Kate Legge

Do you hang out sometimes?

Yeah, well, when we have the grandchildren together, we hang out and sometimes we travel together, as we did to Broken Hill.

And I think my mother died when I was 23 and I was with Greg for longer than I knew my mother.

And, you know, he's my family and the father of the children.

And so, you know, there's a lot we have in common.

I'm just remembering there's that moment in the Woody Allen movie in Manhattan when his ex-wife Meryl Streep says, oh, I'm writing a book about our former marriage and then it gets made into a feature film and all of that.

How did he respond when you told him you were going to write a book about it?

Well, he originally was very encouraging and the reason why we went to Broken Hill was to do the research so that I might write a fictional treatment of infidelity and the intergenerational story of infidelity in his family.

And that's what I was intent on doing.

And it was only during lockdown when I started to get another idea

I wanted to bring an authentic voice to what is a universal problem and I felt the best way to do that was in this series of essays.

When I told him I was going to do this, I can still remember on the front porch of our family home where I said that I was thinking of going down the direction of non-fiction and there was a very, very, very long and awkward pause.

I bet there was.

But I said, let me see how I see what I come up with and let's see if you can wear it.

So it was always down on the proviso that it wouldn't proceed if there was a big objection or he felt that it would be impossible to do.

And as Daniel Crabb said about him, a cheating, status-anxious man in the media is not a rare thing, but someone who understands his wife's need to write about it sure is.

And you feel the same way?

And I feel the same way, yes, because, you know, it's been difficult for him to have to, you know, live with this tag.

But he understood.

He's a student of history.