Rona's aunt, Holly, was right there waiting: when Rona stepped out of the airport terminal and looked around, there she was - from a distance she looked the same as she ever had. It'd been such a long time - years - since Rona had last seen her.

As soon as she saw Rona, Holly hurried forward and wrapped her niece in a tight embrace. Didn't give her a chance, just stepped forward with her arms open wide and claimed her. Rona was a little stiff in her arms: She's keeping herself under control, Holly realised. Just for now she's keeping things close to her chest. "Where's your luggage?" she asked Rona, when she released her from her hug.

Rona sighed. "Melbourne, apparently" she answered. Holly threw her a quizzical look. "Airline fucked up" Rona explained.

"Well, just what you needed huh?" Holly walked Rona over to the carpark, and unlocked her car. Rona noticed a number of grey strands weaving through Holly's auburn hair, peeking through like an undercoat. Holly opened the door for her, and Rona got in. Her aunt's car was just like she remembered it: barley-sugar wrappers strewn all over the seats and the floor, a dozen or more trinkets from friends all over the world scattered across the cracked vinyl dashboard, a folder full of council plans sitting magisterially on the passenger seat. "Here, let me get that for you" Holly said, and grabbed it and placed it on the back seat. Rona got in and Holly started the car. "Hospital visiting hours are just about to start" she said. "We figured you'd want to go straight there?"

"Um, yeah, yeah sure." Rona flipped down the sun-visor as Holly pulled out of the carpark. "It's not like I've got any luggage to drop off, is it?" Rona said.

Despite the joke, Holly couldn't help but notice the way Rona had baulked when she'd heard the word 'hospital'. She's still absorbing it, poor dear. They all were, really, but it must be especially hard for Rona, Holly thought: down there in Melbourne all by herself, then to get a call like that - and right before bed-time, too! Then having to drop everything and get on an aeroplane . . . She stole a glance over at Rona: she looked exhausted, the poor thing. It was no wonder.

Rona didn't ask which hospital they were going to. She found she didn't want to know. She wanted to ask her aunt all about how she was, what she'd been up to - but it didn't seem right, somehow. Her aunt was uncharacteristically quiet. Rona found it unsettling: her aunt's silence, the silence in general. It was like they were on their way to a funeral, but up until now Rona hadn't countenanced the thought that this would be anything other than a mild hiccup in her father's rather unruly life: just a little stroke. Just one of those things where someone says "Now I don't want you to panic, he's all right, but . . ."

But her mother, last night on the 'phone, hadn't said that. Hadn't said that at all. Rona hadn't thought about that. She'd just assumed it went unspoken. Didn't it?

Holly didn't know what to say - and that didn't happen often. She'd always been close to Rona, but this situation, right now it seemed beyond words. "Here" she said, "turn the radio on, find some music." She turned to Rona again, and smiled apologetically. "It's all a bit grim, this, isn't it?"

"Yeah" Rona said, though the sound barely came out. She reached forward and turned on the radio, as her aunt had suggested. All the stations were programmed in there that she'd expect her aunt to have programmed: Radio National, A.B.C. Classic F.M., S.B.S. Radio. From memory Rona turned the dial towards the frequencies she'd tuned into as a teenager, alone on the floor of her room in her parents' house, when it had seemed that every song played was her own personal discovery. But maybe the stations weren't there any more: she tuned and tuned and tuned, and got nothing but static.