“Abigail’s dad is here!” yelled Fred from the front of the house, meaning, Abigail’s dad’s car is here!

“Gidday, mate!” Madeline heard Nathan say to Fred. Sometimes just the sound of Nathan’s voice could evoke a wave of visceral memory: betrayal, resentment, rage and confusion. He just left. He just walked out and left us, Abigail, and I couldn’t believe it, I just could not believe it, and that night, you cried and cried, that endless new baby cry that—

“Bye, Mum,” said Abigail, and she leaned down to kiss her compassionately on the cheek, as if Madeline were an elderly aunt she’d been visiting and now, phew, it was time to get out of this musty place and go back home.

38.

Stu: I’ll tell you something I do remember. I ran into Celeste White once. I was on the other side of Sydney doing a job and I had to go pick up some new taps because someone had stuffed up . . . anyhow, long story short, I’m walking through a Harvey Norman store where they had all the bedroom furniture on display, and there’s Celeste White, lying flat on her back in the middle of a double bed, staring at the ceiling. I did a double take and then said, “Hello, love,” and she jumped out of her skin. It was like I’d caught her robbing a bank. It just seemed strange. Why was she lying on a discount double bed so far from home? Gorgeous-looking woman, stunning, but always a bit . . . skittish, you know. Sad to think about it now. Very sad.

Are you the new tenant?”

Celeste jumped and nearly dropped the lamp she was carrying.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” said a plumpish, forty-ish woman in gym gear, emerging from the apartment across the corridor. She was accompanied by two little girls, who looked like they were twins about the same age as Josh and Max.

“I’m sort of the new tenant,” sad Celeste. “I mean, yes, I am. I’m not sure exactly when we’re moving in. It might be a while.”

This hadn’t been part of the plan. Talking to people. That was much too real. This whole thing was hypothetical. It would probably never actually come to be. She was just toying with the idea of a new life. She was doing it to impress Susi. She wanted to go back to her next appointment with her “plan” all in place. Most women probably had to be nudged along for months. Most women probably came back to their next appointment having done nothing. Not Celeste. She always did her homework.

“I’ve taken a six-month lease on a flat,” she planned to tell Susi, casually, briskly. “In McMahons Point. I could walk into North Sydney. I’ve got a friend who is a partner at a small law firm in North Sydney. She offered me a job about a year ago, and I turned it down, but I’m sure she could still find me something. Anyway, if that didn’t work out, I could get a job in the city. It’s just a short ferry ride.”

“Wow,” Susi would say. She’d raise her eyebrows. “Good job.”

Top of the class for Celeste. What a good girl. What a well-behaved battered wife.

“I’m Rose,” said the woman. “And this is Isabella and Daniella.”

Was she serious? She called her children Isabella and Daniella?

The girls smiled politely at her. One of them even said, “Hello.” Definitely twins with far better manners than Celeste’s boys.

“I’m Celeste. Nice to meet you!” Celeste turned the key as fast as she could. “I’d better—”

“Do you have kids?” said Rose hopefully, and the little girls looked at her hopefully.

“Two boys,” said Celeste. If she mentioned that she had twin boys, the amazing coincidence would create at least five more minutes of conversation she couldn’t bear.

She pushed open the door with her shoulder.

“Let me know if you need anything!” said Rose.

“Thanks! See you soon.” Celeste let the door go, and the two little girls begin to squabble over whose turn it was to push the button for the elevator. “Oh for God’s sake, girls, must we do this every single time?” said their mother in what was obviously her normal voice, as opposed to the polite social voice she’d just used for Celeste.

As soon as the door closed there was complete silence, the mother’s voice cut off midsentence. The acoustics were good.

There was a mirrored feature wall right next to the door that looked like it was left over from an ambitious decorating project in the seventies. The rest of the place was completely neutral: blank white walls, hard-wearing gray carpet. Your quintessential rental property. Perry owned rental properties that were probably just like this. Theoretically, Celeste owned them too, but she didn’t even know where they were.

If they’d saved for an investment property together, just one, then she would have enjoyed that. She would have helped renovate it, picked out tiles, dealt with the real estate agent, said, “Oh yes, of course!” when the tenant asked for something to be fixed.

That was the level of wealth where she would have felt comfortable. The unimaginable depths of Perry’s money sometimes made her feel nauseated. She saw it on the faces of people when they saw her house for the first time, the way their eyes traveled across the wide expanses, the soaring ceilings, the beautiful rooms set up like little museum displays of wealthy family life. Each time, she battled with equal parts pride and shame. She lived in a house where every single room silently screamed: WE HAVE A LOT OF MONEY. PROBABLY MORE THAN YOU.

Those beautiful rooms were just like Perry’s constant Facebook posts: stylized representations of their life. Yes, they did sometimes sit on that gloriously comfortable-looking couch and put glasses of champagne on that coffee table and watch the sun set over the ocean. Yes, they did. And sometimes, often, it was glorious. But that was also the couch where Perry had once held her face squashed into the corner and she’d thought she might die. And that Facebook photo captioned Fun day out with the kids wasn’t a lie because it was a fun day out with the kids, and anyway, they didn’t have a photo of what happened after the kids were in bed that night. Celeste’s nose bled too easily. It always had.

She carried the lamp into the main bedroom of the apartment. It was quite a small room. She’d get a double bed. She and Perry had a king-size bed, of course. But this room would be crammed even with a queen.

She placed the lamp on the floor. It was a colorful, mushroom-shaped art deco lamp. She’d bought it because she loved it and because it was a style Perry would hate; not that he would have stopped her having it if she really wanted it, but he would have winced every time he looked at it, the way she would have winced at some of the gloomy-looking modern art pieces he pointed out in galleries. So he didn’t buy them.