I was obviously suspicious because, like I said, what kind of idiot walks away from a million dollars? I said, ‘Are you sure?’

Doug said, ‘Oh, quite sure. She sounds like the loveliest woman and she has no real need for money. She was just thrilled to get the news that she has a sister.’

I said, ‘I’m not really a sister. We’ve never met.’

Doug said, ‘She’s really keen to meet you.’

I said, ‘Did you tell her I’ve got no interest in meeting her?’

Doug said, ‘She’s never met a member of her biological family before. She grew up in an orphanage, and they told her she’d been abandoned.’

I said, ‘I really couldn’t care less. All I know is that Dad can’t have had much interest in this person because he never mentioned her to me or to anyone. Why don’t you ask her to scrap that whole “let the sisters meet up” thing?’

That was the way I felt, Jack. I had no desire to meet Agnes, and had it been up to me I would never have met her. But Doug was saying, ‘She wants to come to Australia and she wants to go to the house in Deer Park. She wants to talk to you about her parents. She was dying for even a photograph.’

I said, ‘I don’t care. Tell her to sign whatever needs to be signed, whatever documents there are saying she doesn’t want Dad’s money, and that can be the end of it.’ But Doug said, ‘No, no, she wants to see where her parents lived, and where they’re buried. She wants to lay flowers on their graves.’

I said, ‘That’s a bit of bad luck since Dad’s ashes are here, with me, at Delaney House.’ That got Doug all upset, and he was saying, ‘I thought you’d have buried Jim next to your mother, at the Altona Lawn Cemetery,’ and I had to say, ‘Well, you’ve got yourself to blame for that. They wanted $5000 for that plot and I don’t have $500 because all my money is tied up in Dad’s estate.’

Doug said, ‘Well, in any case, Snow, your sister wants to meet you, and I don’t like to remind you, but she has the right. I won’t be putting your father’s will up for probate until that condition is met. You can either go there to London, or your sister is going to have to come here to Australia, but either way it has to happen.’

I put the phone down and when I reported all this to Mark, he said, ‘I don’t get it either, why does she want to come? Tell her to sign her rights away and piss off.’ That was very, very good advice, and don’t I wish I had taken that advice? But I didn’t, and here’s why: I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I wasn’t nice to this woman she might turn nasty on me. I was thinking, ‘Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, Snow. If this woman wants nothing from the estate, and all she wants is to visit, let her visit. Don’t upset her, let her come over, be nice, make sure she signs whatever she has to sign, and then she’ll be out of your hair.’