By five A.M., she was dressed and ready for work.

She sat on the sofa with dry, burning eyes, her hands folded in her lap and her back straight, as if she were waiting for a job interview.

Dan was supposedly staying on Sean’s floor until he got a new lease on a flat. He wouldn’t be there every night, of course. Sometimes he’d stay with his girlfriend.

Girlfriend. A girlfriend sounded so much younger, sexier, and prettier than a wife.

Cat hadn’t seen him now, or talked to him, for thirteen days. Thirteen days, where she hadn’t known what he wore to work, what he ate for dinner, who pissed him off, what made him laugh on TV.

And that lack of knowledge about his life would just keep accumulating and expanding, pushing them further apart, a cold empty space between them.

Decisively, she stood up and went looking for the keys to the courtesy truck. She needed to know where Dan had spent the night. If he’d stayed at Sean’s place, she would be able to make it through the day. If he’d stayed with Angela, well, at least she’d know.

It felt good to be outside, moving. The truck made her feel tough and capable. The streets were deserted, the streetlights still glowing.

At Sean’s place in Leichhardt, she drove up and down the narrow street, peering hopefully at each parked car. Finally, she gave up with a sickly sort of calm. So he was with her. Right now, he was with her, in a bedroom Cat had never seen.

It was light by the time she turned into Angela’s street in Lane Cove.

She remembered driving there that first time, filled with righteous hurt. Looking back, it seemed like she’d been luxuriating in her pain, safe in the knowledge that their marriage was a given, that Dan’s love was a given.

Dan’s car was parked outside Angela’s block of units, parked with the assured confidence of a regular visitor. It looked like it belonged there.

Then she saw the car in front of Dan’s. A blue VW. She remembered Charlie on Christmas Day. “Her Vee-dub conked out this morning.”

She looked in the car window and Dan’s long-sleeved blue top was lying on the passenger seat. It seemed she had an endless capacity to be hurt. The casual familiarity implied by that shirt was somehow more shocking than anything.

“Ange? Have you seen my shirt?”

“Your blue one? I think you left it in the car.”

And was Cat in Dan’s consciousness at all when he had these conversations with Angela? Of course not. Cat no longer existed, except as a problem to be solved, a memory to put behind him.

She was an ex-wife. Ex-wives were vindictive women with bitterly lined faces. Fine then, she’d act like one.

There was a Swiss Army pocketknife in Sam’s smash repair truck. It slid back and forth in the center console each time she turned a corner. She got the knife from the car and unsnapped it. The morning sun caught the blade.

It was a beautiful Friday morning. The cicadas were already humming a promise of a hot summer’s day and a weekend especially created for brand new-couples.

Tomorrow was Saturday, and she’d be waking up alone.

She squatted down besides Angela’s car and plunged the tip of the knife into the black rubber of the tire.

Something unlocked in her mind. She tipped right over into blind fury.

She hated Dan. She hated Angela. She hated herself.

She hated the tires for resisting her. It was so typical: nothing ever went right for her! “Fuck you!” In a frenzy she ripped and slashed with all her strength, not moving on to the next tire until she was sure it was satisfactorily butchered.

After she finished Angela’s tires, she moved on to Dan’s, becoming efficient and deadly in her movements. And now it was for her baby. Her baby had been betrayed too. Her baby didn’t have a chance to live and that was somebody’s fault and she was going to kill them!

“Hey!”

The sound made her jump.

She looked up and saw Dan and Angela walking out of the glass doors of the block of units.

Dan’s face changed as he got closer and recognized her.

“Cat?”

The knife was clenched hard in her hand as she stood up. Her chest was heaving, her face hot and sweaty.

It was a moment of profound humiliation.

On their faces she could see fear, pity, and a touch of revulsion.

And the worst of it was, this was an event happening to them. They were experiencing it together; they would talk about it later. It was the first in their collection of shared stories. “The time Dan’s ex-wife slashed our tires.”

Cat didn’t say a word. She turned away from them, climbed into her truck, and drove off, without looking back.

Her hands on the steering wheel were filthy black.

What is happening to me?

She drove home to clean up. She had a nine o’clock meeting.

Gemma turned up at lunchtime.

She sat in Cat’s office with that mystified expression she always got when she visited, as if she’d landed in a foreign country, instead of a normal, everyday workplace. It was an expression Cat found simultaneously charming and irritating.

She said, “I don’t have time to go out for lunch.”

“Oh, that’s O.K., I’m not hungry.” Gemma looked up from reading a memo in Cat’s in-tray. “Goodness. It’s all so serious here.”

“Yeah. Deadly serious. We sell chocolates.”

Gemma put down the memo. “Did you happen to slash a few tires before you came to work today?”

Cat was startled. She had just come back from a meeting where she had given a highly professional presentation. That knife-wielding maniac of this morning was somebody else entirely.