‘You okay?’ he mumbled.

‘Yep.’

A moment later, she was throwing up into the toilet bowl. She raised her head and found Rhys staring anxiously down at her. His right hand was dangling protectively over his genitals and this made her want to laugh. She pointed at the towel and he bent down to wipe around her mouth. That’s very nice of him, she thought gratefully, and then almost immediately, and almost comically, He must be very much in love.

She got to her feet and kissed him lightly on the brow. ‘I’m alright. ’

His green eyes were still anxious.

‘Rhys, it’s nothing. Just a bit of flu.’

‘Take the day off work,’ he yawned.

‘As if.’

‘Go on. I’ll do the same.’ He was pissing into the bowl. She had not yet flushed her vomit away and his unconcern disgusted her. She suddenly wanted to wound him, to say that the last thing she wanted to do on a day off was spend it with anyone. She rubbed her belly and looked at her lover’s firm behind, the graceful curve of his back. There were probably hundreds of girls more than half her age around the country whose dreams of Rhys were about to be rudely interrupted by their alarms. Maybe thousands. Some of them would gladly tear her eyes out for the way she was treating their idol.

Rhys flushed and turned to her, smiling.

‘You’re really disgusting.’

He scratched his balls and ignored her. She pushed him out of the bathroom. She wanted warm water falling on her head and shoulders, she wanted solitude. She had a long, extravangant shower. She felt better after it. She felt she was herself again.

Fucking poofter soapie producers. She was not looking forward to the morning meeting. During the last month her writing had become florid, deliberately theatrical, and at the same time, self-aware and mocking. Her recent script had a young girl quoting Verlaine, both the poet and the rock singer. But this wasn’t why it was going to be a tense meeting. The producers and the network had been congratulating each other for introducing an incest scenario into the early evening soap opera’s storyline. They were being ‘brave’, ‘socially responsible’. Anouk had no illusions about what they were doing. It was basically a recycled child abuse theme which included an unspecified and vague sexual torment. The victim and her father were also secondary characters, newly arrived neighbours living next door to the central family. In this way, had the advertisers protested, it would have been relatively simple to immediately drop the storyline. Not that anyone had protested. As the executive producer kept reminding them, they had ‘managed to remain tasteful’. When she first heard this, Anouk had burst into laughter. Another of the writers, Johnny, told her a story about a friend who was working in Hollywood, involved in the production unit putting together a mini-series set in World War II. She’d sent Johnny a confidential email that had circulated among the writers. One sentence had been highlighted: All scenes set in the gas chambers must be tastefully executed and not upsetting to the viewers’ sensitivities. Anouk had stuck the copied email above her desk at home. If she ever fell into the delusion that her career was glamorous, or worse, important, she would remind herself of the email. She took her most recent script out of her bag, squashed next to a friendly old man on the tram seat, and began to read. She smiled to herself. They probably did want to kill her this morning.

She had made the supposed victim a liar, exposed her as a sadistic vixen. She had set a scene in a high school corridor where the fifteen-year-old asked her sympathetic teacher to kiss her. When the shocked teacher refused, the girl warned him that she could get him into trouble. That had been it. A jarring scene which she had written to confront the viewers and to make the plot more interesting. She was also bored with the sugary niceness of the girl. The soap was filled with wholesome, buxom blondes and that made Anouk feel decadent and amoral, made her want to fuck them up. She smiled again. He was going to kill her.

That was the only point at which Anouk answered back. ‘You have to pay me.’

‘You’re not fucking getting one cent for that rubbish, you useless bitch.’

She didn’t miss a beat: working in Australian television stank of the locker rooms.

‘And if you don’t pay me, you fat ugly faggot, I’ll shut this production down so fucking quickly that you’ll have advertiser dollars gushing out of your overstretched arsehole.’

It was a bluff. She doubted she could muster enough union support from the writers to shut down the canteen for an hour. But her bravado made him hesitate for a moment and in that moment she won.

‘Well, you’re not getting a fucking dollar more for the rewrite. And I want the rewrite tomorrow morning. Got it, sweetie?’

‘I’ve got plans tomorrow morning, sweetie. I’ll talk to Rhys.’ She usually avoided referring to her relationship at work. It had become public only a few months ago and, by now, everyone knew, but she did not want to discuss it with anyone at the studio. However, she had a hunch the producer fancied Rhys. It was too good to resist.

‘I’ll get him to bring it in.’

‘How did it go?’

‘I hate my job.’

‘You like the paypacket.’

As Aish went up to the bar to order a white wine, Anouk laughed to herself. She loved her friendship with this woman because they knew each other so well. Aisha had known Anouk well before she’d become a successful, confident woman. Aisha had been there from the beginning, when Anouk was the gauche Jewish girl with vomit on her too-tight red dress at the end-of-high-school ball.

Aisha returned with the wine and sat down. ‘I still hate my job.’

‘Rosie and Gary have got the police involved.’

For a moment, Anouk had no idea what her friend was referring to. Then, with a groan, she remembered the incident at the barbecue.

‘You are fucking joking, surely?’

‘Harry hit their child.’

‘He should be given a medal.’

‘Hugo’s just a kid, Anouk.’

‘He’s a monster. I hate that bloody child.’

