Mum had put Ruthy’s biscuit tin with all of her notebooks in the case she packed for her. That was wise of Mum, because it might have been the last straw for Ruthy if she hadn’t been able to keep writing in them, and she liked to take old ones out and review what had happened in the past, but we all had to have a good think about the fact Mum seemed to know the secret location for all of our precious things.

Brother Hodgeson made a special wooden pencil box and carved Ruthy’s name on the side of it. Sister Hodgeson filled it up with all sorts of pens. I was particularly jealous of the set of pencils they gave her, with the most wonderful range of rainbow colours. They took her on outings after school and on Saturdays. She went to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the movies, during which she was allowed to eat popcorn and a choc-top ice-cream. Sister Hodgeson hugged her quite a bit.

Ruthy said at first this was fine. She was the centre of attention and nothing she said or did made either of them cross – not that Ruthy caused grief at home anyway as a rule. But after a while she found it a bit smothering. She felt like a little doll they wanted to play with. She was paraded in front of their friends like a wind-up toy. She grew tired of been chucked under the chin and asked to sit on the knees of all their old friends. She particularly disliked it when they took her to visit Sister Hodgeson’s father in the rest home. His legs were very bony and she kept slipping off them when they put her on his knee. He liked to pick his nose, and sometimes did it the whole way through a visit. He flicked little bits of goobies all over the room, and Ruthy constantly panicked that one would flick on to her and she would scream or faint. He liked to force her mouth open so he could look at her teeth. Sometimes he put his fingers in her mouth and counted them over and over. This made the Hodgesons laugh, but not Ruthy. She told me she was sorely tempted to clamp her teeth shut on his yellow, gnarly fingers, but thought she’d better not. They were so fragile she imagined they would snap off in her mouth and she might accidentally swallow one of them. This might lead to her being taken by ambulance – or police car, given biting off old people’s fingers was probably an offence – to the Royal Adelaide Hospital to have them surgically removed from her stomach so they could be sown back on. We agreed this would not be worth the pleasure of biting him.

Her second least-favourite person to visit was a mutual friend of the Hodgesons’ and Aunty Maisie called Sister Everude. Well, you can already guess the jokes about that name, but the sad thing was they weren’t really jokes because she was rude. She would look at you for a minute and then pass judgement.