‘You know it’s been weeks, since we—’

‘It has not.’ She tightened her grip on the ball of paper. ‘It has not been that long,’ she said, smiling through the third lie of the day. ‘You’re exaggerating.’

‘Come back to bed, Mandy.’

‘The Walkers are coming over before lunch. I need to get the house clean.’

‘It’s nine-thirty, Mand—’

‘I know the bloody time.’

‘So are we still trying then or not?’

Her heart thumped at the question, the starkness of it in the morning light of their bedroom. It was typical of Steve to come out and say the thing that needed saying; the thing she was trying to pretend was not a thing.

‘’Course we are. Not right now, is all.’

‘My timing off again?’

‘Don’t go on about it, Steve. Just – leave it. Please.’

He thumped a pillow with the palm of his hand and his face flushed a dark red. He didn’t look at her. ‘Righto,’ he said, to the pillow. ‘I’ll take a shower.’

In the kitchen she leaned against the counter, rubbed her hands over her face and let out a sigh. So warm in here. She turned to look out at the yard, opened the window and got a burst of noise from the cicadas. The heat was taking a grip; you could feel the strength of it, even at this hour. The cloud had burned off already. It was going to be a belter of a day.

She nudged the back door open and sat on the step to light a cigarette. Holding her arm out, she tried to like the watch, to reconsider it. It was a nice enough watch, if you could forgive it for not being the necklace she’d wanted, and for being too tiny for an ample woman like herself. It had a gold-plated strap and a small oval face, with notches where the numbers should be and a dial on the side which moved the hands around. She’d have preferred a watch with numbers on it, since the whole point was to tell her the time. Why would you leave the numbers off a watch?

But that wasn’t it. She disliked the way it sliced time into prim, breathy little ticks. She’d never noticed seconds before, and now they were twitching around the dial, interfering with her natural rhythm. That was why she’d never owned a watch, come to think of it. She liked to do things as and when she was ready, in her own time. The watch was trying to push her around.

She heard him singing in the shower. He was good-natured, her Steve. Didn’t take the hump for too long. She sat back against the door frame and smoked her cigarette, watching the horizon, a fine blue line just darker than the sky, visible through the tea trees at the back of the yard. She could hear the waves from here, whenever the cicadas took a breather: a low boom; quiet; another boom. That was a rhythm she could appreciate.