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pimples, half of them, and boyfriends and whether or not they are or want to be, pregnant, and who got engaged. And I come here and it’s all coffins.’
    â€˜You don’t have to work, Rhetta, she said she’s going to sell the house.’
    â€˜I do have to work,’ Mum said, ‘of course I have to work. I couldn’t cope if I didn’t work.’
    Nan joined a yoga class and started Italian lessons. Some afternoons when I got home from school she’d be doing exercises in the lounge room or she and Dad would be sitting sort of together, sort of apart with their eyes closed and all you could hear was their breathing, Nan’s steady and regular, Dad’s all ragged and noisy.
    â€˜What are you doing? Can I have some cake? I’m starving.’
    â€˜Meditating,’ Dad said, ‘that’s what we’re doing. Sitting quietly listening to nothing. Counting our breaths. Stilling the chattering monkeys.’
    â€˜What monkeys? Can I have two pieces?’
    â€˜One only, don’t want to spoil your dinner.’ Nan stood up, ‘The monkeys inside our heads, Chrissie, the ones that chatter on about all life’s trivia. We want to be still enough so we disappear into our own hearts.’
    â€˜Where’s Mum?’ my mother said, come home from the afternoon shift. ‘I thought she was supposed to be here, helping? How can she help if she’s never home?’
    â€˜She cooked dinner,’ I said. ‘Look — lasagne.’
    â€˜Where did she go, Dave?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Dad said, ‘yoga or Italian probably. Or maybe to the movies with that old bloke she’s met?’
    â€˜What bloke? Why doesn’t she talk to me? Why doesn’t she tell me what’s going on?’
    â€˜You’re not home, Mum,’ I said, setting the table. ‘How can she tell you anything when you’re not here?’
    â€˜Thanks, Chrissie, thanks a lot. That makes me feel very good, I don’t think. I have to work you know. I have to work.’
    â€˜You don’t,’ Dad said softly reaching out to her, ‘you don’t have to work, Rhetta. Your mother’s offered us money.
    â€˜You don’t understand do you,’ and Mum jumped up from the table. When she came back later she’d washed her waitressing make-up from her face and her hair hung loosely around her face.
    â€˜I’m just not used to a mother who goes to yoga and speaks in Italian.’
    It was true Nan was starting to talk in little bits of Italian. She had a cassette tape she played. She had to answer the voices on the tape. It sounded like rain. The words lilted away from me, I could hear them but I didn’t know what they meant and I was always a little bit disappointed when Nan explained that she’d just asked where the nearest supermarket or railway station was.
    â€˜Not to mention, goes out with a bloke,’ Dad said, watching Mum.
    â€˜I’ll have to talk to her,’ Mum said.
    â€˜That would be a really good idea, Rhetta. That might make things a lot easier for both of you.’
    â€˜About the bloke,’ Mum said, ‘that’s all, Dave, just about this bloke.’
    â€˜Have you changed, Nan?’ I asked when she got home late that night.
    â€˜Good heavens, Chrissie, I thought you’d be sound asleep. What do you mean have I changed? I’ve still got my good trousers on.’
    â€˜No, other stuff. Like inside.’
    She didn’t talk for a while. The room was filled with other night-time noises, her zipper being pulled down, the rustling sound of her shirt, Dad coughing down the hallway and Bongo dreaming of rabbits.
    â€˜Yes,’ she said finally, ‘yes, I think I have changed. I should have done all this years ago. It’s too easy to get caught up in the stupid little things of life, to make them all that matters. It shouldn’t take death to make us see that,