She glanced down at her watch again, took a deep breath, and made her calculations. Hector’s plane would have departed from Melbourne an hour ago. Her own plane could possibly be delayed for another two hours, which meant he’d have to wait for her for at least three hours in the airport in Denpasar. He’d be in a bad mood. Should she leave him a message at the airport, send him a text, tell him to meet her at the hotel in Ubud? It was best to not panic—not yet anyway. The idiots should have some information for them all soon. Around her bored, frustrated tourists, most of them young men and women dressed in grimy singlets and shorts, were mutinously watching the information desk, ready to spring into action at an announcement. Aisha got up from her seat and slung her bag over her shoulder. She wanted to escape the whining and the stink of beer and perspiration. She walked back from the gate to the blaze of neon lights and dizzying movement at the end of the corridor. Bangkok airport never closed. She might as well shop.

‘It has rather dulled the pleasure of air travel.’

Aisha bought the latest airmail editions of Vanity Fair and Marie Claire and a crime novel from an English writer she had enjoyed reading in the past, and walked back to the gate. The seats were still packed with the expectant passengers but their frustration and rage had turned into exhausted, resigned collapse. The young Thai woman behind the counter beamed at her, and gushed, ‘The plane departs in one hour and thirty minutes, thank you very much.’ Aisha stared, incredulous, at the girl. Why was the little fool smiling? She was tempted to make a scene but fought against the impulse. It would only alarm the girl, and—the thought made her smile—just confirm whatever prejudice she had towards Indians. Without acknowledging her, Aisha turned and walked away.

She had been in her hotel bathroom, getting ready for the final conference dinner, when her phone rang. It was Art.

They did go dancing. Of course they did. Aisha allowed herself two champagnes at dinner, just enough to feel light-headed but not to lose control. She and Art shared a mango brûlée and then he slipped her two pills under the table. She rubbed them along her fingertips, then, furtively, she slipped them into her mouth, took a quick sip of champagne, and looked nervously down the table.

Hector and Aisha had been together for nineteen years. In all that time she had never been unfaithful. She had been with other men before him, but only a few. She silently counted them as the lift sped to Art’s floor. Eddie, tall, good-natured, what the girls back then referred to as a ‘hornbag’. Their courtship began on the beaches of Scarborough. He was older, she was gratified that someone so popular, so attractive, had made a play for her. But she quickly became bored with him and dumped him as soon as she started uni. The only good thing to come out of being with Eddie was her friendship with his sister Rosie. After Eddie there was a boy she had met at a party in Northbridge, a half-Croatian guitarist with the beginnings of a heroin problem. Michael was tall, just like Eddie, but that was the only similarity. Michael was certainly not dull. Instead, he was moody, unkempt, unshaven and noncommittal, and he might just have broken her heart if she had let him. She did not let him. It was not just his drug addiction. At that time what pissed her off more was his inability to return messages or keep to appointments. She did not find his masculine evasiveness endearing or masochistically romantic and when he took a week to return a call, she asked her mother to say she’d call back. She never did. After Michael there was Mr Sam De Costa, her tutor in anatomy. Sam was thirty, also tall, married, stylish and always well-dressed, passionate about European cinema and early rock and roll. Their affair lasted the whole of her second year of veterinary science. That had definitely been love and Sam had definitely broken her heart. Soon after the breakup she had a drunken one-night stand with an inexperienced young science student. She’d ended up in his dorm and he had passed out before coming. She had stumbled out of his room and gone back downstairs to the party where she followed another inexperienced young science student back to his room. She had fucked both of them in order to feel desired again. Sam’s abandonment of her had made her feel so gutted that she believed she could never be whole again. It had broken her, led her to step into the shadows of annihilation, but she had not succumbed. The closest she came was scraping the edge of a knife against her wrists and acting like a silly self-loathing whore with those two science undergraduates. After that she transferred her studies to Melbourne. Soon after she met Peter, a carpenter, the brother of another vet student, and they had dated for six months. He was only a few years older than her, and she had felt very little for him. But he was very attractive, virile and confident. They also looked good together and she found that this was important to her. The sex with him was the best she had ever had. Peter, however, had fallen in love with her and in order to make him hate her, she slept with his best friend, Ryan. And then she met Hector.

