POER FOREVR ended

We finished lunch and went to brush mum's teeth. There were quite a few ladies in the ladies' washrooms but most of them were behind closed doors. Mum cleaned her teeth so discreetly that nobody noticed.

Back in the mall she bared her teeth. Can you see any lettuce? she asked. No, I replied, I can't. Was there any point mentioning the chunk of white pastry lodged between two of her teeth? The dentist could poke that out later, with a prong.

We had more than an hour to look at the shops. We went into Laura Ashley and Esprit. We looked at the two Sydney Streets. One Sydney Street is more dressy, the other more sporty. In the sporty one we saw a bargain. An unstructured jacket knitted in dark green silk string. It once cost four hundred dollars but now you could have it for fifty.

Try it on, said my mum. I want to see what it looks like. I tried it on. I turned sideways to look at myself in a mirror. I looked like a disconsolate pine.