“OK, mate,” interrupted Patrick. “Anyway, Colleen, we’ve got other big news too, haven’t we, Jack?”

Jack looked blank. Patrick tilted his head at Ellen and said, “The baby!”

“Oh yeah,” said Jack. “Maybe Mum knows already if it’s a boy or a girl! She probably knows, right? Like maybe she saw it coming off the assembly line in heaven, like in a factory, and it’s like a baby factory, and Mum was there, and she’s, like, hey, that’s Ellen’s new baby, you’re going to be Jack’s little brother! Or, you’re going to be Jack’s—”

“Right,” said Patrick. “So, this is Ellen.”

He looked up at Ellen, reached for her hand and took it in his.

Should I kneel down? I should kneel. But what if I’m sick? No, I should definitely kneel.

She knelt down. There would be grass stains on her cream pants. But it seemed the right thing to have done because Patrick’s face suddenly filled with some complex emotion, and Jack slung an affectionate arm around Ellen’s shoulders, something he’d never done before.

“Ellen and I are getting married and I know you’d be happy, Colleen, because I always remember that day, when you told me I had to find someone lovely.” Patrick’s voice broke, and he squeezed Ellen’s hand painfully hard. “And I said I wouldn’t. But I have. And she is lovely. She’s so lovely. And she’s made us very happy.”

“Yeah.” Jack banged his chin gently against Ellen’s shoulder.

“Oh, you guys,” said Ellen, because she didn’t know what else to say. She could smell cold damp earth and Patrick’s aftershave and Jack’s peanut buttery breath. Patrick’s hand was warm around hers, and for a moment the waves of nausea receded and Ellen was filled with glorious relief.

No, this was not an excruciating story to laugh over with Julia. Its very awkwardness and awfulness made it somehow essentially human. It was one of those rare, poignant, pure moments that encapsulated everything that was wonderful and tragic about life.

Today was the fourth Sunday of the month. That means Patrick had lunch with Colleen’s parents.

It never changed. We arranged our holidays around it.

I only went once, after we’d been together for a few months. It wasn’t a success. It was too soon. I shouldn’t have agreed to go, but Patrick seemed anxious to take me. He insisted, in fact. He seemed to be in a hurry, like this was something that needed to be done, to be ticked off some checklist. I got the impression he thought it would somehow be good for his in-laws. I remember my mother telling me that it was a mistake. “Oh, Saskia, you mustn’t go—that would be too cruel,” she said. But like an idiot I thought that Patrick knew best.

And of course Mum was right. It was terrible for Frank and Millie, to see me with Patrick, to see their grandson running to me. They were still raw with grief. You could sense it as soon as you walked in the house, as though tears had a scent that pervaded the air. They both had the identical shocked expressions of people who had just a moment before been punched in the faces There were photos of her everywhere. It was like a museum with one subject: Colleen. Colleen as a baby. Colleen on her first day of school. Colleen and Patrick. Colleen and Jack. I couldn’t let my eyes rest anywhere. Although strangely, I remember not feeling any envy when I saw the photos of Colleen and Patrick together; I was utterly, idiotically confident of his love. It was the photos of Colleen and Jack that made me feel unsettled: the evidence that I wasn’t really Jack’s mother.

After that, I always let Patrick and Jack go up to the mountains without me, and I always spent that Sunday catching up on housework, or seeing a friend, or in the time before I got my leg problem, doing some exercise. I quite enjoyed the break, having the house nice and quiet to myself. It seems completely foreign to me now, the idea of enjoying time on my own, when these days I have my whole life to myself, and time outside of work is a gigantic expanse of empty space, an endless desert I fill by watching Patrick.

Was I really that busy, happy girl? That girl who raced down the aisles of the shopping center after work, who prepared nutritious meals for a toddler and gourmet meals for his father, who went to parties and barbecues and movies, who had sex on Sunday mornings, who was just another regular member of the human race.

That Saskia really does seem like someone else, someone I knew well, someone I quite liked—but not actually me.

I’ve never bothered following Patrick up the mountains on the fourth Sunday. I know where he’s going. I know the flowers he’ll take and the florist where he picks them up. I know how he’ll stop at the graveyard where Colleen is buried. The day I went, he wanted me to come along to see Colleen’s grave. I refused. I thought it was a completely bizarre idea. I said, “If I died I wouldn’t want you bringing your new girlfriend to dance on my grave.” He said, “I’m not suggesting you dance on it.” But anyway, Jack had fallen asleep in his car seat, so I said we shouldn’t wake him and I’d stay in the car with him.

I thought it was about time he took Ellen up the mountains with him. Now they’ve moved in together, and they’re getting married and all that. Now he’s in a proper relationship; now Jack has a proper stepmother.

I watched them from my car as they all came out of Ellen’s house, looking like a proper little family. Jack wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the mountains in the middle of winter. He was only wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt. I thought about calling out to Ellen, “Get Jack a jacket!” but I didn’t. I’ve always tried not to confuse or upset Jack.

Ellen didn’t see me, but Patrick did. He actually held my eyes for a few seconds, and then he sniffed and shrugged and put his sunglasses on like a gangster at a funeral catching sight of the police presence.

It was strange when I saw them at the supermarket the other day. I wasn’t actually following them. I just happened to be there. It was a coincidence. Sort of. I was in their area because I’d driven by their house on my way home from work, but then I’d decided to pick up a few groceries. I wasn’t even thinking about Patrick and Ellen, which is a rare treat. I was looking for oats. I’d had a sudden craving for Anzac biscuits. I haven’t baked biscuits in years. Not since I was with Patrick. He and Jack loved it when I made biscuits. Of course, when I got home from the supermarket with the ingredients I couldn’t be bothered to make them. What would be the point? Ellen was the one who should have been making biscuits, not me.