Aisha looked incredulously at Anouk, who took a deep breath. She didn’t want an argument but it was inevitable if the subject was going to be Rosie. They’d all been friends since they were teenagers in Perth, but it was an uneven friendship. Aisha loved them both but the truth was that Anouk and Rosie no longer had much time for one another. Not that Rosie would ever admit that—she could never acknowledge darkness or confusion in life. Rosie was always about the light and the good and the positive. That way she never had to admit to cruelty or malice within herself; she could always be the victim. Anouk thought of the plain-speaking burly Harry who had slapped Hugo at the party. She knew next to nothing about him but that he seemed decent enough, good-natured, probably insufferably dull and bourgeois except for the faint linger of a once-dangerous prole virility. He was definitely more of a man than Rosie’s Gary. Anouk also liked Harry’s charming, unpretentious wife and his good-looking son. The man probably liked his life. And now her unthinking friend, no doubt encouraged by her resentful alcoholic prick of a husband, was going to try and damage that life. She breathed out slowly and waited for Aisha to speak.

‘Hector’s furious with me. He thinks I am betraying his cousin.’

‘Why, what have you done?’

‘He’s so fucking Greek at times.’

‘Don’t evade the question.’

‘Rosie wants me to make a statement.’

Anouk exploded. It was as if all the tensions of the day had collided and found a release through her scorn for Rosie. No, it was more than that: she was furious that her good, smart friend could be led into making this mistake because of the self-righteous whims of a doormat like Rosie.

‘Don’t get involved.’ She would not let Aisha interrupt. ‘If you get involved not only do you fuck things up between yourself and Hector but you pander to Rosie and Gary and their paranoia. Hugo is a basketcase. He has no boundaries, he is uncontrollable. If she wants to act like some hippie earth mother, that’s fine, but Hugo’s no longer a baby and he’s going to have to learn about consequences. What happened on Saturday was a good thing.’

Aisha was composed. ‘He hit a child. Are there no consequences for that?’

‘He was defending his own child.’

‘Rocco is twice Hugo’s size.’

‘Aisha, don’t get involved.’

‘I am involved. It happened at our house.’

Anouk rolled her eyes. ‘And what does Hector think?’

Aisha was silent. She ran her finger along the rim of her wine glass.

Anouk smiled. ‘He agrees with me, doesn’t he?’

Her friend slapped the air in a gesture of annoyance. Anouk’s anger dissipated. Aisha’s dad does that, she suddenly realised. Mr Pateer’s plump face was kind, genial, but it had always been inescapably Indian, unavoidably foreign, whereas Aish was her familiar best friend, undoubtedly Australian. She always thought of her as more the daughter of her English mother than of her Indian father.

I love you, thought Anouk, and she was suddenly shamed by tears welling in her eyes. It was just a moment, just the blink of an eye, and the tears were gone.

Aisha’s hand rested back on her wine glass. ‘Hector is impossible at the moment. He’s quit smoking again.’

Anouk reached for a cigarette and lit it.

Aisha laughed. ‘You’re never going to quit, are you?’

‘No. I don’t want to.’

‘Neither does Hector. He’s doing it for me. But it makes him hate me.’

It was Anouk’s turn to laugh. ‘Oh please. Hector does not hate you.’

‘I think he hates me at the moment,’ she hesitated.

Anouk could see that Aisha was agitated, that it was getting to her. ‘They say a month. Give him a month of being an arsehole and then the cravings will go. Just ignore him for a month.’

‘It’s not the quitting smoking. It’s this business with Hugo. Fuck him!’ Aisha gulped down her drink and rose to order another. ‘It’s his mother. She has to interfere. She’s furious with me for supporting Rosie, and Hector won’t stand up to her. Of course.’ Her tone was sarcastic, bitter, and as Anouk waited for her to come back from the bar, she found her own anger returning. It’s not his fucking mother, it’s you, it’s you taking Rosie’s side without question, and then resenting the fact that we are not all bending over backwards to lend you support. Of course Hector is furious, of course his parents are not going to support you causing trouble in the family. You are the one who should be standing up to Rosie.

‘You are being unfair.’

Aisha’s eyes flashed as she sat back down.

‘Unfair to whom?’

‘Hector.’

They sat in silence. Anouk could see that her friend was thinking, weighing up arguments and positions in her mind. It was the way Aisha worked. She made lists, she was organised.

Anouk enjoyed her cigarette and waited.

Aisha sighed. ‘I’ll tell Rosie that I’ll support her emotionally but I can’t be a witness in any legal or official capacity. It places me in a compromised position with Hector and his family. She’ll just have to understand that.’

She won’t. She’ll pretend to.

‘She will.’

It was a good decision. They could relax back into gossip and laughter now, shop, maybe catch a movie. Anouk was slightly drunk now, and she felt happy for the first time that day.

She had printed the redraft and was proofing it when Rhys came home.

‘That was a late shoot.’

‘I went to the gym.’

He had taken a bite of leftover green curry chicken and she wiped away a grease mark where he had kissed her neck. He sat beside her on the couch and lifted her leg onto his lap. He began massaging her foot, kissing her ankle. She pretended to continue reading. His hand was creeping up her thigh, to her groin. The phone rang and her sister’s voice, pleading, breathless, was coming through the answering machine. He dropped her leg.

‘Leave it,’ she whispered, as though her sister could somehow hear her. ‘I’ll call her tomorrow.’

Her mobile rang next. They both laughed.

