On Wednesday Rona had to work, and in the sudden twenty-four-hour heatwave that had descended upon the city she was glad to spend the day in the cool, dark silence of the bookshop. She ran her hands along the leather spines of the older books, opening the glass cabinet within which they were kept just so she could touch them; Guy had warned her that oils from her fingers could damage the leather, but she couldn't resist it, the leather hadn't seen direct sunlight for years - decades, maybe - and it was so cool to the touch.

She liked it when there weren't any customers; sometimes she went for an entire shift without turning the radio on, or putting on any music on: the silence was better, she liked it more. She'd always used to hate silence, likening it to a vacuum, but she found now that she was starting to appreciate things she once would have baulked at. Getting older, she supposed: just like Brent had talked about.

Things she had to do before the weekend:

She had to do her Christmas shopping. That was another good thing about being in the bookshop today: she would be able to find at least one present for one person in here. Something for her dad, perhaps? An old edition of Moby Dick, maybe. He was always going on about Moby Dick. (Always had, she told herself: she had to keep reminding herself to update her childhood conceptions of her parents, all the things she'd known from years ago when she was living in Sydney).

She had to double-check the time of her flight on Friday. Eight o'clock, she was pretty certain, at night - some time around then - but she had to make sure because her aunt was insisting on picking her up from the airport, so Rona had to let her know when the flight was getting in.

She had to buy some shorts. She'd gone for ages without shorts - and skirts, heaven forbid - even through the heatwave last summer; she'd always prided herself on her resilience, but pride wasn't what it used to be and she was sick of being uncomfortable just for the sake of looking cool, whatever that even meant. Now here was summer again and she was over it, and Sydney had been hot this year.

She still had to pay those bills; pay-day tomorrow, then she'd take care of it.

She had to get her mum 'something nice from Melbourne'. Not a Christmas present, her mum had hastened to add: her mum hated to be seen asking for Christmas presents, something about the sanctity of the day and the way she'd been brought up, but she'd said that seeing as how Rona was coming up all the way from Melbourne, and seeing as how they hardly ever saw her (still 'they', always 'they', Rona noticed - which was who, exactly? Her mum and her dad and her dad's new partner?) it'd be a golden opportunity. Rona had tuned out by this tage of the conversation but her mum's use of the words 'golden' and 'Christmas' in close proximity had made caught Rona's attention and had made her think of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and then she couldn't help thinking of the phrase 'myrrh opportunity' and she'd laughed, and then her mum had asked what she was laughing about and Rona could think of no way to explain it.

One-and-a-half weeks, two maybe, she'd told Miranda. It would be the longest time she'd spent with her family in ages; since moving to Melbourne; since leaving home.