Home Visits

Ella excelled herself this morning. Not content with her cock-a-doodle-doo at a quarter past five, she went on to spill an entire cup of milk across her mattress before six o'clock and spent the next fifteen minutes sitting outside our bedroom door singing the first verse of Waltzing Matilda on a loop, a change from Daisy Daisy, though I'm beginning to wish I'd never taught her the words.

Darren was out working nights, having spent seven days and nights on call for the international chopperdocs without a single tinkle on the bat phone; not even a wrong number. You might think this all sounds a bit cushy but it's actually very frustrating because there are plenty of things we'd like to do outside of Sydney but can't even contemplate while Darren has to stay near the airport. A few days on call is one thing but a full seven day run (which means 24 hours a day) is quite a limitation on your time, not to mention your freedom to have a drink.

Anyway, I dragged myself to work and after a four-shot flat white I was ready to face the day.

This morning I went out on a home visit to see my patient at Double Bay. Her mum phoned me first thing to confirm the appointment time and mention that the little girl would be at her grandparents' house in Bronte because she had to go off on important business, so did I mind going there instead?

And then she gave me the address and described where the house was and no, I had no objection at all.

One of the things I do like about my job is the opportunity to go into other people's houses. As someone who lived on a council estate until the age of ten, the tendency towards net-curtain twitching has never left me, nor has the instinctive need to know what's behind other people's nets (or blinds or any other window dressing).

My last job in the UK involved a few home visits too; one family lived with a menagerie of animals (including a flightless cockatoo that sat on the washing line) while another mother could eat an entire plate of curry and rice in front of an episode of Diagnosis Murder while I worked with her child.

And then there was Georgie. Georgie lived with his chain-smoking grandparents in a house backing directly onto the Manchester Ship Canal, the garden decked out like a Fuengerola tapas bar. It's one thing dreaming of the Costa del Sol, quite another waking up to the Thelwall viaduct, though none of this bothered his nana provided she could sit outside and dream, roughly five months of the year, weather permitting.

Here in Sydney, the patients are a bit different, not least because the services they're taking up aren't under the umbrella of the public health (NHS) system, which means they have to actively seek us out rather than sit and wait for us to contact them. The result is a caseload of kids whose family circumstances probably don't represent a cross section of the Sydney population, though even while you know this, you really begin to feel like the poor relation when you go to see them.

One of my patients, for example, lives out in an old federation house in Haberfield, a predominantly Italian area where the delicatessens sell proper parmesan and you can get a decent coffee if you pull over on the way back to the office. His parents run a business importing Italian ceramics, which means not only do they live in a stunning property, but their house is crammed with paintings and artefacts they've no room for back at the gallery.

Another of my patients comes from a long line of professional sportsmen. Her father's retired now but he's set up a business developing sports clothing and equipment and has just worked out an advertising contract with Sky Sports as well as a contract with JJB sports in the UK and some huge chain in the states. They're rich now, but going to be seriously rich sometime soon. Seriously.

The home visit in Bronte, however, was in a different league altogether. I was probably another five minutes away from the house when it dawned on me where the directions were heading me. And then I pulled up and thought no, this can't be the right place, but yeah actually, it was, so I straightened my skirt and checked my lipstick and tried not to look too much like I came from Dallam, a place these people could have absolutely no concept of.

The house was set on the cliff between the beaches at Bronte and Tamarama and from the outside it looked exactly like the type of house they'd choose as a movie location for some sort of Julie Roberts film. Set on the corner of the road, it swept around the cliff in arches of clean grey lines; three levels of plate glass windows, the glass sloping backwards to maximise the light.

"Hi I'm Sarah from the University" I said "Kristen told you I was coming?"

"Yes, yes, come in, mind the pushchair. She's asleep in here, I'll wake her up"

And with that, she disappeared into a room off the hallway while I spun around taking the place in; white marble floors, pale grey walls, Greek mosiacs on two of the walls. Blimey.

From the ground floor we climbed several flights of marble stairs until we reached the top of the house, where I tried not to gasp at the view of the Pacific and the enormous sound of the water crashing at the rocks below. The top floor was open plan; two sitting areas, a dining space and a white granite kitchen with a breakfast bar and white leather stools. One wall of the space was painted white, the rest of the room was glass. For a minute I forgot myself and stood gawping at their view; the azure of the water, the sands at Bronte and the sandstone cliffs at Tamarama; one of the greatest views in Sydney.

"It's a great spot" I eventually offered, trying not to sound impressed, as though I had houses like this myself all over the world if only I could be arsed to live in them.

"I suppose so" sighed the grandmother. "No, we're lucky, but it wasn't like this when we bought it. It was a small house on a tiny plot and you couldn't even see the ocean unless you stood up. We bought it as a deceased estate then used the shell of the place to design this"

"Do you ever get used to it?" I asked, completely unable to take my eyes off the view. "I mean, does this just become normal?"

"I don't know. I suppose so" she replied flatly, which is exactly how the mother in Haberfield replies when I admire her taste in fabrics or the 1910 cornicing in her sitting room.

It stuck me then that the lady with the Fuengerola tapas bar in Warrington is somehow happier than both these women put together. She has something to dream about, I suppose. I don't know whether these two still do, they've got it now, nothing else left to wish for. Perhaps that's the difference.