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up a set of stairs.
    The room faces onto a leafy lane and the back of a small church. It has slanted walls and features a made-up double bed and a desk next to a blue-curtained window. It resembles something between a scout’s cabin and a cheap hotel room, but it’s clean and has an adjoining bathroom.
    ‘So this is it.’ Pat puts her hands on her hips. ‘I sometimes come to do some admin, but just close the door to the stairs if you want privacy. I’m quiet when I’m here.’ She hands me her card and a set of keys. ‘Ring if you have any questions. I live around the corner. My address is on the card.’
    The scent of her perfume sits like an itch in the air after she’s gone.
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    I open the window and inhale. The aroma is familiar. It’s the smell of people, pleasant and insistent: washing detergent, fuel, garbage bins and a whiff of something spicy frying that makes my stomach growl. I walk back downstairs and unload the ute quickly before walking up to King Street.
    People eat at tables outdoors despite the cold. A woman in Doc Martens and a purple shawl drinks tea outside an Indian diner with a scruffy-looking dog sprawled on her lap.
    There is movement and colour everywhere I look. King Street attracts artists, students and people living on the streets, and I am met with voices, beards, tattoos, swearwords, hats, skirts, chains, piercings and men begging on the sidewalk.
    I decide on the Indian diner and order lamb curry and a lassi so yellow that it seems to emanate light. From the window seat I gaze at the street. Newtown looks different from when I used to live here, but it feels the same.
    I rented a room above a butcher’s shop after I left uni. It was a dump. The toilet was downstairs and I shared it with the butcher and his two apprentices. They left bloody handprints on the sink and never cleaned. I would wash in the tiny kitchen upstairs or at the local swimming pool if I had money. The place was freezing in winter and suffocating in summer, but the lease allowed me to use the back shed for my woodwork and for that alone it was worth it.
    By then my mother was already famous. Her book Exterior Politics had become an international bestseller and students flocked to hear her speak.
    I brought Vera to one of her lectures. It was held in the quadrangle at Sydney Uni and the hall was packed. Vera and I squeezed in at the back next to the open window and then my mother made her entrance, rushing in with a briefcase under her arm. She didn’t know we were there and didn’t see us. Applause broke out, brief but enthusiastic.
    ‘Oh,’ she said as she reached the front, ‘you are being entirely silly and adorable.’ And then she put on her reading glasses and began the lecture. I didn’t hear a word of what she was saying. I just kept thinking that I too would have clapped had I not known her. There had always been a kind of heat emanating from her. People responded to it, and that day was no exception; that day she made everyone feel that Political Science 101 was a gateway to a brilliantly inspired life.
    When the lecture finished the guy next to me said, ‘Man, I always feel like I can fly after hearing Bessie speak.’
    ‘Bessie?’
    ‘That’s what I call her in my mind,’ he said and smiled a crooked smile.
    After the lecture I introduced Vera to my mother, who multitasked perfectly. She handed out papers, gave someone a hug, nodded seriously at someone else’s comment and still managed to ask Vera all the right questions. What did she like about art school? Who was her favourite sculptor? And she had looked amused when Vera and I joked about the inescapable heat in my room and how we had tried to haul an old bathtub up the stairs. The endeavour had been unsuccessful, the tub too large for the bend in the staircase, and we had ended up bruised and exhausted from our efforts.
    ‘So what do you think of the famous Beatrice Oliver?’ I asked, as we walked home.
    Vera looked at me sideways.