I remember us eating the last jar of frozen strawberries labelled 2010 in Mum’s handwriting. Auntie Annu had just emptied out the freezer of Sawdust House.
We ate the strawberries slowly. They were covered with a crisp layer of ice and sugar and they tasted wonderfully cold and sweet. No one talked about Mum’s vegetable patch or about crushed ice or the veranda or the strawberry pyramid, which never got built once Dad’s tyres had tumbled down the steps.
I remembered Mum’s fingers were dyed crimson as she dropped berries into boxes. Pop, pop, went the plastic, and the sugar rasped on top. Mum licked her red fingers and ate the too-small strawberries herself. The strawberries that were too large she sliced in half with a knife. The knife was red with strawberry juice as well.