A woman three rows in front of Lena was watching a video with the sound on full. Buy some goddamn earbuds! Or switch on subtitles. Or, fuck, wait until you get home? What could be so urgent? The sound filtering through to Lena was gibberish, a tinny rising and falling of voices. She imagined storming down the aisle, snatching the phone from the woman, throwing it to the floor and stomping on it over and over until it was just shards of glass and plastic, a tangle of tiny wires.

  Back in Brisbane one time, a man diagonally across from her on the train put his legs out on the seat beside her, propped a tablet on his knees and started watching a video. She couldn’t see the screen but from the panting and groans it became obvious within seconds it was porn. She was blocked in by his thick, bare legs; nobody else in the half-full carriage seemed to be bothered, if they noticed at all, seeing as most of them had done what this creep hadn’t and stuck earbuds in or headphones on. She thought about telling him to turn it down. Thought about standing and making him move his legs. She thought she might be overreacting; it wasn’t like he was wanking or anything. She snuck a glance at his face; calm, focused, like he was watching an instruction video: how to poach an egg perfectly every time. Lena wished someone would walk past and see, tell him it was inappropriate. Her mother’s favourite word, which always drove Lena crazy but now she wished for Mum and her prissiness, her sense of propriety. Excuse me, but watching that in public is inappropriate, Mum would say.

  Lena tested the moment out in her mind, watching the inner suburbs fly by. Excuse me? Can you switch that off? It’s inappropriate. She couldn’t get her mind to show her what would happen next. You are not someone who tells strange men on public transport what to do or not do, she thought. You are not Mum, even in this best of ways.

  Then she thought, What would Aunty Nic do? And she knew right away. She cleared her throat. The man looked at her, a challenge in his eyes. Go on, tell me not to watch my porn. She smiled, lifted a hand, stuck her middle finger up her nose. He grimaced as she turned it around, really having a good old dig up there.

  ‘Filthy dog,’ he muttered, closing his laptop.

  ‘Oops. Probably something I should only do in private, hey?’

  The man legged it out of the carriage and Lena wiped her hand on her jeans and then texted the woman who inspired her.

  Now, on this bus full of sniffers and sneezers, screeching kids and unmuted cat videos, feeling like her head was going to explode, she tried the trick again: What would Aunty Nic do?

  No answer, only images: the bruised old woman in the hospital bed; the urine-stained, ranting one, half buried by junk and tat.

  While she’d been hiding in the hospital, Sydney’s jacarandas had burst into flower and the campus and surrounding streets were flushed purple. The sight of them infused her with optimism. She’d forgotten this about Sydney; how the blossoming of the jacarandas signalled the winding down of the school year, the almost-here summer holidays. This lightness, this buzz of childlike excitement was merely Pavlovian. The sight of the college building Josh had taken her to, disguised as an innocent sandstone backdrop to three giant jacarandas, corrected her falsely lifted mood. There was nothing to look forward to here.

  She’d been in her room ten minutes, was preparing to make the trek down the hallway to the shower, when there was a knock on her door. The RA who had run her orientation in February. Julie, Julia, Julianne? A peroxided pixie cut, eighties-style blue eyeshadow. She wore baggy pyjama bottoms, candy pink stripes on a white background. Her yellow t-shirt hung to mid-thigh.

  ‘Lena! You’re here for once. Can we chat?’

  ‘Okay.’ Lena motioned to the desk chair, perched herself on the edge of her single bed. Her shower bag—an absurd, shiny hot pink sack hanging on a hessian rope, a gift from Mum—by her side. She hadn’t turned on the light when she’d come in and the day was fading fast. The dim quiet made it feel like a sick room. Switching on the light now would only encourage the RA to linger. Let her sit in the growing dark for as long as she could stand it.

  ‘So, this is awkward …’ Juli-whatever looked at her own twisting hands. ‘I’ve been made aware of this, um, this material that’s circulating?’

  Lena listened to her own breaths, in and out. Normal.

  ‘Material featuring you?’

  Unprecedented quiet. Why no stomping in the hallway? No shouting from downstairs or hammering on neighbours’ doors? No tinny music or shrill ringtones or Skype trills. Not even a bird calling its babies in for the night. She picked up the shower bag, couldn’t believe the loudness of the squeak its skin made against hers.

  ‘You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Lena?’

  She wound the hessian rope around and around the fingers of her left hand. Remembered that the RA’s name was Juliette-but-you-can-call-me-Jules and that she was from South Australia. It’s why her accent was so posh, Annie had said, confusing Lena, who thought that Jules and Annie sounded so alike you would mistake one for the other through a closed door, but Annie was Sydney born and bred. Confused her, too, because why did being South Australian make you speak posh? She realised she knew nothing about South Australia or people from there at all and, as with so many of the things she didn’t know, she felt this was a thing that most people did know. It wasn’t like asking in class for the definition of metacognition or phonology. It wasn’t the kind of question people meant when they said there are no stupid questions.

