Was the winner of the Open Category of the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Awards 2016. Judge Stephanie Johnson said her entry ‘‘does everything a short story should do and more’’, describing it as ‘‘a moving, memorable story by a writer of considerable ski

Mrs Lim was so small she could fit in Mrs Maniakis’ pocket, Mrs Maniakis said. Her eyes were black like cold hard beads and her eyebrows had been plucked and drawn on, so she looked like a movie star, she said. Mrs Lim was like one of those little China dolls you could get from China, where she was from, like a little souvenir, Mrs Maniakis said.

‘God, Mum,’ her son Peter said. ‘Can you even hear yourself?’

Mrs Maniakis was concerned that Peter might have misunderstood.

‘She was beautiful,’ she said. ‘Beautiful. Like a little agalmatio, a figurine.’

‘You’re being problematic, Yiayia,’ her granddaughter said. ‘You can’t say she looks like a China doll, not any more.’

‘She doesn’t know she’s being problematic, poor thing,’ Peter said, and patted Mrs Maniakis’ hand.

‘I don’t have any problemata,’ Mrs Maniakis said. ‘I’m saying she’s was a coukla, like a little toy. You’re the one with problemata. The Devil’s going to get you.’ She swatted Peter’s head with a teatowel. Her granddaughter laughed.

‘But seriously, Yiayia. You can’t say that,’ she said.

‘You don’t understand,’ Mrs Maniakis said. ‘This Mrs Lim, we love each other. She loves me. I love her for years.’ Peter gave her a strange look. She went on drying the dishes. The invitation for Peter’s end of school prizegiving came in a thick white envelope with gold embossed lettering. Mrs Maniakis could read it; they had been in New Zealand for more than 10 years and she had taught herself to read and write. The only English book in the house was the dictionary her husband read at night after he got home from the fish shop. She didn’t read that – the letters were too small. But she read the ads for groceries in the newspapers, and she read the signs at the shops. It was surprising how many English words she recognised, once she had learned the odd, naked-looking alphabeto.

‘It’s almost like they borrowed some of the words,’ she said to her husband. Her husband raised his eyebrows one after the other, individually.

‘Agape-mou, they did,’ he said. He gave her a familiar look, the one that said that she was small, and precious, and to be protected. ‘They took a lot from us; the language, democracia, philosophia. You didn’t know?’ Mrs Maniakis smiled. ‘No, Stavro,’ she said. It was a game they played, but she really hadn’t known. She had left school when she was 8 years old. Stavros laughed.

Everyone laughed at Mrs Maniakis. She was small, and she was easily flustered, and she made silly mistakes. Sometimes she thought Stavros had married her so he would have something to laugh at, like a monkey in a cage. But he treated her well. He bought her things. He never raised his hand.

She ran her hands along the fine paper of the invitation. They were to wear dinner wear. She would have to have her black dress dry-cleaned. She hoped her leather pumps would be sufficient. There were some more words at the bottom: Ladies, a Plate. She waited for Peter to get home to ask him what this meant.

‘It means you have to bring something to eat, Mum,’ he said. ‘You have to bring a plate of food to share.’ Her son’s face went slightly pink.

When they sent him to school he couldn’t speak English. He often came home with welts on his legs. Mrs Maniakis couldn’t understand how not knowing something was a caneable offence, but his teachers knew what was good for him. He learned the language quickly enough, though he would always hate school. Early on he had asked her to stop putting feta in his lunchbox, to leave out the olives, to please send him with something more normal.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll do something Anglasika, for the prizegiving. I’ll make an English dish. Scones, maybe.’

‘You mean those pieces of flavourless dough you’re always going on about?’ Peter asked. But he grinned as he walked out of the kitchen.

‘There’s just something about her,’ Mrs Maniakis said to the ladies at the church group. ‘Usually they’re so quiet, the Chinese I mean. But this one, she’s strong. She’s different. She doesn’t care what people think.’

‘If we didn’t care what other people thought of us, how well do you think we’d do in this country?’ her friend said. ‘They’d throw us out.’ ‘They’d send us back.’ ‘They like us because we don’t make trouble,’ her friend said.

She was right, Mrs Maniakis thought. Stavros’ boss said he liked to employ Greek people. They were quiet, and hard-working, he said. He said they were alright.

‘Mrs Lim doesn’t make trouble,’ Mrs Maniakis said. ‘She stands very straight. Like a lady. Like a Chinese princess.’

‘Look at you,’ one of the ladies said. ‘Anyone would think you were in love.’ The chorus of voices rose, their laughter tinkling around Mrs Maniakis.

Mrs Maniakis looked into her coffee grounds. Her mother had used to read them. All she could see was a dark mess, with a kind of jagged shape at the edge, like a wound.

When Stavros had first come into her she had cried out in pain. Then it got better for a while, but then, after the children, worse. There had been a problem. She would never look, of course, but now there was a smooth place as if she had been burned. She kept quiet when he did it. He was a good man, and it was always over quickly.

‘Poor little thing,’ her friend said. She touched Mrs Maniakis’ hair. ‘You shut up, all of you!’ she said to the chorus of laughing women. ‘Don’t you know the smart bird is grabbed by the nose?’ She looked at Mrs Maniakis closely.

Mrs Maniakis looked deeply into her cup.

The day of the prizegiving ceremony Mrs Maniakis wore her good shoes, the newly dry-cleaned black dress, and her most expensive scarf over her hair. She took her son, uncomfortable in his long pants, and her husband, in his best jacket and, most importantly, a pavlova. She had followed the recipe exactly. She had never seen a pavlova, but the strawberries against the white of its surface were pretty.

After the ceremony the parents milled about in the school hall. Mrs Maniakis approached the table. She saw there not only her pavlova, but two others: fine, high things crested with hard crusts and cream. Now it was clear to her. Amongst the lamingtons and the ginger slices and the custards tarts, her pavlova was a sad slumped thing, a failed imitation. The other parents circumnavigated her pavlova in favour of the others.

Peter messed around with his friends near the back. There was a boy close to them, an Asian boy, talking to no one. This boy also was called Peter. She had asked who he was once when she accompanied her Peter to school. Nobody, Peter had said. She had asked where his friends were. He doesn’t speak well, Peter said. Then he seemed confused. Well, he does now, I think, he said. But he hardly says anything.

Stavros circulated, making smalltalk. She lingered near the table. There was one other untouched dish, a plate of translucent steaming bundles.

She saw the woman suddenly. Like her, the woman hovered near the table. She had fine posture, blue fine lines instead of eyebrows, a delicate face, perfectly coiffed hair. There was something stubborn about her, you could see it at a glance. It was the way that she stood, the way she was closed off to conversation. She was shorter than Mrs Maniakis herself.

A couple of women passed Mrs Maniakis’ pavlova in favour of scones. One of them looked at the bundles curiously. They didn’t whisper or laugh. But as they settled on the bench beside the table they looked again at that plate, and then at the woman standing beside them.

Mrs Maniakis advanced upon the plate, and took one of the bundles. In her mouth it burst with unexpected depths of flavor. The pastry was soft and smooth.

‘Stavro!’ she called. ‘Peter!’ Her voice rose above the parents’ heads. ‘You must come and taste these!’

Peter ignored her. Stavros came over and took one of the bundles. She took three of them, four, five, many more than was polite. The two women’s eyes widened. She jammed them into her mouth. She turned to the upright woman, who had been watching her