Fern’s mother died on a cruise. A ferry cruise, a movable party, the sort that patrols the harbour on weekends. No-one saw her fall into the water, and no-one missed her until the ferry pulled in at the wharf. Then her husband realised she was gone.

Fern and I had not been friends then. I moved to her school when I was in fifth class. Fern invited me home after I had spent a week in the wearying company of Lucia Morgan, a girl the size of a grown-up. Lucia was kindhearted, showing me where the canteen was and sticking with me through the endless lunchtimes. She was not fat, but certainly not thin. She was larger than my mother. She put a heavy arm around my shoulders and called me cute. She noticed—as I never had—that I had a lisp, and in her kind voice used to chant at me, ‘Not thoggy dog, soggy dog.’ Thoggy dog became her nickname for me. Its pointlessness depressed me. There were no dogs in our conversation. I was not a puppy.