Dad stayed with Tanja the rest of the night. As morning stretched out, leaving the fairy light time behind and opening out into full daytime, the door to the guest room was still closed and he hadn’t emerged. I must have checked about a thousand times. The waiting – and the yawning and the trying to keep sleep away – got me itchy, and I needed to do something, so I clapped my hands together, startling Rani and Bec, who were pretty much dozing at the kitchen table. ‘Okay, who’s hungry?’

I ruled the kitchen for a while, making lots of coffee, and lots of tea for Bec, and some more substantial food for Rani and me (hummus!) and when our nomming wound down, Bec and I cleared away while Rani went to check on Dad and Tanja again.

Bec stacked the last glass in the dishwasher and pointed at me. ‘Okay, I’ve got one I’ve been saving up for you.’

‘Hit me.’

‘“I can’t stand people who do not take food seriously.”’

‘Sounds like a very sensible person.’

‘Oscar Wilde.’

‘What? A real, true Oscar Wilde quote?’

‘You bet.’

‘I’ll remember that one. I have a mind like a steel trap, after all.’

‘Right. A steel trap that’s been left out in the rain and gone a bit rusty.’

‘It’s still trappy.’

Rani came back. ‘Tanja still hasn’t woken up, and Leon’s asleep in a chair by her bedside.’

‘You opened the door? He didn’t notice?’

‘I do surreptitious very well,’ Rani said.

‘I don’t like to raise this,’ Bec said from the sink, ‘but if she doesn’t wake up, we should take her to the hospital.’

‘Dad won’t be keen. Civilian authorities and all that.’

‘Sod that,’ Rani said. ‘If we can’t help her, we have to do something.’

‘I said Dad won’t be keen, but don’t get me wrong. I’m a representative of the new-look contemporary and modern Marin Enterprise, remember? The rules of yesterday are only useful when they’re useful. I’m already working on a cover story when we front up at Emergency. A rare tropical disease. Lightning strike. Allergic reaction to something incredibly unusual. Lupus.’

Bec snorted. ‘It’s never lupus.’

‘We keep it simple,’ Rani said. ‘Most liars over-complicate their stories. We’ll say she was fine, went to bed, but we couldn’t wake her up in the morning.’

‘Way to crush a back story,’ I said.

The exhaustion that had been hanging around barely out of sight chose that moment to sneak up and whop me on the back of the head. I yawned, a real jaw breaker that took both hands to cover it, and I had tears squirting from the corners of my eyes like a cartoon character.

‘I don’t mean to toss a grenade in here.’ Bec put her hands together. ‘We’ve got to plan for if she doesn’t wake up, true. But have you thought about what we’re going to do if she wakes up and she isn’t Tanja?’