When Isla rang the bell, Ken called out, ‘Who could that be?’ in a singsong voice that made Noah giggle. Then Ken opened the door and said, ‘Look at that! It’s Noah!’ and swept the boy up in his tattooed arms, ignoring Oscar and Isla.

  Noah shrieked, grinning as he dangled upside down in Ken’s grip.

  Oscar watched with wonder. Who were these men who liked children? How could he become one of them?

  When Isla was pregnant, other parents had warned him that having a child changed everything. But after she gave birth, the problem wasn’t that things had changed—the problem was that Oscar hadn’t. He enjoyed the same activities: watching the cricket, playing video games and sleeping in on weekends, all of which were now impossible most of the time. And while he’d expected to transform into a devoted father the moment he saw his child, he found himself simply staring. Probing around the edges of the dark void where the love was supposed to be.

  ‘We’ll be back on Monday afternoon,’ Isla was saying. ‘I reckon around three, but it could be as late as four.’

  ‘No rush.’ Ken beamed at Noah.

  Oscar and Isla each hugged Noah goodbye. He stiffened in Oscar’s grip, as always—scared of his own father.

  Then Oscar and Isla drove away in chilly silence. He told himself that after this weekend, things would be different. This weekend, Felicity would be his.

  FELICITY

  ‘This place has hardly changed in twenty years,’ Dom said wistfully.

  Felicity looked around at the fluffy pollen blanketing the deserted car park. She knew her husband suffered from hay fever. ‘You must have spent most of your time sneezing.’

  ‘Yep. Back then, I couldn’t afford the good antihistamines. But now …’ Dom took a deep breath through his nose. ‘Ta-da!’

  ‘Bravo,’ Felicity said drily.

  Dom was always talking about the things he owned. When they first met, Felicity had assumed he was bragging: I came from nothing, now I have everything, look how great I am. She’d actually found it attractive, the way he wasn’t embarrassed by his wealth. It helped that he was attractive in every other way, too. Thick brown hair, deep blue eyes. A head taller than her and square-jawed, with a heavy brow and broad shoulders. Today he was wearing a buttoned Hugo Boss shirt, but he still looked a bit like a sexy caveman.

  She understood him better now. Bragging was designed to impress other people, and Dom didn’t care what other people thought—he was just expressing gratitude. He was that rare kind of man who appreciated what he had, instead of always wishing for something better.

  Felicity wrapped her coat more tightly around her body. ‘Why are we meeting here?’

  ‘Old times’ sake.’

  ‘We look pretty shady, adults hanging around a high school. We might get in trouble with the cops.’

  He leered at her. ‘You could pass for a high school student.’

  She tried to look affronted. ‘Well then, you’d be in even bigger trouble, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’m sure you could get me off.’

  She laughed. ‘Oi! No funny business. That’s my job.’

  Dom winked. ‘Just providing extra material, sweetheart.’

  She often made fun of him during her set. ‘I’ve discovered a life hack,’ she’d whisper into the mic, then pause, luring the audience in. ‘It turns out, being a wife is way easier than being a hooker.’ A single awkward chuckle from the darkness beyond the stage. ‘For starters, you only have the one client. It’s very easy to remember his name. I get it right, like, eight times out of ten.’ Laughter, from more people, a little more comfortable now. ‘And his fetishes,’ she’d continue. ‘No more wondering, Is this the guy who likes being spanked, or is it the guy who’s into feet? Now I know straight away: it’s both! It’s always both. “You want me to kick you in the arse, honey? Just like last night, and the night before? Okey-dokey, you’re the client—I mean, husband!”’

  Like all the best bits, this had a sprinkle of truth but was completely deniable. She’d never been a sex worker, but in high school she’d charged a boy twenty bucks to touch her boob. She had accidentally said ‘James’ when she meant ‘Dom’, but only once. And Dom was indifferent to spanking, but he did love her feet; she got a lot of massages.

  While she mimed a mixture of kicking and mock-sexy dancing on the stage, Dom would be in the crowd, laughing uproariously alongside all the uncomfortable-looking friends for whom he’d bought tickets. That was the other thing she loved about him: he didn’t mind being the butt of a joke.

