One Long Thread 4xi1v

Belinda Jeffrey is the author of the much acclaimed novels Brown Skin Blue and Big River, Little Fish. Her short story ‘The Hallelujah Roof’ was also published in One Book, Many Brisbanes 2007. She has been shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award, the Queensland Premier’s Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Award.

www.belindajeffreyauthor.com

Also by Belinda Jeffrey

Brown Skin Blue Big River, Little Fish

To those who share my family tree, especially my grandmothers; Gladys, Beryl and Judith.

To produce one long thread of silk, a weaver must never allow the silkworm to fully transform or ever emerge from the cocoon into the light.

1.

When she was still a girl, no longer a child yet not quite a woman, my grandmother woke, one morning, to the smell of dissolving dye, bitter in her throat. She threw back her covers and ran from her bed, underneath the bedroom window, barefoot, down the age and through the laundry where clouds of steam rose from the tub and the taste of ammonia was slivery-thick. Nausea rose in her throat. Three concrete stairs from the laundry to the backyard were ice slabs under her feet as she ran towards the outhouse at the back fence, though she fell on the ground before making it there, vomiting on the wet grass. It was mid-winter in Sydney, the sky was a grey blanket, and the wind shook the world loose. Leaves were sucked from trees, lax roof shingles rattled like wind chimes and all along the street beside backyard compost patches and chook runs, wooden outhouse doors struggled against their latches. Against her side fence, where Jack lived, the back wheel of a bicycle spun against a twig caught in its spoke. Wind howled through the gap in his back door. My grandmother, that girl, stood up, holding her hair back from her face, her nightgown whipping around her legs, slapping two wet spreads of fabric – from where her knees had pressed against the grass – against her skin. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, turning towards Jack’s house before treading the path back to the laundry door. She waited a moment, wishing he would appear at the back door, or at his window, so she could explain things. If only she, herself, fully understood what was happening. Her stomach rose in her throat a second time and she swallowed it back. There was no door on her bedroom – it was not really a bedroom – and, once inside, she opened her cupboard for her winter coat, to find only her one good dress, one jumper, two pairs of shoes and three shifts. Her coat was gone. She glanced towards the age, wondering which of her sisters had taken it. Goosebumps rose up on her skin and she ran back to her cot, tucked the bed covers around her body like a cocoon, and closed her eyes. On the outside she could hear the sounds of the house; her sisters, Beatrice and Mavis – twins one year older than her – preparing breakfast. Her father had long gone, tramping

The Hungry Mile for wharfing work. The footsteps along the age, getting louder and pausing at her doorway, were her mother’s. She said nothing to my grandmother, Pearl, but continued to the laundry, pulled up the sleeves of her cardigan to her elbows, took hold of the wooden broom and pushed my grandmother’s winter coat into the dye, her muscles straining with the weight of the wool, swelling thick. As I listened to my grandmother it was as though I was this story and it was us. I could see that red cocoon breaking through the water, I could smell the tang and see the dye swirling, pushed and sucked by invisible currents; dancing and spreading. Bleeding completely until the tub was full of red. I heard the horsehair bristles on that broom scraping the sides of the old cement tub but mostly I could sense my grandmother’s fear, feel the shivers on her arms and the wet patches on her nightgown. I heard the pulse of blood in her throat as she thought about what had happened to her and what the future would bring. I was there in some small, insignificant way, I suppose. We were there, my sister, Sally, and I. At conception, a woman possesses all the eggs she will ever have in her lifetime, losing one each month, like a broken string of beads. Unless one is saved. We would have been there, inside our grandmother, inside our mother. Each of us a tiny potential; a tiny pearl. We were, all of us, set one inside each other like Matryoshka dolls. And we are, all of us, from the one forbidden red; the river and ruin of women. My mother says that sin is red and only Jesus can wash you white as snow if you let him into your heart and life and, unless I do, I will never be complete. Please, God, she prays for me daily. Claim Button, fill her to overflowing with your purity that she might accept you freely so she and I can be together again. I feel as if I am red-run through with the weight of all my sin, but I can’t take all that washing white. I just can’t. My grandmother must have fallen asleep that morning when her coat was being dyed because when she woke again the house was empty. Her sisters had gone to work in the cannery, her mother to the dye-lot. It may have been the slamming of the front door that woke her, she can’t be sure. But she got out of bed for a second time, to run to the outhouse. The wind had stopped, but the sky was a blanket of fog in the ing dawn. She said that the sight of it that morning was etched in her mind. Something she’d held onto all these years above so much else. Her winter coat, once beige like everyone else’s, blood-red. Hanging on the

