‘Are you ready for the baby?’ I asked Eliza.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, smoothing down her blue-and-white seersucker dress.

‘Do you have family around? It’d be so much easier with family.’

‘You don’t have a family?’ she asked.

‘My dad’s in the country, my brother’s overseas and my husband’s family are interstate. But we manage.’

I could see from her expression she found this puzzling, jarring. ‘My parents live in the same street as us. They’ve put a nursery in their house. Mum says the baby can stay there when we need a night off.’

I should’ve felt strong, hearing this. I raise my children without any help aside from Mark. When Dad visits, he’s only another person to feed. I manage the long nights. I learned from books what my babies should eat and how to settle them when they cried. There’s no time off.

Eliza gazed around the table. I pictured her walking the halls of her spotless house, with her husband at work, her baby being rocked by her mother, and realising her life would be a line of same-same days, like a panda in a cage. I made a face at Lou to make it clear she’d cop it if we didn’t leave soon.

I filled in my enrolment forms when I got home. Twenty-five, a mature-aged student and mother. I felt sick at the idea of it, but I did it anyway.

Did the woman beep her horn? I think that’s what woke me. She’d been wide awake, assessing her options. Deep gullies on both sides, our car taking the whole middle of the road, coming right at her. She must have been terrified. I think about why she was on the road, alone, at night. Was someone waiting for her at the other end?

I force myself to focus on something else. I’ve bought my textbooks. I have Mrs Lewis lined up for babysitting. The Christmas presents are wrapped. The trip to Dad’s farm was the last thing to tick off before the end of the year. I can get it back on track. I can’t – I won’t – throw away my life because of an accident that’s not of my making. But I know I’m an accessory. I let Charlie drive. I sit still so I don’t vomit.

‘What’s the plan?’ Charlie is standing in the doorway, toothbrush in hand, his hair wet and finger-combed. The drips from his head have made a dark cowl on his shirt.

‘We get some food. They serve breakfast downstairs. You’ll need to put shoes on . . . Let’s eat fast though.’

We pad down the hallway on plush floral carpet that seems strangely grand given the boarding-house decor in the bedrooms. All the doors are closed. I wonder if other people slept here or if we’d had the building to ourselves. Maybe the men in the bar live here. Maybe they know the woman in the car.

I shouldn’t have left Charlie alone last night. God knows what he said.