But she had never lashed out at anyone else before, she told me. It had always been simply self-destructive, she’d thought. She hadn’t thought it was affecting me at all. My jaw dropped. ‘How could you think that?’ I said. I had trouble keeping my eyes on the road. ‘How could you not know?’

‘I really thought I was doing a wonderful job at keeping it separate. It was my thing, I thought I had it contained.’

‘Not even remotely,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘It’s amazing how alcohol can make you feel spectacular about being an alcoholic.’ She nearly choked on the word, but she got it out. I could feel hope bounding away inside me, out of control. I hoped it would be worth it.

‘But I couldn’t convince myself of that anymore, not when I saw that glass sticking out of Nassim’s arm.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘And the look on your face . . . I needed to accept that was me. My doing.’

I gripped the wheel, concentrating on keeping the car straight on the road while my whole understanding of my mother and of my father and of myself shifted and changed and reassembled itself with this new information.

All this, I thought. All this because of Hessel. Because of one man’s entitled determination to have his life the way he envisioned it, and his preparedness to inflict violence on others to make it happen. All this, from one horrible act of selfishness and self-righteousness and self-interest.

We drove without speaking, looking at the stripped paddocks beside the highway. All around us boundary fences divided up the landscape, marking out ownership. Just like those paddocks that spread out from around Bromley Cairn and the gully. All this, too. This land that was taken, not given. Stolen, not bought. Wrought from the hands of the first people by thunderous acts of violent entitlement that reverberated, as all violence does, through people, through time, through landscape, spreading shadows that darken lives.

All this, I thought.

I drove on back towards my old life. Towards Dad and Nassim and city and home and school. My mother’s face in profile zoomed against the backdrop of the passing land; a soft face, vulnerable, weathered, against that beautiful battered land beyond. We hurtled along together, our two bodies, one from the other, flying through time and space, carving a path through a difficult, beautiful, imperfect world. We drove and drove and I looked around me, seeing, finally seeing.

Seeing where we had come from. Ready to begin.

30 September

Dear Anna,

I’m sorry this letter is so late – it takes me a long time to write anything.

Basil is helping me write this and will post the letter for me. I am writing a letter to Kitty Cat too, to say thank you for what she said in court. Baz says that you might not know that I call your mum Kitty Cat so I should write that in too. Kitty Cat is your mum. You are Anna Panda. I just decided that.