Meg had forced her into it. Gone on and on in that bossy way of hers, never leaving you alone, always wanting to help. They were the worst, the helpers, the do-gooders. Jilly preferred the replacement carer she had for three days when Meg was sick, what was the guy’s name? L-something, with his strong arms to lift her out of bed, his reassuring hands in the bathroom as she clutched the side rails, only there for support. Never rushing forward to “make things easier”. Never meddling.

Even now, as the wheelchair lowered from the back of the van, Meg was saying how it was a good thing they were doing, it would really help, and not for the first time Jilly wished her legs worked just to give the silly girl a surprise kick up the clacker. Whack! Then Meg looking down at Jilly’s stick-figure shins, wondering how she had done it.

“I’m really glad you came,” said Meg as the wheelchair touched the ground. “It’ll do you the world of good. All the doctors say so.”

“Only taking a look,” grumbled Jilly. “And I’m having a ciggie too.”

Truth be told the smoke burned her throat these days, but it was worth it for that look on Miss Perfect’s face. You could tell Meg had never done it tough. The teeth said it all — milky white, the colour of money, not like Jilly’s stained yellow. Meg was blathering on about the treatment, mouth full of big words she could hardly pronounce, hypnostate this and electropulse that, on and on until Jilly put an end to it just a few metres down the road.

“Actually, changed my mind.”

“But the building’s just over there.”

“Yeah, well. Person can change their mind, can’t they?”

Jilly watched Meg’s eyes fire, then fizzle out. “Fine. Of course. It’s your choice.”

“Too right it is. And I’ll have that ciggie now.”

Smoking wasn’t allowed on the street so Meg insisted they move to the park across the road. When they got there, Jilly saw why. It was directly opposite the massive government building Meg wanted her to visit, the sly bitch. Once they’d stopped, Jilly lit up and Meg edged away. Jilly took a long drag so she could blow the smoke as far as possible.

Now she was here, facing the building and enjoying a puff, she supposed there was no harm in having a gander. The outside was bloody stupid, a bland grey box except for three giant cubes — red, yellow, blue — breaking out of one corner. Only the government would waste money on shit like that. She chuckled, coughing, and flicked the half-smoked ciggie into the breeze. As the orange tip tumbled away, Jilly noticed a series of flickering screens at ground level, each one a different shape: triangle, square, hexagon, circle. She snorted. Some architect showing off, but the screens were low enough to view from a wheelchair on the footpath, and she’d come this far, hadn’t she?

So when Miss Saviour swooped in to pick up the butt, acting like she’d just prevented a raging bushfire in the wet grass, Jilly turned to her and said, real casual, “Might take a look after all.”

Meg was smart enough to keep her trap shut, just pushed the wheelchair across the street, and Jilly saw the sides of the building weren’t plain grey after all. Engraved handwriting ran diagonally from the street to the sky, stories in the simple words of children. She picked out the words when I was five and quickly looked away, but it was too late, she was back there in the cold dorm rooms of Saint Bastards Home for Stolen Girls, what the nice folk called St Basils, and smelling the stink of the Chaplain’s socks when he took off his shoes at her door — government appointed, he was — and suddenly the wheelchair had stopped.

“You okay, Jilly?”

That meddling face, peering down.

“Yeah, get on with it, what you waiting for? Said I wanted to take a look.”

The wheelchair started moving again.

The first screen was lopsided, a child’s drawing of a triangle. Jilly tilted her head but the footage still didn’t make much sense. This tough-looking young bloke, angry tatts marching up his shaved head, was having a tea party with a giant Humpty Dumpty. The teapot had a floral pattern and the spout came up to his barrel chest. Even the teacup was oversized, and as he brought it to his lips, Jilly saw it was empty. He drank the pretend liquid, stretching his handlebar moustache into a wide grin, and Jilly howled with laughter. “Look at him! He’s off his head!”

“I told you, they’re not on drugs,” replied Meg, sounding tired now.

Jilly grinned. “Looks like pingers to me. Next one, yeah?”

For the next fifteen minutes, Meg wheeled her all the way around the building looking at the oddly-shaped screens. A silly old biddy was wearing a pink tutu and spinning herself in circles while these attendants in fluorescent green suits, head to toe the same horrible colour, gave little helpful pushes to keep her upright. Another woman whooshed down an adult-sized slide and when she got to the bottom her dress rode up, exposing a saggy white incontinence nappy. “This one’s flashing us!” yelled Jilly.

