The house was quiet in the way it only ever was when the kids were staying elsewhere. I glanced at the ceiling, the bedsheets, plumped my pillow, let my head fall. A drawing of a fallow deer stood out from all the other school artwork on the wall. Its sausage body, its oblong head, its blank expression. One shot – bang – and it would gallop away, dragging its crayon hoofs.

I looked at my phone, no new texts. The last was from Sarah, at 1.27 am:

So high, feeling over the rainbow, kissed a French guy, dancing now, love you, spunky xxx

It was 9.15 am. Anything could have happened between then and now. I hoped it had. Something. We’d been gearing up to it for so long. Years of coochie-coo baby-raising and no sex. Years of rejection and disappointment. Years.

***

I’d gone from shop to shop in Melbourne’s CBD looking for a gift for Sarah’s fortieth: a teapot, some cups. But not just any teapot, not just any cups: rustic, handmade, aesthetically pleasing, robust and entirely functional cups, no two the same but still clearly from the same kiln.

After a few false starts and a flurry of back-and-forth texts with my new friend-of-a-friend, Zac, I found a ceramics specialist down some steep stairs. Each item was marked with the name of the artisan, each price tag sobering. Fuck. Just for a cup?

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