Soon after my first marriage broke up, I had to take my then seven year-old daughter, Hannah, shopping for clothes. It had always been something she did with her mother, while I mowed the lawn or wrote. But no amount of scribbling or gardening was going to fill the empty cupboard in my daughter’s bedroom. I had to get out and prowl the racks with her.

We went to Dimmey’s in Geelong during summer school holidays. We were bunking with my parents for a few days. Before we left, Mum asked: ‘Do you want me to take her and you can go to the beach?’ The idea was appealing, but I was locked into the notion that anything Hannah’s mother could do I could do, if not better, at least capably.