The Apartment That Isn’t Home

“You can clean something a hundred times, but it still remembers what it used to be.”

Mum found the flat behind a row of shops that looked like they’d once had ambition and had long since given it up. The whole street had the feel of a place that had stopped trying—like someone had pressed pause on life here and forgotten to come back. The cracked pavement was littered with faded leaflets and bottle caps, and there was a faint sticky sheen on the ground in front of the takeaway that suggested something had been spilt and never quite cleaned.

The laundromat windows were clouded with grease and age, the kind of grime that couldn’t be wiped away anymore because it had somehow fused with the glass. Only one machine still worked, its drum sluggishly spinning behind stained glass like it was doing a favour just by staying alive. The others looked abandoned mid-cycle, their doors swung wide in surrender, innards rusted and flaking like they’d bled out trying to keep going.

Next door, the Chinese takeaway exhaled the persistent tang of stale oil and old soy sauce, thick and greasy in the air even outside. The shop’s signage blinked unevenly—one half-lit character in faded red, the rest permanently stuck in shadow. I held my breath without meaning to every time we passed it, like my body didn’t trust the air to be safe.

At the end of the row, a nail salon sat forgotten under a film of dust and time. Its posters curled in the corners, bleached to a shade of ghostly pink where once they’d probably shimmered with metallic fonts and airbrushed hands. The women in the adverts had no faces left—just pale ovals where features had once smiled, giving them the look of haunted mannequins mid-scream.

The flat itself was hidden in plain sight—tucked behind the shops like an afterthought. Number 23A. That was all the building had to say for itself. The numbers were painted in a shade of grey that might have once been white, now peeling like old wallpaper, flaking down the doorframe in curls. A security door barred entry, its metal warped slightly at the bottom like someone had tried to kick it in once and it hadn’t quite recovered.

Mum didn’t seem fazed. She jingled the key she’d pulled from a lockbox—one of those cheap plastic ones with a rusted combination dial, duct-taped to the meter box like a secret no one was really trying to keep.

“It’s just for a night or two,” she said, and her smile was the brittle kind she wore like armour. “Nice and quiet. Just what we need.”

That phrase again. Nice and quiet. I hated how she said it. Like she was trying to cast a spell, but didn’t really believe in magic anymore.

I stared up at the building. Four storeys of patched concrete, rendered in mismatched colours that made it look like a stack of memories no one wanted to keep. Each level bore signs of repairs that had been done quickly and forgotten just as fast—off-white paint over brown brick, duct tape around a cracked drainpipe, patches of silicone sealing broken windows like crude stitches in wounded skin.

And the balconies.

Every one was caged.

White metal mesh, woven tight like chicken wire, boxed in the tiny squares of concrete where plants might’ve once lived or people might’ve once stood for air. There were no plants now. Just plastic chairs turned on their sides, laundry racks stripped bare, and the occasional glimpse of blue tarpaulin flapping like a trapped wing in the wind.

The mesh made them look like holding pens. Not balconies, not places to breathe, but confinement units for people who weren’t supposed to leave.

A cold twist settled in my gut. I didn’t know why the cages bothered me so much. I couldn’t explain it even to myself. But something about them whispered that this was a place you came to be forgotten—not for a night or two, but for good.

Mum didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she noticed everything and just couldn’t afford to care anymore. She was already inserting the key, her hands shaking just slightly, like even this much felt like a gamble.

I didn’t move.

Ribbons hung limp in my arms, and I held her close, because I suddenly had the uneasy feeling we were stepping into something we wouldn’t leave as easily as we’d arrived.

The hallway inside smelled of something that tried too hard to be clean. A chemical sharpness hit my nose first—industrial-grade floor cleaner, the kind they use in shopping centres and school toilets—followed by something murkier underneath. Something older. A mildew tang that lingered at the edges of the scent, like a secret the building was trying to scrub away but couldn’t quite erase.

