At 69, I sold my house to travel around the world despite my children’s protests — in Australia, a man invited me to his home for coffee, but when I walked into his living room, I froze.

And then he said: "I know what it says, love."

And I said: I know it says it, I'm telling you I wrote it—

And he said: "No. I mean I know what it says. I've had it on a wall for forty-four years."

And then he said the thing that I have not been able to get past, and that I have now repeated to four different people, and that I still cannot say out loud without stopping in the middle.

He said: "I knew at twenty that it was a brush-off. I'm not stupid. I just never had anything else with my name on it."

Nothing else with my name on it.

Eleven years of my mother's letters were addressed to the farm school, which held them and distributed them, and which he had to hand back.

The envelope of my letter — the last one, the unkind one — came after he had left, to a boarding house in Winnamurra, addressed to Mr A. Hartnoll.