LENA

Salvation arrived at 8 a.m. in the form of a bright yellow skip bin taking up three car spaces on the road outside the house. Within an hour of signing the delivery docket Lena had cleared the house of eighteen bursting-at-the-seams bags. Drop in a garbage ocean, but a boost all the same to see the speed with which it was possible to get rid of stuff once there was somewhere to chuck it.

She had just hauled the second non-functioning vacuum cleaner of the day into the skip when the road moved beneath her feet and black spots appeared on the yellow steel. She closed her eyes, eased forward until she could press her head and palms against the skip, and waited for everything to stop moving.

She breathed in metallic tang, breathed out the sickly sweet fruitiness of ketosis. Lou had taught her to recognise the smell, celebrate its achievement. It meant her body was cannibalising itself, using its fat stores to survive. Problem was that she needed to do more than survive today. She needed to complete another ten hours or so of hard labour. Also, she didn’t have much in the way of fat stores left after nine months of eating lunch like Annie (miso soup, sashimi, garden salad without dressing) and skipping dinner because who can afford it when you’ve spent fifteen dollars on a frigging tasteless lunch salad? Eating like a rich girl while still being a poor one had not only helped her become as thin and wan as a model, it had taught her a lesson that extended into every aspect of life: If you get used to wanting less, you’ll always have enough.

She’d forgotten this briefly, gone ahead and let herself have what she wanted without restraint or caution. If she’d known the voice in her head urging her on belonged to a woman so greedy she would almost die under the weight of her belongings, she may have resisted. May not have ended up in an exponentially replicating video, the epitome of a shameless whore who just can’t get enough.

When the world felt stable again, Lena returned to the house and scoffed a stale protein bar from the bottom of her backpack. Her ungrateful stomach grumbled and cramped while she started work emptying the bath. Could start her own shitty supermarket, right here. Come get your out-of-date, slimy-labelled, store-brand shampoo and conditioner, your leaking, sticky tubs of hair gel. Buy three jars of palm-oil-and-paraben-laden face cream and get a jumbo bottle of environmentally disastrous micro-beaded body wash for free.

She stopped to piss, wondering whether ‘organic and all-natural avocado body butter’ was edible, saw that her undies were splattered with blood. She hadn’t had her period for months—another benefit of the skinny rich girl diet—but of course it had to come now.

You win, body, you win. I’ll leave this house stocked with everything except what I need to go spend money I don’t have on things I don’t want. Fucking perfect.

As she stepped out on to the porch, a man pushing a stroller with one hand and gripping a leash attached to the torso of a rapidly toddling child with the other glanced at Lena, then focused. His eyes said, Don’t I know you? Or maybe it was: What are you doing there? He slowed, calling for the child to stop, tugging on the leash as he moved towards Lena. His smile said, ugly bitches are the best at riding dick theyre so grateful.

She fumbled with the door, which had closed and locked behind her. It took her too many seconds to remember that the key was in her pocket, and by the time she had it in the lock the man was calling to her. Not loud, close.

‘Hey! Hi! Something happened to Nic?’

Lena turned, took him in. Smooth baby face but with grey streaking through his thick black hair. One arm pulled behind his back by the straining toddler.

‘I’m Andre. I live across the street. Up a bit and across.’ He jerked his head to the left. ‘Haven’t seen Nic for a bit. Wife and I were just saying, hope nothin’s happened to her?’

‘Oh. No. Actually, yes, sort of. She had a bad fall last week. I’m Lena. Her niece. I’m just—’

‘Lena! The brains of the family. We know all about you and your high distinctions and everything. A fall, hey? That’s no good. You’re here to take care of her?’

‘Yeah. I mean, she’s in the hospital at the moment. Probably for a bit longer.’

‘Geez. Poor thing. We wondered because, well, she sometimes watches the rug rats for us. I texted her the other day but she never—I feel awful now. Shoulda come and checked up in person.’ ‘She babysits for you? Here?’ Lena could imagine the straining toddler climbing one of those living room stacks, falling hard on her soft little head. And the baby? Would it even be able to breathe in that thick, dusty air?

