I straddled my bike at the intersection, waiting for the lights, come on, sweating. My phone … Had Sarah texted? No.

Green light. Driving the pedals, wind in my face, my wife released.

We’d been married for ten years, together for fifteen. Other than her fling with Nikau six months after our wedding, and the fact she’d been in love with him ever after, and maybe more so since he’d carked it, she’d not been with anyone, to my knowledge, but me.

She’d gone to the South Island for her friend Larissa’s thirtieth, a party in the mountains. Nikau had approached her after his DJ set, sidled up to her, told her, ‘You’re dangerous for me.’ He was fascinating to her, so dark and mysterious and …

I swerved to avoid a pothole.

In the past eight years, she’d been a mum or expectant mum or mum who worked five days a fortnight at a myotherapy clinic in Fitzroy while studying for a complementary health sciences degree. It wasn’t easy: life after dancing, motherhood, Nikau’s demise, family grief. Meditation, spirituality, poetry – Sarah still found solace in those, but they only went so far.

I got my phone out, texted Kyle: There in five. Or even sooner, the way I was riding – I was a superdad, unstoppable.

Sarah’s sexual reawakening would be good for her, but more importantly it would be good for me.

I wheelied over the tram tracks.

Despite myself, I still craved her – how she looked, smelled, moved, touched, kissed, tasted … I yearned, she spurned, but I loved her, like a chump. She loved me, always told me so, still made me laugh with her interbred idioms.

We were a success, a happy couple.

And thanks to Valentino I’d maybe even get laid.

* * *

I couldn’t get the kids and me and my bike and their bags on the tram – I tried, had to step back off, wave at the driver.

‘Oh, what’s Daddy going to do?’ I said, faking a laugh.

‘We could all ride on your bike,’ Sophie said.

‘Yeah, that could work,’ I said. ‘If you could just sit on the handlebars, just there, and, Olly, yeah, if you could put your feet there, on the back-wheel bolts – just be careful with your shoelaces, and hold me tight round the waist.’

‘You’re joking, Daddy.’

‘You think? Well, what else can we try?’

‘What if Olly and me ride your bike?’ Sophie said.

‘And you run after us,’ Oliver said.

‘It might be hard to reach the pedals,’ I said. ‘What if we try this?’ I propped the bike against my hip, lifted Oliver, sat him on the seat. He leant forwards at full stretch, pulling against my arm, trying to reach the handlebars. ‘I can push you in turns so that you both get a shot. Shall we try that?’

‘I’m scared,’ Oliver said.

‘Yeah, lame idea,’ Sophie said.