The kids are wildly excited when Max brings them back, and loaded down with T-shirts and a million other trinkets. They unwrap their treasures and spread their massive haul over the beds. I motion for Max to join me outside.

'I don't want to talk about this now, Lucy,' Max says, as I close the door behind us.

'Well, I need to, Max. The kids and I are about to fly home. I need to know what you're doing.'

He doesn't say anything.

'Our marriage is -' I start.

'I'll always love you, Luce.'

'I want to hear you say the goddamn words, Max. Tell me our marriage is over!'

'This isn't what . . . Look, let's not do anything hasty.'

As usual, Max would rather not think about or discuss the problem. No doubt he's hoping that if he ignores it (i.e. me), it (me, again) will go away or, at the very least, shut up.

'Hasty?' I repeat. 'Isn't it a bit late for that? What? You want your wife, your kids and your mistress, all of us, on a short leash at your beck and call?'

'If you're going to get hysterical -'

'I'm not hysterical. Under the circumstances, I feel I've been very patient. But now we have to tell the children.'

'Let's not get ahead of ourselves.'

'Max, I've been behind the eight ball from the very beginning. Okay then, if our marriage isn't over, tell me you're going to leave Alana and come home with us.'

'I can't do that.'

'I thought so.'

Max goes to hug me but I throw my hands up in front of him. 'Don't ever touch me again.'

Blinking away the tears, I walk back inside and tell the kids, 'It's time to pack up, we're going home.'

Bella and Sam look at their dad. For a moment Bella looks as though she might burst into tears.

'So you're not coming with us,' she says to him.

Max avoids the question. 'Let's get you guys packed,' he says.

Fifteen minutes later, the four of us, standing in the foyer and surrounded by bulging suitcases, paint a glum picture. Bella's on the verge of tears, Sam's confused, I'm exhausted. And Max? He appears shockingly devoid of any emotional understanding about what has transpired over the past few days, or the weeks before that, back at home. Perhaps it's a front - how he's chosen to protect himself. He'd rather pretend this isn't happening.

While Wayan crams our bulging bags into his van, Max hugs Bella and Sam tightly. 'I'm going to see you guys real soon,' he tells them.

I force myself not to hope he means it. This is the kind of person Max is. When confronted, he'll tell you what he thinks you want to hear, rather than take responsibility and tell you the truth.

He goes to kiss me on the cheek, but I pull away just in time. 'Take care, Luce,' he says.

Moments later, Bella, Sam and I are sitting in Wayan's van, ready to begin the long journey home.

'Is that the man you were looking for at hospital, Loo-see?' Wayan asks me as Max waves goodbye.

'Yeah, he is.'

'Ah, I see. All good now.'

At the airport, tight security, the lengthy time it takes to check in our bags and the endless wait for our boarding call makes for a very long and tiresome evening. To keep Sam and Bella amused, I buy lollies and toys even though they're outrageously overpriced and satisfy them for all of two minutes.

Three hours later, we're on our plane and flying home. Surprisingly, I feel at peace. If I can take anything away from this holiday it's that you really don't let go of the things you love. That old saying, 'If you love something, set it free', is bullshit. You try with all your might to hold on to it, and go down screaming when you lose it.

But I've done my screaming.

Max has made his choice.

Day 48.

We arrive at Sydney airport, weary and flat, at six-thirty in the morning.

'Wonder what our house will look like,' Sam says as we stand in the goods-to-declare line after having collected our luggage from the baggage carousel.

'No idea,' I say absentmindedly, cursing myself for buying several wooden picture frames and woven placemats I'll probably never use. For that moment of impulse buying, I'll be standing in this line for the foreseeable future.

'It'll be a mess,' Bella says, shaking her head.

I silently agree with her. Without me cracking the whip I'm sure progress will have been minimal.

Along with extreme tiredness, we have only vague memories of swimming, ping-pong and sucking on crab claws with our fingers.

The kids are bored and bickering and I'm fast losing patience - reality hits hard. But I guess disowning them won't help me much. I have to stay in line.

'Would you two just be quiet?'

They look at me and giggle, then poke out their tongues at each other.

There's a commotion up ahead in the line and everyone cranes their necks to see what the kafuffle is about. Drugs maybe? A minute or two goes by before a customs woman holding a grey megaphone stops beside me and begins shouting. 'Ladies and gentlemen, it is against Australian law for anyone - adult or child - to bring in fruit or meat from foreign countries. Please check your luggage NOW. Rest assured that if you're caught smuggling fruit - and you will be, mark my words - you will be fined . . . even if you do blame your child for bringing in a rogue bag of rambutans.'

A hunched couple and their screaming toddler are ushered into a small windowless room to the right of our line. People around me half-heartedly peer into their bags as maroon-jacketed quarantine beagles parade up and down the lines of people, tails high in the air as they sniff out trouble.

'Neither of you have got a banana in your bag, have you?' I hiss at the children.

