He looked up at me, not sternly so much as seriously—as though I were worthy of knowing, of being told the truth. It made me feel strange to be taken seriously like this. It made me feel like I was part of the grown-ups’ story, rather than just the kid character, separate, on the outskirts. ‘We are your guardians, Owen,’ Mr Parish said. He yanked his boot onto his foot, and then the other. ‘We became your guardians because your mother needed help, and your father—well, a father is not a mother, is he? Your father works all day, all night.’ He touched my hair. ‘Any time your mother is ready, she is welcome to come back here.’

He asked me if I wanted to come and work with him on the fences, but I didn’t want to, and I said No, and he seemed relieved.

In the lounge room, Mrs Parish had naughtily lit the fire, and there was a citrus smell as she peeled off twigs from a stick of lemon-scented gum.

‘Come on, Owen,’ she said. ‘Let’s make a bouquet you can take home for your mother.’

PIE CHART

I guess you could say you were my primary carer, Ornella. If I look at it in terms of a pie-chart. We were learning pie charts at school. We started by dividing up the different countries our parents came from. Britain was the biggest part of the pie chart, then Italy, then Greece. We learnt a song in Greek and how to count to ten in Italian. My primary school was the local state school and it was halfway between your house and Mother and Papa’s house. Mr Parish hadn’t wanted me to go to Hawthorn West State School No. 293. He wanted me to go to Christ Church School, which was at the other end of Bridge Road, ‘just as easy to get to, for god’s sake,’ he said, ‘and I’ll pay, of course.’ But it didn’t happen. I don’t know why. Was it you, Ornella? Did you say no?

Hawthorn West sat up on a hill, with rich kids living on one side and poor kids on the other. The rich kids lived in big Victorian houses in streets with names like Shakespeare Grove, houses that backed on to the Yarra River with bona-fide Aboriginal canoe trees in their backyards. The poor kids lived in single-fronted terraces with party walls and concrete backyards, or way up high in commission flats in Richmond. The rich kids remained at our school till second or third grade and then went off in caps and long socks to the private schools that netted the Hawthorn side of the river—or to schools like Christ Church. Goodbye, we waved: the poor kids and the commission flat kids and immigrant kids and sons of bus drivers and restaurant owners. Off they went to their separate realm. We never saw each other again. Never.