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When I was discharged – like a freed prisoner, I think, slightly dazed at the sudden concrete presence of the outside – I travelled back to Manawaka by bus. Calla came into the city to get me, to come back with me. She didn’t fuss or treat me like an invalid, the way some people might have done, forever asking after one’s comfort until the burden of reassuring them that you are fine becomes unbearable. No, she simply said, “You won’t want to talk much, I expect,” and for the whole three hours we hardly said a word. I wanted to thank her for this gift, which had cost her something, but I could not seem to clarify my mind enough to decide what could be said and what could not. So I never mentioned it, and she thinks still, no doubt, that I never noticed.

I felt, those first few days back at home, brittle and thin-textured, like a dried autumn flowerstalk that might snap in the slightest wind, an empty eggshell skull that might crumble at the slightest tapping from the outside. I wanted only to take great care. Not of my flesh and bones, which were resilient enough, as I had discovered, but of the other. Nothing must disturb me. That’s what I thought. Nothing must happen to disturb me. Everything must be exceedingly calm. We must have no difficulties. Do not let there be any arguments or anything unexpected which demands decision or response. This was all I prayed, to no one or to whoever might be listening, prayed unprayerfully, not with any violence of demand or any valiance of hope, but only sending the words out, in case. Do you read me? This message is being sent out to the cosmos, or into the same, by an amateur transmitter who wishes for the moment to sign off. Don’t let anything happen.

I wasn’t quite myself.

Mother pampered me for a week, which was appreciated, and then for a further week, which wasn’t. Then she had an attack and her mouth went dark lilac and Doctor Raven came in the night and I got up and was recovered and now we are back to normal.

When she was reasonably all right again, that night, and Doctor Raven had gone, I made tea and sat beside her for a while. Just as she was beginning to go off to sleep she murmured something so fretfully that I wondered how many thousand times she’d stabbed herself with it.

Niall always thinks I am so stupid.

I looked at her – she was asleep now – the ashes of her face, the ashes of her hair. I drew the sheet and blanket up around her scrawny and nicely lace-nyloned shoulders, as people do when there is nothing they can do. Then I went back to my own room and got out my clothes, ready for the next day, knowing I would be returning to school.

That was the night I quit sending out my swaddled embryo wishes for nothing to happen. No use asking the impossible, even of God.

“Rachel, do you think you should go out this evening, dear?”

“I won’t be long. I’m only going for some cigarettes.”

“Oh – do you really need them, dear?”

“Well, I’ve run out.”

“It’s up to you, of course, dear, but I would have thought – what with getting back to school and everything – it might just be advisable for you to conserve your energy, that’s all.”

“It’s only a step from here to the Regal. I’m all right. Now please don’t –”

“Well, I know you think I’m being silly, dear, but it’s only because I –”

“I don’t think you’re being silly. But I feel all right. Honestly. Look, should I get you a chocolate bar, while I’m there?”

“Nothing for me, thanks, dear. I’ve got everything I want. Only, do take it easy, won’t you? And don’t be too long.”

Walk slowly but hurry back.

“Yes, I will. And I won’t be long.”

I had forgotten it was Saturday night. River Street is crowded as it always has been on this particular evening, with women in from farms to do their shopping, and teenagers bound for the Flamingo, and men with a six-days’ tiredness and yearning for voices bound for the beer parlour of the Queen Victoria.

I don’t like the lights and noise, and I walk along the extreme outer edge