I AM SITTING on the white wooden-frame and wire fence that runs along one side of our house and separates us from our neighbours – the Bonds. I am ten. It is a hot day and the sun is burning the skin on my arms in ways that I won’t know about until I am over thirty and having skin cancer cut out of them.

A flock of rosellas is eating the tiny berries off the hundred-year-old camphor laurel tree in our backyard. Their high-pitched chattering almost drowns out the sound of my Greek Cypriot Nana as she barrels down the long hallway of our large, colonial house, yelling in her accented English at my sister or at Gabby or at anyone.