There are differing views as to what is, or has been, wrong with me. The doctors at the hospital in town agreed finally to put my collapse down to an undiagnosed infection, though even that was uncertain. One specialist came all the way out to the nursing home a week after I awoke, bringing a colleague, to examine me again, for what he called his own satisfaction. The colleague asked a lot of questions about my family, none of which seemed very relevant, and which after a while seemed to set up a swaying motion inside me and then a sick dizziness so that I closed my eyes, and when Hil arrived soon after, she asked them to leave.

What seems clearer is that my recovery in the slow weeks since then has not been what was hoped for. I have had blood tests and stool tests and brain scans; I have had injections of vitamins C and B. I have been told to stay in bed and to get out of it. What has remained constant has been a lassitude verging at times on paralysis, and, until recently, an inability—Steff calls it a refusal— to walk. Mostly I feel tired.

In the midst of this I have turned away the few visitors, my husband among them, who have made the trip to this outermost suburb to offer me comfort or company. I have told staff not to put calls through to my room, and nor have I answered most of the letters or cards that have accumulated in the bottom drawer of the dresser by my bed. I will only see Hil.

At the same time I am bored. I am bored with sickness, its strictures and relentless needs. I am bored with the dullness in my body, the wasted space, the finite allotment of energy. On Tuesday at eleven, I make my way down to the rec room. When I open the door there are three old women in their tracksuits, and Anna Greene at the front of the room. ‘Come in, Jess,’ she says and smiles. The three old women all turn around expectantly. Maud says, ‘Hail the queen of Sheba.’

‘Come in,’ Anna says again, ‘and take your shoes off. We’ll just do a warm-up.’

Harder now to leave than to do as she says. I put my shoes by the wall and find myself a spot at the back. Closest to the door.

‘Now,’ says Anna. ‘I want you to stand with your feet hip width apart, close your eyes—or open, Elsie, if that helps with your balance—and feel your feet against the floor. Good, and just breathing. Breathing is always good. Best not forget.’

A giggle from Maud. I keep my eyes shut, unamused.

‘You too, Jess,’ says Anna. ‘Allow your body breath. Allow the soles of your feet to feel the floor. Relax your buttocks. Bending your knees slightly. Letting your arms hang loose, Maud. And now start jiggling from the knees. That’s right, Mary. Stay loose. Shaking your body down like a sack of grain. All over. Not just the outside bits. The inside parts too. Relax the jaw. Let your jaw drop open Jess, don’t worry what it looks like. And sound. Sigh it out with the breath. Ah-ah-ah-ah.’

I open my eyes and there she is, standing in front of us, jaw hanging open, looking stupid, shaking these ugly sounds out of herself. The old women join in, one by one. Mary’s hair falling out of its bun, Maud’s breasts bumping against her stomach. Ah-ah-ah-ah. Sometimes bursting into laughter, all of them together, ah-ah-ah. I keep my legs straight, straight-faced, little bobs from the thighs. Policeman plod; ’ello ’ello ’ello.

‘C’mon love,’ says Maud, catching my eye. ‘We all look stupid. You don’t want to stand out.’

I roll my eyes, pull a face at her and keep bobbing. Anna ignores me. Eventually I start to loosen, feeling the rhythm of the movement in my heels and the balls of my feet; my stomach and arms and jaw. I keep my eyes closed, let my throat open, let the sounds bump out until I too find myself releasing a quick laugh. A child in a car on a corrugated road. Ah-ah-ah. After a while Anna tells us to slow, then stop, then stand with our eyes shut, and feel how it is in our bodies. Then we sit down on chairs, and she asks us how we felt when we were standing still. Elsie says she feels a bit funny in her tummy, but nothing to worry about. Mary’s knees feel big. Maud can’t stop laughing. I say my legs feel heavy, weird, as if there is nothing holding them up.

‘Would you like to lie on the ground, here,’ Anna says. Not really a question. I shrug, then get up and lie in front of her. She sits at my side on the floor, cross-legged. ‘What I’m going to do,’ she says, ‘is to put my hands beneath your knees, like this.’

Her hands feel very warm through my pants. Very solid.

Surprising somehow. Not unwelcome. Not even embarrassing.

‘Just let your knees relax,’ says Anna, ‘and remember to breathe.’

I take a deep slow breath, and feel my legs, one then another, regain their focus.

‘That’s good,’ says Anna. ‘Just let those legs know they have some support.’ And suddenly, shockingly, I am crying. Sad creaky hiccoughs.

I roll away from her, on to my side. Anna leaves a hand resting on my thigh for a moment, then takes it away as I pull myself to sitting, puts a hand on the back of my neck while I slump forward.

‘Is that all right?’ she asks. ‘That I touch you?’

I nod, quiet my breathing, feel the relief of her hand cupped behind my neck, then shake my head abruptly, shake her off.

‘Jess?’

I keep shaking my head.

‘Jess, come back. Look at me.’

I look up. Her face is big, close, her eyes are blue, dreamlike, and I am leaving through the back of my head, shrinking into a pinprick of dark light behind me. For a moment, I stop hearing, cocooned, untouchable.

And then the lilt of her voice again, even, persistent.

‘Come back, Jess. Bring yourself back. Look at me, Jess.’

It is like waking. Nothing dramatic. Just finding myself back, her eyes the anchor. She is squatting in front of me, solid, unthreatening. The room seems bigger than before, and there is an odd sense of space around me. I move my head slowly from side to side. I almost smile. She nods.

‘That’s good work. You’ve done a lot. It’s a good idea to rest now. Go and have a sleep.’

