I felt a flicker of nerves, the ghost of what this moment could have been, meeting his mother as once I met Claire. It was an important moment in my life that fire had ruined. ‘You’ve done the best you could. Lovely gardens. Nothing burned.’

‘They were lucky. I still can’t believe she’s here. When I think of Mum, I imagine her aged around forty.’

‘Younger than you are now.’

He continued talking as we walked. ‘I apologise to her all the time. For putting her here. She never remembers. I don’t know how much of her is left… Aren’t memories who we are?’

He pressed a buzzer at the entrance and a security lock clicked open.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe your mother’s life still makes sense to her.’

We stepped through the door. A blonde woman with the coiffed hair of a china doll sat behind a desk in a small reception area. She smiled at Jack, and frowned past him at me. ‘You’re here to see your mum,’ she said, like he might not realise.

‘Thanks, Rebecca.’

‘I’ll walk you down.’

Rebecca led us down a long hall of closed white doors. Eventually, she opened one, revealing a room that looked like a hotel but smelled like a hospital ward. An elderly woman with sparse dyed-blonde hair sat in a well-padded chair beside the window. She rattled a teacup in its saucer. ‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Laskin, I’ve brought visitors.’

‘Mum,’ Jack said, his tone helpful. He placed his hand over his mother’s teacup until the rattling stilled. His simple gesture moved me. ‘It’s me. Jack. And this is Phoebe.’

Shirley smiled. Her eyes were the same blue as Jack’s. The expression revitalised her. ‘A friend of Jack’s?’

‘Caleb’s mother,’ Jack said.

‘Caleb?’

‘You’ve met him a few times.’

I stepped closer. ‘I’ve read Sugarcane Poems,’ I said. ‘My white vows in the church, witnessed by summer. So beautiful.’

Shirley attempted to sip from her empty cup. Jack, noticing, switched on a kettle on her sideboard. ‘Your poems,’ I reminded her gently.

‘I loved that Queensland landscape,’ she said. ‘So inspiring there. Fields on fire like we could harvest flames. That’s what I used to tell myself. My poems were mostly stories.’

‘That’s what I love about them. I know how important stories are.’

Afterwards, Jack drove me back to the hospital.