Chapter One

The ribbon is biodegradable twine because of course it is. I bought it from a shop that sells soap made out of other soap and the woman at the counter winked at me like I’d made an ethical choice instead of forgetting to buy scissors.

“Three… two… one!”

Everyone cheers. I snip the twine with a paring knife from the café drawer because Everyone’s—the café-that-became-a-studio—still thinks it’s a café when the light hits the espresso machine just right. The machine hisses. The kiln, square and silent, keeps its opinions to itself.

“Welcome!” I say, projecting from the diaphragm I misplaced during child three. “Welcome to Mayfield Street Studios—known affectionately as Everyone’s. A space for making, learning, resting, and—” I look down at my notes— “community.”

Community looks like fifty humans strapped into tote bags. They clap as if they’ve already forgiven me the price of clay. The staff stand together, a gentle phalanx of linen and earnestness. I love them. I hired them. I feel outnumbered.

“Before we begin,” says Dawn—poet, organiser, keeper of brown paper—“we might take a moment to land in the space.” She does a small wing movement with her hands. A few staff inhale together. A student imitates, self-conscious, like she’s joining a cult that smells faintly of cinnamon and wet dog.

I smile. “Yes. Land away.”

We land. I think about the rent.

Once upon a dinner, our table was a courtroom with side plates—the KC cross-examining the lasagne while the eldest objected to breathing and the boy pleaded guilty to gravity. That was then. Tonight the room behaves, and I take the win.

The first workshop is Clay for the Clay-Shy: a one-off, make-one-thing-and-tell-your-friends class. My favourite. People arrive brittle and leave pliable, and the room gets credit. We move tables aside, lay out bats, centre the wheels. The studio light—cream on cream—makes everyone kind to themselves.

“Quick housekeeping,” I say. “Kiln room’s off-limits unless you fancy inhaling powdered glass. Bins for clay slop are labelled slop; bins for not-slop are labelled not slop. Bathrooms are gender-neutral but we do have a door for modesty, which is frankly revolutionary.”

A few laughs. Good. My heart slows to a tempo suitable for a person not running from her own spreadsheet.

We are five minutes into wedging when Dawn taps my elbow. “Sally, a couple of us need a micro-break. We didn’t get a chance to stretch in the landing.”

“We just landed.”

“Yes,” she says kindly, “but that was breath. This is fascia.”

“Of course,” I whisper, as if fascia is an endangered species I neglected to feed. “Two minutes?”

“Fifteen,” Dawn suggests, “so we can model non-extractive time.”

I look at the clock. The clock looks back at me the way my husband does when he says, This is an unhelpful tone, Sally, which is to say, he is right.

“Ten,” I say. “Please.”

The staff form a ring on the café side and begin something involving calves and gratitude. In the studio, I take seven beginners through coaxing clay into a cylinder instead of an emotional spiral. It’s fine. It’s lovely, actually. A woman named Maureen makes a small, stubborn vase and cries into it. “It’s the first thing I’ve made that won’t shout at me,” she says. We all decide Maureen has won the day.

When the staff return, caffeinated and fully fascial, Dawn declares, “We’ve been discussing inclusive timing. It’s harmful to centre the clock.”

“The landlord centres the first of the month,” I say, cheerful as a guillotine. “But I’m open.”

She beams. “This is why we love you, Sally. You’re open.”

Open is one syllable away from opened, as in open wallet, open-ended, open wound.

At clean-up, a wheel spits water at my jeans. I add replace seals to the list on my phone just under tell accountant about the thing you’re definitely not hiding. The staff gather near the roster pinned to the corkboard with ethically sourced thumbtacks that cost as much as a small horse.

“We wanted to talk about shifts,” says Finn, who makes cups that look like weather. “We’ve done the maths, and with our practice time and decompression windows, a four-hour shift is really one hour of labour.”

“I see.” I do not see. I see the espresso machine, gleaming like a boyfriend who will never move houseplants. I see the kiln’s red LED declaring READY like a dare.

“We’re not asking for more pay,” Dawn adds, generous as a saint who’s never met payroll. “Just fewer shifts.”

“Fewer paid shifts,” I repeat, to confirm that words still mean things.

“Language is fluid,” Finn offers, which is something only people with rent paid by the universe get to say.

I look at the roster. There are washes of time where nobody is technically working but everyone is present, touching things lovingly. This is also how my marriage is currently: house full of presence; nobody doing the dishes.

