It was so nice to not be going home to an empty house. The lights would be blazing as she pulled up in the driveway. When she opened the door, there would be the smell of tacos or popcorn or some other late-night snack. Patrick and Jack would be watching television together, or playing some game on the Wii, or chasing each other through the house, brandishing the branch that had once hung on her ceiling to remind her to practice mindfulness and had now somehow become a sword or a laser gun or something (they seemed so violent sometimes!). Patrick would ask about the movie. Jack would want to tell her something about his day. They would have hot chocolate and some of the fund-raiser chocolates Jack was meant to be selling for school. Patrick would tell Jack to go to bed about twenty times and he finally would.

Yes, it was so very nice to be going home to the hubbub of the family life she’d always wanted.

But she still didn’t turn the key in the ignition.

Fine. Think it out loud, Ellen.

It would also be quite nice to be going home to an empty house, to calming silence and a hallway free of boxes, to a cup of tea with a book, to a long hot bath without anyone asking if she was coming to bed soon.

It would be lovely, in fact, the way she was feeling right now, to have her own house to herself, to have her own bed to herself, to have her old life back for just tonight.

She thought of all those nights over the last year when she’d come home alone and she’d fumbled in the dark with her key to unlock the door, and as she’d fumbled, she’d longed for someone to be waiting inside for her, someone exactly like Patrick.

She thought about Saskia, so single-minded in her desire to have Patrick back. She’d held on for all those years. She was an attractive, intelligent woman. She could have met plenty of other men, but she only wanted Patrick. It might be crazy, but it was committed.

Ellen knew that she didn’t love Patrick with that same ferocity. Actually, she’d never loved anyone that much. She would never break into anyone’s house. She’d never be so overcome by a feeling that she’d break a law, or do anything that was socially unacceptable. She could hear Julia and Madeline saying, That’s a good thing, you fool! That’s sanity! That’s maturity!

She sighed and reached out to turn the key in the ignition, and then she dropped her hand back in her lap. A young couple walked by on the pavement outside the car. They were arguing over something. Suddenly the girl turned on her heel and walked away, making a flicking motion with her hand. The boy watched her go. Follow her, thought Ellen. That’s what she wants you to do. But he clenched his jaw, shrugged, shoved his hand in his pockets and walked away from her.

She thought about everything she’d said to her friends at dinner that night and everything she’d left out.

All those years she’d sanctimoniously told clients that “relationships are hard work,” she’d never truly understood the truth of what she was saying.

(In fact, she’d probably secretly thought that relationships were hard work for other people, not for her, not with her knowledge and skills and emotional intelligence. Oh, the conceit!)

She and Patrick had made up after their trip to the mountains, of course, later that night. The relief was exquisite, almost worth the argument.

“It was my fault,” Ellen had said nobly.

“It was absolutely my fault,” said Patrick, and he’d explained about a problem he was having at work: a client who was refusing to pay a big bill. Also, he’d seen Saskia waiting outside in her car when they left for the mountains. Patrick said, “I think I was subconsciously taking out my stress on you.” He was trying his best to speak her language, which was sort of adorable.

Then he’d been horrified to learn that she’d had to cancel her coffee with Julia to stay home with Jack.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said. “That’s crazy!”

“I don’t know,” said Ellen. “I guess I just wanted to be like a proper mother.”

“You are a proper mother,” said Patrick. “I love the way you are with him. You couldn’t be any better. I should never have assumed you were free.”

“Well, I guess I should have told you earlier.”

“Shut up, woman. I’m taking the fall for this one,” said Patrick, and he’d spent the next twenty minutes rubbing her feet.

There was no way she was going to mention Saskia’s biscuits then. The foot rubbing would have ended instantly, while he paced and fretted and swore.

And later that night on the day of their trip to the mountains he’d actually moved two of the boxes. He’d dragged them into the dining room, leaving what looked like the tire marks of a monster truck right across her grandmother’s carpet. Ellen had a vision of her grandmother’s horror-struck face, remembering all the times she’d spent on her hands and knees scrubbing away at some tiny spot visible only to her eyes.

Sorry, Grandma.

The rest of the boxes were still there. They had a settled, slumped look about them now. It was becoming impossible to imagine them moved.

Now she turned on the ignition and switched on the headlights, illuminating the street in front of her.

The boy she’d seen earlier was running back along the street, his chin down, his arms pumping like he was on a football field. Yes! Ellen felt a tingle. He was running back after his girlfriend to swoop her up into his arms and bury his face in her hair. How lovely.

Or perhaps he was going back to knock her teeth out. Life wasn’t always as romantic as it seemed. She pulled out into the traffic.

Like, for example, you would think that meeting your father for the first time ever would be an occasion filled with tender, tremulous emotion.

Monday lunchtime had been such a mistake. Why in the world had she thought that daytime would be better than night? It was so obvious that dinner would have been more appropriate. They had ended up meeting at a café in North Sydney, because all three of them had various appointments around the area that day and it seemed to make sense. The problem was that it made the lunch feel like just another appointment in their day, an errand to be crossed off their list. They were making small talk like business acquaintances do before someone takes out their notepad and says, “Right, let’s get started.”

Also, the lighting was all wrong. It was too sunny and real. She didn’t want to notice the minuscule black dots of hair on her father’s upper lip. She didn’t want to see the pores on his nose, or the glimpses of pink mottled scalp beneath his hair. She didn’t want to see the sauce from his Moroccan chicken wrap on his lip. She certainly didn’t want to see her mother gaily wiping it away with her serviette! (Her mother! So soft and accommodating and feminine. At one point in the conversation, she’d actually fiddled with her hair.)