  Now, in the car park, she got out her journal and scribbled a note. Butt of a joke. She was sure she could work that into the spank-fetish routine.

  ‘If the cops handcuffed us,’ Dom was saying, ‘could you use your old circus skills to get us out?’

  ‘I was a clown,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, but …’ He trailed off. This car park was adjacent to the high school campus, close enough that the buildings were visible through the fence. Dom was frowning at some kids lounging under an awning, hypnotised by their phones. ‘What are primary school students doing here?’

  ‘Oh, sweetie.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Those are high school students.’

  ‘What?’ He squinted. ‘No way. Those children are ten at the most.’

  ‘They look ten to you, because you’re an old, old, old …’

  He swiped at her, and she leaped out of reach.

  ‘… old, old, old man,’ she finished, laughing.

  He chuckled. ‘Okay, give me a break.’

  She wrapped her arms around his waist, tilted her chin and kissed him on his stubbly cheek. ‘Never.’

  A dented hatchback turned into the car park. Isla and Oscar were here. Felicity felt her good mood slip away, like the sun disappearing behind a cloud.

  There were two types of sexiness, in her experience—the type that needed you, and the type that didn’t. Dom had the second type. He was a rugged, independent man who loved Felicity but nevertheless gave the impression he’d be just fine without her. They’d first met two years ago, after she’d quit the circus and found a job as a sales assistant at a Wagga Wagga car dealership. Dom asked her out just after buying a Jaguar from her. ‘Maybe you could take me for a test drive sometime,’ he said, spinning the key on one finger. It was the sort of line that Felicity usually rolled her eyes at, but he made it work. His smile seemed to suggest that if she turned him down, it would be her loss.

  They’d really clicked, and Dom proposed after only four months of dating. His family hadn’t liked her much, particularly his grumpy old father, but that seemed to work in Felicity’s favour—Dom became her defender, her champion. It was them against the world. They got married at a vineyard in the Hunter Valley, honeymooned in the Maldives, and came home to Dom’s beautiful house in Warrigal. After a senior partner at his company had a stroke, Dom got promoted, and suddenly they had even more money. Felicity quit her job to focus on comedy. Dom showered her with gifts on Valentine’s Day, her birthday, their anniversary, Christmas, and sometimes for no reason at all. She had never been so happy.

  Soon Dom got bored with the Jaguar and went out to buy a Tesla. Felicity waited outside the dealership, while he went in to sign the paperwork. When she glanced up from her phone, she saw him talking to the pretty young woman behind the counter. The woman was laughing. Felicity wondered if it was just the Jaguar Dom was getting tired of.

  That night, at the party, she told him she was going out the back to check on Oscar. She made sure to take a suspiciously long time. She talked loudly, hoping to lure Dom out. She wanted him to see them together, to realise what he had, and what he might lose.

  Oscar was so pathetic that it was almost a turn-on. He had the other kind of sexiness, the kind that was desperate, hungry. Manipulating him was unexpectedly thrilling. Some well-chosen words, some seemingly innocent body language, and then, bam! This total stranger was in love with her. Kissing her. Betraying his wife with her. Why couldn’t she seduce her own husband as easily as someone else’s?

  Dom hadn’t come out into the backyard. Felicity had left Oscar there. She’d expected him to forget about the kiss once he’d sobered up; instead, he’d become obsessed. He liked every single one of her posts on social media. He texted her in the middle of the night. She deleted the messages and blocked his number, but the more she retreated, the more desperate he became. She seemed to be the fulcrum on which his whole world was balanced. He sent emails. Turned up at her shows. Once he even came to the house with a bunch of flowers, in the middle of the day when Dom was at work. Felicity had pretended not to be home and Oscar had gone away, but not before her nosy neighbour spotted him.

  Oscar wasn’t sexy anymore. He was like a drowning man who would grab hold of anyone who got too close and take them down with him.

