Anyway, I said, ‘Where’s my breakfast?’ and Mum didn’t say anything, she was just standing looking out the kitchen window with a cup of instant coffee, and she was smoking, which she wasn’t supposed to do in the kitchen because the smoke wasn’t good for me as I had asthma. I sat down at the kitchen table and Mum still didn’t move so after a while I said, ‘Are you going to make me any breakfast?’

Mum said, ‘Oh, I’ll give you canteen money today,’ which was amazing to me because I wasn’t allowed to miss breakfast and I wasn’t allowed to go to the canteen. And then Mum said, ‘I’ll just get the keys,’ meaning she was going to drive me to school which, again, never happened. I always walked to school, or else I got the bus, and that was the same for all the kids in Deer Park. So I said, ‘Are you going to drive me to school?’ and Mum said, ‘Yes, because I want to have a little talk to you.’

Straightaway I thought, ‘Okay, I’m obviously in trouble,’ and I was trying to think of what I might have done wrong. But then Mum said, ‘Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything. Just get your school bag and let’s go.’ She made out like she was going to go out the front door and so I had to say, ‘But aren’t you going to get dressed?’ because she was still in her dressing gown.

She looked down, a bit surprised, but then she said, ‘Don’t be silly, Snow, it’s not like I’m going to get out of the car. I just want to have a bit of a talk to you.’ And she walked out to the drive in front of the neighbours in her dressing gown and her slippers! Since I was about ten years old, that was so embarrassing, and even as we were driving along in the old Datsun we had I could see people staring in at Mum in her dressing gown at the wheel of the car. I kept waiting to see what the big thing she had to tell me was but she obviously lost her nerve because she didn’t say anything to me in the car.

I probably forgot how weird all that was once I got to school, but then when I got home that afternoon, there it was: the suitcase in the hallway.

Like an idiot, I said, ‘What’s that?’ And Mum, who had pulled herself together and was now playing all easy-care, said, ‘Oh, that’s your father’s, Snow, he’s going away for a while.’ And that’s when I saw Dad, who was never usually there when I got home from school – he was always still at the shop. But on this day he was home and he was standing in the middle of the kitchen in the blue Yakka pants he always wore to Olarenshaw Electrics, with the Olarenshaw Electrics polo shirt on and his brown bridge cardigan with the walnut buttons over it, just looking sick.