‘I’m dying to meet her. The born-again Jew as you call her.’ His fingers were stroking her now, the script discarded, her eyes closing in pleasure. He was a great lover, his fingers both determined and gentle, a combination she had rarely encountered in a man. She opened her eyes for a second to see him smiling at her. She was awed by his youth, it was almost overwhelming, the softness of his skin. She was both aroused and sad. He would never meet her sister. His beauty and his youth would only make her sister suspicious. Anouk could not bear having to justify herself. She arched her back and pushed her body forward, as Rhys’s fingers teased her clitoris, slipped inside her. His lips were on her neck, her cheek, her chin, her mouth. She unzipped his jeans and felt for his cock, pulling his free hand to her breast, moaning as he squeezed her nipples. Everywhere, all over her skin, every part of her was aroused. It was as if her body had been asleep for years and had suddenly awoken, refreshed but hungry. Fuck me, she whispered into Rhys’s ear. She shook, shuddered, as he pushed his cock inside her. She wanted to bite him, scratch him, devour him. Fuck me, she ordered him sharply now, and she wondered, Is this how a man understands sex? This ravenous animal desire? She came before he did and then came again. And as he began to spasm, as he withdrew, as his semen pumped warm against her thigh, she reached for his cock, feeling the blood still throbbing underneath the silken skin, and shuddered once again.

‘You can smoke in the cab,’ she muttered absent-mindedly. ‘It’s alright by me. In fact, I may have one myself.’

‘Sorry, lady, I can get a fine.’

She didn’t even hear him. She looked out of the window. An old lady, the kind you rarely saw in public anymore, her hair dyed chemical blue, wheeling an out-sized shopping trolley, was standing blinking at the lights.

‘Where to?’ The man had been patiently waiting for her to speak.

She apologised and gave him her destination. Her fingers were tapping against the vinyl covering of the seat. She did want a smoke. Fucking stupid regulations, fucking nanny-state ideology, fucking puritanical death-fearing Protestantism. Fuck! Why was this country so over-regulated? At times like these she desperately missed the anarchy and disorganisation of the Balkans. She badly wanted a cigarette. It would be real defiance to have one now. She was aware that nothing seemed to be penetrating her consciousness. The buildings, the other cars and vehicles on the road, the driver, the sky, the city. It was as if she was under the effect of some drug but there was no reciprocal pleasure permitted to counter the loss of what she could only describe as her intelligence. She felt as if she was floating, incapable of decision.

‘Which way do you want to go?’

She glanced at the reflection of his eyes in the rear-view mirror. She was numb, she couldn’t think. Would there be too much traffic on Swan Street? Should they take the tunnel? Her mind cleared, irritability smacking away the fog, and she replied bitchily, ‘You’re the driver, shouldn’t you know the best route to take? Isn’t that why I’m paying you?’

His face tightened and he focused on the route ahead. He was a young man, probably younger than Rhys, his skin the rich honey shade of roasted chestnuts, and his eyes wide and striking, set deep in his sharp-edged face. She hated the wiry, immature beard that seemed stuck onto his chin. Why do you do that to yourself, she wanted to ask him, why do you make yourself deliberately ugly? Why does your God demand that of you? This was not like her at all. She was usually courteous to taxi drivers. They were invariably immigrant men, and she told herself that in treating them with respect and dignity she was separating herself from the immense sea of indifferently racist Australians out there, a world that existed—as far as she could tell because she never visited ‘out there’—somewhere beyond the yellow lines that marked the inner-city zone-one train and tram tracks on the Melbourne transport maps. But she felt neither courtesy nor respect at this moment. Fuck him, she thought sourly, ignorant fundamentalist Muslim pig. She received an illicit thrill from the jolt of hatred.

‘I’m sorry for snapping at you,’ she began sweetly, ‘but I’m a little shell-shocked. I’ve just found out I’m pregnant.’

The young man looked at her again in his mirror, smiling now. ‘Congratulations. You are very fortunate.’

‘You think so?’

She saw confusion spread across his face and he turned his eyes away from her again.

‘I don’t think I want it. I’m not married, you see, and the father is almost half my age. There’s so much I want to do. I don’t feel fortunate at all.’ Her eyes were focused on the rear-view mirror. She could see a corner of his face, but his eyes were averted.

Talk to me, you bastard.

They sat in silence as the cab weaved fitfully down the clogged South-Eastern freeway. Nearing the studio she realised that she was red-faced. She felt ashamed and then furious. Who the fuck was he to judge her?

She leaned forward as he stopped the car. ‘I know what you think of me.’

‘I not think anything at all.’

‘You’re a liar,’ she hissed. ‘I know exactly what you think of me.’ The vitriol shocked them both.

‘Your change,’ he said, as she went to leave the car.

‘Keep it,’ she mumbled.

He looked at her, still unsmiling. ‘Please do not presume to know what I think of you. We do not know each other.’

‘Are you free tomorrow?’

‘Thursday is a bad day. I’m working till eight.’

‘Friday?’

‘What’s this about?’

‘I need some advice.’

‘Rhys?’

‘Friday?’

Aisha laughed. The sound of her chuckle made Anouk feel sane again for the first time that day.

‘Let’s meet in the city. How about somewhere on the river. South-bank or Docklands?’

‘Friday night? Forget it. Too crowded.’

‘How about Doctor Martins? It’s got a courtyard.’

‘Great. But you sure the city’s alright? I can come up to your side.’

‘Hector can get off early on Fridays. He can pick up the kids.’

Anouk felt her belly. Was this going to be life for her from now on? Was she, for the first time in her adult life, to be beholden to another being’s whims, demands, needs?

‘And I’ll call Rosie.’

She could have said it then. She should have said it then. She didn’t want Rosie there. She understood why Aish did. Aish wanted them to be girlfriends again. Aish wanted the tension between them to go away. Aish wanted them to get drunk together, be friends together, talk shit together. Anouk could have said, No, I need to talk to you, just you. That’s what she should have said, but she didn’t.

‘Fine. Can you get off early?’

‘I’ll be out by three-thirty. Brendan won’t mind.’