  She hadn’t told Dom about the kiss, because she didn’t want to admit she’d been trying to make him jealous. She couldn’t allow herself to seem needy. But the longer she waited, the more impossible it became. If he found out now, he would surely wonder if she’d led Oscar on, not just that night but in the months since. What’s more, Dom might start looking more closely at her background. He might figure out why she’d left Warrigal to join the circus, all those years ago.

  She remembered how fast things fell apart with James, the boy she’d dated in her late teens. She couldn’t let the same thing happen with Dom. But it would be hard to keep him if he thought she had cheated. He was rich, handsome and childless: he could find a new wife in a heartbeat.

  Felicity had been lost before she’d found Dom. Nothing she did felt meaningful. She’d told outrageous lies out of boredom. She had friends and boyfriends but only pretended to like them, and never thought of them when they weren’t around. At school, she used to think that if the Rapture happened and her friends vanished, she would shrug it off. She wondered if she was even capable of love.

  Now she knew she was—and she refused to give it up.

  Isla got out of the car first. ‘Hi, guys!’ she called. As usual, she wore clothes that concealed her body from head to toe: a baseball cap, a high-neck long-sleeve top that covered not only her wrists but also the heels of her palms, and loose pants that hung over closed-toe shoes. Perhaps she was sensitive to the sun, despite her dark skin.

  She hugged Felicity, squeezing tight enough to make her ribs creak. Isla had represented Warrigal High School in the state athletics championship, along with Dom, Cole and Clementine. None of them seemed to know their own strength.

  ‘I like your hair,’ Isla said.

  Felicity touched the back of her head. ‘Thanks.’ She’d cut her red locks to shoulder-length and straightened them in preparation for this weekend.

  Isla hugged Dom next, but not as tightly or for as long. Her affection looked forced, although Dom didn’t seem to notice. There had always been something off about that relationship. When Felicity queried it, Dom had said he dated Isla ‘very, very briefly’ in high school. Felicity had asked others, who’d confirmed this, but no one would explain the undercurrent of tension, the one Dom didn’t seem to notice. She went through his old social media posts, but he hadn’t joined Facebook until 2011, so there was nothing from high school. All Isla’s profiles were set to private; after Felicity’s friend requests were accepted, she found that the woman hadn’t posted anything prior to 2009—or had deleted her old posts. Even now, she seemed camera-shy: all her photos were of Noah, not herself.

  Oscar came over. He always looked a bit drawn, with dark hollows under his grey eyes, a permanent slouch in his lean body, curly ginger hair often stuck to his forehead. Now his hair was neater, but in his tattered, stained green coat, he still looked like he should be holding a cardboard sign that said THE END IS NIGH.

  ‘Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie,’ Dom said cheerfully, extending a hand.

  Oscar shook it stiffly, then opened his arms to hug Felicity. She couldn’t avoid it without arousing suspicion, so she forced a smile and spread her arms.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he whispered, his face buried in her hair.

  She slipped out of his grip, skin crawling, and patted the envelope in her pocket. Two more days, she thought. Then he’ll be out of my life forever.

  COLE

  Cole hit the brakes too hard, so he and Clementine jolted against their seatbelts. The car came to a stop at a slight angle, not quite parallel to his best friend’s Tesla.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Cole asked anxiously.

  Clementine brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes. ‘Are you?’

  He forced a laugh. ‘Yeah, sorry. Just excited.’

  She squeezed his thigh. ‘It’s okay. Me too.’

  Cole was a careful driver. He’d aced his driving test on the first go and never once received an infringement notice. But with his old high school friends watching, he was self-conscious. And the leather bag on the back seat was distracting him. The contents of the side pocket were like a magnet, messing with his internal compass.

  Even in an almost-empty car park, Cole couldn’t bring himself to leave the car crooked. He reversed slowly, giving the Tesla a wide berth.

  It was ridiculous, in Cole’s opinion, for Dom to have bought an electric car when there were no charging stations in Warrigal. But Dom was like that. He’d drop thousands of dollars on something just to show that he could.

