Rose agreed to everything. The thought of her sister being in Sydney filled her with curiosity. Here was an opportunity to be kind to Susan, who was after all a widow. Rose said she would meet them off the train at Central, but Susan wanted to double-check her address and, as usual, laughed when she heard it. ‘Isn’t that just like you,’ she said. ‘To live in a place called Rose Bay.’ Rose laughed too. She made an effort, always, to be pleasant. Her boss referred to her as ‘particularly pleasant’; she had heard him. Her instinct to please people, without being over-eager, came from a dislike of disagreement. She knew Susan considered it immodest of her to live in a place that shared her name; it was the sort of thing Rose did in order to draw attention to herself. ‘It’s lovely there by the water, that’s all,’ Rose said, as she had before. ‘The name is just a coincidence.’ The name was not entirely a coincidence. Robert, the man who paid the rent on her flat, liked the idea of her living there.