‘Let’s make it for four-thirty. We can score a table before happy hour.’

‘Perfect.’

Anouk hung up the phone and looked at herself in the mirror. She raised her shirt and looked at her stomach. It was flat, she still had a young woman’s stomach. With Rosie there on Friday, she knew how the conversation would go. She’d tell her friends and they would be excited for her. Rosie would gush and Aish would probe her for her feelings. She’d explain her reservations and Rosie would tell her that there was nothing like the experience of having a child, that all women should go through childbirth. She’d listen and then put forward more objections. Aish would consider them all in turn and tell her that she shouldn’t make up her mind straight away. That they should talk about it together again later. Anouk would chain-smoke and Rosie would make a joke about her not being able to do that for much longer. Anouk would then say that word—she would not say termination, she would say abortion—and Rosie would look fearful and Aish would look inscrutable. Rosie would have tears in her eyes and Aish would order them all another drink. Rosie would plead with her and Aish would try to intervene. Rosie would go off to the toilet and Aish would ask, Are you sure? Rosie’s eyes would be red when she returned and she would not look at Anouk. Anouk would then take her hand and tell her that she did want to know what it would be like, that she did dream of having a child, she did, but she was scared and confused. Rosie would be placated and they’d start gossiping about other things and they would laugh and get drunk. Anouk would leave, promising her friends that she had not yet made up her mind.

Anouk then realised that she wouldn’t say a word about being pregnant to her friends. She looked critically at herself in the mirror. She was not a beauty, but she held herself well, she had style and she was striking. She was chic, and with age, that mattered more than looks. Chic didn’t desert you. She did look her age but she looked fantastic. She was secure, comfortable and she had a good life. She knew this but it was not enough. She wanted to do great things. Television was not a great thing. Rhys was not a great thing. She wanted to write a book that would shake or move or be known throughout the world. She wanted the grand success. Or the grand failure. It did not matter. She did not want the pleasurable and comfortable mediocrity in which she now wallowed to be the sum of her life.

It was possible that a child could change all this, but a child would not make her a success. All the child would succeed in doing would be to transform her finally, irreversibly, into her own mother. She had no doubt she could nourish and educate a child—she would be encouraging, loving. She could also be suffocating, smothering, demanding that the child fulfil her dreams to repay the debt she would always feel it owed her. She would not be a mother; she would be a gorgon. It was in her blood—her mother had been that and her sister was becoming that with her own children. Not that Anouk bore ill-will towards her mother, not at all. Her mother had been fierce, courageous, had challenged family, society and love. She had raised her daughters to be equally relentless, equally brave. But her mother had been resentful, unable to submit to having no talent for anything but being a mother. She had raged against the unfairness of destiny to the end of her life. No, all of them, all the women in her family, they should have been born men. She shut her eyes tight and tried to will the desire for a child, to really feel a sense of achievement about the life developing in her womb. I’m sorry, she whispered, it’s not enough. She flinched as she recalled her churlish behaviour with the young taxi driver that afternoon. It was not his difference that annoyed her: his accent, his beard, his unforgiving God. It was not that at all. What had shamed her was that he was not at all different. She had assumed he spoke for all of the world.

She showered and dressed quickly. She hadn’t thought of Jean-Michel for a long time. She remembered that even back then his chest was beginning to sag and grey hairs had begun to spread across his thickening stomach. He was always going to age badly, and he would be an old man now. She blushed as it struck her that he had been the age she was now when they were lovers, and she herself had been even younger than Rhys. She found herself mouthing him an apology in the morning light of the apartment. Maybe it wasn’t mere cowardice or professional fear that had made Jean-Michel reluctant to leave his wife and pursue the passionate affair with his Master’s student. Maybe he was only too aware of the ruthlessness of time, saw ahead to the moment when she would no longer find him attractive. She had not possessed such wisdom then and overcame her sorrow by first detesting and then pitying what she had thought was Jean-Michel’s weakness.

Before leaving her apartment she looked at herself, up and down,

critically, in the mirror. She was tall, yes, she was glamorous, her figure was still strong and supple. But she was an ageing woman. In twenty years’ time she would be sixty-three. And Rhys would be a handsome and still-attractive man of forty-four. The thought of her young lover brought a smile, tender and amorous, to her lips. She felt a spasm of desire. Was this pregnancy, this constant awareness of eroticism, this helpless surrender to the body?

‘I nearly got run over by three little bitches, just outside the pub.’

‘At the lights?’

‘No.’ Anouk shook her head and smiled. Rosie was frowning, concerned and anxious. ‘They weren’t in a car. This was on the street. They bumped into me and then walked off as if I didn’t exist.’

‘How old were they?’ asked Aisha.

‘God knows. They looked like hookers but they could have been sixteen. They were probably twelve.’

‘Well, you probably don’t exist for them. None of us do.’ There was resignation in Aisha’s tone.

‘Well, I do fucking exist and I want my existence acknowledged when I’m physically dealt with. God, I hate young women. I much prefer boys. They are so much more polite.’

Rosie shook her head in mock derision. ‘We’re turning into our mothers. I’m sure we were bitches to older women when we were young.’

Anouk lit a cigarette and looked down at the table. They needed an ashtray and she quickly surveyed the tables around her. Two men, in suits and with their ties loosened, were engaged in spirited conversation at the next table. She indicated their empty ashtray and one of the men smiled and handed it to her. He was roughly handsome, paunchy but virile. She registered his assistance with a small smile but she was thinking of what Rosie had just said.

