Mum decided in March that the kitchen had to be yellow, and once Mum decided something the rest of the house had to catch up. Dad disagreed quietly, the way he disagreed about most things — by spending a long afternoon choosing the roller and an even longer one taping the skirting. By Sunday the walls were the colour of a custard tart, the radio was loud, and we were eating toast at a table whose legs were still wrapped in newspaper.

“Hope,” she’d say, “is allowed to be loud.”

It was the year I turned eight. The year we got the dog. The year Nan stopped driving and started catching the bus, which made her late to everything and, somehow, happier. Mum said yellow was a hopeful colour, and that was reason enough.

Years later I painted my own kitchen white, which Mum took as a small personal slight. When she died, I went home and stood in that kitchen for a long time. The yellow was duller than I remembered. I left it that way.