Finally, we arrived at the head of the queue. A customs official unwraps our wooden photo frames, and whacks them on the table searching for bugs. Finding nothing, he hands them back and waves us through to the outside world.

We're standing in another unbelievably long queue, this time for a taxi, when Gloria taps me on the shoulder.

'What are you doing here?' I say as I hug her, trying to keep any suspicion from my voice.

'What? Can't I pick up my best friend and her children from the airport?' Gloria says, smoothing out the folds in her black sweater dress.

'I guess.'

'Tell me all about it. I want to hear everything.'

'Okay, well -'

'Excellent. Before you start,' she says, taking the laden luggage trolley from me and wheeling it towards her car, 'I've primed the media. They want to talk to you - television and radio, of course. Probably print -'

'Gloria, I told you I didn't want to do all that.' So that's why she's at the airport. Witch!

'But now that you're back and you've had time to think -'

'I really don't want to talk about it. It was horrible . . . depressing . . . really sad.'

'Yes, of course it was, darling,' she says, wrapping her free arm around me. 'I get it. But -'

'No, I really don't think you do get it,' I say, shaking myself free. 'That's my point.'

Gloria hesitates, then turns her attention to the kids. 'Love your hair, Bella, and the two of you are so tanned. Did you have fun?'

'It was great,' says Sam.

'Awesome,' says Bella, swinging her plaits from side to side.

On the drive home Gloria starts up again. 'Lucy -'

'No.'

'Just hear me out. I've been hard at work for you, hitting the publicity trail to get you back in the public eye. As I said, I've alerted the media - told them you narrowly escaped the bombs, and feared for the safety of your children as they played at Jimbaran Bay, metres from where the bomb exploded.'

I turn to the back seat to make sure Bella and Sam are plugged into their new iPods and oblivious to our conversation. Then I glare at Gloria. 'By the time the bombs went off we'd been back at the hotel a good couple of hours.'

'The public don't know that,' Gloria says. 'And, more's the point, they don't care. All they want to know is that you were in Bali and you survived. You're a survivor, girlfriend.'

'I'm not a survivor, and please don't call me girlfriend. You know I hate it. I had nothing to survive and I'm not going to lie about it.'

Gloria sighs. 'We've talked about lies before, and clearly this particular tale falls into the category of white lie. The truth is, you were in Bali, you were at Jimbaran the night of the explosion, and you were eating dinner barely twenty metres away from where the bomb blew up. No one need know the finer details.'

'Like the timing, and the fact that my kids were watching Evan Almighty and I was consoling myself with an outrageously expensive bottle of cheap Australian white wine when the bomb went off?'

'Exactly. And not only are you a survivor, but you spent the whole day afterwards looking for your husband and his mistress.'

'Shh.' I glance back to the kids. Nothing, not even a flicker of the eyelids, suggests they hear us.

'They were presumed dead,' Gloria goes on.

'Only by me.'

'Again, Lucy, mere details. We can spin it - you searched, you found, you were reunited.'

'This story doesn't have a happy ending,' I whisper. 'Max was with Alana the whole time, in another hotel. I could have killed them both.'

'Of course you could have, and no doubt you'd get widespread publicity and sympathy for your trouble, but it's probably not an angle we should pursue, hey?' Gloria pats my thigh. 'Max is a fucker, always has been, so let's just use him to your advantage and move on. What do you say?'

'I'm not giving an interview, that's what I say.'

'You'll regret it. The media's desperate to talk about Bali. It's your big opportunity . . .'

'Funnily enough, I don't feel like using Bali's tragedy to advance my career.'

There's silence for the next four minutes, which is somewhat of a record for Gloria. She has an insatiable need to speak. It must be killing her. So she's pissed off.

She'll come around. I'm not going to talk about Bali. End of story.

'Thanks for the lift, you shouldn't have,' I say when she pulls up in our driveway. 'You really shouldn't have.'

'I know that . . . now. There's just one more tiny thing,' she says, snapping back to her usual effervescent self.

'Gloria -'

'Hear me out. I know you don't want to give any interviews -'

'That's right.'

'Okay, but I've done something I think you'll be really excited about.'

This is troubling. I've only been away eight days.

'There's this new show - Celebrity Renovation Rescue.'

'Yeah. You've told me about it. No, thanks.'

'But, Lucy, the most exciting opportunity has come up. Your house has been chosen out of hundreds for the first episode - the pilot. Isn't it thrilling?'

Standing in my driveway, with exhausted kids and too much luggage, feeling jet-lagged and haggard, I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. 'Please, I really don't want to be involved,' I say. 'I just want to have a shower, unpack my bags and go to sleep.'

I'm also keen to see what progress, if any, has been made on the renovation in my absence.

'Think about it,' Gloria calls from her car before speeding off.

I don't want to think about it. How many times have I told her: no reality programs! I'm an actress. Next she'll be putting me up for I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! Besides, why would any network be interested in my luckless building work?