clothesline in the fog, still steaming with the heat, red water dripping on to the grass. My grandmother was made to wear her red coat as her parents drove her to the train station a few days later. She held a small leather suitcase on her knees and held back her tears. She said she re thinking that she’d never see Jack again because of what she’d done. A baby clutching at life inside her, my mother not yet three months grown. She was so scared of what might happen, her knuckles were white on the handles of her suitcase.

The night I ran away to find my grandmother, it was so unusually cold she had nothing else to warm my legs but that red coat she’d held onto all these years – stuffed in a box in our garage – that I had brought with me. I’d arrived with my bag, drowned from the rain like a stray kitten, on her doorstep. It only took her a moment to realise who I was and she pulled me into her arms and crushed me against her flesh. She smelled all at once of gardenias and frangipanis and coconut oil and, when she let me go, I’d left a wet imprint across the front of her. The red coat was barely across my knees, when something broke inside me and I cried and couldn’t stop. I convinced myself it was the relief of being as far away from my world and all its troubles as I could get. ‘At first I kept this coat because it reminded me I was no Pearl of great worth,’ my grandmother said. ‘But after, well, I kept it because it reminded me that I am worth something. You’ll be fine, Ruby,’ she said and I cried all the harder for the sound of my name. I fell asleep that night with Pearl’s hand on my head and her soft humming beside me. ‘Your mother still call you Button?’ she said after a while, but I was snug tight and so tired I could have slept for months. In the next room it had already begun. The sound of a hundred thousand eggs hatching; a steady drumming. Their ravenous determination. In the light of my dreaming they were fragments of the moon turned upside down and let loose, like confetti. And I was a bride in white.

2.

Some nights, when we were children, our mother would bring us into the kitchen to watch the moths gathering around the outside light. Inside the house it would be dark, but outside we could see the light bulb, suspended like a small moon on a long wire, blowing about in the breeze. Our mother would stand behind Sally and me, her hands on our shoulders, and we’d watch the moths gather, following that false moon as it swung from side to side. At first I used to think it was beautiful; those moths circling and hovering, drawn to the light as if they were partners in a dance. Side to side, back and forth, mesmerised by the glow. ‘Everyone needs a light in their life,’ Mum would say. And that’s what I used to think when I saw those moths; everyone needs a light. If we had nightmares Mum used to make us stand at the window and hold out our thumb towards the moon, which was no bigger than an egg in the sky. ‘Close one eye and, that way, you are almost touching the moon. Send her your troubles and, by morning, when the sun comes up, they will be gone.’ Our mother did not marry young, though she did marry quickly, she used to tell us in those rare moments when she loosened up. She and Dad married for love and love was a light and when it came you wanted to be close to it forever. ‘I was a moth and your father, Brett Moon, was the light.’ In the registry office she wore a simple yellow cotton shift, lavender flowers in her hat and borrowed blue gloves from a friend. I never asked her what shoes she wore and in the only picture I’ve ever seen, the photographer cut them both off at the knees and it’s one of those things I guess I’ll just never know. It would be a comfort if my parents looked happy in that photograph. Because, to be perfectly honest, their appearance was a disappointment and I’ve dressed them

differently in my mind a hundred times since then. In my scrapbook I designed a dozen dresses to replace the one in the photograph. But happiness isn’t something you can disguise in red organza and chintz satin. Not completely.

There was only one time I ever Grandma Pearl, my mother’s mother, coming to stay with us. ‘They are just so different,’ Dad said one day after I had asked him. ‘Your mother likes everything done a certain way, in a certain order. She likes life to be neat and simple. Whereas Pearl is a free spirit. Your mother thinks she has no morals or regard for decent society.’ I saw my father smile after saying that. ‘But she was pretty amazing – a single mother in a time when it wasn’t the done thing. It really affected your mother.’ It seems difficult to understand, in this day and age where there are so many unmarried mothers, that the institution of marriage was once fiercely guarded and a girl or a woman could ruin, not only her own life, but the foundation of society by whom and how and if she decided to marry.

