Margot offered to watch the kids after Christmas lunch. Sarah and I left the farmhouse and walked down the gravelly path, shooing flies, climbed across a rusted wire fence, traversed an overgrown field, alert for snakes, puffed and wheezed up an incline flanked by gum trees. At the top, oh, Jesus, we were sweating, a view for miles, the wind in our hair.

‘Hey, look at that,’ she said. Three wild horses, grey, white and chestnut, in the rough grass to the left of us. ‘Wow, my god. They’re amazing.’

I got out my phone, took some photos I’d never look at while we watched and kept our distance. The horses were calm, inquisitive.

I was champing at the bit with the pressure of wanting to feel closer to Sarah before Biddy arrived and everything … It didn’t bear thinking about. And what about my new comms job? The application was in – I might get it.

The horses turned, trotted away. We walked along the fence line, clumps of cattle hair on the barbs.

‘I feel so lucky,’ Sarah said. ‘Being here again, this place.’

‘Yeah, I suppose …’

She stopped, looked at me. ‘Why the funny voice, hun?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, stopping. ‘I really want us to connect, and here we are, away from everyone and everything, and, I don’t know …’

She swiped a fly from the corner of her mouth. ‘Maybe all good things start with a kiss.’

Heartbeat, boom. We hadn’t pashed properly for …

Awkward pecks to begin with, but then deeper, with more abandon. Coffee, toffee. Sarah was enjoying it. And me – fuck, I was consumed, the soft scrape of her tongue, the taste of her saliva. I slid my hand between her legs – erect me, don’t eject me – started rubbing.

‘Chris, not here,’ she said, backing off.

I looked around. Empty fields to our left, gum trees and scrub to our right, fields behind us, up ahead. Even the horses had gone.

We kissed again – slowly, slowly, my hand between her –

‘I’m sorry, Chris.’ She pulled away. ‘I can’t relax like this, being outside.’

‘Didn’t you jerk off some Tinder dude in a playground last week?’ She frowned, shook her head. ‘Yes, thanks for that, Chris. It’s not helping.’

She still hadn’t told me about Jack the Dom, but they’d been writing regularly. Dave was dust: they’d argued after sex about the fairness of the Medicare rebate and she’d told him she didn’t want to see him again. Kudos.

‘OK,’ I said, huffing, ‘shall we start walking back?’

‘No, stay,’ she said. ‘Don’t be like that.’

We walked back to the house slowly, me trying not to show my resentment that it hadn’t happened, never happened, wouldn’t.

* * *