  ‘I know you haven’t attended any of your classes this week, haven’t been returning to your accommodation. You’re not in trouble. I mean, that’s not—I’m not here to tell you off or anything. You don’t have to be so … Look, I’m trying to reach out, Lena. To find out what I—we—can do to help you. I spoke to the university liaison and he—’

  ‘Who asked you to do that?’

  ‘I didn’t identify you—not that it would … It’s confidential, anyway. I wanted to find out what could be done for you. He advised making an appointment with the student welfare office. Speak to a counsellor?’

  The hessian was permanently wet. What a stupid material to make a shower bag rope from. Never properly dried, its fibres swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking, always damp and scratchy. She wound it tighter and tighter; it couldn’t be broken was the thing. Her circulation would be stopped, her damn fingers would drop off, before the rope gave the slightest bit.

  ‘Is that something you’d like me to do, Lena? Make an appointment with—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. So …’

  It was properly dark now. Lena wanted to say, Get the fuck out of my room, but she had never been good at saying things like that. To her mum, to the Dick, to Will, sure. But with them she knew she was in the right. Everyone else, it was harder to know. People in general weren’t like her and her family. It made it difficult to know how to handle things.

  ‘I understand this is hard to talk about.’

  If she understood that why did she persist? Again, Lena wanted to say the words but they wouldn’t come. She sat like a goddamn mute. Because what was the right response? There was a stranger in her room wanting to talk to her about how it felt to be fucked over and over again for an audience.

  ‘Wait,’ Lena said. ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘The material was shown to me by—’

  ‘You watched it?’

  ‘Not in any prurient way. I needed to know what we’re dealing with. What the nature of the situation—’

  ‘Get the fuck out of my room.’

  ‘Lena, please, I only—’

  She stood. The bag dropped to the floor, her hand singing in relief. ‘Get the fuck out of my room. Now.’

  And the RA did. Not another word. Not a backward glance. How easy was that? She didn’t even feel bad about it. About telling the bitch to leave, that is. All the rest of it … Bad didn’t come close. If she could tell herself to get the fuck out, she would. Stupid ugly desperate whore. Get the fuck out.

  Lena slept badly, woke a few times thinking she was still at the hospital, remembered she wasn’t, remembered as she had every night at the hospital when she woke that whatever time it was there were people watching her fucking Josh, some of them jerking off to it, many of them laughing or pretending, like Jules, to be sorry for her. By the time morning broke she had accepted she must go to class. It was just like after Dad died. People would stare openly. Other people would pretend not to stare but in a way that made the effort obvious. A few would broach the subject with squinted-up eyes and a tone that would make you want to punch them, hard. They’d say, I heard. I’m so sorry. I’m here for you. And what she would do was ignore the stares, say, Thanks. I appreciate that. What I really want is to get on with things, get back to normal. And she would. It was like after that singer pissed herself on stage during a televised show. She just kept showing up at things and, in time, everyone moved on.

  So: Introduction to Classroom Management at 10 a.m. She dressed low-key—jeans, t-shirt, grey hoodie—but took time with her hair and make-up so she looked well rested and natural and like nothing in the world could be wrong. Even so, she arrived early, hoping to avoid walking into a roomful of people who had probably seen her bare tits, heard her pathetic panting. But the building was locked—the lecturer had no idea why, had to stomp off to find someone from maintenance.

  By five to ten more than half the class was there, leaning solitary against the wall or forming jostling knots around the door. Some murmuring, others laughing loudly. Lena tried being one of the wall leaners, earbuds in, eyes closed. The surety that the murmurs, the laughs were about her grew each second. Eyes open, pretending to focus on her phone, then really focusing on her phone because there was a message from Nic saying, Social worker at 12. Will you be in class? Okay if you are just thought I’d ask.

  She closed her eyes again, pressed her skull into the wall. How had she never seen what a useless child Nic was? Even without the house of horrors she should have realised. What kind of forty-something woman paints her nails like she’s taking art direction from a kindergartener? How can you be that old and not only have no partner but no evident history of ever having had one? No kids. Same shit job her whole adult life. Texts her uni student niece every single day, hangs out with her on weekends. And lucky she does, because otherwise she would have lain alone in that shit-pile until she rotted. What kind of person can go days with no one noticing they’re not around, not even answering the phone? Have no one to visit them in hospital? No one to call on for backup before a difficult appointment?

  But Lena had always known Nic was a child, hadn’t she? That she’d been able to think like one, at least. When six-year-old Lena was scared of the dark, Nic didn’t tell her to stop being silly like Mum did; she said of course the dark was scary, because you couldn’t see what was there. You’re being very logical. So we’ll leave on the hall light and then any nasties thinking of sneaking through won’t even bother. When nine-year-old Lena cried because she hadn’t been invited to Sara Frost’s Pretty Princess Pamper Party, Mum said, Good. Pedicures and facials for nine-year-olds is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. But Aunty Nic booked the two of them into a proper grown-up beauty salon and they took a thousand photos of themselves with face masks and head wraps and holding glasses of champagne (whisked out of Lena’s hand as soon as the shots were taken) while the girls who went to the party only had pictures with clear nail polish and babyish pink lemonade.