That first night Grandma Pearl stayed with us I begged her to us in the kitchen to watch the moths. She stood beside our mother and I stood in front, as always, only Sally wasn’t beside me. I asked Mum to tell me about her being the moth and our father being her moon. Grandma Pearl laughed before the story was even told. I turned back to glance at my mother and she had her head lowered. I felt her hand slide from my shoulder and, without saying anything, she turned and left the room. Sally, who had been standing beside the fridge, followed her and it was only Grandma Pearl and me looking at our false moon and those moths. That night it felt as if the light we all needed was slowly going out. When we were in bed Sally whispered in the darkness, ‘It’s a trap.’ ‘What?’ ‘Those moths just can’t get away.’

I was quiet. ‘I read about it in school. Moths use the light of the moon to navigate. When they see a false moon, they’re disoriented and lost.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘Oh go to sleep, then, Ruby Moon.’

When we were born, Dad insisted that he and Mum name one daughter each. Mum named Sally after her favourite childhood friend and Dad named me after his mother, Ruby, whom he’d dearly loved. She had died, some years earlier, when a Corolla skidded off the road onto the footpath where she had been standing, iring the window front of Hastings Jewellers. Dad was never entirely happy with Sally’s name, hoping Mum would have chosen her own mother’s name, and their daughters would be a twin set of precious jewels. But there was too much tension between my mother and her own mother for her to ever have agreed. The dissatisfaction of our names was an evenly balanced equation, however, because Mum had never been happy with the name my father had given me, either. Though it had nothing to do with Dad’s mother herself, but rather the connotations of the name. According to my mother, anything ‘red’ was shameful. This judgment was just one of a substantial list of rules for decency and morality my mother maintained. Her job was to teach us what those opinions were and our job was to learn them. These rules included, but were not limited to: 1. Never dressing babies in black, white, navy (or red). 2. Always wearing a petticoat under skirts. 3. Never wearing open-toed shoes with stockings. 4. Always ensuring hemlines were below the knees. 5. Never wearing an outfit with competing fabric patterns. 6. Never resting unless the house was completely clean and clear.

7. Never discussing ‘that time of the month’. 8. No red lipstick. 9. Staying away from boys. 10. Marrying for life. I don’t know if there was ever a time my real name was ever used, because I only being called ‘Button’. I’d like to say there was something kind in this nickname but, I’m told, it is because I once swallowed a button. My mother discovered me in her wardrobe pulling clothes off her hangers. She found me surrounded by a mountain of her dresses and coats. I had a button in my hand that must have come free as I pulled the coat down. Apparently I heard her shout, turned my head to see her, promptly put the button in my mouth and swallowed. The doctor told her to make sure it ed through and I was teased about it from then on. Every now and then – at some family gathering – Mum or Dad (or Sally) would tell that story. I always felt ashamed, the kind of shame where you feel bad for doing something you have no control over, or even . I may as well have been called ‘silly girl’ for how that name felt. But names and judgments have a way of rubbing smooth over time, they become habitual and familiar. And you forget where they come from and what they mean. And, like a lot of things you can’t change, you get used to it. I’ve always pretended not to mind but the truth is Ruby sounds a whole lot less shameful to me and I’m rather fond of short skirts and outfits with competing fabric patterns – I’ve designed and sketched many outfits with exactly such combinations. And I happen to think that red lipstick, on the right woman, can be perfect.

3.

