“All good, no hurry,” Nina replied, lowering herself gracefully onto a sun lounger. “Why don’t you chill for a while?”

Emily didn’t need to be asked twice. It was a beautiful day; the last thing she wanted to do was paint. She took the adjacent lounger and lay back, placing her arms above her head and closing her eyes.

The sun shone orange through her eyelids. The sound of her breath made itself at home among the white noise of the ocean, the whisper of the trees, and the gentle slop-tap of the pool filter.

After a while, Emily heard the creak of Nina’s lounger and the pad of her feet on the tiles. In the kitchen, the fridge door squeaked and then she was back with a bottle of rosé and two glasses. There was a tinkle and a glug, and a frosty glass was pushed into Emily’s hand. “Cheers,” Nina said.

They clinked glasses and Emily took a sip. Best. Job. Ever.

“Are you close to your mum?” Nina’s voice was sleepy.

Emily felt her jaw stiffen. Every time her mother came up in conversation, her whole body tightened up. It was like a tic. She shrugged. “No, not really.”

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know … we’re just very different. She doesn’t like to talk about things and I’m all over the place. I make her feel uncomfortable.”

“Now how could that possibly be true?” Nina said. “She gave birth to you.”

“Actually, she didn’t. I’m adopted.”

“Really?”

Emily took another sip of wine. She could feel Nina looking at her.

“Can I ask at what age?”

“They fostered me when I was two and made it legal when I was eight.”

“Do you ever think about them?” Nina asked. “Your birth parents, I mean?”

“Sometimes.” Emily usually dodged questions like that. Maybe it was the wine or the heat, or maybe it was just Nina’s company, but she was too relaxed to censor herself. “They’re dead, though, so it’s not like I can go and find them. I wouldn’t anyway. They weren’t very nice, apparently. Alcoholics. Hit me and stuff.”

Nina was quiet.

“It’s okay, I don’t remember it,” Emily continued. “Or at least, I don’t think I do. Juliet made me see a child psychologist because they thought for a while that maybe I did.”

Nina shifted in her lounger. “Did what? Remember your biological family?”

“Yeah. Or what they did to me, anyway.”

“What did they do to you?”

Emily swallowed. “I’m not sure, specifically. No one ever said. I think they were all waiting for me to tell them.”

“But how could you possibly remember?” Nina said. “You were so little.”

There was a pause. Emily drank more wine. She could see the psychologist’s office clearly. Wood-paneled walls covered in pictures drawn by children. A sand tray. A Play-Doh table. A serious-looking woman with short gray hair and red-rimmed glasses: Dr. Forte. After every visit, Juliet would peer intently into Emily’s eyes, searching for a sign that she was different, that the doctor had fixed her.

“They told me they thought my body might have retained some memory of the abuse,” Emily said. “Like, not the kind of memory we have as adults or older children. Something different. There’s a word for it.…” She tried to think but her brain felt foggy. The sun was making her drowsy.

They lapsed into silence again. Emily felt as though she should say something else. “It sounds weird but sometimes I wish I did remember. It’s like having a blank space inside me.”

“Have you asked questions?”

“Yeah, kind of. Juliet told me some stuff when I was younger, but she doesn’t like talking about it. Neither do I, to be honest. It’s pretty depressing.”

“I can understand that.”

They sipped their drinks. The wine ran down Emily’s throat, glacier-cold.

“Why do you call her Juliet?” Nina asked. “Why not ‘Mum’?”

Emily hesitated, remembering the moment she’d decided never to use that word again. She’d been ten years old, a little ball of fury. “Just didn’t feel right.”

“Does she mind?”

“No.” Emily crossed an arm over her stomach. Something was flipping around unpleasantly in there, like a dying fish. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Just a thought,” Nina said quietly, “but maybe you should go a little easier on her. No one’s perfect. And it sounds like you’re a lot better off with her than you would’ve been otherwise.”

“I know. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I know I’m lucky, it’s just … it’s like I was never enough for her. She always wanted more.”

“What do you mean?”

Emily thought about the few times she had seen Juliet cry. Always after hospital appointments or on the phone to doctors, sometimes in strange places like cafés or the supermarket, often behind almost-closed doors at home (Emily remembered pressing her face against the gaps and trying to peer through). Never an outburst; more like a teary stillness followed by a mad tornado of fake happiness: a spontaneous trip to the ice-cream shop or a crazy dash around the adventure playground, Juliet following Emily up ladders and across rope bridges with a shaky smile and sad eyes.

Some part of Emily’s brain poked a hole in her boozy stupor. Maybe a little bit of censorship wouldn’t go amiss.

“Oh, nothing. Forget it, I’m just being weird.” She yawned and turned to look at Nina. There was a thin white scar just next to Nina’s eye that Emily hadn’t noticed before, a silvery line from her temple down to her jaw. “How about you, anyway? What’s your family like?”

Nina laughed softly. “Not much to tell,” she said. “Grew up on the Northern Beaches. Do you know Sydney at all?”

“No. Not even a little bit.”

“Well, let’s just say it’s very white bread. Picket fences and bake sales. Mum, Dad, me, my brother. Couple of dogs. Pretty boring, really.”

Emily closed her eyes again, feeling as though she might doze off. The Northern Beaches … she imagined big houses overlooking the ocean and dads washing their cars out front, families surfing together and having barbecues on the beach. Tall blond mums like Nina and gorgeous sun-kissed children frolicking in the waves. (No wonder the Dennys didn’t live there; if poor Aurelia struggled in Europe, she certainly wouldn’t last long in Australia.) She could see it all so clearly, could even smell the sausages and the smoke from the grill.…

Her eyes snapped open. She really could smell the smoke.

“Hey…,” she said, sitting up. She craned her neck to see into the kitchen. “Is something burning?”

“Mmm?”

A breeze pushed past them, bringing with it the dry, acrid stench of charcoal.

“Nina, I think something’s burning.”

But Nina had already caught the smell. She jumped up, knocking over her glass and spilling the contents. “Bloody hell,” she said, breaking into a run. “Not again.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EMILY

BY THE time they reached the playhouse it was already engulfed in flames.

Just meters away, Aurelia sat cross-legged and open-mouthed, tracing circles on the ground with her finger as the smoke billowed into the sky.

Nina sprinted straight to her. Hooking her hands under her daughter’s arms, she dragged her backward and away from the blaze, then, once they’d reached a safe distance, swung her up and over her shoulder. With an intensity Emily had only ever seen on the faces of elite athletes, Nina staggered over the sandy driveway to the family house and deposited Aurelia on the steps. “Stay there!” she yelled, and dashed inside.

Emily knew the command wasn’t meant for her, but she obeyed it anyway. She stood rooted to the spot, unable to think of a single thing she could do to help. It’s going to spread, she thought dimly as the flames rose higher, crackling and spitting at the surrounding dry leaves.

A few seconds later, Nina reemerged from the house brandishing a small fire extinguisher. “I called Yves!” she shouted as she ran back over the sand. “He’s on his way.”

Yves? Emily thought, surprised. Surely they would need more than just Yves? “What about the fire brigade?” she shouted, but her words were cut off by the guttural roar of the extinguisher.

Pointing it at the playhouse, Nina let loose a stream of white foam until the cylinder was empty. Suds pooled on the ground, but the flames seemed to climb even higher, tearing at the floral curtains and ravaging the little window boxes. The miniature door knocker fell off with a clank, and then the door itself collapsed. The air became thick with heat.

“Get another one!” Nina shouted.

Another one? Another what? Emily’s brain had frozen.

“Emily, what the hell are you doing? Guesthouse. Top of the basement stairs. Go!”