Meg didn’t take the bait. They kept going.

The last screen before the entrance was shaped like a rainbow, one side of the arch thicker than the other. It showed a skinny man, had to be a druggie for sure, hugging a stuffed koala twice his size. Jilly wheeled closer and studied his face in profile, the sleepy curve of his smile, the slack skin around his closed eyes. Even when Meg said, “well?”, Jilly didn’t speak. She’d noticed something else — the tiny round patches on his temples, no bigger than a mole, too shiny to be skin.

Finally, she gave a grudging nod. “Reckon we go in.”

Meg beamed.

Jilly caught the smile and added, “Just so we can see these idiots close up.”

[…]

You couldn’t trust the government but if you were smart you could milk them for all they were worth. Jilly wasn’t sure if this was one of those times or not. Her racing heart said to be careful. Best keep yourself to yourself. One thing she’d learned in the government home and later foster care. The people who say they want to help you are the ones to watch out for.

Still, the ramps and railings inside were the best she’d seen, and the woman at the counter didn’t ask too many questions or make her re-tell her story. They’d learned how all that paperwork made fresh cuts each time. God knows it had taken them long enough. Jilly didn’t sign up for the court cases, even though she could have made the bastards pay and earned a packet. She wasn’t ready to go through it all over again. But this — maybe this was something she could do, because it wasn’t about digging up the past. It was about replacing it with something else.

So she let the government woman try to sell her on the therapy and she listened for a bit, while watching a screen mounted high above the counter. The same footage from outside ran in a loop, only this time with text underneath the Humpty Dumpty bloke and the old biddy and the koala-hugging man: REDISCOVER YOUR INNER CHILD. The videos had been fake, actors or AI. Bloody typical. They were just trying to flog her something.

She craned her neck to see over the woman’s shoulder into the real thing. There was a playground alright, big enough for adults to use, surrounded by padded green walls. A couple of people wandered about inside and attendants followed their every move, ready to catch them if they stumbled or give a helping push on a slide or swing. Closest to her was a balding man wearing an oversized party hat and playing with a massive red ball.

“We know we can’t truly make amends for the past, but some people have found connecting with their childself very healing,” the government woman was saying, as the bald man threw the ball in the air and it bounced away. He started chasing after it, taking the wobbly steps of a toddler.

“It’s a chance to create new childhood memories in a safe group setting.” Meg oohed and aahed, yabbering something about parallel play, showing off as usual. Jilly watched the man catch the ball, wonder stretching his cheeks wide, and then she turned to the government woman. “You think this makes up for what you people did? This fancy building? A few hours getting high?”

The government woman frowned deeply, cracking the smooth make-up on her forehead. “I can assure you the treatment does not involve narcotics. It helps you access a younger version of yourself, before the traumatic experiences.” She held up a small round patch, semi-transparent and shiny. “It uses electrical signals. Actually, it’s a form of hypnosis —”

Jilly silenced her with a glare. “Don’t pretend you can make things better. You know how long it took me to track down my real parents? So long they were already dead.”

The government woman blushed, red-cheeked like someone had given her a good whack, but this time didn’t speak.

Jilly let the woman’s silence linger painfully, then felt Meg’s hand on her shoulder. Wanting to help. Always meddling. She went to slap it away then had a better idea.

“If it’s so bloody good,” she said, looking up and meeting Meg’s eyes, “how about you give it a try first?”

[…]

Why was Jilly always so stubborn? Couldn’t she see that Meg was only trying to help? The biggest frustration of the job, reflected Meg, not for the first time, was seeing a client fall into the same counterproductive patterns, the same self-sabotaging and negative thinking. Meg saw herself as an educator, first and foremost, although she had never told Jilly that she was studying counselling part-time. That would have been asking for trouble, tempting Jilly into a destructive pattern of belittling her ambition.

Jilly was looking up at her, waiting for an answer. Meg smiled and said the only thing she could think of to keep her strategy on track. “I’ll have to ask if that’s allowed.”

The attendant at the counter was watching them both with an expression Meg had seen many times before — pity souring to irritation. Jilly’s superpower was to kill any sympathy the wheelchair evoked. Why not be positive for a change?

“You could do a short treatment, as a demonstration,” said the attendant, “here are the forms. Have you done any childself therapy before? You might already be registered.”