I don’t a time when church wasn’t a part of my mother’s life, and I don’t a time when it was ever a part of my father’s, and perhaps in searching for simple explanations that was the problem. Sundays were my mother’s favourite day of the week, days we two girls wore small golden crosses around our necks. Mum would fuss over our dresses and hair, spitting on a hanky to wipe some speck or smear from our faces before marching us to the car at eight-thirty in the morning in order to be seated and ready for the opening hymn at nine. I the priest talking about the light of God but I couldn’t muster the same fascination for the light of God that I had for the moth light outside our kitchen. Sally tugged on my dress or pinched my arm when Mum was praying and had her eyes closed. And, when she’d finished praying, while everyone was saying ‘Amen’, Mum would pinch my other arm for making noise during prayer. Dad never came with us. Yet every so often, I would wake up on a Sunday morning and hear our mother laughing. I’d watch her washing the breakfast dishes, humming, the sun shining in through the window and the breeze fluttering the hem of her dress. I the smell of wildflowers on those Sundays, she would turn to us as we ate our breakfast and say, ‘Want to take a drive, girls?’ Sally and I would nod and, instead of going to church, Mum would laugh before leaving the kitchen to find Dad and I’d hear her say ‘Come on Moonlight, get dressed and take us girls for a drive.’ We would sit, side by side, Sally and I, in the back seat while Dad drove and Mum wound the window halfway down and rested the bend of her elbow on the ledge. There would be wind in her hair and a lazy look to her body. Like the breeze had unpicked the stitches holding her bones so tight. Sally would fall asleep on the way home, in the afternoon when the sun was going down. Dad would be humming by then, Mum would be colder. We would have spent too much on ice-cream and coffee and the gourmet cheese Dad would insist on taking home.

At night, on those kind of Sundays, I could fill two whole pages with sketches of dress designs I knew I would make one day. And Sally would pretend to wear each one of them, patting down imaginary box pleats, spinning on the spot to test the flow of frills. Those nights, unlike so many others, Sally and I were twins, each one needing the other, the world was a forever place, and the only light we needed was our all being together. Those were the Sundays I thought God was alive.

Not long after Grandma Pearl stayed with us, that one time, a parcel came for Sally and me in the post. We fought over who was going to open it and ended up tearing the yellow package to pieces from either end. Grandma Pearl was always roaming the world, sending us letters with stamps and postmarks from exotic places like Paris and Rome. We weren’t interested in reading the letter that slipped out of the package onto the floor, just in discovering what present lay inside. But in our excitement to see what it was, it slipped free of both our hands and landed on the floor with a thud. A small, hardcover book by Enid Blyton. The Magic Faraway Tree. Somehow the arrival of this book marked the end of our kitchen gatherings because, by the time the characters, Saucepan Man and Bessy and Fanny and Silky and Toffee Pops, became as familiar to me as my own Sally, I could not one more night gathered in the kitchen with our mother, or a family drive together. It seemed as though one light had gone out and another was turned on inside the pages of that book. The Magic Faraway Tree saw Sally and me through mumps and the chicken pox. The pages became dog-eared and yellowed. The corners of the cover became knocked and worn. Some afternoons, on the way home from school, Sally and I would invent our own lands for the top of that tree and I always imagined Grandma Pearl was flying between them, travelling from one mystical worldly place to another, free as a bird, alive on love and laughter. And in the case of Grandma Pearl that seemed enough for anyone to live on.

At some stage after the arrival of The Magic Faraway Tree Sally and I were

huddled together in her bed listening to our parents shout at each other beyond our closed door. We clutched our faraway book, each of us hoping the other would volunteer to read it first, but neither of us having the courage of distraction. We listened in case those words being shouted outside would change our lives forever. That night was the last time The Magic Faraway Tree seemed as real to us as the thought of growing older and growing up.

One Sunday morning a group of women had been handing out flyers and talking after church during morning tea. I had been leaning against the brick wall at the side of the church watching the kids play with hoops on the small patch of grass at the back of the kitchen, wondering where Sally had gone. Mum was standing with the women having a cup of tea when I heard their voices lower to a whisper. I inched my way closer, my back against the bricks, alert. ‘Not enough discipline these days,’ Mary said. ‘I wouldn’t call it a breakaway. It’s not like those evangelical movements. The Aberdeen want to reclaim the light of God as a focus for good living. I’ve been reading their pamphlets and I’m convinced God is leading me there.’ My mother didn’t say anything but I watched her sip her tea ever so carefully, I saw her place the cup on the saucer and I’m sure no one would have ed the change in her. But I’d heard those words, same as her, and I just knew what words like that could mean to my mother. The Monday after church Mum went shopping and came home with a bag full of crucifixes. She displayed them on shelves and table tops around the house and glued magnetic tape on the back of some to put on the fridge door. In the following weeks Sally and I would come home to find her kneeling on the floor in front of the fridge, or the sideboard, which held the largest crucifix, praying, her voice strangely silent despite the relentless movement of her lips. We began finding handwritten notes around the house, Bible verses and prayers she had scribbled on pieces of paper and Blu-tacked or sticky-taped to our mirrors and lunch boxes, Dad’s car doors and even his rear-view mirror. Some nights I would wake to hear her moving around the house removing older notes and replacing them with ones she had written that day. She had even placed a glow-in-the-dark crucifix above each of our beds so the light of Jesus Christ could shine on while