She could hear Art pissing in the bathroom. She fell onto the bed, her head was spinning and her mouth felt dry. His room was indentical to hers, watercolours of Buddhist temples on the wall, an unadorned desk and chair, a thick cushioned armchair, generic hotel floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the neon and lights of Bangkok below. The sound of his urinating was faintly repellent to her. Eight men and now Art would be her ninth. She was hardly a slut. She heard the toilet flush. She was married, she was a mother, she was about to sleep with another man, a stranger really. She was a slut. She would have sex with Art, that would be it, a one-night affair, she would file it away, far from her life, far from her family and marriage. It would not count. It would not be part of her life.

An announcement came over the airport public address system asking for travellers on the next Garuda flight to Denpasar and Jakarta to proceed to their gate. The confirmation acted as a balm on the exhausted travellers around Aisha, and they began to talk excitedly to one another. Across the seat from her sat a young American couple, students, she presumed. The girl seemed agitated, as if the message from the loudspeaker had upset her in some way. Aisha’s practised medical eye took in the situation. The girl was under the influence of some drug; her pupils were dilated, her skin unnaturally flushed and she was sweating profusely, even in the artificial air-conditioned chill of the airport. The woman was overheating. It was stupid to be in such a state in Bangkok airport. She hoped the fool didn’t have any drugs on her. The girl began to cry.

Art’s whiteness had surprised her. His face, neck and arms were tanned from the unrelenting Asian heat, but the rest of his body was the hue of Arcadian marble. Her body had seemed almost obscenely dark next to his. She had allowed him to lead their lovemaking, had submitted to the sureness of his desire. At first, she was afraid that the amphetamines in her body would make her detached from the experience. Her own pleasure seemed muted, she could not give herself over to the rush of lust. Art’s body felt strange, foreign; she could not help comparing him to her husband. Hector was a better kisser. Art’s litheness, so attractive when he was dressed in his suit or his expertly chosen shirts and jackets, seemed almost too slight for her. She did not know how to hold him, where to put her hands. The smoothness of his body was distracting, so different from the carnality of Hector’s hirsute flesh. She closed her eyes and gave in, dropping her hands to her side. She allowed Art to explore her body. And then, as his hand moved between her legs, her body jolted, and she pressed herself against him. She was now part of the sex, not outside it, no longer remote but aroused by the unfamiliarity of him, his body, his smell, his cock, his breath, his hands, his skin. She opened her eyes and pushed him off her. His eyes expressed a momentary confusion until she straddled him and began to kiss his chest, his nipples, his neck, his chest again, tracing her tongue down his navel to his crotch. She took his penis into her mouth, heard his moan of pleasure. It felt slutty, dangerous. His salty masculine taste was in her mouth, on her face, she was enveloped in it.

The brevity of the flight, as always, came as a surprise. It took at least six hours to fly across the length of Australia but in less than half that time they had begun their descent into Denpasar. After the metropolitan sprawl of the airport in Bangkok, Bali’s international airport seemed provincial, easily navigable and not at all daunting. She paid her arrival tax and confidently followed the bilingual signs to the baggage carousel. Customs proved efficient. She was glad for the abrasive manners and countenance of the mainly Javanese security staff. She smiled to herself. It was a welcome to allow herself to be brisk, methodical, straightforward, after the suffocating politeness of the Thais. She had heard enough to know that she would expect similar courtesy from the Balinese. But at least, till she cleared customs, entered the street, she could be herself.

She had seen nothing of the countryside in Thailand and she was intoxicated by the lush colours and smells of the jungle as the car drove away from the congested city and up into the central mountains. Not that there was any stretch of land free from the presence of human settlement. Stalls lined both sides of the road selling a dizzying array of jewellery, ceramics, Hindu and Buddhist idols, trinkets and clothes. Dogs, hens and roosters darted out across the street and every few minutes their driver would furiously beep the horn to avoid hitting them. The air-conditioning was on full blast in the car but Aisha had wound down her window and was breathing in the rich, foetid aroma of the world outside. Hector and the driver were discussing Ubud but she was only half-paying attention. She was aware that the driver had started some harangue about Muslims. She caught his eye looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

The first thing she did after they were shown to their room was to ask Hector to fuck her. Hector responded to the urgency of her request; he kissed her roughly, biting her lip, exactly what she wanted from him. Moaning, she turned around and lay on her stomach on the bed. He pulled her underpants off, forced her legs apart, she heard him unzip, the tearing open of a condom packet, and then his cock was entering her. She gritted her teeth, choked back a cry as he pushed hard inside her, the pain slicing her, the sensation exactly what she wanted, needed, what she deserved. She took one, two, three, four shallow gulps of air, winced, and then she was above the pain. Hector was now a jackhammer, slamming into her, she was full of him, as much in her belly as in her cunt, she buried her face into the coverlet, her outstretched hands were clutching at the sheets, the fabric coiled around her fingers: she wanted him to fill her completely. He was smashing into her, tearing her apart, destroying her and putting her back together. She was crying from the pain and from the relief. She was still nowhere near arousal when he climaxed—he came with a roar, not touching her—but she let out a loud, grateful moan. He fell on top of her and she savoured the heaviness of his wet body over hers. He had made her his again.

