London is having a coffee in a cafe in Melbourne, the city where she spends about half her time at present, although home is in Perth. It struck you down and then it set you apart.’’ The implication was she would never marry. ‘‘Her name was always prefixed by ‘poor’. ‘‘Then there were kids you’d see in callipers.’’ One was a girl in the Perth suburb where London lived as a child. She wouldn’t let my older sisters go to swimming pools or the river, or on public transport.’’ One of her three sisters remembered wearing camphor round her neck to ward off infection. ‘‘I heard stories from my mother about the terror of polio. ‘‘Everyone was so afraid and so in the dark,’’ London says. Polio was a parent’s greatest fear, because so many children caught it, and nobody knew how it happened, or what to do about it.
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