Dad said she’d gone.

I didn’t reckon. I reckon she’d had enough, all right, but she couldn’t be gone gone. Mothers didn’t take off. Not any of the mothers I knew. And not my mum. She was too set on yanking my hair into twisty plaits, no matter what I might or might not have done to make her go.

Philly said Dad wouldn’t lie. ‘Dad hates sin more than he hates the devil.’

‘Shut your gob and go to sleep.’ I jammed my arms behind my head and got my eyes busy counting cobwebs on the ceiling. You couldn’t keep ahead of those spiders. Philly jumped up in her flannel jarmies. Even in the moonlight, I could tell Mum’d ironed em. Those jarmies made me bloody mad. I flung back the blankets and bolted to our chest of drawers, the chill of the floorboards nipping at my feet.

I ripped open Philly’s drawer. She had her clothes in piles like soldiers, all squared up.

‘Get your filthy hands off my stuff,’ she said.

‘Your PJs are dirty. I’m getting you another pair.’

‘You’re a lying snake in the grass, JJ.’ She pushed back the covers and was on all fours.

‘It’s on ya collar—bleedin great stain.’

She twisted her head, plucking at her jarmies, like a maggie, over and over at the ground for a worm. She gave up and launched herself at me, roaring. At nine, she was only a year younger, but so little, I caught her scratching hands easy. She pushed her face into mine and hissed like a cat.

We both stopped, listened. Normally, Mum would be belting down the passageway, floor vibrating, yelling at me to stop riling up Philly again. But this time there were just the rats scratching about like nothing had changed on their side of the wall.

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