Sunday.
Up before the alarm, which never happens on a Sunday.
Told myself I was just deciding, right up until I was in the car with the address Carol had texted the night before, the church tucked in just off Macquarie Centre, a five-minute drive I'd somehow never noticed on all the trips there for school shoes and printer ink.
Early enough that the car park was still half empty. Nine o'clock service, first one of the day.
A table out the front before you even got to the doors. Coffee, free, in real cups, a woman in a lanyard telling me to help myself, no catch to it that I could find. Wrote my name on a sticker and pressed it flat against my cardigan, the same one I always wear.
Felt strange, wearing my own name like that. Like I was the new customer for once, not the one behind the counter.
Carol found me before I'd finished my coffee, waving from across the courtyard, someone new beside her. Introduced her as Penny — blonde, quick smile — driven all the way over from Kirribilli for this, Carol said, like it needed explaining. Been coming here for years, nearly as long as Carol has.
Introduced myself properly this time, not just the woman who does her fish oil.
The building itself was plainer than I'd pictured. Brick, low roof, nothing like the churches you see on postcards. Inside felt more like a school hall dressed up for the occasion, except full — more prams and toddlers than I expected for nine in the morning.
Ten minutes in, a woman up front called all the kids down for their own bit — a short story, something about a shepherd, before they were led off to a room to the side. Half the pews emptied at once, parents settling back like they'd done this a hundred times.
Then the real service. Singing first, words up on a screen so nobody needed a book. Readings after that, a man I didn't catch the name of reading in a voice too careful for a Sunday morning. Then the priest, up front, talking longer than I expected, though I lost the thread of it more than once, still half thinking about the roll-ons boxed up at home, the formal only hours away now.
Afterwards everyone spilled out to a little yard behind the building, tea and biscuits set out on a trestle table like a school fete. Carol and Penny found me again straight away, like I'd already been folded into whatever this was.
Penny does this most Sundays, drives the whole way over the bridge for it. Asked her why, half joking. She just said it's the one thing all week that isn't about anyone needing anything from her.
Carol's been coming three years. Started because a neighbour asked once, the same offhand way she'd asked me.
Nobody asked what I did for work. Nobody asked me to come back next week, either, though Carol said it anyway, the same easy way she asks about the fish oil — no weight to it, take it or leave it.
Stood in the car park after, biscuit still in hand, working out how I'd gotten from Saturday's counter to a courtyard full of strangers who weren't strangers by the end of it.
Formal at six. Dress still zipped in its bag, shoes only sorted Thursday, fifteen little bags already lined up on the hall table from last night, ready to go.
Drove home the long way, no real reason for it. Just wasn't ready for the morning to be over yet.