In the afternoon, Emily got up from her desk and went to the cafe across the street from the hotel, sitting near the entrance, where a cat roosted on the windowsill. She heard the close flap of wings above the awning. The spicy smells of spit-roasting meat drifted down the road. At the corner, pink jasmine covered the side wall of a terrace house like flesh. Emily listened to a couple, both Scots, argue until the woman got up from the table and said this had not been any kind of holiday, let’s face it, they’d been miserable the entire time, and she’d find somewhere else to stay tonight. Emily viewed the scene with interest, almost satisfaction: here was something important, the truth discovered in a quiet cafe—the couple was not well matched. Better lives were now possible.

From the cafe window, Emily watched her friend Liam, dressed all in navy, wheel a suitcase down the other side of the street and enter her hotel. She knew Liam was in the country—an event at a Melbourne university—but he hadn’t given her a date for his arrival in Sydney. For some reason he’d never bothered with that detail. Emily crossed the road and peered into the hotel foyer where he stood at the reception desk. The automatic doors detected her shape and opened.

‘Surprise!’ said Liam, turning around.

‘I knew you’d be arriving soon,’ said Emily. She hugged him. She lightly punched him on the arm.

‘Maybe I should have called ahead. Is it odd, arriving like this?’

She replied, ‘I don’t know, is it?’, which was often what Emily said whenever Liam asked a question that she thought didn’t need asking.

Liam checked in, making small talk with the receptionist, Isabel, about long flights and jetlag. He looked tanned, his face freckled; his hair imperfectly parted. He wore a thick oxford shirt with pearl buttons, and collar buttoned down—preppy style becoming popular again. Liam dressed much better than he did when they were in their twenties. He held his carry-on bag with two hands, thin and heavily veined.

‘How’s the magazine?’ Emily asked as they stepped into the elevator.

‘Oh Jesus, I’d prefer to talk about your stuff.’

‘We’ll get to that. Tell me something about Lorrie Moore. Or maybe John McPhee. Are you writing anything?’

‘I’m trying to write a piece about the North-West Passage but the material might be totally beyond me. This morning I removed the terms “silly” and “unseasonably” from the story. Those two words kept appearing in my first draft. I don’t know why.’

‘Now you have a story that isn’t silly or unseasonable.’

‘It’s been a while since I wrote anything longer than an email. The draft is a right mess. I don’t like to think about it.’

‘I don’t like to think about nuclear bombs. Or my husband.’