‘At ours. The little one sleeps through and this one—ha, not that you’d know from her current feral state, but she crashes out early and stays out mostly. So it’s not, like, a lot of work for your aunty. We’re not taking advantage or anything. I trim the hedges, sweep up the leaves and that for her.’ He spread his free arm out, taking in the non-expansive expanse of it.

‘I was just thinking how neat it was out here.’

He smiled, bit of pride there. ‘Nice having neighbours you can rely on, help each other out. Not many in this street, sorry to say. Nic’s one of the good ones, but. So you just here to get some things for her or—’

‘Daddy! Stop talking! Come on come on come on come on!’

Andre laughed, waved a hand at his little girl.

‘I’m staying for a bit,’ Lena said. ‘Getting the place, ah, cleaned up for when she comes back. She’ll need a bit more room to get around.’

‘Good on you. She’s that proud of you, hey. Must be stoked you’re doing all this for her.’

‘Daddy! I need you now! Come on come on come on come oooooooon.’

Andre grinned, turning towards the stroller in the driveway and the straining child. ‘Better get this one to the play centre before she screams the neighbourhood down. But hey, let us know if you need a hand with anything. I work nights, so anything during the day. And after five my wife Mel’s home. She loves Nic, so, yeah. Number forty-eight. All right, chicken, I’m coming. See ya, Lena.’

The supermarket aisles reverberated with a child’s full-throated screams. Lena scanned the shelf labels beneath the tampons. The yellow-stickered ones, super-sized and with applicators, were almost half the price of her preferred slim regulars. The difference would buy a tub of cottage cheese and a tin of tuna. Maybe a bag of salad, too, if the cottage cheese was on special like last week.

Probably there had been tampons in the piles of stuff she’d thrown out from the kitchen the other day. There had been so many overstuffed plastic bags in the cupboards and under the table that she’d stopped opening them. What was the point when nine out of ten items went right into a different plastic bag ready to be tossed?

This, right now was the point. The blood stiffening her undies while she calculated the unit price of discount tampons.

Probably some of the bags she’d tossed from Nic’s room had brand-new undies in her size, too. There had been a lot of clothing, tags still attached.

From behind her came a tut-tut, which she didn’t know was even a real thing that people did. She spun, ready to unload on the cow tutting her slow tampon contemplation, but the cow—actually a tiny, grey-faced woman with Amy Winehouse hair—was shooting daggers at the screaming, thrashing child who’d just been wheeled into the aisle by a serene-faced woman in a West Tigers jersey.

‘A good slap’d sort that out,’ the cow said as the trolley rolled past. If the Tigers fan heard, she didn’t show it, continuing up the aisle and stopping in front of the painkillers. Then, as though her hearing worked on delay, her head snapped towards Lena and she blinked, looked back at the pills, peeked to the side as though she wasn’t.

I didn’t say it, Lena wanted to tell her. Instead she knocked the cheap, giant tampons into her basket and took off for the tinned food aisle.

At the checkout, the toddler was doing its best to maintain the rage one aisle over. It was like those old battery ads with the drumming bunny; the kid kept kicking the sides of the trolley and shaking its fist, howling incomprehensibly at the floor, but ever slower, ever quieter. Winding down down down.

Lena felt the mother’s eyes on her. She glanced over … Yep, still staring. Fuck. Did the woman think the slapping comment had come from her or … Fuck fuck fuck. Even here? Even fucking everywhere. That’s the point of the internet, hey.

If the checkout chick hadn’t already started scanning her shopping she would’ve taken off. She willed the girl to go faster, shoving the items into her backpack as soon as they were through, smashing her card against the reader before the girl could mumble Nineforty-sixcashorcard.

She had one foot out the door when she heard her name. She turned and saw the trolley—with half-a-dozen canvas shopping bags and the toddler now slumped, hiccupping, with eyes half closed—wheeling straight for her.

‘Lena! Bloody hell! Lena Harris! It’s been like eighty-seven years!’

Jersey tight against enormous breasts and several fat rolls, slicked-back blonde ponytail, black roots regrown to her ears. Something familiar about those green-grey eyes, though, and the dimples now she was smiling.

