I knew I was pregnant before I did the test, but I didn’t tell Eddie. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even go to Dr Shaw. I knew what he’d say, and it would start with: ‘Congratulations!’

I’d been pregnant once before, not long after we were married, and everyone got so excited and started buying things, and then I miscarried and let them all down.

Dr Shaw would want to see me in six weeks. ‘Eat properly, stop drinking, don’t smoke.’

I hadn’t smoked since I’d given up the last time, and not drinking is as easy as filling an empty can with water.

I think at the start I kept it a secret because of what had happened before, when everybody knew too soon, so when I lost the baby everybody had to know that too. The nurses said it was a common thing, but I still felt like it was my fault. Something I’d done unintentionally, or something that was wrong with me that would come to light after two or three more messed-up goes. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ they said, but that just made me think that under the surface they were blaming me a bit as well.

‘It just wasn’t meant to be,’ Eddie said, but he was gutted, and he made no secret of that. He wanted children more than I did—sooner than I did. I imagined them a way off in the future with the boat ramp and the outside shower, but Now was the time for Eddie. Now was the time for everyone.

‘Have them young,’ Leonie said. ‘So you can enjoy them.’

‘No good waiting till you’re too old to kick the footy about with your son,’ Tom said.

And it would be a son. They’d decided that. And they’d decide it again if I gave them the chance.

I reckoned I had at least twelve weeks. Three months, before I’d start to show. Before I’d have to tell. A lot can happen in twelve weeks, I thought.

And a lot did.

Mary left. She didn’t give much notice. She just came in one night and handed an envelope to Shirley. There was no leaving party. They didn’t even do a whip-round to buy her a card. ‘That’s the problem with that type,’ Shirley said. ‘Transients. They never stay long. You just get them trained up properly and they bugger off.’

I thought it would be nice to be a transient. To sail into town and work a while, then move on whenever I felt like it—when the town grew boring or if the people weren’t so nice.

It was time to go, Muddy had said. The cyclone season was over, so they could come out of the river now and push up north. They had a plan and it slotted in with the seasons.

‘I couldn’t live like that,’ Eddie said.

I could.

Mary and I said goodbye at the factory gate where Muddy waited on the yellow scooter which came apart and folded into pieces they stored somewhere on the boat, so they could take it everywhere they went.

Mary and I hugged for a long time and promised each other we’d write. ‘You’ve been like a sister,’ is the last thing she said to me before they zipped away, and I cried all the way home.

‘It’s not like you knew her that well,’ Eddie said, and he was right, I hadn’t known her that well, we hadn’t really been like sisters, and I’d always known she’d leave, but I hadn’t expected it to be so soon, and I hadn’t thought that it would feel so much like curtains closing.

Mary was a small bird on the windowsill. In catching your eye, she showed you the view, let in the fresh air and the what-could-be. Not that I wanted what she had, but I envied her wings.

I cried on and off all morning, and most of that afternoon. I didn’t want Eddie’s baby. A Carney County baby that would keep me in Winifred for the rest of my life. A little Lamb who’d go to the same school Eddie and I went to, to be taught by the same teachers. Running home to ask me what one of them might have meant when they said, ‘I remember your mum very well!’ School runs would drag us back into the heart of town, the yellow of the egg, claggy with not-belonging.

The bar was coming down on the roller-coaster of what-would-be. I felt like I had till the count of ten, and then there’d be no getting off.