The night before the casting call, Amber's hosts, Bee and John, held a party in their garden. Children thundered up the long hallway, through the open French doors at the back of the house, around the puriri tree with the swing hanging from it, down the side of the house by the fence and back through the front door to repeat the circuit. The effect was of constant, noisy motion. Their parents, locals from the school, older friends, some random adults John taught piano, clustered in groups drinking and passing food around, discussing work and politics, local gossip, kids. Amber drifted outside, and hovered at the edge of a conversation by a camellia tree. Two women she didn't know stepped apart to make a space for her, but she didn't follow what they were talking about, and she smiled and drained her glass, waggled it, moved on. For a while she knelt beside a five-year-old girl who sat on the swing, counting early stars. The children were called in for ice creams and the girl burst out of the swing like a rocket, shouting, ‘I'm here!’ Amber pulled herself up by the thick white rope, grass stains on her white dress.

She came and went from a few conversations and stood by the piano for an impromptu concert. Later, music came on, and she danced, across the room from John's cousin Sam. They'd met last Christmas, when Tobias had still been alive. They hadn't spoken then, but as she danced and her gaze floated over the room she could feel that he was staring. The music changed and she poured another drink, took it into the garden. The lights from a side room, where the children now watched a film, flashed purplish on to the fence. Sam was in a dark corner of the garden, not knowing anyone either, drinking a beer. Now by some silent mutual agreement they wandered down the side of the house towards the purple lights. Amber had been drinking to stay awake, because she was sleeping in the living room and couldn't go to bed until everyone had left. Now the wine-buzz crested and made her drowsy.