‘What are you doing with your face?’ Mia asked. Kate’s ten-year-old daughter had skipped out from one of the bathroom stalls to wash her hands. She’d tied the string of a heart-shaped Welcome Home balloon to her wrist, and now it bobbed above her like a buoy.

‘Nothing,’ Kate said.

‘How much longer until Dad gets here?’

‘Ten minutes until he lands, then his plane has to taxi in, he has to collect his bags, clear customs … all up we’re looking at about sixteen hours.’

‘You’re killing me, Mum!’ Mia slapped her feet against the polished concrete floor, buzzing with the sort of nervous excitement she usually reserved for Christmas morning. She’d never spent this long away from her father.

John had spent the past two weeks in London for a palliative care research colloquium. Kate had spent most of that time striking days from the calendar with a fat red texta, longing for his return. She hoped that old cliché about absence making the heart grow fonder was true of John, but a dark part of her feared it might work the other way too. She had read somewhere that it only took two weeks to break a habit, and what was marriage if not a habit?

Kate took her daughter’s hand and led her out into the terminal. The arrivals lounge at Melbourne International Airport was surging with people. Families gathered beneath hand-painted banners, watching the big frosted-glass doors outside customs. Behind them, drivers in black suits scribbled names on little whiteboards. There was a collective energy to the crowd that made it seem like one big entity rather than a hundred small ones, all moving in gentle, nervous harmony, like the legs of a caterpillar.

Any second now, John would emerge through the doors dragging his little blue American Tourister behind him, eyes sunken and weary from the long flight. He would see them and beam. He wouldn’t be expecting them. He had insisted on catching a taxi back home, and Kate had insisted that was totally fine by her, knowing full well that she and Mia would drive out to the airport to surprise him.

She was eager to see her husband, but more eager to hand him back the reins. She was a good mother, she thought, but a nervous one. She had never taken to the role as easily as other women seemed to – her mothers’ group friends, or the capable, busy-looking mums at school pick-up. Kate felt much more comfortable with John’s backup.

‘Do you think Dad remembered my pounds?’ Mia asked, staring over at the display screen outside a currency exchange kiosk. Lately she’d grown obsessed with collecting foreign money.

‘You reminded him at least two thousand times,’ Kate said. ‘I doubt he’d have the nerve to come back without them.’

‘How much longer now?’ she groaned.

‘Five minutes. Watch the flight board. See?’