She looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. This was much better, casual, unaffected—although her face looked pale and very old; she resisted an intense longing to go through that amazing dab, dab, slap, slap routine again that transformed her face. Surely she didn’t normally wear makeup on a Sunday night at home.

Earlier in the day, after Elisabeth and Ben had gone home, it had suddenly occurred to Alice that it was presumably her responsibility to feed those three children. She had called her mother and asked her what she should cook for dinner, saying she wanted to cook their favorite thing. Barb had spent a full twenty minutes discussing each child’s dietary idiosyncrasies throughout their lives. “Remember when Madison went through that vegetarian stage? And of course it would have to be at the same time that Tom was just refusing to eat any vegetable. Then Olivia couldn’t decide whether she should only eat vegetables, like Madison, or refuse to eat vegetables, like Tom! Oh, you were tearing your hair out every tea time!” At last, after much changing of her mind, she’d finally settled on homemade hamburgers. “I think you found a healthy recipe in your Heart Foundation recipe book. You were saying just the other week that you were sick to death of it but the children can’t get enough of it. I’m sure you remember that, don’t you, darling? Because it was only last week.”

Alice had found the recipe book and it had opened straight at the right food-splattered page. All the ingredients were in her amazingly well-stocked freezer and pantry. It seemed like there was enough there to feed hundreds of children. As she made the mince for the hamburgers, she realized she wasn’t looking at the recipe book anymore. She seemed to know that now she grated in two carrots, one zucchini, now she added two eggs. Once it was ready, she had put the mince back in the fridge, defrosted rolls ready to be toasted, and made a green salad. Would the children eat a green salad? Who knew? She and Nick could eat it. He would stay for dinner, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t just drop the children off and leave? But she had an awful feeling that was exactly what divorced parents did. She’d just have to ask him to please stay. Beg him, if necessary. She couldn’t be left alone with the children. It wasn’t safe. She didn’t know the procedures. For example, did they bath themselves? Did she read them stories? Sing them songs? When was bedtime? And how was it enforced?

She went back downstairs in her jeans and looked around her gleaming, beautiful house. Two cleaners had turned up at the door at midday, laden with mops and buckets, asking how the party had gone as they plugged in vacuum cleaners. They’d scrubbed and polished while Alice had wandered vaguely about, feeling embarrassed and not sure what she was meant to be doing. Should she help? Get out of the way? Supervise? Hide the valuables? She had her purse ready to give them however much they asked for, but there had been no request for money. They told her they’d see her on Thursday at the usual time and disappeared, waving cheerily. She’d closed the door behind them, breathed in the smell of furniture polish, and thought, “I am a woman with a swimming pool, air-conditioning, and cleaners.”

Now she looked about the kitchen and her eyes fell on a rack of wine. She should have a bottle open and breathing for Nick. She selected a bottle, went to get a corkscrew, and realized that the bottle didn’t have a cork. Instead she unscrewed a normal bottle top. How funny. The smell of the wine hit her nostrils and she found she was pouring herself a glass. She buried her nose in it. Part of her mind thought, “What are you doing, you tosser?” Another part thought, “Mmmm. Blackberries.”

The wine slid smoothly down her throat and she wondered if she’d turned into an alcoholic. It wasn’t even six o’clock. She’d never been much of a wine drinker. Yet drinking this wine felt right and familiar, even as it felt strange and wrong. Maybe that’s why Nick had left her and wanted custody of the children. She’d become a drunk. Nobody knew, except for Nick and her children. It was a terrible secret. Well, but couldn’t she just get help? Join AA and follow those twelve steps? Never touch a drop again? She took another sip and tapped her fingers on the countertop. Soon she would see him and then the mystery of all this would finally be solved. It wasn’t logical, but she had a strong feeling that the moment she saw Nick’s face her entire memory would land back in her head, fully intact.

Dominick had turned up again this afternoon. He had takeaway hot chocolates in a tray and tiny polenta cakes (she had a feeling they were her favorites and acted accordingly grateful). She’d been surprised by the pleasure she’d felt when she saw him standing at the door. Maybe it was because of his somewhat nervy demeanor. It made her feel like she was adored. Nick adored her, but she adored him back, so it was equal. Talking to Dominick made her feel as if every word she said was somehow amazing.

“How is your, ah, memory today?” he’d asked her politely, while they drank their hot chocolates and ate the cakes on the back veranda.

“Oh, maybe a bit better,” she’d said. People liked to think you were making progress when it came to health matters.

Apparently Jasper was with “his mother.” She realized that Dominick must be a divorced dad. How strange it all was. Wouldn’t it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place?

That meant divorce was a shared interest. She’d had a moment of inspiration and said to him, “Have we ever talked about Nick—about why we separated?”

He gave her an odd sideways look. “Yes.”