“Let’s trial it,” I say, because my mouth still believes it can out-yes a problem. “Two weeks. We’ll review.”

Dawn squeezes my arm as if I’ve donated marrow. “You’re a dream.”

I would like to be awake.

After the workshop, when the last student has left with a soft little bowl and a harder little hope, I slide into the café corner and count the cash drawer even though there is no cash. It’s a historic gesture, like curtseying to your own inbox.

The accountant has texted: HOW’S OPENING?

I reply: Bruised peach.

He sends back a peach emoji and a knife. He thinks he’s hilarious.

I open the back door and take the bins out. The night smells of river and yeast. A possum looks at me as if to say, You built a communal feeding station and now you’re shocked the community arrived.

Inside, the staff are discussing a policy document drafted in Google Docs during the stretch break. I can see the title from here: Everyone’s Collective Care Commitments v0.1. The cursor blinks at me from twenty paces: A lighthouse for ships I cannot afford.

“Quick one,” Dawn says. “We’ve added ‘emotional hydration breaks’ every twenty-five minutes. It’s basically a Pomodoro but kinder.”

“Tomato, tomato,” I say. No one laughs. I am funny to accountants and unfunny to people who sun their sourdough starters.

“And we’ve moved Friday clean-down,” Finn adds, “because of the new moon.”

“The kiln doesn’t follow the lunar cycle,” I say gently.

“But we do.”

There is an exquisite quiet, the exact second a plate decides to become a floor problem.

“Okay,” I say. “Trial it for a fortnight. Bring me numbers.”

Numbers, my secret leverage. Numbers, my quiet revenge. Numbers, the last language I trust.

When they leave, I walk the studio like a nightwatchman of my own dream. Wheels asleep. Tools nested. On the whiteboard, someone has scrawled YOU ARE ENOUGH in a handwriting that suggests they have never met enough. I erase the ARE and write COST. Then I rub it out quickly in case the building heard me.

On my way out, I pick up a small clay cylinder—the demo I made for Maureen—and press my thumb into it so it remembers we were here. The kiln blinks READY. I am not. But I lock the door and go home to practise the art I have ducked since I learned to speak: saying no to the shape other people want to make out of me.

Tomorrow I will write a policy. It will be kind and unfair in equal measure. It will be the beginning of a rumour that I am difficult. It will keep the studio open. But for now I will keep being nice.

At home, the kitchen clock has joined the opposition. Time is now measured by Wi-Fi outages and how many mugs are in the sink. The teenagers are waiting, each in a separate mood. The eldest is wearing eyeliner heavy enough to count as an alibi, fine enough to write a ledger for the amount of food and ingredients I have neglected to purchase for the fridge. My son has discovered protein. He hoovers it in milkshakes, in tomahawk steaks his father buys for him at the Queen Vic markets, on cereal, in Mushashi bars after the third workout for the day while he destroys the kitchen grilling the said steak. Child Three has arranged the Schleich deer into a custody agreement and is assisting them negotiate their differences in French. Child Four is stretching at the bench, feet in first position, elbow in the butter. Child Five is reading the ingredients on the dishwashing liquid with the intensity of a scholar. They are all actually old enough to drive now. Unfortunately.

“Did you drive?” the eldest asks, which is sport.

“No,” I say. “I took the tram.”

They smirk. I have lost my licence again, not because I am reckless, but because I am generous and a fool. The points attached themselves to my name while my car carried other people’s adventures. The eldest took it “just to Coles” and met a speed camera that does not forgive charisma. The son borrowed it to “drop a board off,” forgot the school zone, waved at the wrong sign, and waved three points goodbye. One of them parked across two bays outside the gym, which is not demerit points but is moral injury. The letters arrived like passive-aggressive postcards. Eventually VicRoads sent something that used the word suspend with a calm I resent.

“You should have said no,” the KC had said, his courtroom voice softened but still containing the word should. Other people always tell me I should have said no when they have busied themselves out of the burden.

“I did,” I said. “They asked again.”

Now I have a Myki card, which the teenagers issue and ration like medicine. They top it up on their phones and hand it to me with ceremony.

“Tap on,” the eldest says, as if I am new here.

“I know how to tap on.”

“You say that, and then you don’t.”

“I do.”

“You don’t.”

The son gives me a timetable like a teacher punishing lateness. Child Five quizzes me on zone boundaries. Child Three draws me a map with deer icons to cheer me up. Child Four offers to plié on the tram as entertainment. I would prefer a lift.

