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room.
    ‘School.’ Janey looked up from one of Dane’s books about cabinet-making and started to smile. ‘Bad influences.’
    ‘What, is
he
one too, secretly?’
    ‘No, but he knows a few. Huh, don’t we all.’ She turned a page. ‘You are so lucky, having civilised brothers.’
    ‘Well, you know, you can borrow them any time.’
    ‘Up to a certain point.’
    ‘Well, as far as they want to be borrowed,’ Chloe said with a laugh. She expected Janey to join in and laugh too, but there was silence, and when she checked Janey there was only a hint of a smile on her face, and Chloe felt uncomfortable about asking her to explain.
    Downstairs the phone rang. ‘Janey, it’s for you!’ Joy called.
    Janey slid off the bed and clomped out in her platforms. ‘Who is it?’
    ‘Your dad. You want to talk? I can—’
    ‘It’s okay.’ Her voice went flat and hard as she spoke into the phone. ‘Yeah, what do you want?’
    Chloe listened, heard nothing more. Then the phone was hung up, and the platforms stolidly thumped up the stairs. Then Janey stirred up the room again.
    ‘My old man. My dirty old man.’ She headed for the book on the bed. Chloe watched her, and she added, ‘Drunk. Hanging out.
Playing with himself
—you want to know more?’
    ‘Bleagh.’ Chloe went back to her own book, then looked up again. ‘Don’t you feel … don’t you feel
something
when that happens, something like that?’
    Janey considered. ‘Not really. I mean, face it, who am I to complain? Huh!’
    Chloe sometimes marvelled at herself and Janey, that this was idle conversation for them. Janey felt her doing it now, and looked up from the book and smiled. ‘I’m so cool.’
    ‘But you’re not. You should be—you should be cold and scary and hating everyone. You should be completely bent—’
    ‘Oh, I am that.’
    ‘Yeah, but you should be, you know,
stuffed up
. Bitter.’
    ‘Miserable, you mean.’
    ‘Yes! You should be miserable! Why aren’t you?’
    Janey bobbed her head, embarrassed. ‘Lordy, I don’t know. Can’t see the point, I guess. At this moment. Like, when I’m sad it’s just a quick thing—comes and goes. The rest of the time—’ She shrugged. ‘It must be my famous hormones. Being oversexed keeps me happy.’ She flipped a page, rubbed her nose, sniffed. ‘What about you?’
    Chloe baulked. ‘Well, if it’s a choice between miserable and oversexed, I’d go for something in the middle.’
    ‘Where you are, already. Happy-ish and undersexed. Or did he
de
sex you, the rat? The scumbucket?’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Theo, dimwit.’
    ‘Oh. Just put me off for a while, that’s all.’
    ‘Why—he was good, wasn’t he?’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t—’ Chloe started to laugh ‘—have any basis for comparison!’ She went silent, thinking. ‘He was okay, I guess. He just … it was
his
thing, that
he
did. It didn’t have much to do with me, except, I dunno, maybe trophy-wise, for him.’
    ‘Trophy-wise. A notch in the belt. Gawd, I wouldn’t have a belt that held together if I thought like that!’
    ‘It’s a good thing you’ve got those broad child-bearing hips to hold your pants up.’
    ‘Yeah.’ And Janey looked pleased.

    As Janey left, she and Chloe passed Nick and Isaac arguing in the lounge room.
    Isaac was saying, ‘You’ve got to find that place where your vision and your client’s vision can meet, you see—’
    ‘Where your vision and their
wallet
meet, you mean.’ Nick was going through some CDs, trying to read the tiny printing on them.
    ‘I think we have a fundamental difference in approach here,’ Chloe muttered to Janey, not intending that anyone else hear her.
    But Isaac looked up. ‘We do. But I’m working on him, Chloe, I’m working on him.’
    ‘Ah, I’ll bring you down to earth yet,’ said Nick.
    Embarrassed, Chloe saw Janey out. Then she went into the kitchen, where Joy and Dane were unloading the dishwasher.
    ‘Can you imagine these two in