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hand, Alex flipped back a page reflexively. No need for glasses, how’s that! Nothing wrong with his eyesight! Ring Jeannie, wish her Happy Birthday . Jeannie? ‘Now that rings a bell,’ he said.
    A relative, for sure. But which one, and what birthday, and when should he ring? Maybe he had that written down somewhere else. The calendar? Really should date these little notes. Or he could – ah, that’s the ticket! He wrote underneath this Jeannie message Check with Deb , tapped hard to make a good definite full stop, and with a feeling of satisfaction flipped the page over. Check roses for pruning. God, the bloody roses!
    He kept the notebook open by him as he made a cup of tea and some toast, and the moment he’d finished he took the secateurs and the medium-weight gardening gloves and went out to the line of rosebushes along the front fence. He had to shake his head twice. He blinked and blinked again. All pruned, and a beautiful job of it, too, and the pinkish shoots of new spring growth coming along. How could that be? The worry in his mind was still there, the vision of the roses unkempt and straggling…
    ‘It must have been a dream,’ Alex said wonderingly, and even as he said it, yes, so it seemed, a dream he had been having just before he woke. Or just before he fell asleep last night. But how could you dream before you fell asleep, eh? Foolishness!
    ‘Something I just need to check with you, Deb. When’s Cousin Jeannie’s birthday, do you know?’
    ‘Cousin Jeannie? Whose cousin’s that, Dad?’
    ‘Well, she’s my cousin, isn’t she?’
    ‘Your cousin? Sorry, Dad, I’m drawing a blank on this one.’
    ‘Oh. An auntie maybe?’
    ‘An auntie? There was Auntie Margaret, but she’s dead now, and there’s Uncle Bob’s wife Joan over in Perth… Is that who you mean? Auntie Joan?’
    ‘No, darl, not Bob’s wife. Jeannie. She was… she was…Well, but I made a note to ring her and wish her happy birthday.’
    Standing in her kitchen, gazing distractedly at various items on the noticeboard beside her, Deborah could picture her father perfectly, standing in his own kitchen just a few kilometres away, probably with his back door open so he could look out to the garden. This was not the outer suburban home of her early childhood, nor the one closer to her father’s work that they’d moved to the year after her mother disappeared. Alex had bought this place fifteen or sixteen years ago, when he retired. He’d bought it not for the house, which was small and unremarkable, but for the block: a quarter acre that had been mostly lawn, a blank canvas he could spend the rest of his life filling in. Which was exactly what he’d done, and was still doing, and good for him – but her life was full of more pressing concerns than what bulbs to order and some forgotten relative’s forgotten birthday.
    ‘Sorry, Dad. If anything occurs to me I’ll ring you back. But I’m just in the middle of doing something right now. Yes… yes, I will. Talk soon, Dad, okay? Bye.’
    Deborah walked back towards the study. Her lower back ached all the time these days. Here it was, only midmorning, and she’d been sitting at that damn computer too long already. And on a Saturday! Angus, unpacking the shopping from the market, tried to catch her wrist as she went past. She paused, her glance flicking past him to the study.
    ‘Your father?’ he asked.
    ‘Who else do I call Dad?’ she said, her voice sharp.
    ‘Everything okay?’
    Deborah rolled her eyes. ‘God, I don’t know. Some cousin whose birthday he can’t remember. Honestly, sometimes I think he’s going gaga.’
    ‘He’s getting on, Dee. Isn’t he eighty now? His memory’s bound to play up a bit, don’t you think?’
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Dee. It’s not my name, it’s not any bloody name at all, it’s just an initial for god’s sake. What if I started calling you by your initial?’
    ‘It’s just a nickname,’ Angus said mildly. ‘An