I may be a grown woman with weekly by-lines in a local newspaper and years of child-wrangling under my belt, but at my core, I will always be my father’s little girl, I ruminated. I thought how much my father loved life and how he would want me to be happy and cheerful, and how I’d better do my duty to him and bloody well be so.

The big empty beach beckoned at the end of the road. The sand was cool under my bare feet. There’d been a bushfire in the tea-trees by the water’s edge. A black calligraphy of branches was now scratched onto the landscape. I looked at the gnarled arms of the scorched trees, which curled and twisted against the moonlit sky as if in pain. Except then I realised I was the one in pain. I bent double suddenly to cushion myself against the short, sharp stabbing cramps. It felt like a long, long time before I could draw a proper breath. Every inhalation was a shallow, panicked little effort that brought no relief. I lay on the sand, curled up like a frightened echidna.

An hour later, I knew I’d lost the baby. Having been unsure if I wanted it or not, I now felt nothing but grief: deep grief and profound loss. I cried and cried as if my heart would break. I once more felt estranged from myself. I was like a book with the ending ripped out. What was to be my denouement? And then, lying there, a sticky mess in the sand, the world suddenly clicked into place. I felt as though I’d finally figured out that I’d been holding the map upside down all this time. After the pain and the sobs subsided, I walked gingerly back towards the house. Under the searchlight beam of the big full moon, at last I saw clearly what I had to do.

35

‘Ladies and gentlemen, friends, family, workmates.

‘Once upon a time there was a woman who discovered she’d turned into the wrong person. I’ve gathered you all here on New Year’s Day, at ridiculously short notice, to toast my dear departed mother, and also to apologise for the last time we were all together, on my fiftieth birthday a few months ago. Proving that star signs mean nothing at all, on the day when my very own newspaper’s astrologer had predicted that I would find “happiness and joy, because the moon was in Neptune”, I got misdiagnosed with cancer, discovered my husband had been unfaithful, insulted all of my family, friends and work pals, got iced out of my job and alienated everyone in the Insular Peninsular, my kids included.