Nor was Nonna there to keep things going in the garden. Nonna was now resident at the Donna Vincenzo Home for the Elderly in Parkville. In her absence, the garden had also gone to the dogs.

But I loved it. I loved the ravaged back yard with its desiccated twine and rotten wood and all those dead plants. You would put the hose on, Ornella, and leave me out there, without my clothes, to get black with mud, to fish slaters and worms out of the ground to keep in pots and jars.

But you were sad because Nonna was no longer at home. And ultimately you had to sell the house, because the Donna Vincenzo Home for the Elderly was molto caro. And when you visited Nonna, she cried because she still knew you, but she wasn’t sure where from and she wasn’t sure how to get on and off the bed—which foot, and why that way, and where did the arm go to support the torso? Her legs were fat and stiff and her kidneys were leaking protein and blood. Nonna held your hand like a baby and called you ‘Nella, Nella,’and sometimes ‘Mamma’ so that you couldn’t visit her without falling a little bit apart afterwards.

Meanwhile, I traversed the increasingly derelict rooms of Coburg on my rusted blue tricycle. I spilled my drinks and pulled up pieces of lino (they came up with such a satisfying crack!). You didn’t care. We made cake and left the flour on the bench. We let egg set on the cooktop. We never made a single bed and sometimes we would eat dinner watching the black-and-white TV propped on your dressing table. If Nonna had become derelict (yes, you sometimes used this word by mistake), there was no point in keeping house to please her. And so you performed only the absolute necessities of maintenance—once, when you put me in the bath, you gave me a sponge and made me clean the shower screen while I was in there.

But I rarely slept by myself. I slept in your bed with your black curly hair in my face, and your smell of almonds and lemon juice, pork and perfume. ‘Oh my God, O-yo,’ you said one morning after we had had a feast of chocolate cannolis for dinner the night before, ‘I have a stomach like a fat puppy-dog. How’m I gonna fit into my dress?’

Your stomach was a whole two inches sticking-out. You were slightly knock-kneed. When we slept, I coiled inside the curve of your body like a baby snake, warming myself on your blood.

Carlito was the only problem in our arrangement. He was your fiancé now. Sometimes he would come over at dinnertime, and at midnight he would still be there. What was he doing? I was getting too tired to stay awake but I had to keep my eyes peeled in case he tried to sit you on his lap. Or put his hand inside your clothes—as if I couldn’t see! And if he didn’t go home, I would have to sleep in Nonna’s old room, which was filled with clocks and Virgin Marys and had a bed like a horned beast, made out of gold-and-cream painted wood.