‘Hello, Cliff. It’s Cyn, as you always used to call me. Cynthia Samuels. I know this must be a bolt from the blue, but I have to see you. I need to tell you something. I’ll be in the city tomorrow and I want you to meet me at the cafe in the State Library, say at eleven-thirty. Please, please try to make it. Here’s my number in case you can’t, but please try.’

I scarcely heard the numbers she recited on the answering machine tape in that strange way people reel off their telephone numbers. Her voice and tone were unmistakable even though I hadn’t heard them for more than twenty years. Cyn was my ex-wife and our parting had been as tempestuous as the relationship itself. We got a no-fault divorce under the new law and went our ways. I kept vaguely in touch with Cyn’s life through her father who I played a bit of tennis with. But he’d died some years back and that broke the connection.

I played the message again. ‘I want you to meet me…’ That was typical of Cyn. She always expected to get her own way. With me she had, but only for a shortish time. As it turned out, our ideas of how to live were completely different. This had been obscured from us at first. By sex, mainly. Cyn was an architect who either sat in an office or went out to places she was helping to put into strict order. She liked life to follow suit. I was a private detective who spent as little time in my office as possible and most of it out dealing with messes that rarely got completely cleaned up.

When we split up we had virtually no assets. Our equity in the Glebe terrace consisted of the small deposit we’d jointly put down. I took out a personal loan and paid back her half and that was about it. She’d disliked the house and Glebe anyway, and went back to the other side of the harbour. I signed the divorce kit papers she sent me and we spent about five minutes in court establishing that our marriage had irretrievably broken down. We didn’t shake hands and wish each other luck. I’d always felt bad about that.