After Nonna died, you threw out the photo albums: Ornella, Sandringham: 1943; Tootgarook: 1948; Bronte Beach: 1951. There you were: wrapped in a towel in Nonno’s lap. Testing the waves with a cautious toe. ‘Look at these, Owen!’ you said wondrously and then you threw the lot of them in the rubbish. I watched, astonished. ‘Nup, nup, nup. Don’ wan’ it …’ The whole time crying, rubbing your nose, re-tying the elastic band in your hair. You kept two photographs in the end: Nonno and Nonna on their wedding day, trussed into uncomfortable suits; yourself as a baby in a christening gown: black-haired and beady-eyed, fists raised.

Nonna lived a long time in the Donna Vincenzo. Brains get holes, like ink blots, that spread. They turn up white on brain scans: I imagine it like coral bleaching. Nonna’s white coral spread and spread till her only mechanism that worked was her thumbs. She couldn’t speak or show that she knew you, but she could be adamant, nevertheless, with her thumbs, using them to punch out long-forgotten messages in the palms of hands or on the arms of chairs. ‘Mama,’ you said, and stroked her hair, and brushed it, and put bobby pins in it. Then one day, she died, just like that: no warning. You were on a night shift. You didn’t find out until you got home at 7 am and saw the note Carlito had written: ‘Your mother died.’ I guess there was no gentle way of putting it. You went straight to the nursing home and saw her still, quiet body, covered by its white cotton blanket, and you got to put a kiss on her forehead.

But you weren’t there when she died and you never forgave yourself. You’d seen people die often enough in the hospital. You’d put drip buckets under their bodies on the way down to the morgue. You knew about it. It was no big deal. But they weren’t your mother.

And then, after her funeral, after everything, there it was: the money she’d creamed off the housekeeping for thirty years, invested in shares, for godssake. Enough money to buy the house in Richmond you were renting. Plus some to go in the bank. Her gift to you. A mother’s legacy trimmed off a son’s rights. You walked over that bridge with me to school the next day and said, ‘Those kids who get picked up in them cars, Owen, don’t you worry about them. One day, you’ll have a better car than every single one of ’em.’ You pulled your cardigan so it sat more neatly over your pointy tits and held your head high. Your Roman nose was straighter than ever, a precise and noble nose that gave you dignity. ‘Is that your mother?’ asked Callum, awed. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s her.’ And then I laughed at his round eyes and punched him in the ribs and said: ‘Sucked in!’