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the foot of the bed. A clump of brown wavy hair has come adrift from its clip. I try to look past her but from this angle most of the room is hidden and all I can make out is the end of the trolley; a bump that might be feet. When I come back, the door is closed again but, as I pass, it opens and a man steps into the corridor. He stops when he sees me and pulls the door shut behind him. He is tall and fine-boned, shoulders hunched slightly towards his chest, a thin grey face; over-large, wire-rimmed glasses behind which his eyes are pale and damp. He nods, still holding the handle, and I nod back and continue towards my room. As I reach my door he says, ‘That’s my son in there.’
    I turn. He speaks quietly, not quite looking at me.
    â€˜I wonder…perhaps you might be able to pop in and say hello to him later? I’m taking my wife home for a couple of hours, she’s done in. This business is killing her. She slept in here last night, in a sleeping bag, and she needs to freshen up before we go to the airport. We’ve got a specialist due in from Canada on a midday flight.’
    â€˜What’s his name?’
    â€˜Orzasky. Dr Paul Orzasky.’
    â€˜I mean—your son.’
    â€˜Oh. I’m sorry. Hugh. His name’s Hugh.’
    Back in my room I lie on the bed and think about nothing. Shadows collect in the creases of Hil’s vase, and the pigeons come and go without my looking. At eleven-fifteen Tina, I know her footsteps, comes along the corridor. She knocks lightly and when I don’t answer, enters and puts something on my table. I keep my eyes shut as she goes into the next room. She is the only one who always knocks. She is in there a few minutes. I hear her voice. And then she leaves. I track her footsteps along the linoleum passage and down the stairs, and when I can no longer hear her, I get up. I take the envelope she has placed on the table and put it, without needing to check who it is from, in my shoulder bag. For later. Then I open the door, pulling it shut behind me.
    The door to the next room is ajar. At first I just stand and listen, then I knock lightly, like Tina, and go in. The room looks smaller without Irena, empty. Gone are the pictures and framed photos, the woven rug that Steff hated, the brightly coloured bedspread. Against the whiteness of the sheets the walls look drab now, and the folded sleeping bag in the corner makes the room seem suddenly fleeting, provisional. The only sound is the boy’s breath, a loose flapping like an unset sail. My bare feet are pale and wide against the red and grey fleck of the lino, and after a while I know that I don’t want to look at him. I turn to leave and just then he begins to speak. Not speech. Not words. A man’s low humming, made of half sounds and floating vowels. Scraps of torn paper. I stand there for what seems a long time among them. It is a young man’s voice, richly sprung and pleasurable. At times a jumble of sounds, a child’s crooned mouthings, and then building in cadence and rhythm, thickening almost to speech, fragments of tune, then falling away again. Once there is a sobbing sound that could as easily be laughter. And later, the same two notes played forwards then back, over and over. Almost music.
    â€˜He’s a tenor,’ says a voice at the door; the mother is standing there and I notice, before glancing away, that she has tears on her face. ‘He was about to audition for the opera in Melbourne. They even rescheduled him, after the accident, in case he woke up in time for the second round.’
    A scrap of brown and grey hair has fallen again from her clip and lies across the shoulder of her dress. I think, briefly, that she is one of those people who will always look messy. There is silence from the bed now, except for the corrugated breath, and from the corridor the sound of voices. The father’s, low and deliberate, and another, quicker, lighter.
    â€˜We