‘You’re probably right. We were arrogant. But we weren’t deliberately rude. That is what I’m complaining about and, much as I hate to say it, I think we feminists have helped create it. These little bitches think they have the right to do anything they want but they don’t care about consequences.’

‘Now you sound like some right-wing shock jock.’

Anouk snorted out loud at this. ‘Rosie, that’s bullshit. I think the age of consent should be twelve, I think heroin should be sold legally and I think the American president and our prime minister should be prosecuted for war crimes. I’m not a fucking conservative and I resent the implication. It’s not only the right who can speak on morality.’

Rosie and Aisha glanced at one another and then started laughing.

Anouk blushed. ‘Rant over. I’m sorry. I just wish I could have slapped those stupid little cows.’

As soon as she said it, her thoughts flew back to the barbecue at Aish’s place. She knew all three of them were flashing back to that instant when Harry had hit the child. The man who had handed her the ashtray kept looking up at her. He would be in his late forties, with salt and pepper thinning hair. Strong forearms, fat fingers. No wedding ring.

‘It’s how slutty they look that I can’t stand.’

For a moment, Anouk and Rosie were confused at Aisha’s statement, then they both burst out laughing.

‘It’s true, we are turning into our mothers.’

But Aisha wasn’t laughing as she poured herself another drink.

She reached out and without asking took a cigarette from the packet on the table. ‘I worry about Melissa. I know she’s still a kid but she’s already asking for bikini tops to wear when she goes out to a friend’s birthday. I don’t want her to grow up thinking that she has to look like a streetcorner whore to be attractive.’

Rosie shook her head at this. ‘You’re forgetting what we were like. You’re forgetting how much your mother bitched about the clothes we wore.’

‘Because she thought we were making ourselves look deliberately ugly. That’s true. But our reality was different, we wanted to be punks, to stand out from the crowd. But we were all aware of what it meant to look slutty and we felt sorry for those girls. They were the girls that dropped out of school, the ones that became single mums. They were the girls that boys fucked and fucked over. I wanted to look like Siouxsie Sioux and Patti Smith. I did not want to look like the Happy Hooker. You know who Melissa thinks is wonderful? Paris Hilton. Paris fucking Hilton. Now, there’s a role-model.’

‘At least she has some attitude. I don’t mind her.’

Anouk gulped down her wine and poured another one quickly. Her good will towards Rosie was dissipating. Rosie was a few years younger than both her and Aish, not yet forty, but as an adolescent Rosie had been reckless and harsh: it came from having a puritan mother and an alcoholic loser dad. It had made her suspicious of pieties. But since meeting Gary and especially since having Hugo she had slowly taken on a New Age moral code that retained elements of her mother’s religious ethics but which resisted the hardline dictates of her Calvinism. Rosie had been a beautiful young woman. She could have been a model, an Aryan model, Anouk thought a little spitefully. Rosie had also been a mean-tongued bitch when she wanted to be, with an intolerance of hypocrisy. She could do with some of that cruelty now. She could do with not being bloody earth-mother to both her husband and kid.

The man from the next table had risen to go to the bar. He smiled again as he walked past them. He was tall. It was the one thing that she regretted about Rhys as a lover, that he was not a tall man. A sensuous glow, intensified by the alcohol, spread through her body, waves of pleasure emanating from her loins. She wanted to fuck all the time. She wanted to fuck the man at the next table. She wanted to fuck him tonight. She drifted back into the conversation. Aisha and Rosie were still engaged in a heated debate.

Anouk raised her hand in protest. ‘Enough!’

‘Okay,’ Rosie conceded, then added quickly, ‘But I still think you two are being tough on younger women. You’re forgetting that we had it easy. Free education, social services, feminism. You name it.’

Anouk’s resentment dissipated. Rosie had a point.

‘I think I hate that they are so generic, so Hollywood.’ She was remembering her fury at the young girls’ refusal to acknowledge her physical encounter on the street. Their swagger, their look, their style was qualitatively different from the arrogance they themselves had as young women. The teenagers on the street were emulating a look and a pose of sneering indifference that was manufactured by the media. It was individualistic, it was selfish. There was no world outside the image. And she herself worked in the industry that created these young monsters. She felt sick to her core. The luscious sexual euphoria she had been quietly experiencing completely disappeared. She felt tired, old, her lungs hurt. She looked up to find that Rosie and Aish were nodding in agreement.

‘I hate that too.’ Aisha finally lit the cigarette. ‘I hate how everything is becoming the same.’

‘I’m part of it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I spent a year in Zagreb teaching Croatian writers and directors how to faithfully recreate a soap opera based on a suburban Melbourne family that was itself based on a concept that originally came from a failed German soapie. I don’t think I have any right to accuse anyone of being a whore.’

‘We are all whores. I get free trips for my family from drug companies who get me to give vaccinations to animals that I know they don’t really need. It’s the modern world, Anouk. We are all whores.’

Rosie was silent.

Anouk grinned evily at her. ‘Except you, of course. You’re a saint.’

Rosie blushed. Anouk saw a glimpse of something like fury, something vicious flash across the woman’s piercing eyes but it vanished, disappeared back deep inside her where so much had gone since marrying Gary, since going straight.

Rosie answered with an insincere smile. ‘I’m no saint, Anouk. I just think you don’t have to engage with all that is terrible about this world. You can separate yourself from it. That’s why Gary and I will only let Hugo watch DVDs and videos, absolutely no television but the children’s shows. We want Hugo to get a chance to develop his imagination independent from that vile world.’

Rosie turned to Aisha. ‘I’ve caught up with Shamira a few times. I like her. That’s what her religion is, a way of protecting herself and her family from the shit in this world.’

