When Sacha finally found her passport, she was so relieved that she was almost angry. She stopped and stared at it for a long time; she held it in her hand with such a tight grip that the dark blue cover almost became creased between her thumb and forefinger.

It had been in her dresser, under an old jumper which she hadn't worn in at least two winters, and how it had got there she had no idea: she supposed it must have fallen from above, perhaps she'd found it months earlier in the course of looking for something else and had casually placed it atop the dresser and had then forgotten about it. It was the kind of thing she was liable to do sometimes. Anyway, it didn't matter: the important thing was that she had it now.

As it happened, the passport didn't have to be renewed: it was still current. That was an enormous relief. Discovering that made the prospect of having to move everything Sacha had displaced into the hallway back into her room slightly more tolerable - but only slightly: it was a warm day, and warmer still inside the house, and humid to boot; moving things, making any kind of sustained physical effort, brought Sacha out in torrents of sweat. She was sure she'd have to wash her clothes, they couldn't be worn again in the condition into which she'd got them.

Moving everything back in was tiring just to think about. The heat, too, of course, had worn her out: she was drowsy and she wondered if Hannah would mind if she left everything out in the hallway, just for an hour or so. Just long enough to have a nap. The house was so warm.

It'd be cool in Europe, if she got a hurry on. She was going to get a hurry on. She was . . . She didn't know. She was too drowsy. She lost her train of thought. Suddenly it seemed more than she could do just to drag herself to her bed and lie down on it. Sunlight was streaming in through the window and setting her bed ablaze, of course it was. Sunlight, always sunlight and heat: she didn't know what it was about Melbourne, that when it was hot it felt like it'd never be anything else, and when it was cold even the memory of it once having been hot was unimaginable. Sacha yawned. Remembering something from when she was a child, regressing in her drowsiness, she pressed her hands over her ears, hard, and yawned again: there was a roar inside her head. And then, when she'd finished yawning, the roar remained - but not so much a roar, more of a low rumble. A rumbling hiss, a constant background noise.

It sounded exactly like the sound of being inside an aeroplane.