‘Good morning, sleeping beauty.’

Mimi kept her hands over her eyes and tried to talk but her voice came out raspy and she felt her stomach lurch. Ignoring the pounding head, she leapt out of bed and raced towards the ensuite to throw up.

‘That bad, is it?’ Pete called after her. ‘Sucks when you haven’t had a hangover in more than a year.’

When she was done emptying the contents of her stomach and had washed her face, she stumbled back out to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed, ignoring the look of glee on Pete’s face.

‘Why are you so happy to see me in pain?’

‘Golf day, August, remember?’

‘Ah.’ He’d come home plastered after a golf day with his brothers a few months back. Mimi had been furious with him for getting so drunk when she was so close to her due date. The next day she’d taken great pleasure in watching him suffer through his hangover.

‘I told you then there’d be a day when the tables would turn.’

‘Yeah, well, my gloating was justified that time. You might remember I went into labour literally two days later.’

‘Hush. Don’t ruin this for me. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so I could ask you this — what do you remember about coming home last night?’

‘Oh no. Nothing. Why? What happened?’

Pete clapped his hands together — actually clapped them like a delighted child.

‘God, it must be bad.’

‘Are you ready? Edna had to pull you out of her rhododendron bushes and escort you to our front door.’

‘She fucking did not.’

‘She fucking did too.’

Edna was their seventy-year-old neighbour who’d already complained twice about the sound of the twins crying, three times about Callie and her friends picking flowers off her rhododendron bushes when they walked past her driveway, and too many times to count about Tara learning to play the tuba. In Edna’s defence, they’d all wanted Tara to stop learning the tuba last year.

‘You texted me about eleven to say you were walking home. I offered to come get you but you sent me an all caps message telling me you WANTED TO WALK. Apparently, you fell into Edna’s garden and couldn’t get back up again.’

‘I’m mortified. I’ll never be able to look her in the face again.’

‘Nope, you won’t. She did helpfully mention that matured rhododendron bushes are available at Flower Power for when we replace the one you crushed.’

‘I crushed it? Come on, I mean I know I put on weight after the twins . . . !’

Pete laughed. ‘I think it was more the thrashing about you did trying to get back up. I wish I’d seen it; I’m imagining you as a giant turtle.’