‘Who the fuck’s Shamira?’

‘You know her,’ Aisha reminded Anouk. ‘Bilal’s wife.’

Anouk nodded. The Aboriginal Muslim and his white Muslim wife. The odd couple. She had found that she had nothing to say to either of them at the barbecue. She could see why Rosie would like them. The three of them had all obviously shed their pasts and grown new, vastly different skins. She glanced over at Aish and she was suddenly convinced that her friend was thinking exactly the same thoughts. It was a shared moment in which they were both pitying and ridiculing the experiences of the three true authentic Australians. Aish and herself, they had real pasts, real histories. Jewish, Indian, migrant; it all meant something, they had no need to make things up, to assume disguises.

‘I had no idea you knew each other.’

‘We exchanged numbers at your party. She’s lovely. And she’s obviously been a good influence on Terry.’ Rosie quickly rectified her mistake. ‘Bilal, I mean.’

‘Yes, they seem happy.’ Aisha’s reply was curt, offering nothing.

Rosie leaned across and almost whispered. ‘We can’t meet anywhere where they serve alcohol. That feels so odd.’

That means you can meet without having to take your husband, doesn’t it? You don’t have to risk Gary getting drunk and embarrassing you. Their wine bottle was almost empty. ‘I’m going to the bar.’

The pub was getting crowded, full of smoke and it was a wait before she could get served. Just as the bartender asked for her order, she felt a tap on her shoulder and she turned around. The man from the table next to them was grinning at her. His face was flushed, pink. His mouth was wide and his lips full.

‘Can I buy you this round?’

‘That’s very kind of you, but I’m getting a bottle for the table.’

‘That’s alright. I’m happy to shout all you ladies.’

Anouk smiled ruefully and shook her head. ‘Afraid not.’ She had let go of the fantasy the second he began speaking. His voice was thin, reedy. Men should not have little boys’ voices. ‘I’m with someone.’

‘Lucky bastard.’

‘Thank you.’

The bartender returned with her order and the man slipped a fifty-dollar note across the counter. She began to protest but he interrupted.

‘My shout. I’m Jim.’

‘I’m Anouk.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Like the actress?’

It pleased her that he knew this. This was not common for Australian men.

‘Yes, like the actress.’

Jim assisted her back to the table. The noise from the crowd was amplified in the narrow bar and they found they had to shout.

‘Your parents French?’

‘No. My parents were francophiles.’

She found herself a little tongue-tied when she reached their table. Jim placed the bottle before the women and introduced himself. He pointed to his friend, who rose, and walked over.

‘This is Tony.’

Tony was also tall, younger than Jim, slimmer with a thick moustache. He was balding. They all shook hands and then there was an uncomfortable moment of silence.

‘Do you want to join us?’ Aisha finally asked.

Jim raised his eyes at Anouk. He slowly shook his head. ‘You ladies look like you’re having a girl’s night out. We’ll do the gentlemanly thing and leave you alone.’ He looked straight at Anouk. ‘Enjoy the night. I just wanted to buy you all drinks. In celebration of gorgeous women.’

Anouk left it to Rosie and Aisha to thank him. She was making sure she could memorise everything about him. The colour of his hair, his ruddy cheeks, the strong, heavy jaw, the fading sunburn visible under his unbuttoned collar, the thick neck, the smattering of fine blonde hair on his arms and wrists. His eyes, his mouth, his hands.

Aisha waited till the men had seated themselves again at their table before speaking. She leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I don’t want to giggle but I feel like giggling.’

‘Don’t you fucking dare giggle.’ Anouk’s eyes were imploring her friends to behave. ‘What did I miss?’

The grin departed from Aisha’s face. It struck Anouk that Aisha looked too thin. Her cheekbones seemed too sharply defined beneath her dusky skin; there were dark shadows beneath her eyes.

Anouk took her friend’s hand beneath the table and held it tight. ‘You alright?’

Aish nodded and Anouk loosened her grip. Their hands slid apart.

‘Rosie was saying that Shamira is the first veiled woman she has ever spoken to.’

Rosie looked embarrassed. ‘Not quite, Aish. Obviously, I have shared greetings with strangers or across shop counters. But I’ve never had a conversation with a Muslim woman before.’ Rosie dropped her voice. ‘I feel a bit ashamed, but I can’t take my eyes off her headscarf. I want to forget it but I can’t.’

‘That’s because it appears strange to you.’

‘And it isn’t strange for you?’ Rosie shot back.

Aisha didn’t respond. God, thought Anouk, let’s not have this conversation.

‘Aish simply meant she’s Indian, it’s not strange for her. Or for me.’

‘Because you’re Jewish?’ Rosie sounded incredulous.

Anouk remembered as a child her parents taking her to Sydney for a wedding, and in Bondi, at some stranger’s house, she had first seen women covered. They had not mixed with any Orthodox in Perth. They had scared her, these women; even the young ones had seemed ancient.

‘Yes, some Orthodox women cover their heads. I think they’re doormats as well,’ she added emphatically.

‘Shamira says it gives her strength. It’s given her confidence.’

I’m not going to have this conversation, thought Anouk, let us not have this fucking conversation again. She was sickened by the return of questions of religion and God. Increasingly she felt restricted by the morality and the confusion of this new century. She had abandoned God a long time ago when still a child. Her athiesm had seemed normal, expected. Of the world. This new century seemed to stretch out before her with an unrelenting, atavistic resolve. She wished that she had been born twenty years earlier. Born a man, twenty years earlier.

‘I hate it when I see women covered. I detest it. It makes me furious that they let men do that to them.’

