Mother got the telegram, and her body went into complete abeyance. She stopped moving and even seemed to stop breathing. It was like she was a statue.

I sat by her with my hand on her shoulder, squeezing occasionally. I didn’t know how to comfort someone who had turned suddenly to stone. Eventually I got her a tissue and pushed it into her hand.

‘Get my hairbrush too, darling,’ she said.

So I did. And she brushed her hair and blew her nose and put on her pale pink lipstick, which was a stupid colour for lipstick because it was the same colour as her lips. And then we took the tram into the city to the Knoxes.

‘Barrington will know what to do,’ she said. And she was quite calm and composed and smoked out the tram window with her back straight and her eyes on the trees.

IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS

‘It never rains but it pours.’ This was one of your sayings, Ornella. On your windowsill you kept a strange plastic felt-covered creature that changed colour according to the weather. White when it was cold, blue when it was overcast, orange when it was warm. When it rained or poured, the creature showed no differentiation: dark dark grey like the dark dark sky. When Mother got betrayed, she got good and properly betrayed.

REAL CIGARETTES

Because it was September, the sun was warm but the shadows were freezing. The commuters were commuting. Women were wearing very short skirts. I hadn’t noticed that before, but now I saw it, as Mother dragged me down Collins Street. Women’s skirts hardly even covered their bottoms. Maybe it was because the sun was out. Maybe they needed to air their bottoms in the sun. All these thoughts going through my head, new thoughts I hadn’t had before, as Mother dragged me towards Knox Books with her sun-glasses on and a cigarette in her hand and her handbag swinging from her elbow.

The sign wasn’t out at Knox Books. Usually there was a sandwich board on which Mrs Knox wrote the bestsellers and new releases. The sign wasn’t out and the door was closed.

‘Well, this is funny,’ said Mother. She dropped my hand and put her bag down.

It seemed that Mrs Knox had failed to turn the Open sign. The sign still said Closed, and it was four o’clock in the afternoon.

‘Silly Edith!’ I said to Mother.

Mother tried the door handle. Nothing. She put her sunglasses up on her head and her hand like a visor to her forehead and peered through the window.

‘Maybe they’re sick?’ I said.

Mother pushed at the door with her foot.

‘They might be sick,’ I said again.

She kicked the bottom of the door with her toe. I could see a spill of mail on the mat inside the door, maybe a few days’ worth.

‘They must be sick, they’re not picking up their letters,’ I said.