Over the next few days she fell in love with Ubud. The town itself consisted of a cluster of villages and she and Hector immediately fell into a routine that consisted of having a tropical breakfast served on the balcony of their room, then taking a long walk through the forests or the villages, before coming back at noon for a swim in the art deco pool at the hotel. The water was fresh and clean, and Aisha loved standing underneath the tall battered stone statue of a laughing, reclining Buddha which poured water into the pool. After their swim they would have a drink by the pool, read, and then stroll into town for lunch. After lunch there would be more exploration of the countryside, or the crowded market where freshly slaughtered meat and plump fruit and vegetables were sold to the villagers while the tourists strolled through the walkways above, bartering for fake designer watches, rolls of cheap fabrics, and small faux-silver and bronze icons. In the late afternoon they would return to their hotel, have another swim to refresh themselves, and then wander the main street for a place to eat. The stroll returning home in the afternoon became her favourite time of day. They would take a zigzag path, follow the tiny alleys that took them past courtyards where, in the cooling shade of evening, young women would light incense and proffer offerings to the shrines of their ancestors. In the back streets they were not bothered by touts, or the surly desperate drivers. They would be largely ignored except for a shy smile from the young women, a polite grin from workmen and the pealing laughter of the old women and children. Hello, hello, the children would call out to them in their sing-song English, Where you from? They would fall about laughing when told they were Australian and a boy would invariably call out a mangled, Goodday, while another would mime the hops of a kangaroo.

The peace was shattered on their third night with their first argument. The day had begun badly. Hector had woken her before breakfast with a silly, lascivious grin on his face and his fat erection poking in her thigh. She had submitted to his lovemaking—penance for her adultery, the thought wickedly and shamefully crossing her mind as her husband mounted her—but she resisted his roughness. She could see his puzzlement: delighted by her animal hunger on that first day, he had no doubt assumed that she was willing to indulge what she found the most prurient of his appetites—to dominate her, to get off on the aggression in sex. But she felt unable to be reckless and realised that she resented his assumption. She felt like a whore; after Art Hector was now fucking her like a whore. With her consent, yes, even with her encouragement. But as he slobbered over her while she attempted to bring herself fully into consciousness, all she felt was a repulsion for the absurd theatrics of his lust. They were not newly-weds, adolescents embarking on a new affair. They were husband and wife, parents. She rolled out from underneath him as soon as he had climaxed and left him lying naked on the bed, embarrassed and resentful while she went into the openair bathroom, splashed water on her face and looked into the mirror. She felt lousy. And her period was coming.

Until she had got Hector back to their hotel room, time ceased to be what she knew it as; it became impossible to comprehend. Time was both compressed and infinite, impossible to follow. She must have paid the bill, she must have somehow convinced her husband to get to his feet, must have struggled with him along Monkey Forest Road, or had she led him along the path by hand, as if he were a child? Later, much later, she would awake from nightmares that she knew were memories of that night. All she knew was that there was the street, the struggle to be home, the confused faces of the touts, the hawkers, the drivers, the tourists, and then they were in their room, he was sitting on the bed and she was kneeling before him and he had placed his arms around her, still distraught, still weeping, holding her tighter than he had ever held her before, his breath hot on her face, spittle, tears, saliva dripping around her neck and shoulders. Slowly, very slowly, time began to fall back into itself, to become recognisable again. Hector stopped howling. His sobs now came intermittently, with deep, shuddering breaths. She was conscious that her right calf was cramping, could hear the ticking of her watch, a Western pop tune playing from somewhere in the back of the hotel. She sat on the floor and rubbed her leg. Hector blew his nose and threw the sodden handkerchief to the floor. He rubbed his eyes. His voice, when he spoke, surprised her. It was firm, controlled.

