Rona was surprised at how quiet the house was, with Eric up in Queensland. It wasn't just the fact that the music, usually emanating near-constantly from his room, was missing: there was a palpable sense of a presence absent. After so short a time in the house he'd already become a part of it, as if he'd been there all along and Rona and Miranda had moved in to find him already in place. Rona took it as a good sign: she took it to indicate that they'd made the right choice, allowing him to move in.

She knew, also, that if she was feeling it, Miranda would be feeling it ten times more. She tried to pounce upon that fact when she next sat down with Miranda, at the dinner table. (On the rare occasions when their shifts at their respective workplaces aligned, Miranda had long insisted that it would be nice to eat dinner together - though recently it usually meant eating dinner in front of the T.V., watching the Simpsons, or the news, or the 7PM Project, whatever was on.)

"Funny having Eric away, isn't it" Rona began.

"Yeah" Miranda said, as if she hadn't thought about it before. "I guess so."

"Funny that it should be funny, too."

"Do you think?" Miranda asked, because she wasn't really sure what Rona meant.

"Nice having the money to eat good food again" Rona said, nodding towards the plastic take-away boxes on the table between them. Miranda had always brought home some food from the café, but nonetheless they'd felt the pinch when it'd just been the two of them in the house. There'd been more than a few dinners of toast and baked beans from a can.

"I wouldn't exactly call this good food" Miranda said. Rona had forgotten that it was a point of pride for her, working in the kitchen at the café as she did. "It's probably loaded with M.S.G." Miranda continued, putting a chunk of beef rending into her mouth.

"I saw a bag of that for sale at the supermarket once, you know" Rona said. "In the spice section. With all the other spices. Next to . . . Marjoram, I guess."

"Oh yeah" Miranda nodded. "You can get it."

Rona realised that the conversation had got away from her, so she decided to be blunt: "You looking forward to having Eric back?"

"Of course!" Miranda said straight away. "What, aren't you?"

Rona didn't really know how to answer that, to adequately say what she was trying to get at. "Yeah" she said. "It'll be good to have him back. And all his . . . noise, you know?"