Between Bookings: Two Women and a Thermos

The thermos belongs to Leonie. It's tartan, dented on one side from being dropped on the tram tracks on Sydney Road, and it always contains the same thing: sweet milky chai that she brews at home before every shift. Nobody else is allowed to make it. We have tried. We have been corrected.

We met on my second night at the house, four years ago. I was sitting in the staff room trying not to look like a new girl, and she sat down next to me, poured two cups from the tartan thermos without asking, and said, "Right. Tell me what you're scared of." I told her. She talked me through every one of them. By the end of the night I had a friend.

What we talk about

Everything, between bookings. Her son's footy. My mum's surgery. Whether it's worth doing a course in bookkeeping. The best cheap moisturiser for heated rooms that dry your skin out. Which clients are sweet, which are fussy, which need a firmer hand at reception. The terrible reality show we're both watching and pretending not to.

We also talk about the job in ways we can't with anyone outside it. The tiredness. The pride. The odd tenderness of looking after strangers. The little moments of absurdity, like the man who fell asleep mid-sentence talking about his lawnmower and woke up apologising to the lawnmower.

Tonight

It's June and bitterly cold. The heater in the staff room is losing its battle. Leonie came in with a new scarf she'd knitted and a cold she refuses to admit to. We sat with our feet up on the second-hand ottoman and shared the thermos, and she told me she's thinking about leaving at the end of the year to open a little dog-grooming business in Coburg.

I felt the floor tilt a little. Then I felt very happy for her. Both things at once.

After shift

We walked to the tram stop together at two in the morning, arms linked against the wind. She said, "You'll be all right without me, you know." I said I knew, but I'd rather not have to be.

At the stop she handed me the tartan thermos. "You'll need it more than me," she said. "I'll be around dogs. Dogs keep you warm."

I've got it on my desk now, dent and all. I'm going to learn to make the chai properly, even if she says I never will.