“Certainly not sexy,” she said out loud then rolled over. Now she was talking to ceiling fans. Perhaps she was really losing the plot? Dust motes swirled in the stream of bright light shining around the curtain. She watched them for a while, then her gaze drifted to the bedside chest and there, poking out from under some magazines, was the corner of the little red book.

Why had it come with her? She should leave it here in a bin when she moved on. She sat up and propped herself against the pillows, then tugged it out and held it on her lap, one thumb rubbing the soft leather of the cover. Then, steeling herself, she opened it to the second chapter. Her big bold NO written next to the words – The model wife should accept her husband’s friends and receive them in her home, her own statement – but not in his bed – the photo of the tennis party with Vee beaming out at her. She flicked to it now and the words she’d underlined when she’d been struggling after Bree’s arrival in their lives. She should not bother her husband with too much baby talk, even though he is the father and may stand a good deal of it, she must remember there are other interests in the world.

The birth itself had been protracted and she’d ended up with a lot of stitches; her milk had been slow to arrive and then copious when it did. Life on the property was difficult. Keeping feed and water up to stock, checking their health, was daily, full-time work for Clem and Milt. It was a long hot summer and Natalie had dragged herself around, unbidden tears falling at the drop of a hat, and feeling as if she leaked from every orifice. She was constantly tired, uncomfortable and sad, but determined she could manage, and then the final nail in her coffin.

She could see back to that terrible day like it was yesterday. There’d been a country tennis carnival in Adelaide and Natalie, concerned her husband needed a break, had encouraged him to go. Brianna was three months old. The day Milt left for the carnival Olive and Clem had also been away visiting Connie who’d just had her first baby.

Natalie remembered so well her overwhelming tiredness, and Bree wouldn’t settle. By lunchtime, all out of ideas, Natalie had parked the baby in the pram in the kitchen under the fan and taken Kate with her to the bedroom. She’d set Kate up with crayons and paper, put on some music and laid on the bed. She could still hear Bree’s cries so she’d put a pillow over her head and that’s how Olive had found her when she returned from Connie’s.