Rosie’s face registered shock and disapproval. Anouk too was surprised by Aisha’s vehemence.

‘But, Aish,’ Rosie answered, ‘not all Muslim women are forced into the veil. You know that. Surely you support their right to wear whatever they want.’

Anouk couldn’t keep silent. ‘I’m not having this fucking conversation. Let us not have this conversation.’

‘Why?’ Rosie would not back down. She was directing her questions to Aisha. ‘Do you think Shamira is lying to herself when she says the veil gives her strength?’

‘Shamira’s strength comes from being with Terry. Shamira’s mother is a drunk, her sister’s a junkie and her father is God knows where. It’s Terry who gives her strength, not a piece of cloth over her head.’ Aisha’s fingers moved towards the cigarette packet but she didn’t take one.

‘And Bilal’s faith is what gives him strength.’ Rosie would not back down.

Anouk knew she was right. She remembered Terry before his conversion, his wit and boyish charm, but also the violence that seemed to lie just beneath his jovial, egalitarian demeanour, the aggro that would surface whenever he got drunk. His open, friendly face was inexorably falling to dissipation and fat, there was always the toxic smell of grog emanating from his body. She had been amazed by the different man who had shaken her hand years later at a dinner at Hector’s and Aish’s house. He had not yet taken on his new Muslim name but he had converted and was studying Arabic and his new faith. His eyes and skin were clear, he had gained weight, filled out. He was calm, as though he had finally found repose. She had never thought him a happy man, but he looked content then. Truth be told, the lacerating awareness of her country’s racial history and her own prejudices had made her assume that he would never be happy, that he would always be aggro. That he would die aggro—aggro and young. She grinned at a blasphemous thought, one that she knew she could never share with Rosie: he had been young and aggro and now he was pious and boring.

Instead she nodded. ‘It’s true. But can we not talk about religion? I thought God had died just before my ninth birthday but it seems that was not the case. I hate being proved wrong. Let’s talk about something else.’

Jim was still glancing over at her. She was glad to be a woman, drinking, flirting, having fun.

Rosie laughed. ‘Done. No God talk. It’s just that she’s been such a help to me. I think we’re going to be friends.’

‘Who?’

Anouk, distracted by the flirtatious game she and Jim were playing, had lost track of the conversation. Was this muddle-headedness also a curse of pregnancy?

‘Shamira,’ replied Rosie, stealing a glance at Aisha and then quickly looking away. They’ve talked about this already. Anouk felt a piercing jolt of adolescent jealousy.

‘How is she being a help?’

‘She’s been such a rock. With this business of Hugo being bashed.’ I will not go there, I will play dumb.

‘We’ve charged Hector’s cousin with assault.’ Rosie could not bring herself to look at Anouk.

‘Rosie, don’t do this.’

‘Gary’s determined.’

Anouk, in frustration, glared at Aisha. ‘You say something to her.’

‘It’s Rosie’s choice,’ Aisha answered firmly.

‘Then I’m going to be a witness for Harry and Sandi.’

Rosie swung around. ‘You saw that bastard bash Hugo.’

‘I saw Harry slap Hugo. And I saw that Hugo deserved it.’

‘No one deserves to be hit, let alone a child.’

‘That’s just a platitude, a new age bullshit platitude. You need to teach a child discipline and sometimes that discipline has to be physical. That’s how we learn what is acceptable and what is not.’

Rosie was furious. ‘Just shut it, Anouk. You have no right to say what you are saying.’

Because I’m not a mother? She nearly said it, she had to choke back on the words: I’m pregnant. She must not raise her voice, she must state her argument calmly.

‘My point is not about your son. My point is a general one. We’re raising a generation of moral imbeciles, kids who have no sense of responsibility.’

‘You do not teach children responsibility by bashing them.’

‘Harry did not bash Hugo.’

‘He hit him. He assaulted him. That’s illegal.’

Anouk exploded. ‘That’s crap. Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped Hugo but what he did was not a crime. We all wanted to slap him at that moment. You’re going to fuck up Harry and Sandi’s lives just because Gary has it in his head that he was done wrong and because Gary always has to be the victim.’

Anouk wasn’t shouting but she was loud, dogged, her tone urgent. She was aware that Jim and Tony had fallen silent at the next table but she did not care. She wanted her words to be knives, to hurt Rosie. She felt as if she had never detested anything in her life with more passion than her friend’s self-righteous conviction.

‘Or is it that he’s bored? Is that it, Rosie? Gary’s bored and he wants some drama in his life?’

Rosie was quietly sobbing. ‘You have no right. You have no right.’

‘Hugo’s problem is not that Harry slapped him. Hugo’s problem is that neither you nor Gary had the control over your child to stop him acting like a brat.’

‘Anouk, that’s enough.’ Aisha was livid.

It was enough. She had nothing more to say. She had wanted to say these things to Rosie for a long time, but there was no pleasure or satisfaction in saying them. She felt guilty and wretched at seeing the effect her words had on her friends.

Aisha was holding Rosie’s hand. ‘You don’t have the right to say any of that, Anouk. Rosie is right.’ Aisha’s tone was icy, her eyes were black steel. ‘You aren’t very interested in our children, we know that and we can deal with that. You don’t like babies and you don’t like talk about babies and children. You’ve made that clear over the years and we’ve respected that. But don’t then assume that you can start being an authority now.’ Aisha was struggling to hold back her own tears, her voice was shaky. ‘Harry didn’t have any right to hit Hugo. Yes, maybe we all felt like slapping him at that moment but the point is no other adult did. We exercised self-control, which is what makes us different from children. We didn’t slap him because we knew that was the wrong thing to do.’

