A commotion suddenly erupts on the road behind me where a large delivery lorry accidentally reverses into a stationary car (an old Capri). Horns are sounded. Both parties leap out of their vehicles. I quickly stand up and walk off, head down (determined not to get caught up in it).

Yup. That’s what Mame always taught me. Never get involved. Okay, she didn’t teach it so much by word as by the worst possible example. Fearless Mame! Always at the heart of any commotion, with her red lips (spewing a constant stream of peerless vowels and brutal consonants), her impeccable blonde curls, her neat little suits and pristine gloves. Mame’s gloves! That was the formal face. And the informal? Equally pristine, but tough. Those same, perfectly manicured fingers would wring a chicken’s neck, shoot a rabbit, disembowel a deer, mend a radio, fix a lawnmower, paint a house, grab a hammer and build a shed. Fearless Mame! Pitiless Mame! Indomitable! Irresistible! Implacable Mame. With her passion for the rules and her unutterable horror of encroachment!

It sometimes felt – and this was the unsayable, the truly unthinkable – as though she was determined to dedicate the rest of her life (after my disgusting conception) to making up for that one, terrible occasion on which she simply could not say no. Storming into battle at the slightest provocation. Searching out trouble. Routing all – any – opposition. Righteous. Opinionated. Hungry for justice. But at what cost? And for whom, precisely? Herself? Me? Us?

But where was I, meanwhile? Where’s cripplingly shy and unassuming, little Carla to be found? Quiet, little Carla? Hiding among Mame’s skirts? Cringing behind the sofa? Fleeing on her bike? Skimming stones on the beach? Perpetually ducking? Perpetually wincing? Standing at her shoulder, mesmerized, as she sits at her old dressing table, carefully applying her lipstick, her ‘warpaint’ – a special red, Mame’s red – before grabbing her purse and marching out? Oh God, just wishing she sounded a little more like the other mothers! Wishing she could act a little more like the other mothers! Be normal, Mame! Why did she always have to be so brave? So proud? So exceptional? So confident? So straight? So practical? So extraordinary? So unbowed?

Is that how she ended up with poor, old Tatteh? Out of sheer contrariness? Just kicking against the pricks? Out of habit? Always different. Always difficult. Engaged to a Jew? A shiftless musician? A piano tuner? In wartime Berlin? Was it simple bloody-mindedness? Or was it … was it actually heroic? Noble Mame!

Fearless Mame!

How different they were. Mame so unflinching. Tatteh so careless. So jolly! So … so deliriously selfish.

Was that me? Did I do that to them? Or was it simply the war? Was what happened his fault – pure cowardice – for getting out when he could, abandoning her, his darling fiancée? Or was it hers: cancelling the wedding, staying behind – out of sheer necessity, she insisted – to support her consumptive younger brother, just sent home, broken, raving, from the front?