And then there were the novels she read. Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Wharton and Henry James all wrote about worldly women who lived passionately — and suffered the consequences. But these characters lived life to the full before their fall. They thrived. And in more contemporary novels, she read about girls and women who travelled abroad and held their own in the world of men, who lived as freely as men, women like Doris Lessing’s Martha Quest and nearly all of Christina Stead’s women. These novels absorbed her, like films did; but unlike films, when she finished a novel, the characters seemed to shine a hard light on her own life. The books nurtured her dreams while simultaneously fuelling her restlessness.

The years passed, Andrew grew, she was busy, and she was happy enough. Days, even weeks would pass without a flicker of dissatisfaction, and then something would happen to trip her up, and she would think life had sold her short. It was in one such mood, in the winter of 1975, that she took herself off to Monash University to attend an information afternoon for prospective mature-aged students. It was a Saturday; Leonard and Andrew had gone to the football and wouldn’t be home for hours, and she was fed up.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam had introduced free tertiary education for all, and many married women were taking up an opportunity denied them when they were teenagers. Sylvie thought it unlikely she would be joining the flock, but attending this information day was making a stand for herself, demonstrating a bravado that in the general run of her life was not required, but which discontent had pushed to the surface.

After twenty years of marriage, her life was not much different from her mother’s. The psychedelic sixties had passed her by; the personal growth-and-development movement of the seventies was passing her by; women’s liberation was changing the lives of many women, but not hers; more women were entering the workforce — even her sister, Maggie, now had a good job. And what had she achieved? Her home was perfect, her appearance was perfect, her sponge cakes were perfect; but an organised cutlery drawer and nicely styled hair made a mockery of the woman she had hoped to be when she married Leonard. She would soon be forty. To be so old with so little to show for it.

She knew the mood would pass, it always did, but now, today, she needed to step out of her ordinary life and do something different. She consulted the street directory, and set off towards the university. Before she’d gone even a short way, she knew the information program wouldn’t pull her out of the doldrums. She was already worried what Leonard would think if he were ever to discover what she was doing, and anxieties about the event itself were also muscling in. She had never been to this university, nor the newer one in the far-distant northern suburbs. As for the original university, the University of Melbourne, she’d only been on that campus for non-study reasons: once to see a play, and another time for a concert with her sister. Universities were well outside her daily round.