Wind in the Wires by Joy Dettman

one of the sisters that she was to be moved down to Melbourne for psychiatric assessment. And maybe she needed assessing – she still denied having that baby.
    The Keatings brought Raelene home. She’d seen Jim at the station the night of the grand final. Hadn’t approved then. Didn’t want him getting into Florence and Clarrie’s car. Florence and Clarrie belonged to her, and their car belonged to her.
    *
    The Keatings had offered him a lift back to the city. Taxis cost money. He’d accepted. And wished he hadn’t once they were on the road.
    ‘Have you known Jenny long?’ Florence asked.
    ‘Since we were kids,’ he said.
    ‘Are you thinking of marriage?’
    ‘Not at the moment.’
    ‘Our solicitor says that, given her situation, there’s little chance of a judge awarding her custody of Raelene,’ Clarrie said.
    ‘That’s Jen’s business, not mine,’ Jim said.
    ‘We’d never cut Raelene out of her life,’ Florence said.
    ‘Her living conditions would go against her in court. Raelene has got her own room at our place, and Flo doesn’t work,’ Clarrie said.
    ‘A bit of traffic on the road,’ Jim said. Maybe they got the message.
    *
    The one constant in life is change. The following Friday Jenny came late to his caravan door. She’d received a letter from the Keatings’ solicitor.
    ‘They’ve picked their time,’ she said. ‘Margot is in a ward for disturbed patients. I’m thirty-four and a grandmother, and my only claim on Raelene is being married to her father and raising her for seven years.’ She lit a cigarette and drew hard on it.
    ‘Want to know why I raised her, Jim? Want to know why I changed Donny’s backside until he was almost as big as me?’
    He wanted to know. He’d been gone too long. Maybe he didn’t want to know when she told him.
    ‘I aborted two of Ray’s babies – or Vroni aborted them. And the last one of them will still be on record somewhere. It went wrong and I woke up in hospital with a cop leaning over me in bed.’
    ‘Why would you, Jen?’
    ‘Because I couldn’t stand him touching me. He never did again – or not in that way. Because I knew I was going to leave him.’ She inhaled smoke and flicked ash. ‘Flora, the woman who shared Ray’s house, knew about the last abortion. Florence Keating lived with him in that house. She was bosom buddies with Flora Parker, and still is. Their solicitor has got a statement from her.’
    ‘About the abortion?’
    ‘Not yet. Just about Florence being a good mother and about Ray’s abuse. If I fight them for Raelene, Flora will give them more.
    ‘And you may as well know the lot while I’m about it. Vroni’s partner does abortions three rooms away from mine. Want to run for the hills?’
    ‘I wouldn’t get far, Jen.’
    They saw the baby the following Saturday. Elsie and Harry met them in the city and they went to the hospital together. It was still a poor wee mite of a thing, but it looked less monkey and a little more human, and they were allowed to touch it. Elsie, who planned to raise it, couldn’t keep her hands off her grandbaby. She had a baby complex.
    Jenny touched a fragile foot, a minute hand – which didn’t look like a Macdonald hand, not that there was enough of it to tell. An old-man wrinkled thing with grabbing fingers, it grabbed for her.
    They saw Margot, or the women and Harry saw her. Jim, who had seen the insides of too many psychiatric wards, remained outside. Harry was out in minutes.
    ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Christ, but I don’t know what went wrong with that girl.’
    He rolled a slim smoke, got it lit before offering his tobacco. Jim shook his head. He’d got out of the habit of smoking.
    ‘Just between you, me and the gatepost, mate, I’m inclined to think they’ve got her in the right place,’ Harry said. ‘Christ Almighty.’
    For the best part of an hour Harry rolled his skinny smokes while they waited for the women, who waited almost as long to speak to a doctor. And