I grip the wheel tightly as I overtake the truck. The driver waves and honks.

And then I hold the car steady on an endless straight. I know the road will get more complicated later on, but for now only my arm muscles are tested. My mind is free to wander, which, today, is not good. But, lacking the energy to stop it, I stare at the road and give in to memory.

The end of my first day in grade one. I’d walked out of the classroom into a mass of mothers waiting for their sons and daughters. There was my mother: standing to one side of the other women, wearing cat-eye sunglasses, dark hair in a perfect dome, a patent-leather purse hanging off her angled forearm, a dress of blue shot silk. My mother, who never left the house without ‘eyes on and a perfect lip’, as advised by Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette. My mother, who bought expensive overseas fashion magazines. My mother, who asked my father to haul her sewing machine onto the dining-room table almost nightly, so that I became accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of whirring machinery and shaking wood. On my first day of school, and each day thereafter, she picked me up dressed like Elizabeth Taylor in a crowd of Julie Andrews, and her loveliness filled me with pride.

Even on our twice-yearly obligatory family stays at our grandparents’ farm near Kingaroy – which we knew she loathed – my mother dressed like a Vogue cover girl. I’m sure I disappointed her as a daughter. I liked to play outside and didn’t care much what I wore back then. She persisted with me, gently. I’d sit on her lap, both of us facing forward, her arms wrapped around me to show me how to thread a needle, sew a button. I had no interest in sewing but enjoyed the warmth of her enveloping me, her powdered cheek an inch from mine, the waxy smell of her lipstick.

The last time we went to Nan and Pop’s farm before Mum died, I found the courage to swim in the murky dam at the bottom of the hill. I dropped my dress in the grass and ran across the dried-earth rim that led to the water, wearing only my undies, trying not to think about what might be underfoot. I squelched in mud then dove into the warm water and swam, blissful, to the middle of the dam. Afterwards, I pulled my dress on and ran to the house to boast, but everyone had gone to see the new calves except for Mum. Before I could explain myself she bundled me off to the bathroom, asking why I insisted on ruining the pretty things she made me.

Once I’d washed, and my grandparents, Dad and Charlie had returned from the calving pens, we ate warm scones in the crowded kitchen while Pop’s cattle dog, Girl, sat by the open back door, watching me with anxious eyes. Charlie and I weren’t allowed to feed Girl but my grandparents – ancient, cranky – were so dismissive of her, yapping instructions at her all day, that I took it as my mission to sneak rewards to her. I went out to the shady porch and sat beside her, whispering advice, counselling her to run away while we slept, to head north, being sure to stay clear of the elephantine trucks that stormed the road throughout the night.