Still, she is not quite forgiving of Mother, not quite. Veda is a different story, but Mother and Veda remain separate in her mind. She cannot congeal the two women into one.

STEEL CHERRY-PITTER

‘You’re going to be a rich boy one day,’ said Papa. I was sitting on the fence at Hawthorn and he was doing up my shoelaces. I guess it made him feel like I was a lord and he was my servant, the way he had to kneel down and bend his head, while my foot stuck up to regally accept his services. ‘You’re going to be Richie Rich, poor little rich kid. Got that, O-yo?’

I screwed up my nose. Was he crazy? I didn’t want to be Richie Rich. I didn’t want a stupid bow-tie and a dog with dollar-signs on its coat. He swung me down from the fence and I immediately trod my laces loose again.

Mr Parish wanted me to go to private school. I was already rehearsing to say no. I was going to work in a racing car factory: what did I need private school for? I was going to have a wife and some kids and I was going to work in the factory and race cars on the weekend. And when my racing career got going, well, then I’d leave the factory and be in the Grand Prix and when I won they’d shake champagne all over my head. I had a wife already picked out, well two actually: Monica Lloyd who read Trixie Belden books and was good at high jump or Vasoula Costopoulos who had big dimples and curly brown hair and the neatest handwriting in class. That was the future. If I was going to be rich, it would be from winning at the Grand Prix.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ you said, Ornella, but you got some fabric with racing cars on it and made ‘drapes’ for my bedroom—for some reason you wouldn’t let me call them ‘curtains’.