‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll just have to tell the US Navy where I am, and I’ll have to leave again on Boxing Day.’

I gave notice at Mrs Mulligan’s and at work—I had started a new job at a law office when the Quartermaster Corps left Sydney—and then tried madly to organise everything, packing my trunk and deciding what to bring and what to leave behind. and Dot came around to help me finish the tablecloth I was embroidering as a gift for Roy’s mother. We were going to stay at his parents’ house at first and then we would find a nice place together. I knew it might take a while because there were housing shortages everywhere.

Mum had been posting clippings and recipes to me since she moved down south. There were housekeeping hints, recipes she had written out on notecards and a few cuttings from advice columns in the women’s pages of the paper. One read: Married couples must go on making love as they did in their courting days. Romance must not be forgotten. Once lovemaking has been relegated to a fixed time and place, the glamour has gone, and marriage rapidly begins to fade into boredom.

I wondered whether she had thought of herself and Dad when she read it, when their marriage had begun to fade, or whether the ‘glamour’ ever truly existed for them at all. I had told Mum about Roy’s injuries but hadn’t said what they might mean for him, that our lovemaking might already be a thing of the past.

The ship was due to leave on 28 December, and on Christmas Eve I took the train to Nowra, where Mum and Dad were to meet me at the station and drive me to their place. I wanted to eat Mum’s Christmas dinner one last time, watch Dad and Fred drink all the brandy besides that in the pudding, and give them each the presents I’d chosen out of the things I wasn’t taking with me. For Mum, my sewing shears, which were brass-handled and sharper than hers. For Dad, the carved bone comb I had won at school in a spelling competition. And for Fred, my hot-water bottle, since the cold made his leg ache.

I’d received permission from the military police to go, and didn’t think anything of it when I saw the MPs’ car pull alongside the train in Kiama as we followed the Princes Highway along the coast. At the station in Kiama two uniformed MPs boarded and walked through my car. ‘We’re looking for a Mrs Sarah Jackson. Is there a Mrs Sarah Jackson on board?’

I stood, my voice shaky. ‘That’s me.’

‘We’ve got orders to bring you back to Sydney. Ship’s leaving early.’