We pulled in just as the sun leant a burnt lip to the mountains. Swaying past were ferns and hydrangeas, flapping at the windscreen, leaving water and pollen. Toby wiped his hand across the inside of the window, seeming slightly surprised when it made no difference.

She was there, crouched down in her artist’s overalls, great plumes of basil obscuring her face. Toby and I walked towards her loudly, as though our footfalls would somehow rouse her from her task. My mother: wide-hipped and cylindrical, capable of hours of tense stillness. Toby flipped his phone end over end in his pocket. Times are tough, I heard in my head. A temporary situation. Our plan of attack, figured out as our car chewed up four hours’ worth of petrol.

I cleared my throat, exhuming a mouthful of mountain air. I sensed Toby shifting his weight, moving back on his heels.

“June,” I called. “June.”

My mother flicked up her head, her low-slung eyes peering open. “What?” she said. “Kathleen. That you?”

Her country inflection worried me. I still pictured her in pastels, in shoulderpads, fingers crooked in a steel travel mug.

“Hi,” said Toby, too quietly, holding up his hand.

My mother raised herself from her haunches, sandy dirt falling from her as if she were made of it. “To what do I owe?” Still the stilted sentences.

“Just a visit,” I said, redundantly. “Wanted to drop in, see how you were.”

She smiled. She said, “You know me, Kathy,” shrugging her shoulders. “Fighting losing battles.” I had no idea what this meant.

“Lovely place,” said Toby, rubbing his hands together like he was cold.

“Thanks,” she said. “Do what I can.” She made her way towards us through the garden, choosing an invisible, fractal path. “But drinks. Drinks. You’ve had a long drive. Tea?”

“Lovely,” said Toby.

She came and took him by the arm, sliding her head under his shoulder like they were lovers waiting at an ocean’s edge. She had squashed down the back of her plastic gardening shoes so her heels were exposed, ingrained with dirt.

Her house was a small cottage set back against the foot of a hill. From the moment dad woke to his first blood-specked pillow she had looked for it. Used the lines on herself that she used on so many newlyweds in so many suburban shitboxes. Not selling a house, selling a dream.

At the back door, my mother fumbled for her keys.

“Thought it’d be safe to leave your door open out here,” Toby said. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it was stuccoed with a gambler’s grin.

My mother shook her head. It heartened me to see a remnant of her previous life. Window grills and the secret family knock.

The back door opened straight into the kitchen, which my mother had obviously Frankensteined from many magazines on country decorating. She’d mounted a wagon wheel impossibly on the roof, from which hung mismatched light fittings. Recycled church pews flanked either wall.

“Humble abode,” she said, running her palm down the side of a potboiler stove. I slipped off my sandals to feel the cool stone floor. I pictured our carpet back home, worn and shined with age: the secret hieroglyphs of unstrung fibres.

“Tea, was it, Kath?”

“Thanks, June, yes.”

My mother frowned and turned to fuss in a cupboard. Her own name still seemed to hurt her.

We sat down at the small table in the corner, perching on driftwood chairs.

“So you two are well?” she said.

When we didn’t reply she turned around, holding up two different coloured tins of tea. “Still working your way through the ranks, Toby?”

Toby coughed. “You could say that.”

“Whatever tea’s fine,” I said. “Doesn’t matter which one.”

My mother shrugged. She filled the kettle, which was brass, dimpled like chicken skin. “Computers still big, are they? Can’t figure them out myself.” She chuckled.

I ignored her lie, as I ignored her carefully teased poet’s hair.

“I’m not actually working in the same field,” said Toby. “At the moment.”

“Really.” She lit the stove. “Not computers?”

“No.”

“But you’re still with the government?”

I pictured Toby at home, slumped over on our bed, his too-big fluro shirt strung with dirt, sobbing like a heart-stricken teenager. An underused body, an underfed mind. Coming home as I’m going out. Two paychecks passing in the night.

I got up from the table. “We’re boring, really,” I said. “How about you? We came to visit you. How’s the art?”

My mother gave me a stare. “Oh,” she said. “You know. Beads, acrylics, charcoal. Working through some ideas. I’m out in the garden so much these days. And reading. I’m reading a lot more.”

“That’s great, Mum,” I said. “That’s really good.”

She went to the stove, put down the kettle, leaving her fingers resting on the handle. She stayed there for some time with her back turned, the sound of the stove gaining velocity.

How could I ever ask this woman for money? For anything?

I thought about what my father had said, as his life and his body fell out around him. As my mother took on yet more work, selling houses, selling dreams.

Never, ever settle.