The carpet was a tired, threadbare grey with a tight weave that flattened under every step, designed less for comfort than for survival. It had that strange sticky-springy feel underfoot, like the pile had absorbed too much over the years—mud, rain, spilled drinks, other people’s stories. Dark patches dotted the corridor in irregular patterns, each one telling a silent tale of something spilled or dropped or forgotten, and never properly cleaned up.

Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed softly. One of them flickered every few seconds, casting jumpy shadows across the walls and floor. The flickering made everything look slightly unreal, like we were walking through a film reel that kept skipping a few frames, just enough to make me feel off balance.

We reached the lift. It was barely big enough for the three of us to stand without our arms brushing. Mirrors lined three of the walls—smudged, scratched things that created endless, distorted versions of us. Our reflections stretched into eternity: Mum standing rigid, her jaw clenched tight; Mack frowning at the floor; me clutching Ribbons like a life vest.

Mum pressed the button marked “3” and the panel beneath her finger made a sound—an ugly metallic clunk, like a reluctant animal waking up. The lift groaned and stuttered to life, rising with the hesitant energy of something that wasn’t sure it could make the journey. I felt each floor like a pause between thoughts.

When the doors finally opened, we stepped out into a corridor lined with doors that all looked identical—faux wood grain, silver peepholes, cheap handles. It was the kind of hallway that made you feel like you might knock on the wrong door and enter someone else’s life by mistake.

Mum’s key turned easily in the lock, too easily, like it had been used recently. Like someone had prepared for our arrival.

The inside of the flat was small—claustrophobically so—and arranged in the most efficient way possible, like someone had measured the square metres down to the centimetre and squeezed in just enough to meet legal standards. Everything was clean in a superficial way, but it wasn’t the kind of clean that made you feel at ease. It was the polished surface of something that didn’t want to be looked at too closely.

There were two main rooms.

The bedroom held a double bed with a flatpack frame that had warped slightly with age, its headboard askew like it had been nudged too many times without being properly repaired. The mattress looked hard. One thin pillow sat at its centre like a token offering.

In the lounge area, Mack tossed his backpack onto the fold-out sofa bed with a little more force than necessary. The cushions gave a tired wheeze under the weight, and he stood there for a moment, looking down at it with his arms folded, like claiming the couch was the only decision he’d been allowed to make in days.

The walls were empty except for a single canvas print hanging just off-centre above the sofa. A beach, of course—bluer than anything real, the kind of ocean you only ever saw on screensavers or real estate brochures. No people, no footprints. Just sand and water and palm trees frozen in perfect symmetry. It made me feel lonelier somehow. Like the picture was pretending there was a world outside that made sense, and we’d all missed the boat to get there.

Mum moved around the flat without speaking, opening cupboards, testing taps, lifting the corner of a rug as though expecting to find something beneath it. She was checking for danger, or maybe signs that we were being watched. She didn’t say so, but I could see it in the tightness around her eyes.

The air smelled sharp with eucalyptus—an unmistakably artificial freshness. It was the kind of smell that tried to convince you of cleanliness without quite succeeding. It reminded me of waiting rooms and school sickbays and that one motel in Coonamble where everything had smelled like antiseptic and shame.

I stood in the middle of the room, not quite sure where to put myself, feeling the walls inching closer with every breath. Ribbons hung limp in my arms. She didn’t smell like eucalyptus. She smelled like dust and sun-warmed fabric and the road.

And she smelled like home.

“This isn't Aunty Amelia's house,” I said, not accusingly, not even sadly—just stating it. Because sometimes the obvious needed to be said out loud, needed to be held in the air like a fragile object so it could be properly seen and reckoned with.

Mum's mouth twitched—an involuntary muscle flicker that might have been trying to shape itself into a smile but gave up halfway and settled for something closer to pain. “No, sweetheart,” she said after a beat, her voice quiet. “This is... just for us. A little pause before we see the family.”

