The two kookaburras are certainly taking their relationship to a new, more intimate level.

Callum comes back from his phone call, just as the male kookaburra finishes off with a violent thrust and flies off, leaving the female kookaburra looking ruffled and dazed.

‘Talk about wham bam, thank you, ma’am,’ says Sophie, which isn’t funny at all really, but is enough to set them off on a new wave of laughter. Grace puts her hands on her hips and bends forward to catch her breath as if she’s been running a race. Sophie’s eyes stream as she hugs Jake to her.

‘What?’ Callum raps his knuckles against the table with a sensible-man expression. ‘What’s so funny?’

But that just makes them laugh even more.

It’s later that night. Callum is marking assignments and Grace is trying to settle the baby, but he is in a tetchy mood, and nothing she does pleases him. He keeps behaving like he’s absolutely starved, sucking feverishly at the air, but then as soon as she gets him on her breast he gives up after a few seconds, turning his head disgustedly as if he hates her. He does hate her, she knows it. She’s tried rocking him in a dozen different positions, bathing him, putting him in the stroller and pushing it up and down the hallway, giving him the dummy, taking the dummy away, closing the door and leaving him in his cot, but he just cries and cries.

It’s a pity, because on her way from Sophie’s place this afternoon Grace had felt almost normal for a few minutes. That silly hysterical laugh over the kookaburras had somehow cleansed out her head, and when Callum put his hand on her shoulder it felt comforting, not like a heavy weight. On the way home she had decided to make salmon pasta for dinner, because she knew Callum would be starved after only having soup for lunch, and that felt like a good, definite, controllable decision. She knew exactly how she would make it and she had all the ingredients, and maybe she’d have a glass of wine while she cooked.

And maybe she didn’t need to go ahead with the Plan after all. Maybe it was going to be OK. Maybe that clamping sensation around her head was gone.

But then, as they opened the front door, the baby started crying, and hasn’t let her be since. Callum said he didn’t really feel like dinner anyway–he’d had enough to eat at Sophie’s. (Soup, with a couple of bread rolls!) He was in a bad mood because the builder had called with more problems, something to do with the bathroom tiles, and the budget isn’t looking good, and he sat for ages reading the building contracts at the coffee table with his back hunched, chewing nervously on his bottom lip, while the baby cried and cried.

Now Grace’s thoughts are a tangled black mess again, and the clamping feeling is worse, more painful, because of the promise of relief earlier in the day.

‘Well, what do you want then?’ she hisses at the baby.

‘What? I’ll do it!’

Friends have told her that sometimes babies simply refuse to settle, and you just need to be calm and wait it out, but she didn’t realise it would feel like he was doing it deliberately. She knows she is imagining that malicious satisfaction in his cry. She knows he is a baby, not a person–he is not making a conscious decision to do this–but it doesn’t matter what she knows because she believes in her heart that he is mocking her efforts. He doesn’t like her, and she doesn’t like him, and if he doesn’t shut up soon she might throw him against a wall. Hard.

‘Callum!’

He comes out of the study immediately, looking startled.

‘What is it?’

‘I know you’re working but I just have to go for a walk. I’m really sorry, but I have to go for a walk right now.’

Your son is not safe with me.

‘That’s OK,’ he says soothingly. ‘Get some fresh air.’

He is a much better husband than she is a mother. She dumps the baby in his arms and virtually runs for the door.

‘You’d better put something warmer on,’ calls out Callum, but she pretends not to hear and it takes a super-human effort to close the door, not slam it.

The cold air makes her eyes sting as she half-walks, half-runs down the steps and out onto the paved footpath that circles the island. It’s like the yellow-brick road, Rose always says, but didn’t the yellow-brick road go somewhere, not just round and round in an endless suffocating circle?

I nearly did it.

Grace trips and clumsily rights herself and keeps on walking, her arms swinging heavily, her legs stodgy. Grace? Grace? What sort of name is that for someone like her? She thinks of the way Callum automatically handed Jake over to Sophie when his phone rang today. They already looked like a family.

I nearly threw him.

37

Sophie must occupy the house.

Sophie must repaint the house to suit her own tastes.

Sophie must have Veronika over for dinner within a few weeks of moving in. Cook my Honey Sage Chicken for her, Sophie, page 46 of the Blue Book. She’ll soon stop her sulking. Tell her she never liked my house much in the first place.

Sophie must take her turn at the Alice and Jack tours. (Grace must be responsible for Sophie’s training.)

‘I thought I was a control freak,’ Ian, the Sweet Solicitor, had commented, when he was explaining the terms of Aunt Connie’s will to Sophie (before he’d asked her out and turned into a potential boyfriend).

‘I don’t mind any of the conditions,’ Sophie had said. ‘Although I don’t know if Veronika will come to dinner. You know she wanted to contest the will? It’s amazing that Connie could tell that was going to happen. Although, not so amazing, I guess.’

‘I think I’ve convinced her to drop that idea. There are no possible grounds. Anyway, Veronika, Thomas and Grace all received substantial bequests from Connie. She was a very wealthy woman. I don’t think you’ll have any more problems with Veronika.’

He’s right. When Sophie feels resilient enough to make the call, Veronika says yes, she will come to dinner, in a tone of voice that suggests it’s about time she was asked.

‘You know what I read on my desk calendar yesterday?’ she asks Sophie.

‘What?’ Sophie is cautious. Veronika sounds quite genial, almost whimsical, which is frankly terrifying.

‘“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance,”’ quotes Veronika. ‘George Bernard Shaw. I’ve decided it’s time to make our family skeleton dance. And you’re going to help me.’