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him. Zara was talking in a babbling, sobbing way. The words were lost in Mathew’s crying. Moira knelt on the bed to hear better.
    ‘I weren’t strong enough,’ Zara said. ‘Weren’t strong enough in my arm to do it.’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘I couldn’t look at him and do it.’
    ‘What are going on about?’
    ‘In the hospital. When nobody was around I tried to do it but I couldn’t look at him. It made me not strong enough if I looked.’
    ‘Do what?’
    ‘I closed my eyes and I put the blankets over his face and I pushed down and down so he wouldn’t breathe and he would just die and go away. But I opened my eyes and I couldn’t keep pushing. And he opened his eyes and he saw me trying to do it.’
    Moira wanted to lift Zara from where she was wedged. The girl would not be touched.
    ‘You’re frightening me now. This is one of your lies. Say it’s one of your lies. You made it up and you’re frightening me.’
    ‘Didn’t make it up.’
    She grabbed Zara by the back of her T-shirt and shook her.
    ‘Say you made it up.’
    Zara let herself be shaken, her head going side to side as if a doll neck.
    ‘Zara?’
    ‘I’m off to town.’ She stood up.
    ‘Answer me, girl.’
    ‘I’ll borrow Rory’s bike.’
    ‘Get out, then. Go. Get out.’
    Zara ran past her, out of the tent.
    ‘Come back, Zara. Please.’
    In among the saplings Zara ran. She was holding the cut pantyhose up over her knees. She kept going further, where the trees were shadows of themselves and huddled together and breezy. They closed behind her and spoke in their leaf-whisper.
    Where’s the bottle? I’ll have to wash it, Moira thought. Mathew will just have to bawl while I wash it and make a new mixture. Rory was arriving on his bike and Limpy with him. The dog would be sniffing around the bottle in a second if she didn’t get it off the ground.
    ‘Rory, come over here—I need your eyes. Help find Mathew’s bottle, there’s a good boy.’
    ‘I saw Zara running through the trees.’
    ‘That’s none of your business.’
    ‘Did she eat dinner? Cause if she didn’t eat it, can I have it for her? I’m still starved.’

4
    Lying in bed listening to the dark plays tricks with sounds. Moira was sure she heard Zara treading over leaf litter three times before she finally looked through the house’s good eye and saw her for certain. The girl was going into the tent. She hadn’t walked into town. That would have taken hours in bare feet, or stocking feet which were as good as bare feet, and it hadn’t been hours since that horrible business. Not even Zara would go into town without more clothes.
    Moira didn’t want to speak to her. What would she say? Better to let it blow over till tomorrow. Though her stomach felt cold and churning thinking about what Zara had told her. When you have to take your own daughter’s baby and keep it by your side, keep it by your bed. When you fear harm might come to it—its own mother doing the harming—your stomach is cold and churning and you want Shane to come home soon and be with you for safety.
    When he finally did she’d got Mathew back to sleep after a feed from the bottle and a change. She’d tried sleeping herself but could not do more than shut her eyes for a minute like a long blink. Mathew was in his little bed on the floor an arm reach away but still she had closed the house door, something she wouldn’t usually do on a hot night. There was a bolt on the frame, rusted and sticking. By giving the door a shove you could shift it across.
    She did this and felt better. But she still preferred Shane to be there. She pushed the door wide open for him in case he was tipsy and waited on the step while the car was parked under the low-limbed sugar gum they called the garage. She saw that Midge was driving, so Shane must have tied one on. He got out of the car and bent over, hands on knees, as if vomiting. Yet he wasn’t drunk in that way. He wasn’t even drunk. You could tell by the