Her flight had circled over Sydney Harbour, over the Lichtenberg figure of the northern suburbs, and from the air she had seen bushfire smoke in the distant south-west, where streams of grey roved into the sky and tabled over the horizon. Isabel, at hotel reception, mentioned the smoke smell that drifted into the city. Brightening suddenly, Isabel said there would be rain soon: at night she heard frogs in her backyard, a sure sign. The hotel’s airy lobby smelled of vanilla candles and appeared to be filled with the style of furniture displayed in the windows of stores across the road: white sofas and leather cushions, tubular lamps, mid-century carving chairs, enormous white seashells on the blue marble coffee tables. The floors were oiled and bare wood, dark as soil, faintly scratched. On the walls were blown-up photographs of native flora, the prints grainy as old fabric. Isabel asked if this was Emily’s first time in Sydney (no, a long time ago), if she required wake-up calls (no), and whether internet access was necessary (yes).

Emily was expecting an email from Michael, her husband, though last week he’d used the term partner when introducing her to someone they bumped into on Chamberlayne Road. Later, when Emily asked him about this description of her, Michael said he’d misspoken, that’s all. There was nothing in it. She didn’t absolutely take issue with the term: what bothered her was everything else Michael had done and said in recent months. The introduction of the term partner suggested to Emily that he somehow felt differently about her status and their marriage, which had indeed shifted (against her will, as though by the orders of a tyrant) into a mostly impassive and practical conjunction. Emily tracked the change back to last June, or thereabouts: the month they began trying to fall pregnant. When they did have sex, it was the kind that involved a minimum of touching. When their time together wasn’t admin-minded, it typically involved drinking. Michael liked wine and beer; Emily cider. He told her: ‘I’ve come to prefer slightly drunk sex.’ Some nights they stayed up late and talked and talked about how to fix their marriage until Emily went to bed so exhausted and stupefied that the next day she barely recalled what they’d said to each other. And yet, she thought, they hadn’t tried couple’s counselling. They hadn’t gone on a proper holiday. She told Michael that most marriages go stale (or whatever the hell had happened), but couples could salvage and thrive again, better than before. Whole shelves of the bookstore charted such recoveries. And here she cited friends and acquaintances who’d overcome what she suspected were the same problems. Michael grew his hair down to his shoulders, which looked very becoming.

‘He’s obviously depressed. He needs to speak to someone,’ she told her friend Liam.