“But we're in Brisbane now,” I pressed, unable to stop myself. The name tasted strange on my tongue—too big and real after so many days of dust and road and nowhere. “We could be at Aunty Amelia's in twenty minutes."

“I said we'll see them tomorrow,” she repeated, but her voice had that paper-thin hollowness it got when she was lying to herself as much as to us. “When we're more settled. When things are... ready.”

She wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t meet my eyes. Instead, she turned away and launched into the ritual that had become her version of control—unpacking with a kind of frantic neatness, placing items with exaggerated care as if the right arrangement of belongings might magic us into a reality where we weren’t running from something.

Only, this time, the things she unpacked didn’t even belong to us.

She laid out a sealed toothbrush I’d never seen before. Produced a crumpled bag of salt-and-vinegar chips from her handbag like it was a picnic. Folded one of Mack’s jumpers—one I hadn’t seen her buy or even carry—and placed it on the bed like it had sentimental weight. The way she touched the fabric made it look like it had come from somewhere important, but I had the horrible feeling she’d found it at a charity shop or servo or worse, and now she was trying to stitch it into our story like it belonged there.

The whole thing felt like a theatre set. All props, no truth.

“You paid cash for this place,” Mack said suddenly, his voice low but perfectly clear.

Mum froze, just for a second. “What?”

“For this flat,” he said again. “You paid in cash. I saw you counting it out in the car park.”

Her shoulders hunched slightly, as though the words had weight and she wasn’t sure she could carry them. “Lots of people pay cash for short stays,” she replied, too quickly. “It’s not unusual.”

“It’s what people do when they're trying not to be found,” Mack said quietly.

Mum turned then, slowly, her face drained of that artificial cheerfulness she’d been straining to maintain. What was left looked exhausted and wary, like someone who'd been dodging shadows too long to believe the daylight could help anymore. “I’m tired, Mack,” she said. "I’m very, very tired. I don’t need you turning every decision I make into an interrogation.”

Mack didn’t flinch. He just shrugged, his tone even. “I’m tired too. Tired of driving in circles. Tired of pretending like this is all fine.”

“Then don’t start a fight,” she snapped, spinning back toward the kitchenette and yanking open a drawer like the cutlery inside had personally offended her. “Not now. Not when we’ve finally found somewhere safe.”

“I’m not starting a fight,” he said again, and his voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to. It was the stillness in it that made the room feel colder. “I’m just not pretending anymore.”

Mum didn’t turn back around. She just picked up a tea towel from the drawer and began folding it.

Over. And over. And over again.

Her fingers smoothed it with delicatey, aligning corners, running down creases like she was ironing invisible wrinkles into submission. I stood still and watched her, feeling a strange ache in my chest. Because it wasn’t really about the tea towel.

It was about control. About having one thing—just one—that she could fix.

And that was what scared me most.

Because you only start folding tea towels like they matter when everything else is falling apart.

I curled up on the fold-out sofa with Ribbons nestled in my lap, her stitched body warm from being pressed close. I ran my fingers across her fabric ear, worn and soft, more memory than material now.

The television in the corner was switched off, but it reflected the room like a shallow pool of black water. We were all in it—distorted in the curved glass, sitting apart even while inches from one another.

The silence in the flat was dense in a way the car’s hadn’t been. In the car, silence could be drowned by motion, by road noise and changing scenery. But here, there was nowhere for it to go. It stayed, coiled between us, pressing in from every direction. A silence built of thick walls and thick air and the heavy hush of too many unspoken things.

Outside, I could hear the city going about its business—cars passing, someone’s muffled music two floors down, a dog barking intermittently like it was trying to remind the world it was still there. Normal things. Life going on, oblivious. Comforting, if you let it be.

But we weren’t part of that life. We were sealed away from it—behind a chain lock and a bolted door and windows that barely opened, in a place chosen not because it was welcoming, but because it could hide us.

Inside, we sat like forgotten actors, waiting in the wings of a play that had long since lost its script.

And no one seemed ready to step back onstage.