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It’s mid-May, nearly a month since their glorious trip around Tasmania, and Sue O’Sullivan is having a midweek dinner with her friend Caterina Bonetti at a dimly lit new “rustic Italian eatery” in Haberfield. They haven’t caught up for six months, so they have a lot to discuss—they practically need an agenda there is so much to cover. Their words trip, their thoughts veer, their voices overlap: Did I tell you, I’ve been dying to hear about, how was Tasmania, how was Cairns, your hair looks great, I love that necklace, how is your mum, how is your sister, how is your ankle, how is your knee?

An LED candle in a glass jar shines a spotlight on the white tablecloth and they lean forward, into the light and each other, and stir their ice-crammed bright orange Aperol spritzes with their environmentally friendly red-and-white-striped paper straws, and each time the waitress appears to take their order they say, “Oh, sorry, we haven’t even looked yet, too busy talking!” The first three times she said, “No rush,” but now she’s annoyed and is ghosting them.

They put on their glasses and swap phones to flick through each other’s photos: Sue’s highly successful Tasmanian camper van trip and Caterina’s mother’s highly stressful ninetieth birthday celebration. They move on to complaining about their daughters-in-law, which is always necessary for therapeutic purposes, as they would never criticize these delightful but maddening women to their lovely young faces.

Sue tells Caterina how she and Max are required by one daughter-in-law to ask their eighteen-month-old granddaughter for “consent” before picking her up and how another daughter-in-law has put her family on a sugar-free diet, so right now, not a word of a lie, the children are banned from eating, wait for it: fruit.

Caterina tells Sue her daughter-in-law keeps asking if Caterina might cut back her hours soon. Caterina is a GP, and the daughter-in-law, who is also a GP, is hoping to increase her working hours while Caterina enjoys the privilege of providing free childcare. The other grandmother is already doing two days a week.

“I do want to cut back on my hours,” Caterina confesses to Sue. “But not so I can look after toddlers! She told me the other day I could take the children to their swimming lessons, as if that would be a special treat for me! Didn’t you just hate taking your kids to swimming lessons?”

Sue actually quite enjoyed taking her boys to swimming lessons, chatting with the other parents, and she’d love the opportunity to take her grandchildren, but she pretends to shudder. “Oh, yes. So noisy. All that…chlorine.”

“ Exactly. I’ve done my tour of duty!”

Caterina is consequently still working full-time, a ridiculous state of affairs: working to avoid her adorable, wicked grandchildren.

Sue tells Caterina to cut back her hours right now and who cares what the daughter-in-law or the other grandmother thinks?! Nothing wrong with day care. Caterina tells Sue to secretly feed those kids all the fruit she likes. Both of them know they will ignore each other’s advice.

They finally stop talking long enough to use their phone flashlights to read the menu. Caterina catches another waitress’s attention and instructs Sue to not start a conversation with her, so Sue resists complimenting the waitress on her lovely hair while they order bruschetta, garlic bread, butternut squash ravioli, pear and arugula salad, and a bottle of Tasmanian pinot noir in honor of Sue’s trip.

Caterina is cutting the bruschetta in half when Sue tells her about what happened on the plane. It’s been on Sue’s agenda the whole time, but she has held off. She doesn’t want to make it seem like a big deal.

“That is extremely creepy,” says Caterina. She leans low over her plate, carefully holding her piece of bruschetta aloft. It’s laden with tomato and basil and the whole structure implodes as soon as she takes a bite. “Right. I’m using a knife and fork.” She looks up at Sue. “I assume you’re not actually worried?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” says Sue. She attempts to bite into her bruschetta, with similar results to Caterina’s. “This sourdough is far too crunchy!” She wipes her mouth with her napkin. “We exchanged details with the man sitting next to me and he promised to get in touch if he ends up dying in a workplace accident. Ha ha. He’ll go first if she’s right.”

“So, what, are you saying she made these predictions for everyone on the plane?”

“I don’t know if it was every single passenger, but there were a lot of people at the baggage carousel talking about it. There were some honeymooners. The bride was still in her dress. The lady told her she was going to die of ‘intimate partner homicide.’?” Sue shakes her cocktail and drains the last mouthful.

“That’s horrendous,” gasps Caterina. She leans forward. “Did the guy look—”

“Violent? No, not at all,” says Sue. “But they never look violent in their wedding photos, do they?”

“Some surprisingly intelligent people believe in psychics, you know,” comments Caterina as she pushes her plate of bruschetta away. “I know this very successful surgeon who—hey, wait, didn’t you see a psychic who predicted Max would have an affair with an Italian? You kept me away from Max for years!”

“It was a short Italian woman—you’re taller than Max!” For some reason the thought of Max and Caterina in bed gives Sue the giggles. They are so incompatible it feels metaphysically impossible. “I never kept you away from him.”

Caterina gives her a look of mock suspicion, wipes her mouth with her napkin, and drops it back on her lap. “I’d love to hear any actual evidence of accurate psychic predictions.”

