Nothing made sense. I was in Grade Six. Puberty was the explanation for my bafflement. That’s what you told Carlito when we got home and I shut myself in my room. Carlito thought the idea of me having puberty was hilarious. But puberty was not hilarious. Puberty meant nothing was fun anymore, and none of the fun things lasted.

The reviews came out for Rosa’s show. There were several. Two or three were cruel. One was humiliating. Two were positive. Merely getting that many write-ups was a coup. Rosa now had press-clippings. Mother cut them out of the paper with her nail-scissors. She pinned them, scallop-edged, to a corkboard above her writing desk. ‘Rosa Rosa Rosa,’ she said, swaying slightly.

In the same week, there was a feature in the local press about Papa. Not about La Coccinella—La Coccinella didn’t need press because it had as many customers as it could take—but about Papa and the Salvation Army soup kitchen. ‘Mr Ferrugia,’ the article said, ‘restaurateur and art collector, is tireless in his efforts for the underprivileged. “Everyone deserves good food,” Mr Ferrugia says. “We are blessed in this lucky country and we should share what we have with those less fortunate. For me, I share my skills and my good fortune in having been successful in my business.” The Salvation Army kitchen has become a reliable focal point for the unemployed and homeless of Melbourne.’

Mother did not cut out this article and put it on her corkboard. Nor did Papa. It embarrassed him. ‘I look stupid in the picture,’ he said. But I cut it out and kept it. Because even though photographs can lie—Papa does look stupid in the picture—words actually tell more than pictures, despite wisdom to the contrary. Those words, aligned with that picture, are a kind of documentary evidence that memory can’t compete with. In fact, you need all three—words, pictures, and memory—to piece together the truth.

The good fortune of the homeless and unemployed of Melbourne was the bad fortune of Veda and Owen Ferrugia. That was the bit not told by the newspaper. Papa spent hardly any time at home because he was so busy with the restaurant and the soup kitchen. If we wanted Papa we had to go to him, and Mother wouldn’t, and I had better things to do than watch him make small talk with diners and fuss over culinary details. I loved Papa, but love had become duty. And part of my duty was to show him I didn’t care or need him. Fathers were supposed to be busy with other things. That’s how the bacon made it home. That’s how the wolves were kept from the door. Papa wrote out the cheques and Mother put the stamps on the envelopes and took them down to the letterbox with her fat little dog trotting by her side. ‘My husband’s mistress,’ she told Mrs Mathers next door, ‘is his work.’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Mathers. ‘Yes, that’s how it is, dear.’