‘Wow, Harry. What a skill set! All you have to do now is win Dancing with the Stars and your Man of the Year award will surely be in the mail.’

‘Wait till you see what else I did for you today. You now have a new loo, with a directional massage jet, automatic lid, power deodoriser, heated seat, and rimless bowl with triple-jet tornado flush. It’s a paperless bidet–toilet hybrid, apparently.’

‘Is that a little, ah, toilet humour, or are you actually serious?’

‘It’s the latest Japanese model. I thought you’d get a kick out of it. When we renew our vows, that’s gonna be one of them – to spend the rest of my life doing things to make you happy.’

I kissed him lightly on the top of his head, which smelt of sea and salt and summer, ate a delicious dinner, threw it up again into the new Japanese toilet while cursing the fact that morning sickness could also strike at night, then crawled into bed.

I was bone-tired but slept fitfully, and eventually woke in a cold sweat. I checked the time. It was only half an hour since I’d last woken. Sleep is one of my favourite things in the world. I often joked that it was the reason I got up in the morning. And yet, since Mum’s death, it had totally evaded me. Finally abandoning all thoughts of slumber, I crept out of bed without waking Harry. I took a pee in the normal toilet in the hall, wondering if my husband really knew me at all. I mean, if I wanted to conclude my seated ablutions with a blast of hot air, I’d move to the hurricane belt in the American Midwest, or alternatively Canberra, where right-wing politicians were still arguing about the reality of climate change while our country went up in flames. I then slipped out into the front garden. The warm summer air felt silken on my skin. At the corner, a streetlight pushed feebly against the darkness that closed in around it. I walked slowly towards the beach, breathing the night’s frangipani fragrance and tasting upon my tongue the sharp tang of the sea.

Mum’s death had opened an old wound in me. The headlights zipping past on the distant highway brought back my father’s car accident in a sickening rush. Even though he’d died decades earlier, I still hadn’t entirely got used to it. Still, it was comforting that he stayed in my thoughts, silently guiding my actions and giving me parking karma when I needed it – ‘Come on, Dad. It’s raining. I need a spot, right outside the cinema.’