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.

It says — and this is the line — we're sure you're settled now and have your own people.

Your own people.

To a man of twenty who had been sent eleven thousand miles at nine years old and who did not have, at that point, one single person in the world who had known him before he was nine.

And then it signs off, in a style I apparently thought was very grown-up: With best wishes, on behalf of the Partridge family.

On behalf of.

Eleven years of my mother's handwriting, and the last thing that family ever sent him was a form letter from an eighteen-year-old who thought she was being efficient.

Why it is over his fireplace.

That is the question I asked him, about two minutes later, when he came in with the tray and found me standing in front of it with my hand over my mouth.