Into the vacuum, waiting for opportunity, Peter’s shame comes creeping. He’s not good enough to have a mother. Not good enough to be found. Probably as bad as his father says he is: a thief, a low-life, stupid, bad. He regards himself: ill-shaped, uneducated, unlovable. What father would want him? What mother? Not even Sophia! A thought strikes like a slap: they’re better off without him. Michael won’t belt her now that he is gone, the rough sandpaper between them. It is all his fault.

So when osteomyelitis strikes him again just after he turns seventeen, and the doctor at a Sydney hospital asks for next of kin, he won’t say. He tells no one about the illness except Keith Smith, a boy he’s befriended on the streets. For some reason, he finds Keith there beside him when he is admitted to hospital; he just won’t go away. So it is Keith who hears the surgeons say that, this time, Peter is likely to lose his leg. They use the word amputate. The infection is severe, he’s neglected it. Part of him wishes Keith would leave; he wants no one to see his fear or to see the hateful tears. But Keith, a quiet boy, quietly refuses. He sits with him until he goes to theatre, saying nothing except You’ll be right, mate, often enough to make Peter believe he won’t be. He doesn’t care; he can’t wait for the anaesthetic, he wants an end to the pain. He goes to sleep with the word amputation going around and around in his head.

A blink of an eye and he is in the recovery room, dozing, waking. Feels for his leg. It’s still there. So is Keith. How are you, mate? Keith says, expressionless. The sight of him as reassuring as the limb still – amazingly – attached to his body. His surgeons warn him he’ll need his crutches and he’ll need care. They mean the care of parents, he knows this, a tender mother to nurse him, in a home as clean as an operating theatre.

The day he is discharged he leaves the despised wooden crutches at the hospital door. Leans on Keith’s shoulder and hops to the car. I’ll drive, he says in a tone that won’t brook an argument. And he does, all the way back to the boarding house he lives in, using one of his old walking sticks to push the accelerator.