Thursday.
Five days since the couch, the lamp, and Ask me Monday.
Hadn't asked on Monday. Mum's curls, three hours in Eastwood. Hadn't asked Tuesday either — Mai, and a laptop at the kitchen table. Wednesday just went, the way Wednesdays do.
Home by half past three. And there on the doorstep, square and brown, a box with my name on it.
Tuesday night's order. Two days. Quicker than I'd dared hope.
Carried it in with both arms. Heavier than it looked. Set it down in the hallway, next to the drawer, unopened. Looked at it for a moment, the way you look at a sleeping dog.
Opening it could wait. The dining table was already cleared, pencil case out, calculator squared against the edge. Four o'clock is maths.
Her tutor arrived on the dot, as he has for weeks. Tall, polite, a shirt ironed better than mine — the kind of young man mothers notice and daughters pretend not to. Today was his last session. The next paper is Monday. After two days of English, one Standard paper, one Advanced, my daughter was sitting very straight with that careful look she gets when she's frightened of something and has decided not to say.
I made tea and kept to the kitchen. Heard pages turning. Heard her say oh, in the voice of someone who has just found the missing piece, and him say there you go.
An hour and a half later, he put his head round the kitchen door with his bag on his shoulder.
She's ready, he told me. Quietly, so it wouldn't carry. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it.
Thanked him more times than a person needs to. Wrapped up a bag of Dad's pineapple buns. He took them with both hands and a small bow of the head.
My daughter saw him to the front door herself. I stayed where I was, rinsing the pot, giving them the hallway. Heard the low murmur of the two of them. Heard the door close.
Then she came into the kitchen with something held out in front of her, like a small bird.
A slim black ballpoint, the heavy kind that clicks properly, in a little cardboard sleeve.
He gave me this, she said. At the door. He said, "For Monday. Black ink. Good luck."
She had given him a small gift herself last week, wrapped twice because she couldn't decide on the paper. He hadn't said a word about it at the time. This, I understood, was his answer. And it had been handed over where I wasn't, which seemed exactly right.
My daughter clicked the pen once, twice, and laughed out loud — the real laugh, the one she hasn't used since the trial papers.
I'm using it on Monday. Obviously.
She didn't gloat about being ready. Just carried it back to the table and laid it at the head of the pencil row. Monday's still Monday, she said. But her shoulders had come down an inch, and she kept looking at the pen.
Dinner was Dad's soup again, in the good container. Dishes. Then the bathroom, one after the other, the LumiSpa humming its two minutes. Hers first, then mine.
Then the couch. The Spa Day mask, thin like icing. Two faces under the lamp, two phones face down on the cushions.
Waited until she'd settled. Then, as lightly as I could: It's Monday.
It's Thursday, Mum.
Well. I'm asking anyway.
She laughed, then stopped herself — the mask doesn't like it — and tilted her face to the lamp, left, then right.
I was going to say my skin feels different. Softer, or something. But honestly? I can't tell. Might just be the lamp.
Said that was fair. Said I couldn't tell with mine either.
That's not what I meant on Saturday, though. She picked at a loose thread on the cushion. It's the only fifteen minutes of the day I'm not running a paper in my head. No flashcards. No "what if they ask about this." Just sitting here with a cold face.
Then, quieter: Tonight it's the first time in weeks it's felt like that and I haven't been dreading anything after.
Sat there with the mask going tight on my cheeks and thought of Mai. Comfortable, she'd said. Not glowing.
Funny. For weeks I'd been looking for something in the mirror. The thing worth noticing was on the couch the whole time. Two people, one lamp, a quarter of an hour with no one asking for anything.
Misted us both with the NaPCA mist afterwards, a light spritz each, eyes shut. She said cold and then again.
Rinsed. Cups rinsed too. The house gone quiet, the way a Sydney street goes quiet after the last bus.
At her door she stopped, one hand on the frame. Looked back down the hallway, at the brown box sitting by the drawer.
Mum. That's a lot of masks.
Who's it all for?
Opened my mouth. Closed it.
Ask me Monday, I said.
Monday's maths.
Then Tuesday.
She gave me a look. The door clicked shut, the lamp glowing under it. Through the gap, the small click of a pen.
Stood there a while, not knowing the answer myself.