Ten years is long enough for a voice to become a place. I heard hers on a Tuesday, in a kitchen in Melbourne that belonged to a life she had never seen, and my hand forgot the kettle.

I am Rachel. I am thirty-seven. Nadine is thirty-six, and when we were twenty-six she left for London with a sentence that was kind and final: not now, not like this, I can't be the woman you need and the woman I'm becoming. I had loved her. I had let her go with a dignity I still don't entirely forgive myself for,…