“Nostradamus?”

“He said the world was going to end in the nineties,” says Caterina. “I remember reading he predicted the day of his own death—”

“Seriously? But that’s impressive.”

“No, but guess when he made the prediction? The day before he died. When he was sick and bedridden.”

“Maybe not quite as impressive,” Sue concedes.

Their ravioli arrives in giant steaming bowls, along with the salad and the wine. Sue takes the opportunity to compliment the waitress on her hair, and Caterina rolls her eyes.

“You are such a grandma, ” she says once the waitress has left.

Sue pretends to scratch her nose while giving her the finger: a maneuver taught to her by her oldest grandson. She decides to say nothing more about the plane incident. Caterina has complained before about people who bore her with their medical woes.

Sue understands. She once had a friend call to ask if Sue could please come over to bandage up her son’s leg. Sue lived half an hour away and had five children at home. (She put the boys in the car and drove over. They had pizza for dinner and it was a fun night. But still. Come on.)

Sue says, “So how did you go with that—”

Caterina interrupts, “You’ve got no family history of pancreatic cancer, right?”

“None.”

“And you’re not experiencing any symptoms? Anything you’re worried about?”

“No.”

“None of the risk markers,” says Caterina. She checks them off on her fingers. “You’re not obese, you don’t smoke, you’re not diabetic, no family history.”

“No,” says Sue. “I know it’s silly. Don’t worry. I’m not worried.” She takes a piece of pear from the edge of the salad bowl with her fingers.

“Aren’t you?” Caterina looks at her steadily. In the dim light she could be the same woman Sue met when they took their first babies to their local baby clinic forty years ago and bonded over their dislike of the bossy clinic nurse.

“Well,” says Sue. “I know it’s hard to catch early. I know outcomes are not great. It wouldn’t be my…preferred choice.”

Caterina smiles ruefully.

Sue continues, “And I guess it’s our age, but don’t you find you keep hearing of people getting terrible diagnoses? It feels like we’re all just waiting to see where the axe falls next.”

“I know,” says Caterina. “It’s brutal.”

“It’s annoying because I’ve been in a really good mood since I turned sixty.”

Caterina says, “You’ve been in a good mood as long as I’ve known you, Sue.”

“No I haven’t. And we’re so excited about this trip. Can you believe I’ve never left the country? Imagine if I die before I even get a passport.”

“You’ve been kind of busy, Sue,” says Caterina. “Raising a beautiful family, working your socks off, saving people’s lives. Don’t buy into this idea that you’ve only truly ‘lived’ if you’ve traveled. As if taking the same photos at the same tourist spots as everyone else is the only thing that counts as living. ”

“I know,” says Sue. She pauses. “Although I really do want one of those photos of me pretending to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I want it on my fridge. That’s my dream. I want to see myself holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa every time I open my fridge.” She demonstrates with the palm of her hand, beaming at an imaginary camera.

Caterina snorts. She lifts her glass, swirls it, and puts it back down. “Okay. So let’s do some baseline tests. An abdominal ultrasound. Abreath test to check your blood sugars. Make sure you’re not prediabetic. Blood tests to check how your liver and kidneys are functioning.”

Sue puts down her fork. “Is it self-indulgent? I don’t want to be like those people who turn up at the ER because they’ve got a bad ‘feeling.’ I haven’t even mentioned it to anyone at work. Too embarrassing.”

“We’ll just do an overall health check,” says Caterina. “Nothing wrong with that. For peace of mind. Everything we can feasibly check, we’ll check.”

“You are a very good friend,” says Sue emotionally.

“Nope.” Caterina holds up a hand like a traffic cop. She can’t stand sentimentality. Although Sue sees right through her brusque exterior to her sentimental heart.

Sue spears one giant-sized ravioli with her fork and watches the juices pour free. “I know it’s stupid to say this at my age, but I feel like I’m only just getting started.”

“My mother used to say ‘ La vita va veloce : this life goes fast, much faster than time.’?”

“Sometimes I worry I’ve lived the last forty years on autopilot,” says Sue, “like I’m always thinking, okay, I’ll just get through this next thing, then I’ll start living: once I’m married, once the baby is born, once this kid sleeps through the night, once this one is at school, once they’ve all finished school, once Christmas is done, once Easter is done, you know how it goes. The hamster wheel.”

“I do,” says Caterina. “But you’ve never struck me as someone on autopilot. You’ve always seemed like a present little hamster, Sue.”

“I’m just not ready to die,” says Sue dramatically at the exact moment the waitress with the lovely hair appears to offer Parmesan and black pepper.

The waitress looks stricken.

“I’m not actually dying,” Sue reassures her. “Oh, yes, please to Parmesan! There was this psychic—well, to be honest, we don’t even know if she truly was a psychic—”

“Sue,” says Caterina.

“Oh my God, I love psychics,” says the waitress.

“Give me strength.” Caterina sighs.