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was about to fulfil every stereotypical picture of a bitch.
    â€˜You’ve done this on purpose,’ I accused him.
    â€˜We’re only twenty minutes late,’ he said, unperturbed at my upset.
    â€˜You’re an hour and a half late. I’ve been sitting here thinking you weren’t coming. What would I have done then?’
    His girlfriend had the gall to laugh at me.
    â€˜Don’t you fucking laugh at me,’ I said to her, mean-eyed. ‘How dare you.’
    I took Marcus by the hand, ripped the small bag Dave had packed for him from Dave’s hand, and turned on my heels. I can still feel the spleen I felt that day, like the uptake of a lethal injection.
    I tried to calm down, for Marcus’s sake. We were off on a holiday – which was, I might add, a very memorable one.
    When we got back to St Kilda and he was tucked up in bed, I felt the unmistakeable severity of the incident. Miffed, I tried to work out what Dave wanted from me. But the more I looked into it the less I could decipher. Perhaps, I thought, I should ask myself what I want from him. But whether it was because I didn’t have the energy or the intelligence, I never got further with my questions. I did realise that all I cared about was how everything fitted for Marcus and from that point onwards, I promised myself, things would change. I would only be concerned about him.
    Still, promises aside, contemplation doesn’t ride away easily. Over the next few months I found myself shaking my head, signalling that I’d arrived at a spot that delivered no joy. Ugly frustration brooded in me. I wondered if the semblance of my life was ever going to coalesce to a point in which I could be, if not proud, then satisfied. A slow-setting despondency lowered itself around me. I felt that the mould had been made, the dye cast, and this was going to be the way of the future. Disillusionment was in construction mode, building me into a corner. I thought I’d asked all the big questions by now, but they only seemed to be coming more thickly towards me. No matter how much people change, I told myself, how much they move on in life, they should be able to keep certain things composed, and in this I had failed.
    I wondered a lot about meaning – what is there if not family? – and to be left with hate – even worse, to harbour a lack of respect – was only going to eat into me. There seemed no way to find a medium, no way to strike a halfway point. To wait for an epiphany in oneself is absurd, to wait for an epiphany in others and to hope that it will occur at the same time, is verging on the impossible. I would have to be satisfied, for the moment – and perhaps forever – that there would never be anything better for Dave and I. Things, after all, seemed to have solidified.

NINETEEN
    T here were, however, things that took me away from my personal quandaries. I found Elliot one morning hovering outside my door. It was six months or so after I’d started at Marlowe Downs. He looked unusually unburdened, while I carried a variety of accessories including two bags, the contents of my pigeonhole and the last of a coffee, all of which I was juggling in an attempt to extract keys from my jacket pocket.
    â€˜Here, let me.’ Elliot came towards me, his arms outstretched with the offer.
    â€˜Oh, it’s all a bit disorganised,’ I said, smiling, beginning to shed my baggage onto the carpet while kneeling over my satchel to rummage through it.
    â€˜Don’t know why I’ve got so much stuff,’ I said. ‘An ox in the Chinese horoscope. Must be that.’
    â€˜I’m the year of the horse. Does that mean I’ve got the cavalry on my back?’
    I found my keys in the front pocket of my bag. I smiled belatedly, huffed a laugh. ‘Please, come in.’
    My office, which just yesterday I had fortuitously made neat, was alive with colour and display. As Elliot was a man with