Ruth’s current neighbours were rich footballers, property developers and daytime TV hostesses, who all unapologetically put the ‘nouveau’ into ‘nouveaux riches’. Christmas one-upmanship was high on the agenda, epitomised by the residents’ annual competition to determine who had the most sensational decorations. Despite global warming angst, the bushfire season starting earlier and lasting longer, and summer temperatures so intense that local chooks had taken to laying hard-boiled eggs, no electrical wattage was spared in the flashing, disco-dancing reindeers, gyrating polar bears, strobing ‘Ho Ho Ho’s, and frenzied elves and Santas sleighing back and forth across suburban roofs in a phantasmagoria of fluorescent choreography. On and on they flickered across the sky, even in full, blazing sunlight.

Stunned pedestrians staggered from throbbing cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac. My mother’s street attracted the most sightseers. My favourite of her neighbours, an old surfie dude in a fibro shack, who’d refused to sell out to the developers, had just one homemade neon sign on his front porch. It was a simple, luminous arrow pointing back towards his neighbours’ houses, above one flashing word – ‘WANKERS’.

Even on Christmas Day, gawping crowds meant that the roads leading out to the point were blocked with suburban SUVs. We trundled along behind these standard parental-issue behemoths at a geriatric pace. Zoe and Jake reverted to ironic, kiddie-type whining, with exaggerated ‘Are we there yet?’s. Although they were joking, it made me have serious second thoughts about my secret baby on board. When we finally arrived at the family home, my mother swung the front door open wide and made a sweeping gesture, like a French courtier, to indicate that we should enter. The look she gave me was so searching and shrewd that when she said, flatly, ‘You’re late,’ for a sickening instant, I thought she was talking about my period.

My mother’s harsh face suddenly appeared to have the fragility of ancient, drying paper. Ruth hesitated and for one fleeting moment I actually imagined she was going to say something nice. ‘Potato bake?’ she said, peering down at the huge baking dish I was clutching. ‘So glad you took me at my word and didn’t go to too much trouble.’

I sighed. Here we go, I thought, resignedly. My mother was good at being mean the way a shark is good at being predatory. Today, even the big windows in her sunny, deep waterfront home seemed cold and unfriendly. Despite the brightness outside, it felt cold in here, as though sunlight never entered.

With forced geniality, my mother offered a cheek to her grandchildren to be kissed, then turned to Harry. ‘Harrison.’ Her eyelashes whisked up and down his frame. ‘I didn’t get the memo that it was fancy dress.’