It was a relief to be back in the muggy Ubud streets, away from Hector, away from his need for her. She ordered nasi goreng from a small, crowded café and sat outside on a crate looking across at the rice fields over the road. It would be a full moon the night after next and every stalk of grass, every tree, leaf and branch, every silhouette of a house or a temple was clearly etched in the radiant silver light. An American voice said something loud, sharply, from inside the café, and she gave herself over to fantasising. She was with Art, she had come to Montreal. He fell into her arms. He would divorce his wife and she would divorce Hector. She would learn French, they would open a practice in the city and both work only half-time. They would have long weekends in New York City. Then she thought of her children and brushed the sweet, impossible fantasy aside. She picked up her order and walked back to the hotel.

They talked for hours, lying next to each other on the bed. Hector had ripped through his meal, ravenous, and then he had begun to talk. He talked first about Hugo, about how he did not hate the little boy. It is impossible to hate a child, he said, and she agreed. He did talk about his anger at Rosie and Gary. He was sceptical about their professed commitment to active parenting, to the supposed enlightened and child-focused philosophies that underpinned Rosie’s approach to motherhood. Hugo is lonely, Hector argued, and what he really needs is a brother or a sister, cousins, kids to put him in his place. He spends too much time around fucking adults. But Gary’s too selfish to have another child. Aisha agreed.

It took three hours to drive through the mountains to Amed on the east coast of the island. They had booked an apartment that had looked reasonable and well-serviced in the photographs on the internet and when they arrived they were glad to find that it was indeed clean, luxurious, cheap and very close to the beach. There were very few tourists in Amed, no ATMs, and every time they sauntered down the main street or walked along the beach they were accosted by good-natured young men asking them if they were hungry, did they want to snorkel, would they like a trip out to sea on one of the boats? But for all the haggling and desperate bartering, for all the half-finished construction, the paucity of technology, she liked Amed. She liked the still, warm waters of the sea, the smells of fish frying in the early evening, the sight of elderly cloaked women walking their goats and pigs on the eroded hills that fell down to the sea. On their first night they did little more than eat a hurried meal at a small restaurant on the beach. And the moon was not quite full but it still looked holy and magnificent perched over the choppy night waters.

That night they saw the full moon over Amed. After their swim together, her mood lightened but she had not yet forgiven him. They spent the afternoon apart, Hector reading and swimming, Aisha taking a long walk along the coast road that cut through four or five villages. Everyone was busily preparing for the night’s festivities. The women and girls sought shelter from the burning sun under the shared verandah of the village compounds, where they were busy cooking the delicious array of sweets and spiced cakes to be offered to the gods and ancestors; the men and boys were in the temples, sitting in circles, praying, each wearing a brightly coloured tunic and a sharp-cornered triangular headdress. Only the very young children followed Aisha, practising their English on her, a weird amalgam of Australian colloquialisms and American hip-hop slang. At one point, feeling the fierce dry heat, she sat near a well and listened to the conversations of the women and children. She felt peace in watching the preparations for the religious festival, their Hinduism both reassuringly familiar and strangely exotic. Aisha’s upbringing had not been religious—both her parents were determined secularists. Their religion was democracy—the labyrinthine devotions of Hinduism were almost an embarrassment to them. But Aisha’s paternal grandmother had been devout and as a little girl she had delighted in assisting her Nani prepare the daily sweetmeats and rich milk desserts for the gods. Then her Nani died and religion went the way of fairytales and dolls, the stuff of childhood to be forgotten. Eavesdropping on the Balinese now she felt neither nostalgia nor loss. She did not even feel that way in a Hindu temple in India itself. She simply enjoyed the serenity of ritual and family. As the sun began to drop in the sky she gathered her bag and walked briskly back to the hotel. Sweat was streaming down her face and as she opened the gate she nearly collided with a young maid coming down the steps to offer fruit and cake to the ancestors. Aisha bowed to the girl, muttered permisi, and watched her place the laden banana leaf onto the first step. The girl flicked a match and lit the incense.

They returned to the same restaurant in the village where they had gone for dinner on their first night in Amed. The owner, a chatty young man called Wayan, had impressed them both with his charm and humour. At first they had both thought him still only an adolescent, but as they were about to leave that first night he’d introduced them to his two young sons. The food that night was excellent, delectable and spicy, cooked by Wayan’s wife who’d remained invisible in the kitchen. Seeing them again tonight, Wayan greeted them with delighted laughter and led them onto the beach, sat them at the table closest to the water. This full moon night he’d swapped his denim shorts and fake Mossimo T-shirt for traditional ceremonial dress. Two Italian men seated at the table directly under the shade of a palm tree, nodded to them as they were seated. They were young, heavily tanned, as if they had spent months under the Asian sun. She and Hector ordered beers and she sat back in her chair, watching the last of the sun disappear in the horizon.

