I didn’t plan to go into private industry. I didn’t dream about it as a kid lying awake at night listening to the pigs squealing outside, or the bitch whining when her pups were taken from her, or the cows cawing out for their calves. I don’t know if I enjoyed buying properties or selling them more, but there was a certain rush, dividing rooms into smaller liveable options and it was what I knew. I understood something about organising bricks on land and it made me deeply satisfied. There was something ferocious in covering over the earth until you could no longer see it, forgetting it ever existed.

They’re not making any more of it, land, Father’d say, cursing and muttering under his breath.

That’s no job for a woman.

This made me more determined and wild in my decisions.

Eventually even Alex grumbled about it. At first, it was the lack of time I had for him, but then it was something worse, something more direct about my choices, and in turn, something more direct about me. You’re not who I married, he’d go on, I thought you wanted to own a farm and make cheese or do something useful (for that was my original promise). When will it be enough? How much is enough?

Until the I-don’t-even-know-who-you-are-any-more-exasperation set in.

Alex and I learned, in time, to stop asking awkward questions about each other’s days. And if we did, in a tick-box way, we chose topics with neutral buoyancy. He’d fill me in on Jacob’s spelling tests, doctor visits, braces. Nathan’s cat obsession, dinosaur films, karate belts, Christmas lists. Joshua’s play dates, swimming strokes and trampoline prowess. I’d fill him in on office politics. Chit-chat. Aside from the children, food and drink produce took a decent chunk of conversation time. Fit Bits. Weighing Scales. Vacuum Cleaners. Deep Freeze. Potted plants. Sunday lunch spots. Bathroom fixtures. Passive Housing; A Greener Way of Living. (Can a house ever be passive?) Car Services. Winter Coats. Winter Tyres. His Mother (though neither neutral nor buoyant). Netflix. Soccer Transfers. Almond Milk. Cutting down on bacon. Cutting down on dairy. Cutting down on sugar. Cutting down on one-use plastic. Taking up Yoga. Too slow. Taking up Bikram. Too hot. We need to make time for each other. We do. Tomorrow. Promise. Hotel. No. Awkward Hotel Sex. Printer ink. Apple trees.

*

Our daughter would be nine now, tucked in between Nathan and Jacob. Alex never speaks about her. Before landing on the Ward, I hinted about her the odd time, usually when I was drunk, but that rarely went anywhere, for he’d shut me out, mostly by leaving the room, or heading out on his bike. I tried dropping her name in here and there, but even I’d begun acting as if she hadn’t existed either. Only ever inside of me and there’s a tight rein on language we use for events that go on inside the body, especially inside your uterus, to the extent that sometimes I wonder did I imagine her, dream her all up, alone. Confinement is such a mad liminal place. Dreamlike. Nightmarish.