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‘It’s mad,’ said Z, ‘to think that only what lasts matters. How can that be? If we lose everything? It can’t be. And we all lose everything. Everything.’ I asked if he found the ephemeral enough; I said that so far I thought I did. He said yes. I said that what he’d been saying reminded me of the e…

A movie on TV about John Waters. I laughed till I was weak and grateful—I’ve been missing that angle of life—shit and fart jokes, the utter refusal to be in any way serious, intellectual or polite—and what is the quality Divine has, that ‘puts everybody in a good mood all the time’? I said to V, ‘T…

Work offers come and I take them. I don’t want to go over to V’s. What if his wife comes visiting and I’m there? Maybe a terrible explosion of truth is exactly what’s needed. I said, ‘She needs you to tell her the truth. Somewhere in herself she knows you haven’t told her everything.’ He will not a…

I’ve sold my books. I’ve let my house. I’ve agreed to sell Primrose Gully. I’ve changed cities. I’ve got no home. I am not to answer the phone at V’s, or be present when certain visitors come, or leave my stuff lying around. I am forty-six-and-a-half and I am humiliated. V is unable to resolve the …

‘I sometimes think the world is divided into people who survive from their own inner strength and those who have to latch on to others to survive.’ —Elizabeth Jolley, interview in Good Weekend