She comes from French and Scottish blood. She boasts that she can cook a three-course gourmet dinner for the price of a McDonald’s family meal. She marinates ducks in a special vinegar and orange sauce invented by her French grandmother and passed down to her. The day I was heading off to high school, still gawky and clumsy in my body, she told me a time would come when the French elegance and the Scottish thriftiness would reveal themselves in me. ‘Just wait,’ she said. My father died later that year. I asked her what I would inherit from his side. ‘Oh heavens! I don’t know,’ she laughed. ‘Perhaps some good common sense?’ These days, on Wednesday mornings, my mother strolls around the Mt Dandenong bush track while I run three circuits. Today as we head off I race away, round a curve, plunge into the scrub and vomit. Bile burns my throat. After the second circuit I give up the jogging and fall in beside her.