we slept. With this change in our mother came the fighting with Dad and the absence of family drives. Sunday, said our mother, was a day for prayer and God. Nothing more. ‘If you would only see the truth, Brett!’ Mum shouted at Dad. ‘Come to church with us, just once. If you let God into your life we would all be happier. Don’t you see the power of Satan over you?’ Dad stopped arguing with her after that. Mum’s voice seemed to fill the house, unless she was praying. And even then her silent mouthing of words felt loud. Dad’s voice seemed to disappear altogether.

4.

‘I’ll pay for the material, Button,’ Sally said one afternoon, shortly after our thirteenth birthday, bringing her hands to her chin, palms clasped around her golden cross. ‘We don’t have to tell Mum.’ Before I could answer her, she had opened my sketchbook and flipped through the pages until she found the dress she wanted. She turned the book around to face me, her finger tapping on the dress I had drawn last week. ‘Tell me what you need and I’ll get it.’ It wasn’t my sewing that had to be kept from our mother but the reason Sally needed the dress at all. I couldn’t say ‘no’ to Sally, I didn’t want to say ‘no’. I wanted the midnight-blue satin in my hands, I wanted to pinch it at the waist, to tack the pleats in place along the fullness of the skirt, lifting the fabric up in places so that it looked like a parting curtain, revealing a rush of black tulle underneath. I wanted to fit the bodice tight around her breast and shoulder. I wanted to make that dress for someone. I wanted to make that dress for Sally; to see it alive in the world. At night we waited until Mum had gone to sleep, then, by torchlight, that dress was sewn by centimetres. It took a month of sleepless nights, holding the torch in my mouth while fitting the material to Sally’s body. Sewing by hand so Mum didn’t hear the Singer sewing machine, Sally and I conspiring, giggling. Sally bought a disposable camera and we laid out candles and I took pictures of her in the dress. Though we are identical I could not wear that dress like her. Even I would have believed she was older than thirteen in that dress. And so did Mathew Grayson and everyone at the Beachside High School Formal. What I most about Sally is how life never surprised her. At least on the outside. When Matthew Grayson wanted to take her to his end-of-year formal, her only thought was about how to get the money so I could make her dress. When he wanted to have sex with her in the carpark afterwards, her only condition was that he wouldn’t damage the material.

Truly, I am nothing like Sally. Not in any way that matters. I don’t think Mum ever found out about that night. Because we might have been shared out differently if she’d known.

A week after the formal Dad came into the kitchen. ‘I just can’t take it any longer, Jan,’ he said. ‘We can’t go on like this.’ Mum had been washing the dishes and she just stopped, resting her soapy hands on the edge of the sink. She became so still and quiet, as if she had disappeared inside herself. I stood in the age, my back against the kitchen wall. ‘There isn’t another woman,’ Dad said. ‘But the sad thing is, Jan. I wish there was.’ It was a Sunday morning and Mum finished the dishes, untied the apron from around her waist and hung it on the hook beside the back door underneath a note saying, I am the way, the truth and the life. ‘Come on, girls,’ I heard her call. Even though I had begun hating church and finding excuses to stay home, I ran my fingers through my hair and walked to stand beside my mother in the hall. We waited there but Sally didn’t appear. I had no idea where she was. ‘You and me, Button,’ Mum said, opening the door and walking to the car. At church Mum sat so close to me I felt uncomfortable. I felt her stiffen, sitting straight and upright, raising her chin against everything she wouldn’t speak about. I had no idea what to do. During the announcements, Mary stood up to the microphone and announced that the new church, The Aberdeen, needed our and prayers as they had started their very own faith community in Darwin. Mary was moving there and took the opportunity to thank the congregation for giving her a community to belong to. She was moving to follow God more fully. She held up a wad of newsletters. ‘I’m leaving these at the back of the church,’ she said.

After the service I watched my mother take one of the newsletters and place it in her bag. All the way home she had one hand on the steering wheel and one hand worrying the cross at her neck. I don’t know where her mind was but it wasn’t in the car, with us.