  It had always been the way: Mum had taught her about budgeting; Nic had shown her how blowing fifty dollars on a high tea made you feel like you had thousands in the bank. Mum had shown her how to use pads and then tampons, warned her it’d be a pain every month for the next forty years so better get used to it now; Nic had told her that she now had a monthly free pass to sleep in, binge on chocolate, skip her turn at making dinner and, if she had a male teacher or boss, get out of pretty much anything. Tell ’em you’re bleeding like a stuck pig and they’ll jam their fingers in their ears while begging you to go home and lie down.

  Every step of the way, Mum had taught her how to survive in the world as it was, and Nic had shown her how to make the world as it was a bit more fun. Was that what all that bloody stuff was about? Trying to make things more fun? Was it just what happened when someone who thought like a kid made an adult wage? I’ll take this and this and this and this and one of those.

  A social worker might be exactly what Nic needed. Help her face up to the way she’d been living. But also, it might be that the social worker would be like fucking Jules and would sit there and put on a syrupy, kind, sympathetic voice when the whole time the details of Nic’s humiliation are looping entertainingly through her mind. She would be saying, I only want to help, and thinking, Can’t wait to tell the girls at yoga about the disgusting mess this crazy bitch was living in.

  Nic would say, Get the fuck out, no problem at all. But the thing is, the social worker wouldn’t have to get out, because the room was not Nic’s. And even if the social worker did get the fuck out, someone else would come and they, too, would talk in syrupy tones like Nic’s life was their business, her shame their problem to solve.

  Lena had a break between twelve fifteen and one. She’d have to slip out of this lecture early. Slip out. Fat chance. Wherever you sat, an early escape drew jealous or judgemental eyes. And once they realised who it was … Their eyes were on her now, she felt them, searing through her closed lids. Her closed lids were giving them the opportunity. Practically a fucking invitation, leaning against the wall, her nasty body stretched out like that, so they could take a proper look.

  Skinnier than she looks on screen

  Can’t see her ugly scar at least

  Needs to show her tits more, best thing about her

  Get the fuck out. She opened her eyes, caught no one looking, felt them start up again, taking in her flat arse, the one that had her graded down to a 6, as she walked as normally as she could away from the building. Family emergency, she told herself, practising—as if anyone would ask. There’s no one else who could be there to handle it.

  NIC

  The social worker looks no older than Lena but is dressed like she’s on a filming break from Real Housewives of Sydney: skin-tight black jeans, open-toed leopard-print stilettos, a fuchsia singlet with leopard-print bra straps peeking out. Her black, arse-length hair is unnaturally straight and shiny, and her nails are, Nic has to admit, both edgy and immaculate: rounded tips, deep, true navy blue polish, satin-finish, not gloss. She tucks her own split and naked nails into her clenched palms.

  ‘We’re meeting today because concerns have been raised about the circumstances in which you were injured,’ the social worker says from behind a desk piled with papers. The walls are plastered with posters about DEPRESSION and ANXIETY and BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER, about SUICIDE and HANDWASHING and NATURAL MOOD BOOSTERS. There’s a calendar displaying all of last year against a backdrop of sunflowers. A newspaper clipping whose headline is too small to read. A child’s drawing of a family with purple faces and hair in front of a house as small as the purple dog.

  ‘I’d love it if you’d tell me in your own words, Nicole, how you came to hurt yourself?’

  On their last Sunday lunch date, Nic and Lena had eaten salads as big as their heads and drunk prosecco and flirted with the hot young waiter who brought them limoncello on the house and asked when they’d return, and Lena had spoken in excited whispers about this boy she was crushing on and Nic had told Lena about Jase from the stockroom and shocked them both by admitting she wouldn’t mind a ride. When they were paying, the flirty waiter had asked if they were sisters and Nic had rolled her eyes, said she could never get on so well with her actual sister.

  And now, here is Lena, grey-skinned and baggy-eyed, smile like a slapped-on sticker. A middle-aged, careworn daughter nodding encouragingly at her decrepit parent to go ahead and tell the nice lady what happened.

  ‘I climbed on the desk so I could hang something on a hook.’ She hears and hates the wobble in her voice. ‘I misjudged the edge and fell. Big whoop. I can’t be the only person to have fallen off some furniture while trying to reach something high.’

  ‘Of course,’ the social worker coos, making deep sympathetic arches of her brows, ‘accidents like yours happen quite often. What we’re concerned about is the circumstances in which you were found. The space in which you fell is what we could describe as cluttered or congested.’ She inclines her head as though she has asked a question. When no one answers, a look of disappointment crosses her face and she presses her beautiful fingertips together and continues: ‘We’re concerned that the clutter may have exacerbated the damage caused by the fall.’ Another pause, during which she looks down at her desk, nods gently as though all is explained there. ‘It certainly made it very difficult, Nicole, for the emergency services to reach you quickly.’

  ‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ Lena says. ‘I mean, it took a couple of minutes to clear the hallway for the, um, stretcher and that. No big deal, really.’

  The social worker turns her pity-filled gaze away from Nic towards the speaker of these true and necessary words: no big deal. Lena knows! And she’s young and clever and in one piece so will be heard.