The door was not quite closed, and George and Capability stopped outside it on their way back. George whispered an instruction and I heard a match scrape on a matchbox. Capability pushed the door open, and George strode in with a pudding like a cannonball on a platter, blue flames licking across the top of it. Michael squealed and ran behind my chair.

George set the pudding on the table and the fire shuddered and went out.

‘Not a pudding without a flame,’ he told us as Mrs Keene opened the curtains again. ‘That’s what my mother always said. Old family recipe.’

He had his hands on his hips as he inspected the steaming black mass to see if it had lived up to expectations. As he took a knife and started to cut it into portions, Capability set a bowl of something that looked like white cake frosting down beside it.

‘That’s not custard,’ I said, without meaning to.

‘Oh, no,’ George said. ‘Much better than custard. That’s brandy butter.’ He passed my mother the first bowl of pudding, then gave a small serve to Michael. ‘Now, you must proceed with caution, all of you. There’s every chance you might discover a silver sixpence or two in there.’ The next bowl was mine. ‘Or even something more.’

My mother found a sixpence and gave it to Michael. My father did too. My spoon struck metal and I dug out a coin. It was gold-coloured rather than silver. It had a long-haired chinless king on one side of it and a crest on the other.

My father leaned across to take a closer look. ‘That’s not a sovereign, is it? You can’t keep a—’

George interrupted him. ‘No, no. Half-guinea. And it’s finders keepers I’m afraid. No returns.’

Across the table, I could see Capability looking in Mrs Keene’s direction. With my spoon, I pushed away the raisin that was stuck to the back of the king’s head. There had been a coin like it in the cabinet of curiosities – same size, same colour – next to the Dutch soldier. The ancestor soldier who might have been Dutch. I could picture it there. But the champagne was still buzzing in my head and I could have pictured anything.

It was George the Third on the coin, ‘Georgivs III Dei Gratia’. There were more words on the crest side, or parts of words, Latin words. It was made in 1775. I rubbed it clean with my napkin and put it in my pocket.

In Brisbane, all my friends were asleep, fans next to their beds ticking and shuddering as they rotated, swirling warm air around the room. Across Teddington, my new classmates, half of whom I didn’t know by name, some of whom I’d already forgotten since Friday, were in their own versions of this cold wet Christmas, but not in this room with its fire, its champagne, its gold half-guinea, my father and George, clinking glasses, toasting something, nodding in fierce agreement.