I tossed and turned as images I’d buried kept flashing into my head – my husband’s concupiscent glance down Amber’s cleavage at a family gathering; his eagerness to help Amber out any day and, more worryingly, any night, at a moment’s notice; the number of plumbing emergencies Amber phoned up about, which, curiously, always seemed to coincide with Scott’s trips interstate; my naive appreciation of Harry’s concern for my sibling, imagining it only proved what a great guy I’d married. Why had I turned a blind eye to all those red flags? Helen Keller could have seen it coming.

By two am, the only thought on my mind was whether I should cap off an otherwise unproductive day by flogging my handyman husband to death with his tool belt.

‘Hmm,’ I addressed my pillow. ‘A husband who had an affair with my sister, a psychotic mother, an unwanted pregnancy at fifty, a broken heart and a dead-end job . . . Who says you can’t have it all?’

After a fitful pre-dawn doze, I awoke consumed with rage at my mother’s vicious timing. Her selfish performance had given me a strong desire to anchor her with weights into a pool of piranhas. Couldn’t she at least have waited till Boxing Day to box our ears with such brutal news? I determined then and there to book in for an abortion. I mean, how could I bring another human into this dysfunctional family? Especially if the poor kid was carrying any of Ruth Ryan’s sour and acidic gene stock.

A feeling of defeat had settled over the house, acrid and thick, like the sulphurous bushfire smoke that clung to everything it touched. Mother Nature was in meltdown and so was I. Watching the sun rise over the sea, the bitter taste of remorse flooded my mouth. My whole life I’d allowed myself to be intimidated by my overbearing mother. I realised that I wasn’t suffering from multiple personality disorder – I didn’t even have one personality. But no more.

Fifteen minutes later, after rolling over a couple of kerbs and taking out a letterbox en route, I wheeled to a tyre-screeching halt outside my old family home and catapulted across the nature strip to my mother’s door. I rat-a-tatted my knuckles on the glass panel in the same way my irritable and impatient mother announced her arrival anywhere. No answer. I stabbed my finger on the doorbell, repeatedly. My mother was clearly resting after the exertions of machine-gunning her entire family with psychological shrapnel – a day that forevermore would be known as ‘The Christmas Day Massacre’. Determined to finally speak my mind, I scrabbled around in the rockery for the hidden spare key, speared it into the lock and let myself in.