I want to tell her about Mama. I want to tell her everything that I might say but – She shuts the door. It seems to be her way: she’ll open it just enough to dazzle me – with a smile, a word, a shower of laughing stars – and then she slams it shut again. She is a closed door. ‘She has her own mind about things, Miss Berylda does,’ the old man Buckley says quietly, staring at the door with me. ‘She’s not much of one to say no to.’ ‘No, I’m gathering that.’ She is determined to see this Ah Ling. Who is he? A famous cancer doctor? I’ve never heard of him, and I made a fair few enquires after Mama’s diagnosis, wrote to every advertised medical ‘expert’ up and down the eastern seaboard; investigated all sorts of snake oil garbage, too, as Howell termed it himself. I even contemplated the services of a clairvoyant in St Kilda before accepting that there was nothing to be done. But what is behind Berylda’s urgency now, her rush to see this Ah Ling?
