My mouth flopped open like I was a beached fish. There was definitely no Hallmark card for this. Yes, I love you madly, but, oh, by the way, I’ve still been screwing my husband and now I’m preggers with his sprog. A tremor of helplessness went through me. My lips stiffened in an effort to say just so much and no more. Finally I replied, robotically, ‘Well, family is important at a time like this.’

I peered behind me to catch a glimpse of the ventriloquist who was uttering these words in my voice. This is not what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was ‘Take me, I’m yours, you crazy, half-legged, horndog!’

But I just kept on staring at the pool, listening to the mechanical octopus making its methodical rounds, sweeping the tiles back and forth, back and forth . . .

When I finally looked up, Brody had gone. I exhaled. I hadn’t even realised I’d been holding my breath.

A moment later I was racing out the front door. My eyes raked the street in both directions. Wiping away tears, I could feel my heart gazing up at me quizzically, asking in between beats, ‘Are you sure you want me to keep doing this?’ I glimpsed him then, moving off at speed through the spotted gums. If there’d been a mist, it would have enveloped him, accompanied by violin strings and a fade to black. But instead he was swallowed up by a gang of kids with new Christmas surfboards, mooching down to the beach in search of a wave.

‘Come back!’ I called out. ‘I’ve gotta tell you something. I’m up the duff!’ But a wind had come up and it blew the words back in my face. I fumbled for my phone and stabbed at his number, forgetting that he’d changed it. I looked up again and he’d disappeared.

Defeated, I dragged myself back to my mother’s home, catching my reflection in the hallway mirror as I passed. I appeared even more dishevelled, wide-eyed and wild-haired than before. My earlier look, of a hair-care-magazine reject, seemed positively poised and groomed by comparison to what I now resembled: a deranged kind of outback woman who hatches abandoned emu eggs in her bra. It was enough to send a shiver up one’s spine. But, of course, I had no spine, because it had turned to jelly.

33

The week between Christmas and New Year’s day was hot – the kind of hot that makes a woman think that the only reason bras were invented was for the unparalleled joy that comes from taking one off.