I decided, at this point, while her peevishness otherwise occupied her, to forge ahead with my own questions.

‘Have you met Florence Hokey?’ I said. ‘Rosa’s friend?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Kitten, as though she wasn’t really paying attention. ‘Rosa’s friend.’

‘Do you think she’s a good drawer?’ I persisted.

Kitten swirled her wine around for a bit and then looked up. ‘Owen. I can’t tell anything from anything,’ she said finally. Her voice wasn’t right. She sounded tired. She sounded like she was imitating herself. ‘Do you understand that? I know nothing about art. I know nothing about anything. I am a complete vacuum.’ She drank another mouthful and sighed. ‘It turns out I am just a very good salesgirl. Very good at getting people to part with their money.’ Then she changed again. ‘One day, Owen, I’ll get married and have a whole flock of children. Oh, yes I will! I’ll have them coming out of my ears.’ She gestured with her hands at the sides of her head, as though babies were popping relentlessly from her brain.

She was drunk now. Not drunk. That other word that means nearly drunk. Tipsy. I waited to hear what she’d say next.

But she didn’t say anything. She sighed and sipped the last dregs of her drink. She got her jacket unravelled from the back of the chair and unhooked her handbag. She put the former on and swung the latter over her shoulder.

‘I don’t know about Florence Oakey, but Rosa is a very good drawer,’ she said.

‘Painter,’ I said. ‘Rosa is a painter.’

‘Painter,’ agreed Kitten. ‘Rosa is a very good painter.’

She kissed me on the forehead and left.

EPHEMERA

Painting, they say, is real estate. It is an investment, a piece of property. It makes people money. Poetry isn’t about money. Poets are poor. I knew this. Mr Parish was an exception to the rule. Mother’s book would be an exception to the rule. Poetry, Mr Parish said, was a ‘commitment to living intensely in the world. I couldn’t survive without my solicitor or my broker—but I wouldn’t be a solicitor or a broker. Life’s too short to be wasted. Poetry is a commitment of the soul.’

I believed him when he said this. It helped make sense of Mother even if living intensely in the world didn’t seem to be a particularly happy or pleasant prospect. What about Papa though? What was a meal a commitment of? Once eaten, you can never eat a meal again. You can’t save it. A meal is a memory that you keep chasing. That’s why you return to the same restaurant over and over. That’s why you keep ordering the same thing on the menu—to make a memory alive again. Papa was in the business of making memories.