The first week without a licence, I try to carry a bag of clay on the 109. A stranger helps me lift it and tells me about his mother’s pottery phase. I consider giving him a voucher just for being kind. By the second week, William starts appearing at the studio with salvaged trolleys and “solutions,” so I stop attempting to carry anything and learn to ask for help, which I hate.

The teenagers have created a spreadsheet titled MUM TRANSPORT OPTIONS. Options include: tram, bike, borrow neighbour’s car, ask Dad, ask William, emotional teleportation (Child Five’s suggestion). Dad, also known as the KC, offers lifts when his calendar allows, which is never, until suddenly always, and then we end up discussing dinner in the car like people in witness protection. Like our son, he is always thinking about food.

“You can’t keep lending them the car,” he says.

“I haven’t got a car.”

“You can’t keep lending them the car you don’t have.”

The house is an orchestra of doors opening and closing. Everyone is practising being a person at the same time. I stand in the hallway with my Myki card and the smell of studio clay still on my hands and realise this is the real work: building a place people want to come back to and pretending not to panic.

The youngest watches me put the card in my wallet with ceremony.

“Do you know where it is?”

“Yes.”

“What colour is it?”

“Green.”

“Correct.”

The eldest rolls her eyes so hard we check for sprain. “Mum, can you not, like, make the tram driver your friend.”

“I don’t make them my friend.”

“You do.”

“I ask about their day.”

“Exactly.”

The boy offers to teach me how to ride his fixie. I ask him to teach me how to stay upright on a Thursday. He says that’s not a bike thing.

I text Dawn: CAN WE CALL THE STUDIO’S POLICIES “TIMETABLES” SO I FEEL LESS LIKE A DICTATOR.

She replies: WE CAN CALL THEM SONGS.

Two days after opening, I am back at the studio early. The room is still. Morning light across the concrete. Someone has left a note on the counter: THANK YOU FOR NOT MAKING ME TALK. No name. Bless them.

I put the kettle on and stand near the window where the dog likes to nap. I think about the licence again, about being ferried by teenagers who narrate my life as content, about the quiet humiliation of asking for lifts, about the sudden intimacy of public transport. I have seen more faces in a week on the 48 than in the last year of my car. I have read more chalkboards. I have learned where people stare and where they don’t. I am less fast. I am more porous. I am trying to decide if that is growth or just exhaustion wearing a hat.

Ruth will take bookings today. I have given her the ledger and the good pen. She has brought in a folder with tabs and a small label-maker that makes her visibly happy. I will not let anyone hand her a spreadsheet she didn’t ask for. She is gentle with people and firm with time, which is rare. She looks at a flustered person and finds the part of them that is not flustered and speaks to that. When I do it, it looks like customer service. When Ruth does it, it looks like care.

We still don’t have a technician. We still don’t have a plan that isn’t five minutes old. We have a dog who decides who belongs and a pew that keeps learning new jobs. William will arrive soon with something that doesn’t roll but will be made to. Dawn will change the board. Tina will cough, rule, wipe, repeat. Ethan hasn’t found us yet; somewhere out there a coffee machine is about to meet its match and then follow him to us. Ebony will appear later, walk straight past the people and talk to the machines, and I will feel the building settle half a centimetre lower into the earth.

For now, the day is mine. I wedge clay until my shoulders stop complaining. I write the start of a policy and then cross out every sentence that begins with we believe. I replace them with we do. I rub out a promise and write a number. I rewrite the number smaller, then larger, then surrender and write the truth: pay rent.

When the first student arrives—early, breathless, the kind of person who apologises for being alive—I hand her clay and say, “You don’t have to be good. You just have to be here.” She nods like I’ve granted a visa.

By ten, there is water on the floor and the good sponge has gone missing. By eleven, Maureen brings me a coffee and a story about her mother’s hands. By twelve, I have said well done so many times it sounds like a place you can move to. At one, the son texts me a photo of the car I do not currently own and says, Found a buyer. He is joking. I am not.

In the afternoon, a teenager from the school up the road watches through the window for twenty minutes before choosing to come in. She touches everything with the respect of someone visiting a church. When she leaves, she says, “It’s not loud in here.” I could kiss her forehead. I say, “Come back.” She says, “Maybe.”

At close, I sweep clay into small hills and think of the kids at home and the timetable and the tram that will deliver me. I think of the KC and his careful sentences. I think of the licence and the points that carried my name without my speed. I think of the studio and the way it is beginning to recognise itself. It is not beautiful yet. It is brave.