PPS. I had two sisters on the phone in tears last night about Granny Love’s ring. Can you please be reasonable about this? It’s not like you ever wore it that often. If you’re thinking of selling it, you’ve really sunk to a new low. Even for you.

“Even for you.” Alice struggled to catch her breath. It was like being winded. The coldness. The viciousness. The dislike.

It was impossible to believe that this was written by the same man who got tears in his eyes when she said she would marry him; who would crashtackle her onto the bed and lift her hair and kiss the back of her neck; who told her when it was safe to look back at the television because the blood and guts had gone now; who sang all the words to “Living Next Door to Alice” to her in the shower.

And why was she refusing to give back Granny Love’s dreadful ring? It was a family heirloom. Of course the Love family should get it back.

She scrolled down and saw that Nick’s message was part of a whole conversation that had been going on for days.

There was one from herself dated just three days ago.

The children should wake up in their own beds on Christmas Day this year. I’m not moving on this matter. Obviously, I want to keep all the same traditions for them—putting out their Santa Sacks at the end of their beds, etc. They’ve had to go through enough disruption as it is. This is just another power game for you. All you care about is winning. I couldn’t care less what points you win over me—just don’t win at the expense of the children. By the way, I have asked you at least twice before now not to give the children, especially Olivia, so much junk food over the weekend. I’m sure it makes you feel like a wonderful father to say yes to whatever they want, but they’re tired and irritable every Monday after a weekend with you—and I’m the one who has to deal with it.

It was May! Why were they even talking about what would happen on Christmas Day?

Some impostor had been living her life. She was stunned by her sanctimonious, contemptuous tone.

She scrolled down further and bitter words and phrases jumped out at her.

May I remind you . . .

You are so small-minded . . .

You are so sanctimonious . . .

You must be out of your mind if you think . . .

What is WRONG with you?

Can we just try and be rational about this?

You’re the one who . . .

There was a scrunch of gravel and a flicker of headlights. A car pulled up in the driveway. Alice stood up, her heart beating like a jackhammer. She pushed a hand back through her hair as she walked down the hallway toward the front door. She was such an idiot for not doing her makeup again. She was about to see a man who hated her.

Car doors were slamming. A child was whining, “But Dad, that’s not fair!”

Alice opened the front door. Her legs were shaking so badly, she thought she might collapse. Maybe that would be a good thing.

“Mummy!” A little girl came hurtling up the stairs and threw her arms around Alice, her head colliding hard with her stomach. She talked straight into Alice’s T-shirt, her voice muffled. “Is your sore head better? Did you get my card? What was it like sleeping in the hospital?”

Alice hugged her back and couldn’t speak.

I don’t even remember being pregnant with you.

“Olivia?” she croaked and put her hand on top of the little girl’s tangled white-blond curls. There was sand in her hair and a crooked line revealing a pink scalp. Her hair was soft and her skull was hard, and when she looked up, she was impossibly beautiful: smooth skin with a cinnamon dusting of freckles and enormous dark-lashed blue eyes.

They were her own eyes staring back at her, but much bigger and definitely much more beautiful. Alice felt dizzy.

“Oh Mum,” crooned Olivia. “Are you actually still feeling a bit sick? Poor darling Mum. I know! I’ll listen to your heart and be your nurse! Yes!”

She was gone, slamming the screen door behind her, pounding down the hallway.

Alice looked up and saw Nick leaning over to pull out stuff from the boot of a swish silver car.

He straightened. Both his arms were filled with backpacks and soggy beach towels.

“Hi,” he said.

His hair seemed to have disappeared. As he walked toward her, she saw that it was completely gray and cropped close to his head. His face had got thinner but his body was somehow thicker: his shoulders chunkier, his stomach paunchier. There were spiderwebs of lines around his eyes. He was wearing a green T-shirt and shorts she’d never seen before. Well, of course, but it was still unsettling.

He walked up the stairs toward her and stood in front of her. She looked up at him. He was different and strange but he was still essentially Nick. Alice forgot everything that she’d just read on the computer and the way he’d talked to her on the phone the other day and was filled with the pure simple pleasure of Nick coming home after a long trip away. She smiled joyously at him. “Hi yourself.”

She went to step forward toward him and Nick stepped back. It seemed involuntary, as if she were an unpleasant insect. His eyes were blank, and they seemed to be fixed on her forehead.

“How are you?” he said. His tone was the frosty one he used when he was being mucked around by incompetent tradespeople.

“Mum! You should have seen the wave I caught today! It was, like, twenty feet tall. It was, like, as high as the roof there. Look. No, look, Mum, at the roof there. Yeah, there. That’s how high it was. Or maybe a few centimeters less. Anyway, Dad took the best photo! Show Mum the photo on your camera, Dad. Can you show her the photo?”

So this was Tom. He was wearing long board shorts and a cap that he pulled off so he could rub the top of his head hard. His hair was the same color as Olivia’s—so blond it was almost white. Nick had that color hair when he was a child. Tom’s limbs were skinny and tanned and strong. He was like a miniature surfie teenager. Good Lord. He had Roger’s nose. It was definitely Roger’s nose. It made her want to laugh. Roger’s nose in this vibrant little boy’s face. She wanted to hug him, but she wasn’t sure if that was appropriate.

Instead, she said, “Yeah, let me see the photo, Nick.”

Nick and Tom stared at her. Her tone must have been wrong. Too flippant?

Tom said, “You sound a bit funny, Mum. Did you get stitches at the hospital for your head? I asked Auntie Libby if it was a brain tumor and she said it definitely was not. I did a lie-detector test on her.”