‘Your pa was just angry, that’s all,’ Mom says to me afterwards. ‘He doesn’t really want you to go hitting people. You know that, don’t you?’

‘I’m not going to go hitting people.’

‘If there’s any more of this rubbish, you tell someone, eh?’ Mom says. ‘That’s the way to go about it in an Australian school, and it’d be a good way to go about it anywhere.’

But she can tell me that all she likes. I still don’t want to face them in the morning. Not Lachlan. Not Max. Not anyone at One Mile Creek State School.

‘I hate them all,’ I tell her, because it feels good to say it.

‘Hate’s a strong word. Just stick with the right people. Max seems like a good guy. Sometimes good people get it wrong, Hersch. They make mistakes. Particularly when they’re afraid.’

‘But I thought Max was my friend.’ It’s him I’m most angry with. ‘And he was part of it.’

Mom’s about to say something, but then she pauses and takes a breath.

‘He’s been a target of Lachlan’s too,’ she says. ‘His mother told me. It’s not public at school, so you have to keep it to yourself. That’s partly why Lachlan’s on that program to manage his behaviour. He’s been bullying Max.’

It’s not public, but I bet Harry and Ben know. It’s only now I realise that, ever since I started at the school, the four of us have been avoiding Lachlan. But why couldn’t Max have told me? Why didn’t I tell him? Because you don’t. Because you just hope it’ll stop, even when that doesn’t fix anything.

So maybe Max felt trapped as well, afraid of what would happen if he didn’t go along with it.

‘You weren’t there,’ I tell her. ‘No one understands me when I talk. I have to keep repeating myself. And I don’t understand them a lot of the time. And when they do hear me properly, I use too many words they’ve never heard of.’

She nods. ‘I know. Sometimes it feels like we’ve got to work this country out one word at a time, but it’ll get easier. In the meantime, if brains were dynamite, Lachlan wouldn’t have enough to blow the wax out of his ears.’ She smiles. ‘That’s an Australian expression. I heard it on TV. Now, I think the school is doing well with this, don’t you? Mr Browning calling it racism takes it to a level that means it can’t be ignored.’

‘But is it?’ I check to see what Hansie’s doing. He’s at the far end of the living room, building something out of Lego, not listening. ‘Is it racism, really?’

‘Well . . .’ She stops to think about it. ‘Well, of course it is. You were chosen as a victim because of how you speak and because you’re foreign. I know it’s not racism like we see at home. Racism is so complicated in South Africa. You know the history. If it’s part of the system, you can’t fix it in one go. But what happened to you is racism too, in its own way.’

I’m white and I’m the victim of racism. My whole life has failed to get me ready for that. Racism has been there, all around, talked about often enough – far more than here, probably – but it hasn’t meant this. It hasn’t come my way, our way, not like this.

Long ago, our family owned a farm. We have a black-and-white picture of it. My great grandfather is in the centre, in a pale suit, seated in a chair made from dark wood and with a back high enough to be like a throne. For the photograph, the chair has been placed on the verandah, at the top of the front steps. He’s holding a rifle in his hand – holding the barrel of it and resting the butt on the ground next to the chair. On either side of him, behind the verandah railing, stand his family. Beyond them, also on the verandah, are the white managers and overseers.

In two rows going down the wide staircase, one on either side, the black indoor servants are standing in their uniforms. Seated on the dirt, legs crossed, are the black farm workers, some in rough handmade European clothes, some in traditional clothing, some shirtless, with goatskin bags on their laps.

Our farm fed all those families, black and white, but some ate at a grand table and others at campfires. Whenever I hear the word racism, I see that picture. I can’t help it. Dad says my great grandfather wasn’t a bad man – just a man of his time. Apartheid has come and gone since then, but its going hasn’t given everyone the same opportunities. Some people got rich. Some people got chances they didn’t deserve. Some people still live in shacks made from rubbish and don’t have toilets.

It’s complicated. So we’re here.