“Nothing much to tell. No luck fishing, although I enjoyed trying. I drank too much trying to keep up with Damo and Shortie. Woke up Monday morning with a sore head and crook guts and decided I’d never do it again.” He patted her back. “That should make you happy.”

“I don’t mind you having a boys’ weekend, once in a while.”

Sean groaned. “No, I mean it, please be the wife that says I can’t ever do it again.”

Kate laughed, gripped him tighter. “So who were the neighbours?”

“A couple and their baby, Adelaide friends of Tom’s from the next-door shack. They were staying for a week. We had a barbecue with them on the Saturday night.”

“The baby looked cute.”

“She was.” Sean rolled away, flicked on the beside light.

Kate blinked at the sudden brightness.

“When were you going to mention Sarah and Nick’s baby?” He studied her.

“I…” She shrugged, looked away from his gaze. “I haven’t seen you since then.”

“There was no argument with Sarah, was there? It was hearing about the baby that upset you the day you met her for lunch.”

Kate looked into Sean’s deep brown eyes studying her closely and crumpled with remorse. “We’d made a pact,” she whispered. “We’d be the childless couples. You know how hard it is when everyone else in the district has kids. Sarah and I were each other’s buffer.”

He continued to gaze at her then shook his head. “You’re a goose.” He reached out, pulled her to him. “You can’t make that kind of agreement with someone else.” He kissed her.

She rested her head on his shoulder. Not even your own husband. The words echoed inside her head. She’d believed Sean when he’d said they didn’t need a child if nature didn’t intend for them to have one; they had each other. His brothers had produced nieces and nephews who adored him. Maybe her sisters would have babies one day. She was happy to be that doting childless aunt but was he truly happy to remain childless?

Only a few weeks earlier one of his nieces had been baptised. It had been a big family celebration with aunts and uncles and cousins. He’d been holding the baby cocooned in the crook of his arm, and one of his cousin’s wives had declared him a natural and wanted to know when he was going to be a dad. “There’re plenty of kids in this family,” he’d said in a jokey voice. “We’re not having our own.” Kate had been near enough to hear and she’d seen his look. He meant ‘she’ not ‘we’. It had hit her like a bolt out of the blue. Her refusal to try IVF was the reason they didn’t have children.

She turned to him now. “You and I made that kind of agreement.”