She did not feel normal again until they were home, until she walked out into Melbourne Airport and saw her children. She scooped them both into her arms, smelt them, Adam’s bracing, earthy scent, Melissa smelling girly and fresh, of the honey and almond soap that Koula used; they both smelt of garlic and lemon and of her in-laws’ home. She wanted to take them away, for them all to be together as a family. This was life, this was what mattered, this was what made all the concessions and compromises and defeats worthwhile. She could not let them go, held her daughter’s hand in the car, kept sweeping her hand across Adam’s hair. They chatted away to her, interrupting, arguing, calling each other names, telling her about school and sports and Giagia and Pappou and about the cat and about football and about dancing lessons and about Australian Idol and their friends and their trip to the cinema and she took it all in and wanted to hear about it again and again. She had missed out on two weeks of their young lives. The moon over Amed, the rich smells and succulent food, the hours lazing in the sun, none of that compared to the two weeks she had missed out of her children’s lives. She couldn’t help herself squeezing their knees, kissing them, touching them. Melbourne unfolded tediously and grimly as they drove down the freeway towards the city. It looked like a carcass that had been out in the sun for too long, stripped of life, of meat, of texture, of smell. But when Manolis dropped them all off in front of their house she had to stop herself from crying with relief.

She swiftly cut up the vegetables for a quick, simple curry. Hector arrived, drunk, and she stopped herself from snapping at him. While he was showering and the kids were squabbling over the television, she rang Sandi. She was trying not to think of Rosie. She scrolled down on her phone till she got Sandi’s name on the screen—thank God, Manolis did not understand mobiles or he would have seen straight through her lie about Sandi’s number. Sandi’s name appeared on the screen. Aisha paused, then pressed for the number. The phone began to dial. It did feel like a betrayal. The woman’s voice on the other end took her by surprise.

‘What should I tell Rosie?’

Hector and the kids were asleep when she got home. Tipsy, she flew through brushing her teeth, combing her hair, getting ready for bed. She slipped under the blankets next to her husband and his arms automatically closed around her. You’re cold, he complained. Warm me up, she urged, and pushed her arse hard against him. She groped behind her with her hand and started rubbing his soft cock, playing with the wrinkled folds of his foreskin. He pushed her hand away. I’m asleep, he mumbled. She lay there, listening to him breathe. She had wanted him to fuck her so she could close her eyes and pretend he was Art. She lay there, hoping for sleep. After ten minutes she rose and headed for the bathroom. She took a Temazepam and headed back to bed.

The next morning was a Sunday. Hector had, so rare for him, risen before her. She staggered out of bed and the first thing she did was ring Rosie and arrange to meet for a coffee in Queens Parade. She could not shake off the grogginess from the sleeping pill, even after her shower. Hector had made breakfast for her and the kids and she feasted ravenously on his cheese and tomato sandwiches, enjoying the buttered toast, the thick, gooey, sticky cheese. He made her seconds and she was late getting to the Q Café. Rosie was sitting at the table reading the Sunday paper. She jumped up and rushed over to Aisha, hugging her tight, all the time calling out her name.

Aisha did not go straight home. She drove to work, switched on the office lights and fired up her computer. While waiting for the screen to come up she walked into the kennel room. The cages were spotless, all lined with newspaper and clean towels. The floor too was shining. Connie or Tracey must have buffed it after their Saturday shift. She sat on a stool and looked across at one of the drip machines. This was a game she sometimes played with herself; not only when she was sad or confused. It was a method she had come to, a way of stilling her mind. She would imagine how she would kill herself if there was the need to. She would go to the drug cabinet and fill a sixty-milligram syringe with Lethobarb. She would inject the green liquid anaesthetic into a bag of saline solution and then attach the bag to the drip. She would click the drip rate to maximum. Then she would insert a catheter in her vein, probably her left arm, and she would then connect herself to the drip. An emerald death. She would fall asleep, she would die. She still believed it was the most humane method to euthanase an animal; and what were humans if not animals? She’d seen enough of death, her work dealt in death as well as life, and she had no romance left in her for suffering. She knew that there was always a way out and she felt at peace. She walked out of the dark of the kennel room and into the office.