I still have a big scar on my right knee from falling off the verandah at primary school. The drop from balustrading to bitumen was four foot but it felt like four storeys. Blood ran in rivulets down my shin as a crowd of girls in blue-checked dresses gathered round me in staring silence.

In sick bay, I sat on the edge of the starched white bed, jaw clenched, while the nurse picked out the gravel with her tweezers. She painted my gashed knee an even brighter shade of crimson with mercurochrome. That stuff stains the memory of every graze and scrape from childhood.