I’M HALFWAY AROUND ‘the Tan’, my local running track, when I pass a group of men. It’s early and usually only the serious runners are out. Sometimes there are big runners’ groups, huffing along in a cloud of breath. These men are chatting, little bursts of speech passing between them like static electricity. The sun is beginning to rise, it’s too early for most but it’s the best time of the day for me. I keep going, my pace is up. My watch tells me my heart rate is at one-twenty beats per minute, my cadence is at 160 and my kilometres per hour is sitting at eleven. There is the same man I’ve seen coming towards me a few times before.

‘Morning,’ he says, as I pass him.

‘Good morning,’ I say. Like me, he runs without headphones, without thumping music or podcasts, opting instead for the sounds of the city rolling out of bed, traffic starting up on Punt Road, the birds twittering in the trees.

I finish my lap then start up Domain Road towards home. After a short hot shower, I begin cooking breakfast for Gabe and the kids.

Gabe comes downstairs first. ‘Morning,’ he says. He reaches for the coffee, pours it into the blender and adds a tablespoon of butter.

‘Still doing that thing?’

‘It means you digest the caffeine slower.’

‘I hate to break it to you, honey,’ I say, touching his shoulder. ‘Cavemen didn’t drink coffee at all.’

He’s unfazed. He sits down with the newspaper and sips the coffee while I turn his omelette. He eats it with asparagus and no toast – some trendy diet to try to get back to the belt notch he had in his twenties, but I can never get him out of bed for a run.

After Gabe’s eaten, I prepare the kids’ food and soon enough they emerge, one at a time. July gets up only after some fervent knocking.

‘I’m awake,’ she growls. Where did that come from? She never used to speak to me like this.

‘You’ll be late for school, July. Please come and eat your breakfast.’

‘Okay okay, I’m getting up.’

July is seventeen but still eats Coco Pops for breakfast. Hard to believe she’ll be a legal adult soon. Evan barely eats breakfast at all. He likes to take a muesli bar on the tram to school so he can get a few more minutes’ sleep. He’s usually up late, gaming with his friends online. He streams himself and has accumulated a sizeable following. We hear him some nights, he’s so much more outgoing in the digital world than he is in real life, but he’s a sweet kid.

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