Mother had gone back to peer through the glass and I came up next to her and pressed my nose hard against the window to block out reflections from the street. All the books were in the shop like normal. All the books on all the shelves. But there was a trail of paper on the floor, and none of the wine glasses from Mother’s launch had been picked up and put away. I could see them, some of them fallen over as if they hadn’t been touched since that night. Copies of The Poems of Veda Gray were still in a motley pile.

Mother turned around and put her back to the door. ‘Jesus,’ she said. She was white.

‘What?’

‘They’ve gone under. Jesus!’

She slid down the door till she was squatting with her back against it.

‘What?’

Her mouth opened as if she were going to yell something, and then closed again. She sat there, looking out at the street for some moments, and then she started banging her head. She banged it backwards against the glass door first, and then turned and banged it forwards on the sharp bit where the wall became a corner. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang went her head against the sharp corner. A bad sound came out of her mouth and I saw blood on her forehead.

‘Mother!’ I said. ‘You’ve got blood on your head!’

I got a hanky from her handbag and tried to wipe the blood off, but she pushed my arm away, and got up and took off her shoe. She stumbled and hopped and then, holding the soft toe-part of the shoe in her hand, she aimed the heel at the window.

‘Mother!’ I screamed. I grabbed her arm. ‘Stop, Mother!! STOP IT!’

She pulled her arm back as if to get momentum, and then, abruptly she did stop. She looked at me and sort of slumped and dropped the shoe. ‘Come on, Mother,’ I said, pulling her arm. Already people were looking at us. Someone would call the police. They would put Mother in jail, and there, in jail, there would be a wall she could really bang her head against.

‘Come on, Mother,’ I said.

She leant her weight on me to put her shoe back on. I gave her the hanky. I spat on it first so she there was something wet she could use to get the blood off her forehead. We proceeded with dignity to the tram stop. I lit a cigarette for her with her Glomesh cigarette lighter. She puffed absently on the cigarette, and the blood, wetted by the spit, smoothed away until it was really just like she had a bit of a bump on her forehead. ‘Good boy, O-yo,’ she said to me. ‘There’s money for the tickets in my purse.’

Poor Mother, she was quiet as a lamb on the way home. I don’t know where Papa was. I don’t know where Mr Parish was. I don’t know where you were, Ornella.