I said, ‘Where are you going, Dad?’ because Dad basically never went anywhere and certainly not in the middle of the week, and he said, ‘Well, tell her, Ros.’

Mum said something like, ‘Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Jim.’

Dad said, ‘I’m not doing anything. This is your doing, Ros,’ and I actually thought he was going to cry. I’d never seen Dad cry because dads didn’t cry, not in those days.

Mum said something like, ‘I thought we agreed,’ and Dad said, ‘I haven’t agreed to anything,’ and that must have annoyed Mum because she took me by the shoulders and said, ‘Come here, Snow, and sit down.’ But instead of pushing me into the lounge room, where I might normally have sat, she took me into ‘the big bedroom’, which is what I called Mum and Dad’s room – because there were three bedrooms in the house: mine, one spare room, and the ‘big bedroom’ that was Mum and Dad’s – and she made me sit on the edge of the big bed. That was again very strange because I wasn’t allowed to sit or jump on that bed ever.

Mum sat down on the bed next to me and said, ‘I want you to listen carefully, Snow. Your father and I have been having some problems.’

I said, ‘What problems?’

Dad appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Yes, Ros, tell Snow what problems we’re having.’

My mother said, ‘Jim, please,’ as if that would make Dad shut up, and maybe it did because he took a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, took out a cigarette and lit it and started dragging hard on it.

Of course by this time I had figured out what was going on and I blurted out: ‘You’re getting divorced, aren’t you?’ But there was no way Mum wanted to admit that because this was back in the day, when a divorce was still pretty taboo. She started saying, ‘No, no, don’t be silly, Snow. You’re always jumping to conclusions. We’re not getting divorced. Of course we’re not.’

I said, ‘Well then, what are you doing?’

Dad said, ‘Yes, Ros, tell Snow what you’re doing,’ but Mum ignored him and said, ‘We’re just going to see if we’d be happier if we lived in different houses for a while, Snow.’

I said, ‘How would we be happier in different houses?’ Because kids don’t want to live in different houses, Jack, they want to live in one house. Dad must have agreed with me because he said, ‘Don’t ask me, Snow, it’s your mum’s big idea.’

Mum was glaring at him and she said something like, ‘What we’ve decided to do, Snow, is find out whether we’d be happier if we weren’t living together all the time. If we were still married, but we lived in two houses.’ And I have to tell you, Jack, my father laughed so hard that the smoke in his lungs came up and he started coughing, and he was saying, ‘Oh, Ros, do you even believe your own bullshit?’ which might have been the only time I heard him swear in front of my mum.