Acknowledgements

Thank you Séamus, Anna and Alice for being born. All characters are fictional.

Thank you to all of my friends who have inspired and motivated me over the years with sparkling and tough con­versations, including but not limited to Ricky Morton, Candice Gallimore, Kylie Dunn, Shannon Molloy, Katherine Feeney, Tulsi Combe and Maria Lewis. Thank you in particular to my early readers Georgia Waters and Veronica Foulkes. I also owe a deep gratitude to Australia’s premier group chat.

To Christopher and Philomena Jabour – nobody says it enough – you are wonderful parents.

My agent Jeanne Ryckmans seemed to make magic happen, and Angela Meyer took my draft and made it a book. I am also indebted to Clive Hebard and Penny Isaac who were the midwives at the end; and the talented Alissa Dinallo for her striking cover design.

Helen Garner allowed a few of her devastating sentences to be used in this book, for which I am deeply grateful.

And finally, to my husband, who was the first person I gave this book to and still hasn’t finished reading it but who makes me cleverer and funnier every day; and to my son, who did absolutely nothing, but whom I feel the need to acknowledge nonetheless.