But this wasn’t about Alzheimer’s. I’d loved my Tonka truck. I could remember lighting fires, putting them out, incinerating plastic cowboys and policemen and watching them turn to glob on the concrete. It’d had an extendable ladder and lights that flashed and bells that clanged, and it was just like the real thing, when you were six.

‘Rabbits,’ Pop said.

I looked at Jen; we stopped ourselves from laughing.

‘Rabbits,’ he repeated, eyes closed, head rolling, mouth open.

‘What rabbits?’ Jen asked.

‘Heap of them, gettin’ about everywhere … that’s what the fella said.’

‘What fella?’ I asked.

‘Rabbits.’

Babbled about rabbits. Triggered memory. Sixth birthday? Tonka truck. Or was it the haircut?

Jen pushed his head forward so she could trim the edges.

I could remember the cab: the three or four firefighters. The little black hose you could undo, although it was solid and you couldn’t squirt anything. Still, you could incorporate your own hose, or a spray-pack, Mum’s, from the bathroom, or Jen’s, used in early attempts at hairdressing to simulate Agnetha’s do. An all-metal Tonka. So you could punish it. Or play with it in conjunction with Evel Knievel.

‘Evel Knievel, you remember him, Pop?’

‘Rabbits …’

‘Pop?’

‘Lasseter’s Reef …’

‘Pop?’

‘If you follow the directions in the sand …’

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘The rabbits are at the reef?’

He came out of it. ‘What?’

‘You said rabbits … and the reef.’

‘Did not.’ He watched Jen, worried she might have heard. ‘What did I say?’

‘Something about a reef.’

He glared at me, annoyed that I’d let this happen. ‘Great Barrier Reef, eh, Clem?’

‘Yeah.’

Something about rabbits became Lasseter’s. Strangely, no mention of the trip for the last few weeks. Hard to know what he remembers.

‘I hate rabbits,’ he said. ‘Disgusting animals. Worse than cats.’

‘Cats are nice,’ Jen said.

‘Stinkin’… anyway, won’t have to worry about that no more.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘I rang the council. Told ’em we’d had enough.’

I couldn’t believe it. He’d been putting up with cats for years. He was good at ignoring them: on the shed roof as he worked, in season, outside his window at three am.

‘They came and took them,’ I said.

‘Good.’

‘Val was upset.’

‘She’ll get over it. Enough’s enough.’

I could see Ernie’s face, hear him, telling me to get my facts straight.

‘That was mean,’ Jen said, although she didn’t like Val’s cats. Not the sort you saw playing with wool on the back of toilet doors.

‘You shoulda said something,’ I added.

‘No point muckin’ around. That’s what you pay your rates for.’

Ernie, going inside, content to let me think what I wanted, but disappointed, perhaps, the cake idea hadn’t come off.

Jen turned off her clippers, offered Pop a mirror and said, ‘Twenty bucks, ta.’