‘Shit! Kylie?’

‘In the flesh, mate.’

‘Shit!’ Lena laughed, slapped a hand over her mouth.

‘You’re blocking the entryway, girls,’ a man’s voice said, and without looking or responding the two of them moved out into the shopping centre, Kylie gripping Lena’s arm with her left hand, steering the trolley with the other until they were clustered against a railing.

‘How do you look the exact fucking same as when you were thirteen?’ Kylie said.

‘Bullshit.’

‘Nah, you’re right. Your skin is way better. Still got no tits or arse, though. How’ve you managed that?’

‘Who’s this?’ Lena nodded toward the dozing, snot-encrusted child.

‘Lacey. Fucking menace, she is. Nah, for real, though, she’s a great kid. Just going through the terrible twos and all that. So how come you’re here? Like, on holidays or back for good?’

‘For good, I guess. I mean, I came back down for uni, but—’

‘You were always smart as fuck. Hey, listen, I’ve gotta get this little monster home, but why don’t you come with us? I’ll get her settled and then we can catch up properly.’

‘Oh, I should really …’ She shrugged her backpack, pointlessly.

‘Someone waiting for you?’

‘Nah. Not really.’

‘So come on then.’ Kylie started walking and Lena followed. When they came to the automatic doors, she wheeled the trolley right out on to the street and kept going, chattering away about what Jo and Nash and the rest of the old school crew were up to. It was three minutes or so before Kylie stopped out the front of a shudderingly familiar block. Four separate six-storey redbrick buildings, each divided into thirty units with a shared balcony connecting them. The ground in between was concrete and determined weeds, VB cans and ciggie butts and faded chocolate wrappers. It was like a TV executive’s idea of how poor people lived.

Kylie scooped up her kid in one arm, grabbed shopping bags with both hands. Lena went to take some for her, but she was already marching up the path towards the middle building, the trolley left to fend for itself on the street.

‘You still with your mum, hey?’ Lena asked.

‘Fuck, no. I’ve got a place of my own one floor up.’

‘Cool. She’s still here then? Your mum?’

‘Yep. They’ll get her out of here in a body bag if they ever get her out at all.’

These were the flats Lena thought of when that tower in London caught fire a few years back. It was much taller than the building she was following Kylie to, but the shape and feel of it—the paper-thin interior walls, the concrete external stairs and landings—had made her think of the place she’d spent so many summer days as a kid.

Kylie climbed the three flights of stairs surprisingly quickly for a fat woman carrying a toddler and a week’s worth of groceries. Lena, half the size including her backpack, struggled to keep up, her lungs burning by the top of the first flight. By the second her knees were creaking, the left one threatening to give out as she reached Kylie’s floor.

‘Bit puffed, mate?’

‘Yeah.’ Lena stood against the railing, catching her breath as Kylie unlocked the door to the unit at the far end of the landing. ‘This air’s so shit. Too much crap in the lungs, I reckon.’ Which might have been true, but also she felt her body becoming her father’s in the first months of his illness. The clicking and cracking that signalled he had stood or bent or knelt or sat; the breathlessness after walking from car to front door. Not the cancer turning his strong, young body ancient. Not directly, at least. Malnutrition, the doctor said, and she never knew whose idea it was but a regime of pot smoking was decided on and Will sent to procure the supplies, and Dad was better then, for a bit.

Lena followed Kylie into the gloom, confused for a second by the thick, sweet smell of pot as though her thoughts had taken form. At the back of the room, a man in a tall black beanie leant over a state-of-the-art bong, coloured glass and engraved brass attachments, twice the height of the two-litre bottle of Pepsi sitting next to it.

‘Ty, this is Lena. Lena, Ty.’ Kylie dumped the shopping in a doorway to her left and then placed the sleeping child on the overstuffed brown velvet sofa next to the bong and its user.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ Lena said.

Ty was older than them. Older than Will. Maybe even as old as her mum or Nic. It was hard to tell for sure with his face cloaked in shadow and smoke.

‘Leen and me were mates when we were small. She’s just moved back from Queensland.’

