‘Oh, it’s so boring trying to write,’ she told me one day. ‘You don’t really want to be a poet, Owen, it’s a stupid, terrible occupation.’ We were sitting on the tram and she was smoking with the window open. It was hot, so it might’ve been the summer holidays 68/9. I was about to go into Grade 5.

‘But I want to be a poet,’ I said to her. (Actually, I wasn’t sure. I was happy with my book-hamper, but the poem had been torture.)

‘Do you?’ she said.

‘Yes!’ I said, wanting to please her.

‘Mmmmm,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s very hard work,’ and she sucked on her cigarette and looked out the window.

Darling, I had hoped she might say, let me let you in on my poetry writing secrets. It’s so easy when you know how!

‘My book will be published sometime the next year,’ she said. ‘But I’m not happy with it.’ She blew a little squawl of smoke into the tram carriage. ‘I wanted something much better. Something all of a piece. Not … this!’

I nodded sagely.

‘It’s impossible to match my intention with their expectation, so I have to do what I can. It’s such a compromise. They’re such nervous nellies. And they’ve wasted so much of my time already.’ She stubbed her cigarette in the wooden windowsill and it sat there, squashed and upright, still fuming. She smiled a wan smile. ‘Did Papa read your prize poem?’

Of course Papa had read my poem. Hadn’t he?

‘Ye-es,’ I said.

She laughed a laugh I would recognise some years later when I saw Glenda Jackson play Elizabeth the First, opened her cigarette case and lit another cork-tipped Old Gold.

‘Papa came to my school assembly,’ I said, shoring myself up. ‘He saw me get my prize. I read it out loud.’

Mother raised an eyebrow.

I became inexplicably cross. ‘He’s busy!’ I rebuked her. ‘He has to run the restaurant and … and … help the poor!’

Mother’s eyes closed and opened dully, like Papa feeding the poor was something boring that we just had to put up with. ‘Yes, he does,’ she said. ‘Yes, Owen, he does.’

I didn’t speak to her all the rest of the way into the city. Of course Papa had read my poem! It was so mean of Mother to be mean about Papa. I wasn’t going to talk to her all afternoon.

But when we got to the Knoxes I couldn’t keep my resolve.

‘Knox Books’ had big clanging doors so the Knoxes would always hear if someone was coming in. They made their clanging sound as we entered. Mrs Knox looked up brightly from the counter and Mr Knox could be heard making his way back from the stockroom.

‘Look, Mother!’ I said. The shop floor had been re-arranged, and now, central to the room, was an enormous table, piled high with books of every stamp and colour—children’s books, wildlife books, poetry, cookery, novels, novellas. A sign read ‘Marked Down: 50% off Everything on this Table!’