Mark would rail at my stupidity in staying silent and then lying to the police, and for effectively choosing my brother over my husband. He might divorce me. He loves me, no question, but his job means the world to him. How could he continue working as a journalist with a wife who’d committed such a serious crime, a wife in jail? People would assume I’d told him and he’d helped cover it up. How, then, would he care for our children, with no job and a wife in jail? And once I was out of jail, what would my life be?

I turn my head to the other side and stare out the window. Telling the truth is a terrible idea.

I forgot to close the curtains last night and I can see the sky is still black. The fuzzy red numbers on the clock radio say it’s 3.40 am. The birds are still asleep.

Once my eyes fine-tune I can make out the elegant shapes of branches against the sky. In the dark they look flat, like rivers drawn onto a map. I watch a possum walk gingerly along the power line. I hear the wind swishing the leaves.

At five o’clock I’m still awake. I could get up, but the days are long as it is. I lie in bed and listen to the warbling magpies and admire the sight of my books and stationery piled along the wall near the door. I scan the pile, as I have a hundred times before, to see if there’s anything I’ve missed, but there isn’t. It’s perfect. I’ve bought my textbooks, ring-bound folders, notepads, packets of loose paper inserts, dividers, pencil case and Bic pens – black, blue and red – a stapler, hole puncher and a sticky-tape dispenser.

I want to put these things on the desk in the spare bedroom, which will be my study area. I picture the desk with my belongings on it, books upright, held in place at one end by the statue of Nefertiti that Mark gave me on our last anniversary and at the other by a glazed vase I made in the pottery class Lou and I took in August. In front of the vase, I’ll put the mug I bought to use as a pen holder.

Yesterday morning, when I went into the spare room to collect Dad’s and Charlie’s laundry, the only thing on my desk was Dad’s watch. His dirty clothes were in a turtle-sized lump next to the bedside table. Meanwhile, Charlie’s jocks, socks and shirts were draped across every surface except the light fitting and my desk – after two nights. Dad carries himself like the soldier he was, and there’s a symmetry to him; Charlie wears his clothes like they’ve been flung onto a twisted wire frame.

Not knowing how long my book pile will be in limbo is unsettling. In bed, I pull the sheet up to my chin, close my eyes, and imagine I’m lying on a cloud. I’m wearing a blue dress, cinched at the waist by a satin bow, one end of which is held in the beak of a robin. I’m surrounded by clouds on which sit porcelain-skinned children with twinkling eyes – girls and boys dressed by loving mothers who turn their minds to nothing more than joyful domesticity. This is not an image I’ve fashioned myself but the cover of a book of poems I treasured when I was little, a gift from my mother. The book is gone, lost in the confusion of a house move, but the cover is locked in my memory.