  Cole looked out the window. Dom was wrapped in an expensive-looking sports jacket. Felicity had her arm around him. She’d straightened her curly hair, and wore a T-shirt and cut-off jeans despite the cold. Isla looked elegant as always, even though she was dressed like a nun, almost every centimetre of her flawless brown skin covered. Oscar was gaunt and hunched, his grey eyes flicking left and right. He’d changed his hair, too: it was short at the back and the sides, like Cole’s. Cole suspected the similarity was deliberate.

  ‘You think this will be the last time we’re all together?’ Clementine asked suddenly.

  He glanced over. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because …’ She trailed off, like she didn’t want to jinx anything.

  He got it now. ‘Could be,’ he said, and smiled. ‘We’ll be a bit busy next year.’

  Clementine smiled too, absently rubbing her abdomen. After several rounds of IVF, she’d gained a little weight in her breasts and belly, like she was carrying already. But Cole wasn’t holding his breath—they’d been disappointed so many times.

  He found it hard to picture her pregnant. In high school she’d been thin and pale, and even when she started building muscle for her career as a fitness model, she still felt small. After their wedding, he carried her into the honeymoon suite without breaking a sweat. When they made love he always held back, afraid of hurting her. Even her wispy blonde hair broke easily.

  Sometimes he worried this was why they couldn’t conceive. ‘Your swimmers aren’t quite strong enough,’ the fertility specialist had said. But maybe Cole’s sperm weren’t weak—they were reluctant. They could sense he thought of his wife as fragile and were waiting for a sturdier vessel.

  He got out of the car and opened the door for Clementine. ‘Howdy,’ he said to the others, as though he’d been transformed into a cowboy.

  Clementine squealed and hugged Isla like they hadn’t seen each other in years, even though they’d had brunch together twice that week. Clementine hugged Felicity too, then Oscar, then Dom, who also got a peck on the cheek.

  Clementine was the lynchpin of the group—the one who organised activities in the group chat. River swims on sunny days, hikes when it was cold, board games when it rained. Once they had a baby, Cole realised, they wouldn’t just leave the group: they’d shatter it.

  He didn’t hug or kiss anybody; he just fist-bumped Oscar and Dom. He was pleased to see them, but it wasn’t manly to say so.

  ‘This place is exactly the same,’ Clementine said, looking around with wonder.

  ‘I was just saying that!’ Dom exclaimed.

  ‘Remember that time we cling-wrapped Mr Heinrich’s car?’ Clementine peered through the fence at the school. ‘It was stuck here for hours before he could get the doors open.’

  ‘I remember that!’ Isla said, guffawing.

  So did Cole. It hadn’t seemed very funny at the time—kind of mean, actually. But fifteen years later, he found himself laughing along, not because it was clever but because it was a shared memory. The past was like that, tragedy becoming comedy. Sometimes he heard a song from his youth on the radio, and even though he’d hated it back then, he’d sing along. The act of remembering gave him joy.

  ‘What took you guys so long?’ Isla lowered her aviators and raised a thick eyebrow at Clementine.

  Felicity made an O with her thumb and forefinger, then jabbed her other forefinger into the hole. Dom, Isla and Oscar laughed, and Cole felt himself start to blush. He avoided Isla’s gaze. Funny, he thought, how taking thirty-somethings back to their old school makes them act like teenagers.

  Clementine’s hands flew to her mouth. She gave them all a mock-scandalised look.

  ‘Sorry, I was just making sure I put everything in,’ Cole said, a bit defensively. He thought again of the bag, its side pocket.

  ‘I’ll bet,’ Felicity said.

  He blushed even harder. ‘I meant I was packing.’

  ‘You sure are.’ She glanced at his crotch.

  He dared not say anything else in case she twisted his words again.

  She held up her palms. ‘Hey, you’re adults. You’re allowed to have sex.’

  ‘We weren’t having—’ Cole decided to change the subject. ‘Are you sure the electric car will make it up the mountain?’

  ‘I would have brought the Jag,’ Dom said. ‘But my wife had other ideas.’

  Felicity rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a scratch.’

  ‘It’s a dent.’

  ‘I had right of way. That bollard should have been watching where it was going.’