I walked around my home feeling like a terrapin exploring the familiar edges of its aquarium. Even though Harry had made an effort to tidy up and the warm, late spring sunshine was streaming through the balcony doors, it felt like a holiday home in winter – cold, stale, paling into significance.

Molasses-slow minutes dripped by as I unpacked my suitcase, opened the mail and put on the washing, stuffing the machine full of clothes he’d touched, unbuttoned, peeled to the side or ripped off in the throes of passion.

I hated cooking. The last time I’d baked was when I’d accidentally burnt my buttocks while snorkelling. On automatic pilot, I started making a dressing to go with the prawns. The whisk beat against glass bowl: tap, tap, tap.

I took a shower before lunch, thinking, This is a metaphor for my life – Shampoo, rinse, repeat . . . shampoo, rinse, repeat.

An hour later I walked heavily into the bright, crisp heat of the sunlit backyard to hang up the washing. Eucalyptus blossoms trembled like soft clouds, translucent and tenuous before my gaze. Although the garden was abuzz with butterflies and bees, and fragrant with frangipani flowers, it felt like a prison wherever I turned.

Soon would come the long, hot, dry summer, in which tempers frayed as the grass turned brown and the sweet scent of dying jacaranda flowers drenched the heavy air. An emptiness was beginning somewhere within me; I felt a withering, a falling away. Pegging up my clothes, which were now washed clean of Brody’s scent, birds started to chatter in the trees that crowded the garden. I listened to the sound of the crow, its long, forlorn cry. I knew just how it felt.

I spent the afternoon in the garden, digging energetically at weeds. As the day cooled, I paused to draw breath. With remote fascination I watched a blue tongue lizard pounce on a smaller one, which dropped its tail and escaped, darting away, reborn. The next thing I knew, I was grabbing my handbag and dashing for the door – scrambling, skidding, scuttling across the concrete apron in the middle of the road, running for the train. Running for my life.

26

Was it possible to wear off a fingerprint from over-texting? That’s what I wondered all the long, long way back to Circular Quay on the infuriatingly slow, all-stops train.

At first, I tried wry humour: Brody, I think you’ll find that your mobile phone will generally be more useful when you a) remember the ‘mobile’ aspect and b) not have it on silent – unless you’re in a Trappist monastery, and forgot to mention it, you know, because of the whole non-talking policy, ha-ha.

Then I tried pleading: Please, please, please answer so I can explain everything. I’m begging you.

Then anger: Who are you? A hottie-hottie-dumb-dumb? Or maybe you’re president of Trump’s pussy-grabbing academy? Have these past two weeks meant nothing to you?