Eva and Rod hadn’t lived in Formosa Street for long when one Saturday morning there was a knock at the door and Eva opened it to find a short, stocky woman with thick glasses and stiffly sprayed bouffant hair standing on the step.

“Hello, I hope you don’t mind me calling in like this but you see, my friend who lived next door to you has moved.”

Eva nodded, waiting to hear what that had to do with the reason for her unexpected visitor. The woman looked at her earnestly through the thick lens of her glasses.

“Well you see, now that she’s moved I don’t have her to visit any more. I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if I visited you. That I could come and have coffee with you.”

This was such a strange situation, Eva was totally bemused. Off the top of her head she couldn’t think of a reason to say no. She opened the front door wider and motioned the woman inside.

“ My name’s Marnie Petersen and I live three streets up the hill. I’m married to Keith. He’s a real estate agent and we have a beautiful house. I have two boys. Keith’s not their father though. Their father died in England . That’s why we came out here.”

Marnie didn’t seem all that interested in Eva’s responses as she chattered on and on and on. Eva was starting to worry about how she might get her to leave. Despite that she was held by a certain fascination. She rarely came across someone so ready to spill words so freely, to lay her life out to a stranger without pausing for breath. So she listened as she would watch a movie or read a book, to hear the next chapter. She sensed an almost desperate animation in Marnie, as if she couldn’t stop talking and be forced to think.

It came out that Marnie had been married to her childhood sweetheart in Bristol . They had two young boys, both had jobs and they were paying off a house. Life was pretty good until he was diagnosed with some paralysing disease, incurable. He became progressively paralysed starting from the waist down. Wasn’t long before he was in a wheelchair. She looked sad as she recounted what a great sex life they had shared until then.

“His erection was gone you see, paralysed. Only sometimes it came back for no reason. The doctor said we should make the most of every opportunity so if it came up during the day he would call me at work and I’d hop on a bus and get home fast as I could.”