AUBREY AND Sophia watched Sidney slide the aluminium wire at a forty-five-degree angle through the soil and into the root ball of her new bonsai tree, a five-year-old juniper in a shallow ceramic pot. She wound the wire gently but assertively around the trunk, avoiding the branches. Using both hands, she bent the tree left, right, left.

Aubrey gasped.

‘Don’t worry. The tree might look fragile, but it’s actually really resilient. Very strong on the inside.’ When Sidney was happy with its shape, she looked in the gardening box under the bench for the finer wire for the branches. She couldn’t see it, frowned.

‘What’s wrong, my darling?’ Sophia said, proffering a packet of cigarettes. Sidney took one, and Sophia lit it with a match.

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Aubrey said.

‘Only with Soph.’ Sidney pushed away Sophia’s hand when she held the cigarettes out for Aubrey. ‘I can’t see the wire I need.’

‘Maybe check the shed?’ Aubrey said.

‘I go in and make a shandy.’ Sophia headed towards the back door, her black summer dress from Kmart revealing bony brown knees. The Greek tradition was to wear black for three years after the death of your spouse, but Sophia had donned it every day for twenty-one years. She walked with a limp, her left leg damaged — broken in three places in a fall down the stairs just before Giannis had died.

After too many shandies one afternoon, Sophia had touched her throat absently and told Sidney that Giannis had not been a good man. Lucky she’d had Christo to keep him under control.

‘You want a shandy?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Bree?’

‘No!’ Sidney answered for Aubrey.

The ‘shed’ was a two-by-two-metre steel cupboard at the back of the courtyard. She found the wire and other gardening paraphernalia in there. And Nan’s missing red tea canister — filled with an unopened bag of dried sphagnum moss, which she’d forgotten about. She took it and the wire back to the bonsai.

She butted out her cigarette in a broken terracotta pot, and wired the branches, two at a time — one on the left of the trunk with one on the right — carefully avoiding the delicate shoots. ‘It’s about creating character, balance, and harmony.’ And perspective — the neat front viewing angle was very different to the denser back. When she was happy with the line, she started trimming for the perfect silhouette: removing any branches pointing directly forwards or up or down.

Sophia was sitting at the antique-stone-finished table under the ‘Cairo’ gazebo from Bunnings, both far too big for the tiny space. She’d fallen asleep already. A fly buzzed around her glass of half-beer-half-lemonade.

‘The Satsuki azalea and silver birch were the first ones. Where I used to live, there was a trash-and-treasure market on Sundays at the old drive-in.’ Her hand cramped as she trimmed. ‘Mum bought them there when I wasn’t much older than you.’ She put down the trimming shears and rubbed her fingers.

‘Can I have a go?’ Aubrey said.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘This is my saikei planting.’ She pointed to a tray of soil and rocks surrounding a miniature banksia, Huon pine, and Tasmanian tea-tree. ‘It means “planted landscape”. It’s an illusion. The landscape’s depth and distance are created the same way an artist does in a painting, with scale and placement of objects to trick the eye.’

‘Why isn’t it green like the others?’

‘I think it looks more authentic without the moss.’ A warm breeze ruffled the tiny leaves and the strands of hair that were escaping Sidney’s ponytail. Her cheeks felt pink. She took a sip from her water bottle. ‘Aren’t you hot?’ She eyed Aubrey’s long-sleeved Wonder Woman top. She certainly smelled hot — sweaty. ‘You can borrow one of my T-shirts or singlets if you like.’

‘I’m good. Have to go soon anyway.’ She pulled her sleeves down further. ‘You like old things, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Bonsai, books …’

‘I like some new things.’

Aubrey raised an eyebrow.

‘Taylor Swift.’

‘Really?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And the old clay houses and coffee tins. And Christos.’ Aubrey giggled.

‘Hey, watch it.’ Sidney glanced at Sophia, snoring. ‘You’re getting a bit cheeky. Christos is not old.’

‘What happens if you stop torturing the bonsais?’

‘I’m not torturing them. I’m recreating nature in perfect miniature. Torture is what you’re doing to that poor spider.’ She pointed at the jam jar in which Aubrey had imprisoned a huntsman earlier.

‘You mean Harriet. Would the trees die if you, like, stopped caring for them?’

Sidney sighed as she heard Christos calling her name, arriving home from work. She started packing away her gardening tools. ‘Out the back!’

Sophia woke up and reached for her shandy.

‘See ya,’ Aubrey said. ‘I can let myself out.’

Sidney heard Aubrey and Christos greet each other perfunctorily as they passed inside.

‘You forgot Harriet,’ she called, but Aubrey didn’t reply.

Christos stepped out the back door holding a tin of paint, which he left on the step. ‘Why is she always here?’

‘Your mum?’

He looked up, saw Sophia, and strode over to hug her. They spoke to each other in Greek, and then she said she had to go home to make dinner and feed Basil, the cat. She double-kissed Sidney, and told Christos there was cake for him in the kitchen.

Christos walked his mother out — a giant dodo and a little blackbird. He returned with a thick slice of karithopita, and surveyed the bonsai. ‘They’re looking good. So are you.’ He patted Sidney’s bum. ‘How many times you been getting to the gym a …’ His gaze fell on the jam jar as he shoved cake into his mouth. ‘What’s in there?’

‘Harriet.’

He grimaced.

‘I told Aubrey to let her out. It’s cruel.’

‘Just give it some breathing holes.’

She tried to twist the lid off the jar, but it was too tight. Christos recoiled when she held it out for his help. She tried harder, hurting her hands as the lid came loose. Christos shrieked and coughed when she released the spider into the garden, near his feet. She laughed and shook her head, and asked what the paint was for.

‘The nursery.’

‘The what?’

‘You want the good news or the bad news?’

‘The bad.’ She pulled her gardening gloves from over her everyday gloves.

‘This cough I got from the Greenworld fire, doc reckons it might be a chest infection. Have to have an X-ray.’

She frowned. ‘I’m sure it’s just a cold.’

‘And the good news is I got my fertility test results back. There’s nothing wrong with my sperm!’ He bear-hugged her from behind. ‘Come on, Sid. Think of how a baby would make our life better. That’s why we bought this place.’

We? She couldn’t remember having much say in it while she was stuck in the psychiatric unit.

‘The extra room, the park across the street. Imagine a little kid running around.’

She could imagine worse things, of course, but not many. She pushed back, pushed him away, harder than intended. He wobbled, off balance, as she turned. The hurt puppy-dog look on his face made her soften. What happens if you stop torturing the bonsai? Would the trees die if you stopped caring for them? She trusted Christos would look after her if she went mad again, when nobody else would. She’d have to watch herself, curb the cockiness, or Christos would realise she was off her meds. Maybe let him believe she’d rethought her stance on having a baby. She looked down at the tin of paint. The same custard yellow as the walls in the psych unit. She pulled up her shorts; the waistbands on all her clothes were getting loose. ‘It’s a nice colour, Chris.’

He grinned proudly as he carried the paint inside.