‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I love you, Dad. I’m sorry I’m not there.’

‘It’s alright, Sar,’ he said. ‘I know you’re just over in the shed. We’ve always been the most alike, you and me. Probably why we find it so hard to get along.’

He started talking about radio talk shows then and I lost the thread of where he was, but when Fred came back on the line I was still wiping away tears.

‘It’s like that,’ Fred said. ‘The drugs they’re giving him. Hours of gibberish and then moments of the truest things he’s ever said. He told me he was sorry he made me and Jack go to war. Said he always blamed himself for Jack’s death.’

‘Oh, Fred.’

‘It’s fine, Sar. I’ll let you go.’

‘Wait,’ I said, but he’d hung up. I remember returning to the kitchen, where the kids were at the kitchen table with their homework spread out, and the rice had boiled over, starchy water pooled on the burner of the stove.

I took the tea towel and wiped at my face, thinking of my mum, whom I’d tried so hard not to become.

Caroline looked up from her maths homework, pulling her ponytail.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, scrunching up her freckled nose.

‘Nothing. You kids need to clear the papers and set the table for dinner.’

•

Jim wasn’t as hard to find as I’d thought he might be. Turns out he was right: Kilmarnock is a small place, and when you show up fresh from the bus station at the only diner in town at lunchtime and tell the waitress you’re looking for a Jim Rice, naval officer, she’ll not only tell you where he lives, she’ll draw you a map on a napkin and offer to give him a call so he can come pick you up, since it’s quite a walk.

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll just walk over there now.’

‘It’ll take you an hour,’ she said. ‘Where are you from anyway? England? You’ve got the sweetest accent!’

‘Australia.’

‘Australia,’ the waitress squealed. ‘Did you have a pet kangaroo? What about the black people over there, what do you call them, Aborigines? What they like?’ She grinned and then covered her mouth. ‘Gwen, come here—guess where this girl is from. Say something,’ she instructed me, as an older woman with her hair in an elaborate pile of grey curls walked over, tucking her notepad into her apron.

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Well, honey, I don’t know.’

‘Come now,’ said Gwen, ‘leave her alone. How’d you like it if everyone told you that you talked funny?’