OLIVIA: I’d been having a bad day myself. I didn’t know it at the time but Edgar, my husband, was in the early stages of dementia. Soon I would understand his mood changes, but that day it felt like our marriage was falling apart. That we didn’t know how to talk to each other any more. That I was a bad wife, a bad stepmother. I’d spent all those years learning about art, for what? To curate a display in a hotel, that people barely glanced at as they walked by with their suitcases? I wasn’t in the right mood to talk, but Jeannie kept phoning. She sounded drunker each time. Angry one moment, tearful the next, accusing me of being a bad friend, then weeping and saying she couldn’t do without me.

JEANNIE: I always did like to keep an open mind.

OLIVIA: At first I tried to placate her. I told her Eliza would be home soon from her holiday with Maxie in New Zealand. That she needed to get ready, go and collect her, but only if she was sober enough to drive. She lost her temper. Told me to keep my nose out of her life and her business. That it was all right for me there on the other side of the world, the queen of the castle, surrounded by comfort and riches, with an adoring husband. What did I know about hardship or loneliness? What need did I have for an occasional drink? I hadn’t even had to go to the trouble of having my own children, had I? I’d got two ready-made ones, two spoilt boys, shipped off out of the way to boarding school. I had no idea how hard it was to raise a child from babyhood, let alone on my own. [PAUSE]

It was that last accusation that did it. Jeannie knew I’d longed for a baby of my own. That Edgar and I had tried from the start of our marriage. That I would have done anything to have a daughter. And yet she had taken that knowledge and turned it back on me. [PAUSE] I hung up on her. But not before I called her a bitch. A selfish bitch. And told her she didn’t deserve Eliza.

JEANNIE CONTINUES SILENTLY SWINGING BACK AND FORTH.