Doug said, ‘I suppose without the clause in there, there’s nothing to make you do it.’

I said, ‘Why didn’t he leave it so that I could decide whether this woman gets anything? Or that I not get what is rightfully mine until I’ve met her? That would be fair enough. This is ridiculous! She could walk away with half!’

Doug said, ‘She could, but bear in mind she might not. You only have to offer. She doesn’t have to accept.’

I said, ‘Why wouldn’t she accept? What kind of lunatic would turn down a million dollars, bang, just like that, out of the blue?’

Doug said, ‘I’m fairly sure your father had in mind the two of you meeting to work it out.’

I looked at Doug and said, ‘She better say no thanks. That’s what I’d do if somebody I never met left me something that rightfully belonged to somebody else. I’d say no thanks!’ Which probably isn’t actually true but anyway that’s what I said, and then I got up and pretty much stormed out of Doug’s office, furious with him but also with Dad. Maybe there are some people who think, ‘Oh, but wasn’t it wonderful to have a sister turn up, after being an only child and everything?’ But no, it wasn’t wonderful.

What would have been wonderful would have been me going into Doug’s office, getting the sale of the Deer Park house organised, closing Delaney House and moving to the Gold Coast on the proceeds of the sale of the land at Ocean Grove, instead of having to think to myself, ‘I’m going to be spending the next five years in court, fighting over my father’s estate.’

I went back to the house in Deer Park. There used to be a portrait of my parents on the sideboard in the front room, and I picked it up that day and looked at Dad, there on the dock at Port Melbourne with his hat and his suitcase, standing next to Mum, both of them on their first day in Australia, and there was nothing about the picture that said, ‘We’ve already had a baby that we left behind.’

I was talking to the picture, saying, ‘How come neither of you ever mentioned any of this to me? And why have you left me to deal with all this when it’s actually got nothing to do with me? Can you not see that this is a prime-sized pain in the neck?’

I tossed up whether to phone Mark and tell him but I decided against it. Things had a habit of being my fault and I didn’t want him all riled up and shouting down the line at me. I slept badly that night but when I woke up I thought, ‘Okay, Snow, you better get to work on this.’

I made contact with a lawyer in the city – a proper lawyer, not a two-bit solicitor from the suburbs – and told him I had an emergency, and he agreed to see me. I put the problem directly to him, saying, ‘How can it be that I’m expected to cover the cost of my father’s funeral and everything else besides, while that land is sitting there in Ocean Grove? How can it be that I’m not permitted to sell my own house in Deer Park until we’ve spoken to this woman? How can I not be allowed to access my own inheritance, because of this stupid clause?’