But family was important to Nassim. He had taken a risk weeks earlier, introducing me to his family. He had taken me to his family’s bakery restaurant, famous among artists and writers and students in the inner southwestern suburbs. And it was so great: the smells; the innumerable members of Nassim’s family in the kitchen and in the restaurant; the coffee, dark and sweet; uni students at other tables, shabby-looking, looking like visitors, casting sideways glances my way as I sat with the family. And his family had welcomed me, but Nassim told me later that that had never actually been a guaranteed thing. His heart was in his throat, he said, because he was never quite sure where his parents were going to come down on these things; some of his aunts and uncles, their brothers and sisters, had banned his cousins from having relationships with Aussies.

‘What about next week?’ I said. It was all going so well. I was happy just as we were. I struggled to think about what to do.

‘No, Anna, this is stupid. Your mum is home now, we should just go there together.’ We stood on the corner. He was waiting for me to respond. I wanted desperately to say ‘no way’, but when I thought about explaining why, my tongue went dry. ‘All my family know you now,’ he went on. ‘I love that they get to see us together. I want the same with your family.’

It hadn’t been difficult keeping him a secret. My dad being away for so long meant I’d only had to omit telling him on our phone calls, and with Mum always out so late working, all I’d had to do was sneak Nass into the house when I knew she wasn’t going to be around – ample opportunity – and never let him stay. And I kind of loved the secrecy around that. I loved it later, after he’d gone – I loved sitting in our bland kitchen remembering the sexiness of his naked body in my bed upstairs, and never saying a word about it.

But Nass had taken a risk for us and my reluctance to do the same was making him feel like shit. He was right: it wasn’t fair. I calculated the risks. It was still early in the day. Mum would probably be okay right now, maybe even for a couple of hours. Maybe this was even one of those times where she would be okay for a whole day, or even days, or weeks, or even months. Sometimes the unpredictability made my head spin.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. But be warned.’

‘Warned of what?’

We began walking towards the house. Nassim slung his arm over my shoulder. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t.

‘Oh, just that my family isn’t like your family,’ I said.

‘I know that,’ he said. He thought he knew what I was talking about. He thought I felt my own background was bitsy and dull and boringly Australian compared to his. Which was true – I did. And I’d told him that. Comparing my dad’s pathetic attempts to keep our German heritage alive with his weekly Bauernbrot and Spätzle and how crappy that seemed compared to being tucked into a booth with Nassim’s aunt and cousins and mother and little sister Nadia, watching his father, busy in the kitchen with a pillow of soft white dough.