No, some of us didn’t because we were too scared. But Anouk was tired. She was not prepared to argue further. This is why I will not have this baby, she said to herself, why I am going to have the abortion. I don’t want to become like either of you. I’m not on your side, not in this. This is not the only way to be a parent but it is the only way this world now allows. And to do it my way would be an exhausting struggle and maybe I could do it but I couldn’t do anything else. Anouk realised that she was repeatedly clenching and unclenching her fists. There was silence at their table, made more insistent by the buzz of the now crowded beer-garden, all the drunken laughter and conversation. She knew that the women were waiting for her to fill the silence, to renew their camaraderie, to make them all feel safe again. It had always been this way. It came to Anouk with the force of a revelation. She was the risk taker, the cool one, the glamorous one. She had the actor boyfriend, the high-powered job. She was not a mother, she was not a spouse. She was different and they must have always seen her as different. Even Aish.

Anouk stood, leaned across the table and kissed Rosie’s brow.

‘Darling, I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I agree. He had no right.’

Rosie smiled tearily. ‘Thank you.’

Aisha gripped Anouk’s hand and looked straight at her. I’m sorry too, she mouthed. Carefully, Anouk wrested her hand free and lit a cigarette. Aisha furtively, guiltily, took one from the packet and this made Anouk and Rosie suddenly snigger.

Aisha ignored them.

‘Has it struck you that smoking is the new adultery?’ Anouk whispered with a wink to Rosie.

‘That’s what Gary says,’ Rosie answered and Anouk let that pass without comment.

Aisha changed the subject. ‘So what did you want to speak to us about? You said on the phone you wanted our advice.’

I wanted your advice, thought Anouk, but instead said, ‘I’m thinking of quitting the job. I want to see if I’ve got it in me to write the novel I’ve always bloody talked about and have kept putting off.’

Rosie and Aish squealed as if they were girls again. They were overjoyed for her.

‘Of course you should,’ said Aisha. ‘We’ve been wondering how long it would take for you to make this decision.’

‘You’ve got to,’ agreed Rosie. ‘You’ve just got to. And you can, Anouk.’

‘I know,’ and she finished the sentence with the words that the others did not dare speak. ‘I don’t have children to worry about.’

Rosie poked her tongue out at her. She had been forgiven. ‘Gary’s in the same head space. He’s talking about painting again.’

Anouk and Aisha shared a quick, covert glance. There was no similarity between her creative ambition and Gary’s. He had no discipline, no talent. The idea that he was a painter was a joke to them.

‘Let’s get another bottle.’

They proceeded to get riotously drunk. Later that night, Anouk got home and rushed to the toilet where she threw up, again and again, something that she had not done for over twenty years. She drained her body of everything, of the food and the wine, and it seemed to her that she was expelling her child with every retch.

‘You must have got hammered last night.’ He was kneeling beside her, wiping her brow.

‘That I did,’ she groaned ruefully as he helped her back into bed. ‘Sorry, Rhysbo, I’ve got no appetite.’

‘You girls can drink us guys under the table.’

No we can’t, she wanted to answer, not because we’re women but because we are no longer twenty-five. It takes days for us to recover. She thought about saying, Rhys I’m going to have a baby. Will you take time out of your career to help me raise it while I write my novel? She looked at him as he reclined alongside her. He’d probably say yes. He’d probably be happy to do it and wouldn’t start resenting her till years later.

She tickled his nose. ‘Aish asked me last night if you could sign some photos for Connie and Richie.’

‘Are they her kids?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You smoke way too much pot.’ God, she did sound like a mother. ‘Aisha’s children are called Adam and Melissa. Which I’ve told you a dozen times. Connie was the teenage blonde girl at the barbecue, a cute kid, a nice girl. Remember?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘Richie was her boyfriend.’

‘Yeah?’ The hint of doubt in Rhys’s voice intrigued her.

‘What?’

‘I just thought he was gay.’

Gay? She thought it preposterous. Richie was just a normal, boring kid.

‘My God, you are vain.’

Rhys looked wounded. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just a feeling I got.’ He looked up at her, teasingly. ‘My generation has got a good gaydar, you know, not like you uptight old baby-boomers.’

This made her laugh. ‘Watch it, I’m not that old. Anyway, I don’t think it’s true, but just in case, get them both a photo of you topless. Unless your gaydar is telling you the girl’s a dyke?’

He rose, laughing as well, and headed to her kitchen. She heard him put on a coffee. She threw the sheets off her and looked down at her stomach. It was flat, it seemed impossible that life was commencing inside there. Rhys and I would make great parents for a gay kid, she mused, they’d be lucky to have us. She patted her stomach. But that’s only one chance in ten, kiddo, and only one chance in twenty if the God-botherers are right. I just don’t like the odds, she whispered to her belly.

‘We can’t give you those details. Do you have his plate number?’

‘No.’

‘Do you wish to make a complaint?’

‘God no, I want to send him an apology. I’m afraid I was terribly rude to him and he did not deserve it.’

The woman’s voice softened. ‘I’m sure you weren’t rude.’

‘No, I’m sure I was.’

There was a pause and then the woman said that she would make enquiries, she would get an apology to the driver. Anouk gave as many details of the fare as she could—the time, the date, the pick-up, the destination—and when she was finished, she asked shyly, ‘Will you make sure he gets my apology?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Do you want my name?’

‘No,’ the woman replied firmly. ‘That’s not important.’

‘Well, fucking write then,’ she said out loud.

So she began to write.