At the age of twenty-one I bought a cheap airline ticket and flew to London. I left behind the expectations of friends and family and an entrenched sense of duty. And I left behind a boyfriend—I’ll call him Dave—a fellow who was well past his use-by date. 

It was a particularly cold winter that year in London. Ice formed around the cracks in the windowpane of my room and I needed to dress for bed. I rationed the coins I put in the gas meter for the heat, I rationed my baths because of the rationed coins—and also because a bath shared by several strangers is not an attractive proposition to a compulsive cleaner. I sat alone in my room at the top of the house and as the weeks passed, Dave, the main reason why I left Australia, came to occupy the centre of my life.