My fingers shook as I put the key into the ignition. Should I have waited for Marty or called Imogen? I couldn’t do this alone. Suddenly I wished for my father—as he was five years ago. Dad had been such a rock for all of us, especially when Mum was dying. He was a practical, get-the-problem-fixed kind of guy. But around the time we moved to England, he suddenly went downhill. His body and his mind decided they’d had enough. It was another thing for which I blamed myself. But, truth be told, I’d been in no state to look after him then; I was barely able to look after Bella and myself. From afar, I’d organised an assessment, a home nurse and then a nursing home. Mostly he recognised me, occasionally Marty, never Bella. He asked what time Mum would be home from the shops. He wondered if Phoebe needed collecting from piano lessons after school. He remembered the name of the ski lodge where we’d stayed when I was ten.

When I’d spoken to the matron yesterday afternoon, she assured me that Dad would be kept away from the television. I’d had a quick word with him and he’d given me his usual salient advice.

‘Finish your homework. Never give up. You’ll be learning all your life.’

He was right, I had been learning all my life—until five years ago, when my mind seemed to stop. Broken. Marty tried. He showed me articles about travelling exhibitions at my old museum: treasures of the pharaohs from Egypt; objects from the Hermitage Museum in Russia; Aztec artefacts from Mexico. I pushed his offerings away, not wanting to catch a glimpse of the words or images. The ones that were related to my own research he printed out and positioned on the kitchen table, ready for me to read. A collection from the Pacific. Oral stories from the Torres Strait. The fishermen from Makassar. Papua New Guinea and the First Australians. Shell middens in Far North Queensland. Those ones I ripped into tiny pieces and hid deep in the recycling bin. He was trying to be kind, trying to bring me back. But it was too late. I’d been creating that exhibition when I’d fallen pregnant: Our earliest traders: The Yolngu People of the Northern Territory. I’d taken that trip to Indonesia to meet with the Makassan people whose ancestors had traded sea cucumbers and turtle shells with Australian Aborigines. With two other researchers, I was determining what dates to list in the exhibition: cultural links from the late 1600s, or was that too presumptuous? Perhaps we should only cite the early 1700s, of which we had hard evidence.