As I leave from the rec room a few minutes later, she catches up with me in the corridor. ‘Jess, I meant to say, I see private clients in that room over there twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays. I’ve got a space free on both days. If you’d like.’

One day Maud’s daughter comes to visit at lunchtime and brings her child. Maud’s fourth grandchild. ‘Breeders, aren’t we?’ Maud laughs and pushes her chair back from the table. Her daughter, Carol, places the child in Maud’s wide lap, and it pushes itself to standing while Maud holds it around the chest, pulling faces at it, making noises. The child’s fat little legs work her knees like dough. It reaches towards her and grabs at her glasses with one hand. ‘Oi. Carol. Give us a hand. That’s my last pair.’ Carol leans and takes the glasses from the child, unwraps its fingers from around the arm. The child turns its attention back to Maud, stretches its fingers for her nose, pats around her eyes with its small fat hands. I am at the next table, still sitting, though lunch is cleared away. The sun is coming in through the window and I watch them for a while before returning to the magazine I am pretending to read.

‘Give Jess a hold. She’ll like a hold.’

I look up when I hear my name. Viv is at the next table now, arms extended for the blue-clad infant. She raises it to her shoulder, gives a firm, brisk jiggle, which does not seem to upset the child, who reaches immediately for her glasses. ‘Oh no you don’t.’

‘Jessica,’ she calls. I have glanced down again at my magazine, and look up reluctantly, knowing what it coming.

‘Here you are. This is Joshua.’ And she plonks him abruptly on the table in front of me, bum on top of New Idea.

‘Hello Joshua.’ Joshua stares at me with an impartial, appraising expression. He does not reach for me. I hold my hands on either side of his solid, hot body. Viv has moved back to the other table, but I am sure she is looking to see how I go. The baby and I regard each other. I realise I am barely breathing, and then that I am a little afraid. I breathe deeper, bring my face a fraction closer to his. It is a sweet, rich smell, the smell of babies. Not unpleasant, despite the hint of partly digested milk. I move very slowly. I don’t want to frighten him. I bring my face a tiny bit closer. Don’t smile. Babies can sense fakes. The baby reaches out and pokes a finger gravely into the middle of my cheek. I release my hold with one hand, and carefully poke it back, touch my finger lightly on its cheek. The baby laughs. Just like that. And I smile quickly at him, glance up to see if anyone has seen.

No one is looking. Viv is sitting with her back to me. Carol has pulled up her sleeve and is showing everyone something on her wrist. I look back to the baby, who is reaching now for the stud in my ear.

‘No way baby,’ I say. ‘No way, Joshua.’

Joshua lunges again for my ear and I take his wrist, bring it to my mouth and bite very softly into the white skin, make a low growling noise. Joshua laughs again.

When I glance back at the table, Carol is looking my way. She raises her eyebrows in a have-you-had-enough way. I shrug and smile as if to say we’re fine. I wonder if Viv has told them.

I walk most days now. Sometimes twice. The bark is peeling from the gums in tattered strips and as I pass I allow names to attach to certain trees: old man, the twins, upside down pregnant woman. Sometimes Hil comes with me and I have to hurry to match her purposeful stride. ‘Pretty buggerised up here, isn’t it? Look at those blackberries in there; and that’s holly coming up.’ Kicking with the toes of her boots to dislodge the feral seedlings. When Hil comes we are always striking out on to new paths, elbowing aside bracken, getting twigs in our hair. ‘What’s down here? Where does this one go?’ Or she wants to know about the history of the place, or the geological formation, or what is beyond.

‘I reckon this must back on to the national park, Jess. Through there somewhere. You should get a map from Viv. You could probably get up into the mountains from here. Now that’d be a walk.’

Mostly I go alone. From the back of the nursing home a dirt path leads first around the oval, with its wooden stands and scoreboard, and then to the base of my hill. The first part is the steepest, up through a potholed paddock and then a cluster of pines. Bloody weeds, Hil says, but it is cool beneath them and the carpeted needles take away the sound of your footsteps. By the time I get to the top of the rise, my breath is hot and loud and fills my chest. I pause for a moment, watching for rabbits, and then set off along the ridge. Up here the path is wider, and sometimes there are fresh tyre tracks in the clay soil, perhaps from dirt bikes. I pass a blackened ring containing scorched tin cans and shards of brown glass and a little further on a rusted car exhaust protruding from the undergrowth.

The path drops and divides, one half disappearing to the right into an overgrown track, the other dipping towards a group of white-skinned gums. The grove, I call it, though it is not. It may once have been a forest. The trees hold themselves like dancers and I walk among them powered by the deep combustion of breath. I do not think. Trees, birds, air, soil, self, light, in no particular order. The air cooling now, gathering scent and colour and sound, the looping cries of the currawongs. Cool in. Warm out. An exchange. And all around, the slow turbulence of the leaves.

At the top of the next rise, the forest drops away to scrub, and looking back I can see the shifting canopy and, above it, the clouds, which have been combed across the sky by some high wind. I squat and breathe. At my feet are small sticky seed pods, open now, and splayed into shapes of children’s stars and flowers. The flesh that once contained the seeds is hard and nutty, the very wood peeled back by the force of expulsion.

One night I wake to the sounds of shouting down the corridor. A man’s hoarse roar that stops as quickly as it starts. The swimmer. I lie for a long time afterwards in the dark, trying to push away the thoughts. How does a person drown? When I was nine I tried to do it in the bath. I wanted to see how it would feel. I stayed under until my cheeks were aching and there was a black beat at the base of my skull. ‘That’s not how you do it,’ a girl at school said. ‘You’ve got to open your mouth and let the water in. You have to breathe it.’