I don’t knock on Charlie’s door on my way back from the bathroom since waking him has always been a job and a half, and I want to get myself ready before I worry about him. I put on a yellow blouse and denim skirt, and pull my hair back. Once I’ve packed my nightie I go to Charlie’s room and knock for as long as expected, until he opens the door, still in the jeans and t-shirt he had on when we arrived.

‘What time is it?’ he asks, yawning.

‘You’re wearing a watch. Didn’t you even take your watch off?’

He ignores me and starts to close the door until I put my hand on it.

‘I’ll tidy the room while you do whatever it is you do when you’re already dressed.’ I point to the bathroom. ‘You can brush your teeth.’

‘Yeah, okay.’ He stretches his arms above his head, interlacing his fingers and cracking his knuckles. ‘How are you holding up?’

‘I didn’t sleep.’

He drops his arms. ‘Me either.’

‘I can’t understand why a woman wearing Mum’s ring would be driving away from Dad’s house.’

‘I thought we agreed she stole it,’ he says.

‘No we didn’t. And why would a pregnant woman steal a ring from a farm in the middle of nowhere at night?’

‘Maybe she’s had it for months. Maybe she wasn’t coming from his –’

‘There’s nothing else out there, Charlie.’

‘Maybe he sold it and wanted her to leave before we showed up.’

‘Why would he do that the night we’re coming? Or ever?’

‘Or gave it –’

‘You said yourself, she was our age.’ I rub my eyes. ‘I can’t even – We need to get out of here.’

There’s nothing to pack, so I sit on his bed and assess the state of my body. I have a headache and my empty stomach is turning somersaults. Through the window, I watch a skinny girl push a stroller on the concrete footpath that stretches a few metres in front of a tacky shopfront. She can’t be much younger than I was when I wheeled Sarah around the streets.

The woman’s head hit the steering wheel. She would’ve felt a moment’s panic, a painful blow, then nothing. I need to convince myself this is true. But the baby . . . How long does it take for a baby to die once its mother is gone? Was the roll and shudder that I felt through her smock the baby’s dying moment, or did it lie alive in its dark space while we drove away?

Next year Sarah will be six. The twins will start four-year-old kindergarten. No more strollers for me. They’ll sleep better as they get older. I’ll have the energy to apply myself. This is the time: my time.

I almost didn’t enrol. I was nervous about whether I could fit study into my life again and, later, how I could work as a lawyer with children, a husband and a house to run. Then I met Lou’s cousin Eliza. We were at Clancy’s for a last-hurrah lunch for Eliza, due to have her first baby in a few weeks. There were five of us there, all of whom knew Eliza except me. I was introduced as Lou’s friend and a mother of three, to sounds that made it clear I had more children than anyone else at the table.