‘Fuck the Cockroaches,’ Ty said, but with so little spirit Lena wondered why he bothered.

Lena asked to use the bathroom, took her backpack with the tampons. The toilet door had a laminated poster on it saying Best Seat in the House in fancy black font. Inside was a matching poster: Hello, Sweet Cheeks. There’d been a stack of similar posters at Nic’s. Cheap laminated prints saying things like This Home Has Endless Love and Laundry, Life is Short, Lick the Bowl and Siri, Pour More Wine. She wished she hadn’t chucked them now. They’d be a good gift for Kylie.

She returned to the living room to find Kylie sitting on the floor in front of the lounge. She patted the carpet beside her, and Lena sat.

‘So tell us what you’ve been up to.’

‘Oh, well, you know. Like I said, came back down to go to uni …’

‘Ha. Fucking Queensland don’t even have any unis. Explains a lot.’

‘Ignore him. He’s an idiot.’

‘Least I’m not a Queenslander.’

‘Yeah, so uni, hey? You doing teaching? Tara’s doing teaching. Maybe she’s finished by now. I dunno. You remember Tara? Always scratching her arms until bits of skin flew off?’ Kylie shuddered, rubbing her own bare arms.

‘She had eczema.’

‘Yeah? Fuck, I thought she was just addicted to scratching and that.’

‘Mighta been on the ice,’ Ty said. ‘Seen a fella scratch right through to his insides once on that shit.’

Kylie rolled her eyes at Lena, saying, ‘Yeah, Ty, she was on ice at the age of ten.’

‘Could be, could be.’

‘Anyway, I know she was going to uni to do teaching because she came into Mac’s—you know the chicken place up at the centre? Yeah, so I work there a couple nights a week—and she came in one time, like three years ago or something, and she said how she’d gotten into the teaching course and that. She looked pretty pleased with herself. Can’t remember if her arms were scratched up or not. That’d be a bit shit for a teacher to have skin flying off and that, hey?’

‘The treatment for eczema is heaps better now,’ Lena said, although she had no idea if it was true. She was sinking into a pleasure she’d long forgotten—being the clever one, being appreciated for that.

‘Good to know. So what are you going to teach? Like the little ones or … ?’

‘Yeah, primary. But actually, maybe not. I’m thinking of dropping out.’

‘How come?

‘Lots of reasons. I haven’t been going much, exams are starting and … I dunno. It just feels kinda pointless, you know?’

‘Fuck, what doesn’t, mate?’ Kylie said, but then reached behind and stroked the sleeping child’s arm and smiled a little.

‘Yeah, so, weird thing, though. You remember my aunty Nic?’ ‘Yes! She always had rainbow Paddle Pops in the freezer. And she painted our nails for us, like all different colours and with glitter and that. We used to pretend she was our mum. How’s she doing?’

‘Turns out she’s, like, a total hoarder these days.’

‘Fuck, for real? Mrs Kidd in the block one over’s a hoarder. Department’s been trying to get her out for ages, hey, but she’s got some lawyer or social worker or something, this smart bitch who keeps fending them off. They tried to get some cleaners in a while back. Poor Mrs Kidd. Screamed her fucking head off the whole time, cops came and all. Remember that, Ty? When the cops were up at Mrs Kidd’s?’

‘They were looking for her husband.’

‘No, they weren’t. That’s a stupid shit rumour.’

‘Yeah, well how come he just stopped turning up at the pub one night and then after that the mad old thing starts filling her house with so much shit no one can get inside? I’ll tell youse why. Because she’s knocked him off and his body’s hidden somewhere under all that crap. He’ll be dust before anyone gets to him.’

‘Maybe he took off because of all the shit. Didn’t want to live in it anymore.’

Ty shook his head. ‘The shit came after he disappeared, I’m telling you. He’s in there somewhere.’

‘Grief,’ Lena said.

Kylie raised her eyebrows.

‘Just … maybe he left her and then she started to just, like, keep stuff because she was sad and that.’

‘That what happened to Aunty Nic? Her bloke leave her?’

Lena shrugged. ‘I don’t know what happened. Don’t think she had a bloke, though. Not anyone serious anyways.’

