Rona knew that Mal and Steve were coming around for band talk, and band practice too, she assumed, so she expected when she got home to hear music and noise emanating from the house onto the street. (She'd been a little worried, actually, about upsetting the neighbours.) So when she pushed open the front gate and stepped up the concrete path to the front door and couldn't hear anything she was surprised and wondered if they were in the house at all.

She found Mal, Steve, and Eric in front of the T.V. in the sitting-room, their faces white and their hands clapped over their mouths, and she knew without having to ask what it was that they were watching.

She couldn't bear to look at it. There'd just been too much recently: Brisbane, Christchurch, now this. She went straight to the kitchen without acknowledging any of them - they didn't say anything to her, either - and made herself a cup of tea. That was all she wanted after working all day, just a cup of tea that she could wrap her fingers around. The nights were starting to get cool, already they were starting to get cool.

She opened the kitchen cupboard to get out the tea and her eyes alighted on the box of green tea tea-bags. Japanese. She didn't know what to make of that. The water boiled and bubbled in the kettle. She hadn't called her family in so long - why weren't her family closer? Why wasn't she closer to any of them than she was?

The kettle clicked off. She was lucky, she took it for granted that things worked, that they'd always work. She dangled the tea-bag into the cup, held the label in a firm grip so that she wouldn't let go when the water buffeted it. She tilted the kettle, carefully, and watched the water spill out, gush out of the spout: felt the tug on the tea-bag between her fingers, almost lost her grip. She almost lost her concentration, too, and the water nearly spilled over the rim of the cup but she realised just in time and righted the kettle. A droplet of water splashed onto her fingers and she shook her fingers and sucked on them until she couldn't feel the pain any more. She could hear noise from the T.V. but she couldn't understand the words, was thankful that she couldn't understand the words. She didn't offer Mal, or Steve, or Eric, any tea: she wasn't going to join them, wasn't going to watch. Not just now. She couldn't bear it just now. She was going to stay in the kitchen just for a little while, she was going to drink her tea and let it work itself on her.