Her new life begins immediately. There is no preamble, no settling in. She is put to work in the shop, cooking, serving, cleaning up, and it is hard and physical and the hours long. The work itself doesn’t daunt her – she has worked in cafés on and off since she left childhood – but something in Michael does. Overnight, her sweet-talking paramour has turned into her boss. It takes her by surprise: the edge to his voice when he speaks to her around customers, an impatience when he asks for eggs or tomatoes or if she is too slow adding up the bill. She tries to learn quickly, how thinly to cut the potatoes, how many chips in a serve. But the shop is busy and the pregnancy slows her down. In north Queensland the heat starts to build in early spring, just as her belly begins to balloon, so the heaviness she feels is doubled.

She tries not to notice his off-handedness. Works quietly beside him as he plunges baskets of fish into boiling oil, flips hamburgers and eggs, drags crates of soft drink and milk to the low fridge where she bends to arrange them. Men from the local Greek community come and go; if it’s quiet he will stop and drink coffee with them, the black syrupy liquid that looks like tar. She watches from behind the counter, trying to interpret their gabble, as her mother would call it. Tries not to feel excluded. In the sound of their voices and their laughter, the relaxed arrangement of their limbs, she sees what she is missing, the easy affection.

And there’s this: the looks the men give her, the unashamed appraisals as she brings the coffee Michael calls for. Her cheeks burn as she walks away. She imagines them thinking: easy Australian girl. She’d assumed they’d be married by now, but Michael makes excuses: the shop is too busy, can’t she see he is trying to make money? But by September she can no longer tolerate it. She thinks of her family, their opinions and expectations, but also of the girls she grew up with, her sisters and cousins – the white dresses and veils they’d planned, the bridesmaids, the flowers. And insists on a wedding, just a quiet ceremony, but in a church. Not the Godless government office Michael suggests. She wants this union to be blessed, even if she doesn’t know the pastor or the words he will speak over their heads. The marriage will feel real, a solid thing, if it’s solemnised in a church, even if there are no bridesmaids, no dress, no party.

They are married on a Friday morning, in a Methodist church as her parents had been, a squat building of reassuring brick. It isn’t the wedding her sisters will have, the one she’d imagined in quiet moments at The Palms, when everything seemed possible. They repeat simple vows and sign the marriage register. There is no shower of rice as they emerge through the arched doorway into the glare of an ordinary, unchanged Friday, no excited kisses or handshakes, no camera flash. But that doesn’t stop the rush of happiness she feels at the cheap gold band on her finger, at her new legal status and name. Mrs Yvonne Preneas. At last.

This sustains her for a while, but in the months ahead she will remember these moments in the church, his accented vows, their names signed together, and she will be stunned that he hid himself so well. That she could know a man, marry him, carry his child, with no notion that he could not read or write. The knowledge is not sudden, but accumulates in her: he can manage a signature, simple arithmetic, and there are words he knows by heart, but she begins to notice the letters that go unanswered until a younger Greek friend is around, the labels he asks him to read, a notice from the landlord he thrusts into her hands as if he isn’t interested. She feels the shock of this knowledge in her body, but especially in the part of her that is still hungry for learning, still mourns the loss of it, the part that is proud, nevertheless, of what her brain can do. She feels a new flush of sadness for him, and embarrassment, and disquiet.

The only real change the marriage makes is inside her head. It’s just one word and it’s almost enough: respectable. As if the marriage has made her legitimate, as well as her baby. But it hasn’t brought the old Michael back to her; if anything, he is colder and more distant than before. Several nights a week after the café closes, he goes to the card tables down near the wharf. She has no idea what time he comes in; exhaustion sinks her in sleep so deep she hears and feels nothing. In the morning she tries to ignore the sour twist to his mouth when he wakes.

As her eighteenth birthday comes and goes at the end of October with no acknowledgement from him, she begins to wonder if the fault is with her. The bulbous shape this baby has made of her, the puffiness in her face, the shapeless dresses. He doesn’t even look at her the way he once did; his hand rarely brushes her face or her thigh. When something goes wrong – they run out of lettuce, she isn’t quick enough wrapping the fish or clearing the plates – and he swears at her in Greek, she blames herself or the heat or the long hours at the stove.

In the last month of her pregnancy his absences begin to lengthen. He closes the shop early and disappears with some of the Greek men to Innisfail, not returning until morning. Saturday night turns into Sunday and still he is not home. Sometimes he is happy as a lark when he returns to the tiny flat above the shop, he is all tender embraces and smiles and caresses, gentle. These times feel like a reward. But more often his face is shadowed, his eyes hard and looking for any failure in her, any lack. She tries to accommodate this mood; makes sure her hair is combed, her cheap maternity smocks clean and the flat presentable. Tries to ignore the hard line of his mouth, his dismissiveness. But she quickly learns it isn’t enough, that perfection is not what he wants then, that in fact he needs imperfection in her, something to rail against, to punish. Still, she tries; her fear and youth dictate it. But it makes no difference. She endures the shouting and insults, the frightening anger. When the inevitable happens and the shouts turn into slaps she is almost, almost expecting it.