Marriages (1990) by Australian writer Amy Witting (1918-2001) is a collection of short stories exploring the idea that marriage isn’t necessarily enough to bring together two people.

The final story of the collection is entitled The Trap. Lawyer Bill feels he is trapped in his marriage with his beautiful wife, Ann.

What Bill doesn’t realise—not until the end of the story—is that his wife has been deeply affected by her childhood. She told him 3 years ago she was an orphan raised in kinship care, now he knows she was ‘illegimate’.

He has seen for himself how Ann’s extended family treat her as if she doesn’t exist, and how they have lied to her about who her mother is for years.

A more sympathetic Bill concludes that he might need to spend the rest of his life reassuring Ann that she is not guilty for anything that happened in her childhood and that she doesn’t “have to be the perfect plastic model of the perfect human being.”