‘What does she say about it?’

‘Doesn’t think there’s anything wrong. Forbid me from cleaning up. Mum and Will reckon I should leave it, but they’re not here. They don’t get how—’

‘Will! God, I had the biggest crush on him when we were kids. Such a babe. How’s he going anyway? Staying out of trouble?’

‘Yeah, he’s good. Been up in North Queensland pretty much since he got out. Got himself a girlfriend, coupla stepkids. Living the dream, he reckons.’

‘Good for him. For real, stoked to hear he’s come through okay. Bloody Will, hey? Speaking of, do you want—’ Kylie cringed. ‘Not speaking of Will. Just, I was gonna ask if you wanted a smoke.’

Lena laughed. ‘I’ll tell him his name makes you think of that now.’

‘Shit, I’m a dick. Forget I said it. But have a smoke if you want. Ty’ll give you some.’

‘I’m good. You go ahead, but.’

‘Nah, I don’t touch it. Not since …’ Kylie tipped her head towards Lacey. ‘Gotta stay sharp with a little one. Especially round here. All the stairs and balconies and bloody druggies and everything.’

‘That’s right,’ Ty added, before sucking back again.

‘You want something to eat? I’m starving.’ Kylie crawled across the floor and rummaged through the bags she’d dumped earlier, emerging with a pack of Doritos the size of her child. ‘Help yourself.’

‘Nah, I’m good.’

‘Go on, you’re skinny as a rake, mate. You should eat up.’

‘Nah, really. I should go, actually. Call in at the hospital before I head back to the hoard.’ Lena stood, shook out her creaking knees. ‘Hey, I love that poster.’ Muhammad Ali in full glorious flight, white letters across his chest: The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. ‘I should get that tattooed on my forehead.’

Ty looked up. ‘I know a bloke can do it for you. Cheap and that. If you want.’

Kylie laughed, squeezed her eyes shut for a second. ‘Yeah, Leen. Ty’ll hook you up for a cheap forehead tatt whenever you want.’

Lena was overcome with the urge to hug Kylie, but instead she tapped Ty on the shoulder as she headed for the door. ‘Hey, good to meet ya.’

‘Wait, wait, wait. Lemme give you my number.’ Kylie moving faster than seemed right, again, reaching towards Lena with open hand. ‘Give us your phone.’

Lena’s phone hadn’t stopped vibrating in her pocket this whole time. What was waiting there when she pulled it out?

‘Dead battery. Gimme yours.’

Kylie handed it over before she’d finished asking. A newer model than Lena’s but with a spider web crack over the top half of the screen. Lena added her number. Said goodbye. Kylie closed the space between them in an instant, gave her a rough, hard, fast hug and then disappeared back into the apartment.

At the bottom of the stairs Lena leant against the wall, waiting for her legs to catch up to her heart. When was the last time anyone other than Nic had hugged her? Josh, when he said goodbye to her after they fucked. And before that? Annie a few times when she was smashed. Mum, saying goodbye at the train station more than nine months ago.

Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out. A fuckload of notifications, but at the top, just arrived from Kylie: Glad your back nerd i bawled my eyes out when you left shutup but i did stay in touch xxxxxxx

Lena scanned through the messages that had banked up in the hour she’d been in the supermarket and at Kylie’s. A missed call from Will. One text each from Lou, Annie and Mum. Eight unknown numbers. Three unlisted numbers. Two from Nic. Four from Josh.

I guess you’ve blocked me and I’m sending this into a void. Have to try

Can’t stop thinking about you

If you’d give me a chance to explain

Just meet with me one time then Ill never contact you again if thats what you really want. Please

She stared at the phone. How could she speak to Nic without telling her about the giant yellow skip, to Mum and Will without admitting she’d quit her job and, by the way, was an accidental porn star, to Annie or Lou without letting on how broken and disgusting and ashamed she felt? How could she respond to Josh with anything except a raw, guttural scream?

She deleted everything. Called no one back. Decided to skip the hospital for the second day in a row. When your whole life has become unspeakable, you’d best avoid speaking.