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‘I thought as much. Why don’t you just disappear to the loo for a few minutes until you feel better? I’m sure no-one will notice.’

***

The meeting concluded after lunch and I got back to my office in the early afternoon. Before starting to check my emails, I logged on to the Sydney Morning Herald website to make sure no Qantas planes had crashed into the ocean that morning. All seemed okay at present so I was relieved of that particular guilt. That’s when the realisation came over me. All day I’d had this tight feeling in my abdomen, a strange abnormal ‘growth’ that I’d assumed was nerves. Now it dawned on me what it was. It was hate. I had a small ball of festering hate in my abdomen, hatred for the husband I had married one gloriously sunny summer day when I’d thought I would surely love him forever. So it had come to this…

You know when I look back on all this now with a few months’ hindsight, I can see that my husband’s behaviour that morning for what it was: insensitive but little more than that. He’d certainly done a lot worse in the past.

But if I’d become a bitch as he claimed, I was a bitch of his own creation. I was his marital Frankenstein’s monster, and now the beast was going to turn on him.

Yeah, I had wanted to pick a fight with him that morning. I had wanted an excuse and I’d gone searching for it.

I wanted my revenge.

The restaurant booking was for 6.30pm that night. Mum picked up Issy from child care for me and I worked back to make up for the hour I’d lost that morning. There was not really enough time to go home and besides that I didn’t have my car, of course. I’d worn my favourite work clothes in anticipation, a navy blue woollen suit with a nipped-in waist and high-heeled black patent pumps, and touched up my hair and make-up in the staff bathroom, taking more time than was customary. Melanie had chosen not to go home either so I conned a lift with her to the restaurant.

Just before we left I checked in with Issy and Mum but all was quiet on that front. Mum doesn’t insist Isabel eats broccoli either, no doubt aiding and abetting my daughter’s slide into delinquency.

John was a popular guy so there was a big turnout for his farewell, eighteen in total, all seated at one long table. It was a Thai restaurant and the service, provided by two tiny, doll-like girls who looked about twelve years old - obviously Thai themselves - was remarkably efficient. We were a rowdy bunch, but because it was a Thursday night and most of us had to front up to work the next day it was only about 10pm when most people decided to call it a night. I had been seated up one end of the table next to Karen and Samantha, one of the sales reps that I actually did like. The FIFA World Cup finals had just concluded and we’d had a rip-roaring time debating the do-ability of the different players: David Beckham versus Harry Kewell, Lucas Neill versus the darkly handsome Italian defender, Alessandro Nesta, my personal nomination. The entire time I was having this conversation, however, I was conscious that the person in the world I most wanted to do it with was seated at the opposite end of the table, next to Melanie. I didn’t speak to him at all during the evening, although I was conscious of his presence at all times and our gazes met on more than one occasion.

In addition to having no car, I of course had no phone that evening, so as people started tallying up the bill I went up to Melanie and asked, ‘Hey, Melanie, would you mind if I used your phone to check with Mum if Issy is okay and ring a taxi?’

That’s when Alex said, ‘I live near you, Ellie, I don’t mind giving you a lift home.’

All I had to say was, ‘No, that’s too much trouble. I’ll just call a taxi.’ But of course I didn’t. That’s all it took in the end.

Alex lives in Balmain which, it is true, was quite close to my house. I’d known that he’d lived there all along but what I hadn’t known for a long time was when he had mentioned that ‘we have an amazing view from our apartment’, he was