I pulled over just in time. Opening the car door, I leaned out and breathed heavily, staring at the asphalt. It felt like my intestines were being yanked around my insides by a sadist jerking on a string.

In short, I felt like shit.

My stomach heaved. The contractions were remarkably like childbirth. To distract myself I compared the two types of pain. The ferocity. The lack of control over bodily functions. For a moment I almost convinced myself this might be worse than the twelve hours prior to Sascha’s birth.

A needle-stab pierced my lungs: nothing to do with the hangover.

Sascha.

I hugged the pain to me, unwilling to let it go.

After a minute or so I sucked in the clean winter air and sat up, squinting at my surroundings through watery eyes and a curtain of lank unwashed hair.

Turramurra: one of Sydney’s most desirable suburbs, filled to the brim with mortgaged-up bankers and lawyers. Houses here had landscaped pools and attached cabanas, tennis courts, long gravel driveways with turning circles for Range Rovers. I peered around, trying to imagine living in a place like this…

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