The Spare Room. Helen Garner

too close to something fragile in her, something I could damage with my scepticism.

      ‘This could be the Faraway Tree,’ I said. ‘I wonder what Land we’ll find, at the top?’

      She flashed me a tiny, grateful smile, and returned her gaze to the lino. I thought, I will kill anyone who hurts you. I will tear them limb from limb. I will make them wish they had never been born. Almighty God, I thought, to whom all hearts are open. The lift landed with a bump. It was four o’clock on the dot. The door slid open and we stepped out.

      The hallway was dark and narrow. Each door had a panel of bathroom glass at eye level. One room was open: as we passed we glimpsed a girl with bowed head, sewing something under a cone of lamplight, while Tom Waits croaked away beside her on a radio.

      We found the Theodore Institute at the very end of the hall. An empty wheelchair blocked the entry. The door was locked. We pressed the bell. No answer, though I sensed a vague commotion. I put my eye to the brass letter slot. Then a buzzer sounded beside us, and the door swung open. I stood back and Nicola led me in.

      The room within was painted a strange yellow, the colour of controlled panic. Jonquils had dried in a vase on the reception counter, behind which a female attendant flustered at a computer. Several people sat on a row of folding chairs with their backs to a blank wall. One haggard woman, who had lost a leg, sat in silence with her hands clasped and her eyes down. Another was busy trying to thread a bright metallic scarf through the loops of a little black toque she wore on her bald head. I sat down while Nicola presented herself at the counter.

      The toque woman caught my eye and smiled. ‘I’m Marj. This is my husband Vin. We’ve come all the way from Broken Hill.’ They both shook hands with me. Vin was a big, slow-moving bloke in shorts and tightly pulled up white socks. Marj went on tugging and pushing at the scarf.

      ‘I like your hat,’ I said. ‘It’s elegant.’

      ‘Well,’ she said with reckless gaiety, ‘if you gotta go, you might as well go out sparkling.’

      We all laughed, except the one-legged woman, who had not raised her eyes from the remainder of her lap. Meanwhile I could hear the attendant, a plain, brown-haired girl with a high ponytail who had introduced herself as Colette, chattering away to Nicola at the counter.

      ‘I know it’s a disappointment for you, but Professor Theodore suddenly had to go to China! And he won’t be back till next week. Don’t you worry, though, because we’ve got another doctor. He usually only comes in on Fridays to make a presentation, but this week he’ll be here on a Monday. And he’ll see you!’

      I could see Nicola nodding and nodding, propping herself on the counter with trembling forearms.

      ‘What’s Professor Theodore actually doing, in China?’ I called out from my metal chair. ‘Because he did make a special point of wanting to examine Nicola before she started the program. Couldn’t he have let her know his plans had changed?’

      I was trying to sound courteous and firm, but the vibe in the room stiffened and an uncomfortable silence fell.

      Colette’s voice dropped an octave. ‘Oh,’ she murmured, ‘it’s a very important international conference.’ Her face radiated a timid solemnity. She spread her palms and lifted her shoulders and eyebrows: the obligations of this demi-god, her employer, were beyond her ken. No one looked at me. Nicola, credit card in hand, kept her back to me. I subsided, but my heart was thumping.

      By the time Nicola had filled in a thick form and forked out two thousand dollars for the opening week’s program, it was after five o’clock. ‘You’ll be seen in half an hour!’ cried Colette. We settled down to wait. In rooms beyond the reception area we sensed movement, heard voices. Once or twice a chubby man with a buzz-cut popped his head round the door and bestowed a benign smile on the people numbly waiting. Were we imagining it, or did the air of the clinic smell faintly pleasant? An elusive odour from nature, or even from our distant childhoods? Was it the scent of summer? We could not pin it down.

      Nicola folded her long legs under her in yoga position on her chair, and opened an Alexander McCall-Smith novel she had had the sense to bring. I flipped in silence through ragged back numbers of New Weekly, looking for cosmetic surgery disasters to sneer at. Once we would have gone into paroxysms together at a condition called trout mouth. Now, angry and full of fear, I kept it to myself.

      There was a water filter in a corner, and a tower of plastic cups, but nothing to eat. It had not occurred to us to bring food. Marj and Vin shared a sandwich wrapped in foil. At six I took the lift down to the street. In the low sun, city workers were still streaming along Swanston Street towards the station. I bought two bottles of fruit juice in a sandwich bar.

      When I rushed back in, the atmosphere of humble patience had not wavered. I thrust a bottle into Nicola’s hand and she guzzled its contents.

      At half past six Marj from Broken Hill shifted in her seat, leaned forward and began to cough. A hacking and a rending convulsed her; a tearing intake of breath followed each spasm. She discreetly spat the proceeds into a tissue and stowed it in a plastic bag. No one spoke. We had now been waiting for almost three hours.

      Just before seven, Colette burst out from an inner room and made a joyful announcement. ‘Hello, everyone! At seven o’clock we’re going to have a presentation. And after that, Nicola, Dr Tuckey will see you.’

      At last Tuckey wandered into the reception area. We raised our weary eyes to him. His face, floating on the sea of himself, was oddly disarming.

      ‘Half the staff are away this week,’ he murmured, ‘so we’re in a bit of chaos.’

      I raised my hand. ‘Can you tell us what effect on the week’s arrangements the absence of Professor Theodore is likely to have?’

      The other patients turned their heads listlessly, then withdrew eye contact.

      The doctor looked right at me, but he seemed almost shy. ‘You mean on the, uhm, quality of the treatment?’ he said.

      ‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean will things be better organised than they’ve been today? Because we need to know how to arrange our time. So I can deliver my friend here every morning and pick her up every afternoon. And keep our lives outside of here running in some sort of reasonable way.’

      Vin from Broken Hill flicked me a look, along which travelled what I read as a tiny current of solidarity. He didn’t believe in this rigmarole either. He had to pretend to because his wife was desperate, because he loved her. Tuckey murmured something reassuring, still far short of an apology. Again my heart was thudding. My cheeks were red. Nicola looked at me kindly, then away again. I felt I had shamed her. I held my tongue.

      The doctor set up a screen against a wall, opened a laptop on the counter, and stood resting one elbow beside it. Without having to be asked, we shuffled our chairs into better viewing positions. Somebody sighed. He pressed the first key and up came the title of his talk: ‘Cancer and It’s Treatments’. I didn’t dare look at Nicola: not because she would laugh, but because I was afraid she wouldn’t.

      ‘I’m going to tell you,’ Dr Tuckey began, ‘about our key cancer-killing therapies. You know how an octopus can break a big rock with its tentacles? Well that’s what a cancer cell’s like.’

      Did he mean the cell was like the octopus or like the rock? The doctor’s manner, as he worked his way down the dot points, was modest and amiable, almost soothing. Everything about him was spongy, without defence: you could not hate him. But his discourse had a stupefying effect. My mind veered about, seeking something to grip. I was tired, I was hungry. My concentration waxed and waned. Once or twice I nodded off. This was not the moment to zone out. I pushed my chair back a few feet and sneaked the notebook and pen out of my bag.

      ‘Stress,’ he said, ‘is the biggest cause of cancer in our society. Stress makes us vulnerable to whatever nasties we have lurking in our beings.’

      That wasn’t so outlandish. My thoughts coasted sideways to my sister Madeleine,