The sun peeked at us through a gum tree, the leaves making it wink cheekily and reminding me of the sun-and-leaf-sparkling view from the memorial on the hill.

‘I think you were incredibly brave,’ I said. ‘I think you were incredible. Are incredible.’

Cathy looked away from me and a silence grew in which it was clear she didn’t know what to say to that. It was awkward, but I was still glad I had said it.

‘How did you call Nassim, Mum?’

She looked at me sheepishly. ‘I got the number from your phone last week.’

‘What?’

‘I owed him an apology,’ she said, quickly popping chips in her mouth. ‘It took me too long to call.’

‘Well, thanks.’

Mum shrugged, and after a moment I asked, ‘Hey, Mum, whatever happened to Becky?’

‘Becky?’

‘Yeah. Do you two still talk?’

‘No, I lost touch with her too. But you know what? I heard that she went on to become a funeral director.’

‘A funeral director?!’

‘Yes.’

‘That is not what I would have expected of her from what you told me.’

‘I know! Me neither.’

I laughed at the thought of Clooney-loving Becky being formal and solemn and ceremonial.

‘Maybe you should call her,’ I said. ‘It sounds like she was a pretty good friend. Not afraid to say the hard things to you. It’s good to have friends like that.’

Mum nodded slowly. She scrunched up greasy chicken paper and shoved it all back into the paper bag it had come from. ‘And we might need her professional services after that meal.’ She tossed the car keys to me. ‘Okay. You’re driving. Bring it on home, my girl.’

On the drive from Gundagai to Sydney, Mum watched the scenery out of the passenger-side window and told me about the last time she’d seen Danny – when Leonie had found him in a rooming house in St Kilda, drug affected and out of control, when I was only two. She told me that as she stood there in that smoke-smelling room, the pain of it all just tumbled down on her, the enormous realisation of what Hessel had taken away from her: the only decent thing she felt she’d had in her childhood, her little brother, stolen away from her. And how then, what she had seen when she was seventeen, Hessel attacking Danny, the memory she had lied even to herself about, came rushing back in so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t function and Dad had to leave me with their friends for two days and come and fetch her and bring her back to Sydney. ‘Having to be without us both for those two days, Anna – it’s a big deal for a two year old. I’m sorry.’

After that her PTSD really took hold in earnest – flashbacks and hyper-vigilance and traumatic shock and insomnia madness – but she never sought proper treatment because that would have meant telling the truth, and she was too ashamed, and too scared of saying anything that might mean she had to take a stand against Hessel. So she deadened it all with alcohol. Dad did everything he could to keep her afloat and keep it from affecting me: Mum had even had stints away in hotels when Dad had kicked her out during some revolting binges that she was ashamed to admit to. A percentage of her ‘conferences’ away had been her alone in a hotel room with a bottle.