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head.
    â€˜See, you’re just a child,’ Madge repeated. She tried to take the letter and he resisted for a moment before he let it go. Then she took the whole pile and threw them out the window. They came undone and scattered everywhere, settling across the road, down an embankment and into a gully. He watched them blow across grass and over rocks, catching in the fork of trees and under piano-sized boulders.
    Madge embraced him. She drew his head against her breast and ran a finger down his cheek, triggering a single cold tear that made it as far as his chin. ‘Trust me,’ she said.
    No reply.
    â€˜You love me, don’t you?’
    â€˜Yes,’ he managed.
    â€˜Well … enough of this nonsense. We don’t need to mention it again, do we?
    Silence.
    â€˜Do we?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜You will be the world’s greatest musician.’
    And then he kissed her arm, and shoulder, and neck.
    â€˜I do it because I love you,’ she said. ‘Everything’s for you.’

Chapter Four
    Madge liked soccer because Erwin didn’t have to use his hands. The position of goalie for the Nuriootpa School’s Under-15s had come up and Erwin had wanted it, but Madge was having none of that. She’d seen how hard they kicked the ball, and could imagine bent and twisted fingers.
    Football had been suggested, but ruled out; batters’ fingers had been smashed by cricket balls; hockey was the same as saying goodbye to your teeth – but if it came to something too passive, like table-tennis or archery, then what was the point of sport at all?
    So there she was, on a cold Sunday morning at the Angaston Community Oval. She watched as the team, in blue and white, warmed up by jogging on the spot, bringing up phlegm and spitting and stretching against a wall with a sign proclaiming ‘Dawes and Penna, Suits in an Hour’. She knew her son was the star; he towered above the brown-haired butchers’ sons, a little Ching-Chong and a Red Sea pedestrian called Goldman, or Goldstein. Of course, they’d made him the captain. It was obvious Erwin had been cheated. He was the one with the square shoulders, muscular trunk and Mr Atlas biceps. These things were never left to a popular vote. It was always whose dad was providing the sponsorship.
    Madge watched as the boys from each team took up their positions. She opened a thermos of tomato soup and poured herself a cup. Erwin looked at her and she toasted him, blowing him a kiss and trying to look like she cared. The other parents had gathered further along the fence. They talked and laughed and patted each other on the back. Some of them spoke in German and she wanted to ask, ‘In which country have you chosen to live?’
    They didn’t bother about her. Most of them knew what she was like. She drove her husband to an early grave, they’d whisper between themselves, and she’ll do the same with that boy, if he lets her. They’d tried to sit with her, and talk, but it had never got beyond how provincial the Valley was, how bad the schools were, how the Germans made no effort to get along (and she should know, she married one) and how she was planning to get her son to Europe, or America, to study with proper teachers.
    The referee blew the whistle and the game began. Erwin had the ball almost straight away, moving it towards the goal, avoiding an Italian with socks up past his knees and a bangle that caught the morning sun.
    â€˜Come on, Erwin,’ his mother called, standing, spilling her tomato soup. ‘First goal!’
    But a few moments later the opposition had him boxed in, with no one for him to pass to. Where was the Yid? Of course, chatting to someone on the boundary. ‘Eh, Captain,’ she called, ‘where are your players?’
    He couldn’t hear her, but the other parents could, turning and looking at her and then whispering something among themselves.
    â€˜He needs