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Maria Takis. I’m from the Taxation Office.’
    ‘And you’re going to have a baby,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘How wonderful.’
    Maria could see her now. She was at least eighty years old. She was frail and petite. She had chemical white hair pulled back tightly from a broad forehead which was mottled brown. Her eyes were watery, perhaps from distress, but perhaps they were watery anyway. She had a small but very determined jaw, a wide mouth and very white, bright (false) teeth which gave her face the liveliness her eyes could not. But it was not just the teeth – it was the way she leaned, strained forward, the degree of simple attention she brought to the visitor, and in this her white, bright teeth were merely the leading edge, the clear indicator of the degree of her interest. She did not look in the least senile. She was flat-chested and neatly dressed in a paisley blouse with a large opal pendant clasped to the high neck. It was impossible to believe she had ever given birth to the woman in the cowgirl suit.
    There was a very blond young man in a slightly higher chair beside her. Maria held out her hand, imagining that this was her accountant. This seemed to confuse him – Australian men did not normally shake hands with women – but he took what was offered him.
    ‘Dr Taylor will give you his chair,’ said Mrs Catchprice.
    Not the accountant. The doctor. He looked at his watch and sighed, but he did give up his chair and Maria took it more gratefully than she might have imagined.
    Mrs Catchprice put her hand on Maria’s forearm. ‘I’d never have a man for a doctor,’ she said. ‘Unless there was no choice, which is often the case.’
    ‘I was hoping your accountant would be here.’
    ‘Let me ask you this,’ Granny Catchprice said. ‘Do I look sick?’
    Cathy McPherson groaned. A young male laughed softly from somewhere in the deep shadows beside the bride dolls.
    ‘No,’ said Maria, ‘but I’m not a doctor.’
    ‘What are you?’ said Mrs Catchprice.
    ‘I’m with the Taxation Office. We have an appointment today at ten.’ Maria passed Mrs Catchprice her I.D. Mrs Catchprice looked at it carefully and then gave it back.
    ‘Well that’s an interesting job. You must be very highly qualified.’
    ‘I have a degree.’
    ‘In what?’ Mrs Catchprice leaned forward. ‘You have a lovely face. What is your name again?’
    ‘Maria Takis.’
    ‘Italian?’
    ‘My mother and father came from Greece.’
    ‘And slaved their fingers to the bone, I bet.’
    ‘Mrs Takis,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I was conducting an examination.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘you can go now, Doctor.’ She patted Maria’s hand. ‘We women stick together. Most of us,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Not all of us.’
    Cathy McPherson took two fast steps towards her mother with her hand raised as if to slap her.
    ‘See!’ said Mrs Catchprice.
    Maria saw: Cathy McPherson, her hand arrested in mid-air, her face red and her eyes far too small to hold such a load of guilt and self-righteousness.
    ‘See,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She turned to Maria. ‘My housekeeping has deteriorated, so they want to commit me. Not Jack – the others. If Jack knew he’d be here to stop them.’
    ‘No one’s committing you,’ Cathy McPherson said.
    ‘That’s right,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You can’t. You thought you could, but you can’t. They can’t do it with one doctor,’ she patted Maria’s wrist. ‘They need two doctors. I am correct, am I not? But you don’t know – why would you? You’re from Taxation.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well you can’t see me if I’m committed.’ Mrs Catchprice folded her fine-boned, liver-spotted hands in her lap and smiled around the room. ‘Q.E.D.,’ she said.
    ‘The situation,’ said Dr Taylor, with the blunt blond certainties that come from being born ‘a real aussie’ in Dee Why, New South Wales. ‘The situation …’ He wrote two more words on