fire Brigade has issued an advice message urging residents to monitor weather conditions and warnings.’

Christos had left a bowl of muesli and fresh fruit salad for Sidney on the kitchen bench. She scraped it into the bin and made coffee.

‘The Country Fire Authority are battling another, much larger fire burning near the Grampians. The blaze comes with windy conditions and temperatures set to soar across Victoria today, with the mercury tipped to hit forty degrees in some areas. Rain is forecast for this afternoon, but firefighters are concerned the southerly change will make the fire front even larger before bringing relief. Residents are being warned to enact their bushfire plans.

‘And in breaking news, the six-month-old baby injured in the Collins Street truck rampage has died in hospital overnight, becoming the fifth victim —’

Sidney couldn’t bear to hear any more; she turned off the radio. She shoved her work shoes into her bag and put on sneakers, needing to walk — the long way, along the creek, to the train station.

It was dirty out with smoke from the bushfires in the air. The brown creek brought memories of the river back home. Familiarity and deception. Boring could quickly become flood or drought. Predictable turned dangerous. She walked faster.

She didn’t often come down here. This was ‘where women shouldn’t walk alone, where they’re followed, flashed, assaulted. Worse,’ Christos always reminded her. She slid the blade of her house key between the knuckles of her useless fist. Cyclists, joggers, and an Irish setter walking its walker passed her on the trail beside the velodrome. Birds chirped and warbled; nearby building works banged and buzzed.

Around the bend, the Russian cathedral loomed — a gingerbread palace with gold onion-shaped domes glinting. A large cross, rusted in parts, almost as tall as Christos, lay sideways on the ground, propped against the building. Fallen or awaiting repairs?

High-voltage power lines marched towards the environment park, like The War of the Worlds’ Martians. In the water, ducks dipped their bills among the rubbish — discarded clothing, plastic bags, soccer balls — caught on rocks, weeds, and willows where once the Wurundjeri people had gathered and, long before, volcanic lava had flowed and set the creek’s course. The smell down here was peppery, earthy, with a hint of something rotting, like dead snails and dog shit: slime-coloured.

By the time Sidney reached the station, sweat had glued her light-cotton dress to the parts of her body that stuck out. The air conditioning on the train wasn’t working. She tried to think about anything except the baby and the pain that had seeped into Collins Street; the baby’s mother and the others who had been there, who would be there always; their last phone calls, the songs they’d been listening to through earphones; their forever-frozen moments in time.

Dean Cola, Dean Cola, Dean Cola. My green light, my bell jar, my pool of tears. I’m scared. I’m ashamed. You were, you are. Did you really exist? Does She, did I, exist? What is existence anyway? Reality or reflection?

Shockwaves of dizziness still fizzed through her body, but small ones, and only every now and then. Her mind was feeling like her own again. Had she ever really been mad? Or had Faye and Christos made it all up?

The creek piddled alongside the train line until it disappeared from view, joining the river somewhere beyond the freeway. When the train stopped at Clifton Hill, Sidney stood and gave her seat to a pregnant woman. Clinging to the handrail, she caught her reflection in the window. Her body was starting to look like her own again too — she’d lost weight, but her waist remained thick. A middle-age encumbrance. Along with other things you couldn’t see, on the inside. Perhaps Christos was right and she should have a baby. Soon she’d run out of good eggs. Maybe she already had.

How could she take care of a child! And there was the chance of passing on her illness. Or worse — parenting like her mother. Mad sad people should never have babies. Why had Christos suddenly become so desperate about wanting a baby anyway? Was it because both his brothers had started families? Tick tock? Time sliding away, too fast now, like blood in amber down the drain. Dizzy, she gripped the handrail tighter, trying not to slide away too. Hold on, hold on. Christos is fine. It was just a shaving cut.

The smells of BO, cigarette smoke, sour milk, and something else even more acrid filled the carriage as an ashen couple, with a pink-clad baby in a battered pram, rattled on at Collingwood. The father stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth. The mother nodded off against the wall, and slid down slowly like a pancake on Teflon until she was squatting, head lolling to one side. A poster family for the unfairness of the damaged being lumbered with the responsibility of damage control.

The train stopped at West Richmond for an age. An announcement screeched over the PA: the driver was waiting on an ambulance for a sick passenger. The baby started crying. The father swore and banged his fist on the window, shouting that he wanted to get out, before finding that the doors were unlocked. Sidney tensed with the rest of the commuters who looked up from their phones, glancing sideways at each other, on high alert since Collins Street. The father shook the mother awake and dragged her and the pram off the train into the filthy north wind. Sidney had a strange urge to scoop up and hold the baby, tell her she was safe now. The commuters went back to their phones.

Sidney found a seat next to a man wearing a fisherman’s cap. ‘How old do you think I am, love?’ he said, running a hand over his shiny face.

Her guess was seventy. ‘Sixty.’

‘Higher.’ He gestured with his hand.

‘Sixty-five.’

‘Higher. Turn seventy-one next week.’

‘No! Really?’

‘Lots of moisturiser. That’s my secret.’

The train started moving. The shiny man took out his phone and opened a photo album. He showed Sidney pictures of himself as a young man: a posed black-and-white portrait, a casual shot, an army photo.

‘Very handsome,’ she said.

He found another picture: shirtless on the beach, flexing his muscles. ‘We didn’t go to the gym back in the day. We just did push-ups and used bars for chin-ups.’

‘And who’s that?’ She pointed at a colour photo of an older woman.

‘My wife. Lung cancer got her two years and nine months back.’

She felt dizzy again. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘At the start, we kept saying it was just a cold.’ He opened a document — a magazine article about the ideal lip shape: Even and perfectly symmetrical. ‘Look!’ He proudly showed her the magazine-perfect lips next to a close-up of his own lips cropped from one of his old photos.

She nodded, impressed — more by the trouble he had taken to collate the images than by the shape of his lips. There were so many creative ways to assuage pain or guilt.

He stood and tipped his cap as the train pulled into Jolimont. ‘Remember to think of me when I was young!’ he called as he alighted.

Sidney stuck in earphones — a Taylor Swift playlist Aubrey had cheekily snuck onto her phone. A song about stars, country roads at night, a boy with a pick-up truck, and an unread letter in a box. She looked towards the opposite platform. Open a Coke, open happiness.