AustLit

'I first noticed her at the beginning of summer. She was
a scruff of a girl, about eight, with scabby knees and tangled hair. Her face was grubby and she had a runny nose. She wore a dirty black and white polka-dot dress and blue gum boots that were inappropriate for the weather and a couple of sizes too large.' (Introduction)

'The orchids flowered when I wasn’t looking.

'They were my grandfather-in-law’s, grown in a plastic pot in a corner of his garden up in the cold hills, where glossy rhododendrons sat studded with blooms like cloves on a baked apple, where the bay was a blue smudge far off in the landscape, and the old steam train ran once a Sunday along the tracks over the back fence, blowing wood-smoke and the cries of children into the yard.'

Source: Opening paragraph.