My Rostered Day Off is an island of calm in the month which I swim towards with growing desperation as another four weeks reaches its culmination . Yesterday it was marred by caffeine and a disturbing reread of Peter Goldsworthy's Three Dog Night- a novel about jealousy, the secret seed of destruction that lies at the heart of the empire of happiness. I have read this book before and because I know what happens, because this prior read puts me in a position to see the signs of ruin rising like a tide towards the happy love affair at the centre of things, I found it almost impossible to bring myself to repeat some sections. Maybe it's a bit too close to home.

For example: Freyja and Zaf's birthday party. We are up at her father's place at Peats Ridge, drinking around a fire under the stars- I go to bed early because I have to get up in the morning at seven, drive back to Sydney and go to work. I fall asleep briefly and wake up after an hour or so- Marcin is still not there. I am overtaken by a feeling of foreboding which I affix to a possible incipient attraction between Freyja's friend Marnie and my husband. He has expressed an admiration for her ability to keep herself in a consistent and extreme state of drunkenness without succumbing either to sleep or sobriety, and my paranoid mind goes to work on this so that sleep becomes impossible. I go outside and stumble towards to circle of firelight. As I get closer, I pull up short. They are sitting together on a wooden bench. I peer and squint in the darkness. Are they touching each other? Leaning on each other? I am overtaken by panic and can't go any closer. I lurk in the shadow of the barn, squatting on the stubble of recently-cut grass, and watch.