Since my splurge for shoes on our joint credit card—and hadn’t that been a fun conversation—we’d started to divide our finances and no longer shared any accounts, except the clinic ones, which because they were part of a family trust business would take longer to settle. The money I was earning at Brewed went into my brand-spanking new personal savings account. No way I was spending any of it on his mess.

‘Ooh.’ Hayley’s eyes sparkled. ‘What did my brother dearest have to say about that?’

I relayed our phone conversation to her word for word:

‘Who is Handy House Inc and what on earth have you paid them three hundred dollars for?’

‘They’re a cleaning company I had come over to annihilate the mess you left me.’

‘You can’t just take money from the work account for household bills.’

‘Fine. Then next time don’t leave the house in such a state that I have no other choice. That wasn’t part of our deal.’

I’d braced myself for an argument but got a surprising apology instead. Adrian sounded super stressed. ‘I promise I’ll do better next time. My cleaner fell through and I haven’t had a chance to get another one.’

‘Okay,’ I said, wondering if she’d quit because Adrian didn’t know the rule about cleaning for the cleaner. ‘Good. And while we’re talking, you need to make sure the kids’ clothes are washed properly too. Saxon stunk when he came home from school on Monday. He’s a teenage boy—sometimes you need to remind him to take a shower. And also, how many nights did you feed them takeaway? The whole thing about two fruit and five veg isn’t just a catchy phrase, you know.’

‘Calm down,’ he interrupted. ‘I had a busy couple of weeks and things got on top of me. It’s okay for you, you’re not trying to hold down a full-time job as well as look after the house and children. Taking care of them—cleaning, cooking, washing, trying to help with homework—is a full-time job.’

By this stage, Hayley was laughing uncontrollably. ‘He said that? As if it was news to you?’

I nodded and smiled too; it was easy to find the humour in hindsight. ‘A full-time job he never showed any appreciation for me doing!’

‘How did you respond?’

‘I told him he didn’t need to do it all by himself, that Saxon and Payton are old enough to take on some household responsibility themselves and that we both need to encourage them to do so.’