That was the story of Cinderella. I didn’t need to have read it. All the girls knew it by heart.

I put on a cream shirt, a blue jacket and a green tie. I went and waited for Mrs Parish at the car.

Mr Knox had put up signs in the front window and Vellum Press had taken out adverts in literary journals and writers’ society newsletters, so there was quite a crowd in the bookshop when Mrs Parish and I arrived. There were people I didn’t know, lots of them. Mother was talking to three or four of them at once and had two glasses of champagne in her hands. Her eyes slid across the room and registered me.

The room was warm. Mrs Parish took a fan out of her handbag and flapped it discreetly. Mrs Knox had a tray of drinks and was hopping around the room with it like a bird. Mr Knox was putting his hands through his hair and laughing. Mr Parish was talking to people I didn’t know and writing something in the notebook he kept in his suit-pocket. John Honey was looking at his watch. The man from the newspaper had a flashbulb that went off every now and then and added to the hilarity, the warmth, the drunkenness. Papa was nowhere to be seen.

A table was stacked high with Mother’s books, brown and tan, over and over, her name going on and on and on unbearably: Veda Gray Veda Gray Veda Gray. Someone I didn’t know who reminded me of Kitten was sitting behind the table with a cashbox and a docket-book.

Papa arrived. John Honey tapped his watch. Mother stood up. A sea of people parted and pushed backwards and I felt myself become suddenly compressed in the crowd. My ears were hot and burning at the tops and I had to try and cool them with spit on my fingertips. A wave of sickness came into my chest and my legs went quivery. ‘Owen?’ someone said in front of me, and then I was going backwards, into the crowd, and a honeycomb of yellow fogged my eyes and I fell.

‘Owen?’ you said again. ‘Owen!’

Outside on Collins Street the air was cool and crisp and grey and it was raining softly.

A pigeon with touches of green in its feathers pecked at a crumb next to a cigarette butt. A broken umbrella stuck out of a rubbish bin.

‘You alright, O-yo?’ you said. You put your face in my face and your breath smelt like Juicy Fruit. I was sitting on the ground, propped against the window of the bookshop. You didn’t have water so you fanned my face with your copy of Veda Gray. ‘Cool down,’ you said. ‘Don’t worry about your mother. She’s fine.’

Inside, the voices were rising and falling, and there was clapping that started, and built, and fell off again. And then a different voice started speaking.