No such congenial coupling occurred for Leonard. He failed to develop any interest in sport, a serious blight in a sports-mad nation. He grew into a boy with abundant desire, but confined by Perth-sized opportunity. His nerves lay exposed, and were always threatening to expose him. He couldn’t explain why he was so sensitive, but over the years he learned the art of self-protection — not through fight or flight, but through disguise and camouflage.

By the age of ten and enrolled in fourth grade, he was a fully fledged actor in a life of his own crafting, and while it was an effort, mostly he managed. Terrence, his best friend and soulmate, made it easier. Terrence, whose dreams like his own stretched beyond Perth, understood him and watched out for him. During weekends and holidays the two of them played endless games of make-believe. They would travel to faraway countries, to other planets, even other galaxies. And they crafted their own private utopia, an existence without parents, without brothers and sisters, without school, and most of all without Perth. In Perth, Terrence was Terry, and he was Len or Lenny; in the life they wanted, Terrence would be Terrence, and he would be Leonard or Leo, a name that would sit very nicely on the cover of the books he planned to write one day.

He and Terrence discovered biographies around the time they started high school. These books led them into the bohemia of Paris and London, Bloomsbury and Montmartre. Nothing was out of bounds in these places, indeed, outrageous behaviour was expected. Unfortunately, Leonard was too self-conscious to embrace the Perth version of bohemia, should it even exist, though he would have been happy if it were to reach out and embrace him first. Terrence had other ideas. He wanted to be an actor, and he needed Experience. He was willing to try anything, and Leonard, in time and with a little persuasion, would have joined him. But he was denied the opportunity. Suddenly, Terrence was leaving Perth, he would be living in Melbourne. His father had a new job. The two boys swore eternal friendship. ‘I’ll come to Melbourne as soon as I can,’ Leonard promised. ‘And in the meantime we’ll write.’ The boys hugged each other — not the done thing, but in such distressing circumstances they didn’t care.

At first they exchanged letters almost daily, then weekly, then monthly. Before the first year had passed, apart from the occasional postcard, the correspondence had petered out. But not Leonard’s desire to join Terrence in Melbourne.

By his late teens, the writer he had long aspired to be had undergone refinement. Now he wanted to be a poet — not a Banjo Patterson balladeer, but a poet in the tradition of the nineteenth-century English romantics: Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. A poet and perhaps a filmmaker. Or a choreographer of Hollywood musicals. Or maybe an actor like Terrence.