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dressing table Diana had kept from her childhood, the oval mirror tarnished at the edges and the trinket drawers swollen from age, and the other by an armchair she had found at a kerbside pick-up and re-upholstered when she couldn’t clean off the musty smell of its previous owners. She had inherited her father’s frugality and as a result their house was filled with a confused mix of pre-loved furniture, mostly found or given to them by friends or family who didn’t want the pieces any more. Diana didn’t mind; she wasn’t a fan of the photos she saw in magazines of houses in which the couch cushions matched the artwork, which matched a collection of vases – always a set of three – placed on a shelf with no purpose other than aesthetics. She felt that houses were for living in, not for display.
    â€˜You know how Mum is,’ Diana said once the clothes were in the hamper. ‘She listens to everything Father Keating says. It’s an Italian thing.’
    Diana’s mother had attended mass with Father Keating every Sunday since she could remember. Diana used to go as well, but she stopped once she started dating Liam. He was also raised Catholic but he didn’t believe in attending church other than for weddings, christenings or funerals. Diana hadn’t seen Father Keating since he officiated at her wedding to Liam a year earlier.
    Liam pulled back the floral quilt cover and settled himself into bed, propping several pillows behind his back. ‘Well, did you tell her it’s like adopting a baby?’ he asked as he watched Diana pull on her pyjamas, a flannelette pair with images of polar bears that he hated but she insisted on wearing in winter. The seal around their bedroom window was in need of repair. In winter the cold seeped through the gap under the aluminium frame and their bedroom grew so cold Diana could see the mist of her breath hovering like a cloud above her face. She reminded Liam to fix it whenever she dared but he always reacted in anger, telling her she was nagging him, so she gave up and relied on her flannelette pyjamas and thick socks instead.
    â€˜We’re just adopting an embryo rather than a baby,’ he said. ‘It’s the same thing.’
    â€˜I told her.’
    â€˜And? What did she say?’
    Diana walked over to her husband’s side of the bed and put both hands on his cheeks, mimicking her mother. ‘But, Diana, my darling, it won’t be your baby. It will be another woman’s baby. Another woman’s and another man’s. How can you put another woman’s child in your womb?’
    Liam laughed. ‘Classic Eleanor. Any chance for drama.’
    Diana walked over to the dressing table and picked up her hairbrush. ‘I know. I felt like we were in a soap opera.’
    â€˜How’d the conversation end up?’
    Diana paused mid-stroke. She always brushed her long brown hair out before she went to sleep. Liam loved her hair and wouldn’t let her cut it, so she kept it long to please him even though she knew it was unusual for a woman in her mid-twenties to have hair long enough to reach her waist.
    Liam was watching her. ‘Di? How’d the conversation end up?’
    â€˜I told her we’d go to dinner at her place tomorrow night to talk about it some more.’
    He thumped his hand against the bedcovers. ‘Damn it, why’d you say that? I don’t want to go to your mother’s house again. We’re there all the time.’
    She knew that would make him angry. He’d be even angrier when he found out that her mother had also invited Father Keating.
    Diana put her hairbrush down and sat on the corner of the bed, facing Liam. She reached for her husband’s hand across the bed. ‘Please do this for me. It will mean so much to Mum, and to me.’
    Liam blew a breath through his nose. ‘Fine, if it will stop you talking about it. But we’re not staying