Afterwards, back at La Coccinella, there was always a lot of washing up to do. Rosa had started to come in on Sundays too. Then we’d all eat together and I’d eat with them, and we’d smile and laugh, and Les would head off in the van and Papa would put Rosa on the St Kilda tram and we’d catch the Mont Albert. Lazy old Sunday-night tram. Took ages to come—was that it, cresting at the top of the hill, or was it just a Herald van returning home? Papa would read out of the papers to me with his legs crossed. Mostly it was crime reports, but sometimes there were other stories: Two women chain themselves to Brisbane bar to protest men-only service—‘Why the hell they’d wanna go in the bar for!?’ said Papa. Police raid the Austral bookshop in Melbourne and seize copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Thea Astley wins the Miles Franklin Award for Literature.

‘Darn it, O-yo,’ said Papa, lowering the paper onto his lap. ‘Haven’t mentioned Mama’s book to Parish yet.’

He folded the paper into a wedge and smacked my thigh with it.

‘Papa’s gonna be in the doghouse, son,’ he said.

I didn’t know what the doghouse was because we didn’t have a dog, but I was nervous about getting home now and wished the tram-ride would just go on and on. All the way to the end of the line. To the magical place that was Mont Albert. I imagined a snow-covered mountain and toboganning. Perhaps a chalet, or even a cosy sick-room like Heidi had in Frankfurt.

‘Darn it,’ said Papa again. ‘God-darn it.’

Usually on the weekends now, I went to the Parishes. I had got used to their house: my room, my toys, the flat brown tiles that lined the low-slung house. But it was cold there. Even in summer it was cold. ‘Mr Parish built this house by hand,’ Mrs Parish told me. I imagined Mr Parish slathering mortar on bricks, checking the spirit level, trowelling off the excess. He was good at building things. ‘Gave up cigarette-smoking and built this house by himself with all the extra time he had.’ Mrs Parish put her own hands out in a small marvelling gesture. She wore a straight brown skirt and a plain-coloured cardigan; occasionally she swapped her plain-coloured cardigan for a gold spangly one, if there were guests. Sometimes she wore pearls. Her straight up-and-down clothes gave her the appearance of height and also a certain unclimbable rectitude, like a straight brown tree with smooth bark and not very many lower branches.