Meg took the tablet with a thank you, ignoring the question in front of Jilly. The experience at the private clinic in Darlinghurst three weeks ago had been underwhelming — twenty minutes in the play area as her three-year-old self but she hardly remembered a thing, just the staff giving her a strange look afterwards, as if they were embarrassed in her presence. Her mascara had been streaked and the next morning she had a large bump on her temple — had she fallen off the slide? A fight with another kid? She’d never asked, wanting to get out of the clinic and sit in the sunlight, fighting the post-treatment vertigo.

But if she was going to be a counsellor recommending this stuff, shouldn’t she have tried it at least a few times herself? And this was free — the previous time had set her back a week’s rent.

“Okay I’ll do it first,” said Meg, smiling down at Jilly. “Then you could have a try?”

After filling out the questionnaire and disclaimer, Meg was led into the play area while two attendants in garish green suits placed neurostimulation patches on her temple. She’d opted to continue wearing her current clothes rather than get changed into an oversized toddler’s outfit or an embarrassing adult-sized nappy. She smiled at Jilly, who didn’t smile back, but had a twinkle in her eyes. The attendant said “Ready?” and Meg nodded.

“I’ll need your verbal assent,” said the attendant. “For our records.”

“I give permission for the treatment,” said Meg.

The woman seemed to grow larger in Meg’s mind, the colours of her green overalls brighter and brighter and brighter, until they faded away into whiteness and she was gone. But Meg didn’t care because she could see a playground in the distance. With swings! Meg wanted to swing! And a big slide, a spiral slide! Going round and round and round … Meg ran over and reached the steps but there was another girl in the way. Me first! yelled Meg, pushing the girl aside. My turn! My turn! She climbed the steps fast fast fast and made it the top. I am the fastest! Someone was crying down below. That stupid girl. She was too slow. She was in the way, so Meg had pushed. My turn! My turn! Meg held the slide and flung herself down weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[…]

Well, well. Jilly watched from the side, her eyeline just above the padded wall that ran around the outside of the ridiculous playpen. Turned out Miss Goody Two Shoes was actually a selfish brat. Pushed that old biddy out of the way without a thought — no warning, nothing — only focused on the slide and her own enjoyment. Now she was stealing a fluffy stuffed emu from the balding guy with the party hat. “Mine!” she screamed. “Mine!”

Back at St Bastards, someone behaving like that would have received a good old-fashioned spanking. Jilly winced — she’d had a few herself. Meg was running towards the sandpit now. Three attendants rushed after her in those ugly suits, the same alien green as the walls. Did it make them invisible, somehow? The mind tricked to edit out the weird colour? That must be it. Which meant all the giant babies in there were effectively unsupervised. And now there was a brat on the loose, terrorising all the other kids.

Jilly wheeled herself to a spot directly opposite the sandpit for a closer look. A young woman, frizzy black hair pulled into piggy tails, was scooping sand into a bucket, then slowly turning it upside down. Behind her stretched a dozen other sandcastles, each one a work of art. She was taking her time, keeping herself to herself. Jilly liked that in a person. So when Meg’s boot stomped on the sandcastle at the edge of the pit, the attendants standing there completely useless, not going to lift a finger and give themselves away, Jilly couldn’t help herself. The words came roaring out: “That’s enough, Meg! Come here, little Missy.”

And her carer, expression like a naughty three-year-old’s, widened her eyes and stared across at Jilly.

“Grandma?”

“It’s me,” said Jilly, letting the question pass. “And you had better bloody well behave yourself or we’re going home right now. Understand?”

Meg nodded, then started crying. “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it!”

A dark patch bloomed across her crotch and she looked down in shock, then up at Jilly with her tear-streaked face.

“I did an accident, Grandma!”

Jilly almost chuckled. “It’s alright, darling. Accidents happen.”

[…]

Meg was quiet as a mouse afterwards, all her do-gooder cheer left behind. Leaked out of her into the sandpit, Jilly thought, remembering that line for later. No point wasting it now, she wouldn’t get a reaction — Meg was still half out of it, shuffling over to the bathroom, carrying spare clothes in plastic wrapping.

But when she came out, walking with a funny waddle — that must have been the uncomfortable government-issued undies — Jilly didn’t feel like ribbing her after all. On the way back to the van they went slowly, Meg leaning on the wheelchair’s handles like it was a walking frame designed to prop her up, and Jilly giving each wheel a nudge now and then to steer them into the centre of the footpath.