For weeks my parents could not agree on anything. Who owned the leather couch, the photographs of our first family holiday, the vase that had been a wedding present. They fought and argued about all of their material possessions until they became worn out and deflated. ‘I don’t want to lose my girls,’ I heard Dad say one night. ‘I won’t lose them,’ said Mum. ‘I don’t know how it came to this, Jan. But I don’t want us dragging the girls through court. We owe them that, at least. Take what you like. Have it all. But for the love of—’ he stopped short of bringing up God in their conversation. ‘Just promise me we will do what’s best for the girls. No court.’ So, in the end, Mum got a job with the new Aberdeen Church in Darwin. The ment for that job had been in the newsletter Mum had picked up from church: Devout Christian sought for sewing job. All applications to Brother Dan of the Aberdeen Church, Malak, Darwin. She took a few of the smaller possessions, the total of their life savings and the one daughter she had named. Dad kept the house. And me.

‘I’m selling our dress,’ Sally said a few nights before she and Mum had planned to leave. ‘I reckon I could get a few hundred for it.’ She was quiet and I didn’t know what to say. ‘Might need some money of my own,’ she said, turning to me and smiling to hide what we were both feeling. ‘I want you to make a label,’ she said, ‘like all the great designers do.’ She held the collar of the dress and pointed to the inside of the back by the opening where the label would go. ‘Your label should just be your name. “Ruby Moon” with a

small embroidered silk moth underneath. What do you think?’ I nodded. ‘Because it is us. Opposite, identical.’ ‘Two wings grown from the same beginning,’ I said. A few days later Dad and I watched a taxi pull out of our driveway taking Mum and Sally away. Sally and I waved frantically, watching each other through the rear window until the taxi turned the corner and they were gone. Standing there, that day, I felt like Sally was being torn from my skin and there was no way I could ever fly free, without her right beside me. It was later that night, after they had left, I discovered an envelope on the carpet under my desk. Sally must have leant it up against my lamp and it had fallen in between the desk and the curtain. Her handwriting was unmistakable, my name scrawled quickly and without complication on the front. Inside the envelope was a newspaper clipping advertising the annual Young Designer of the Year Award. On the back of the clipping she had written, . . . and the winning label is Ruby Moon. I would like to have hung it on the refrigerator door, like we used to do with all our achievements and aspirations, but it seemed wrong at that moment. So I taped it into the back of my sketchbook. That was the last thing Sally ever gave me. And it’s the only thing I have left of her as Sally had already sold that midnight-blue dress for two hundred and fifty dollars to a friend of a friend through school.

5.

‘Do you miss her, Dad?’ I asked soon after they had gone. ‘I love you both the same,’ he said. ‘I just don’t have the right to regret how things turned out. I’m sorry for you,’ he said. And that was something, at least.

For our first birthday apart, Dad sent Sally a present and money for a visit but she spent the money on something else. Mum only sent me a card and that’s the way it continued. It hurt thinking that she didn’t care enough to think to send me something. I wouldn’t have minded what it was, it needn’t have been anything expensive, I just wanted something from her, to know she had been thinking of me, at least. I wrote her a letter asking why she never sent me anything and she replied,

Birthdays indulge our egos and God only needs our hearts. If I you were a grateful daughter you would think my letters were enough. I pray for your soul every day and ask God to look after you when I cannot. I’d like you to read Luke 1:52.

There’s nothing you can say to something like that. Except, sorry. With that letter came a pamphlet explaining the Aberdeen way. It was a fairly thick, professional publication complete with pictures of beautiful people smiling, happy, attempting to explain some of the more unusual rituals they observed. These included: * Accepting and submitting to the authority of God and the Aberdeen Council * Marrying within the Aberdeen community and wearing the white Aberdeen

wedding dress (women, that is) * Renouncing all technology * Observing all rituals concerning Fast, Feast and Holy days. It wasn’t stated directly, but I was aware of an undercurrent through the literature suggesting that women were considered inferior and needed looking after by God and the Aberdeen Council. And of the twenty names listed comprising the council not one of them was a woman. It was sad to think of Mum and Sally subjecting themselves to that kind of domination. Because our dad never thought of women that way. ‘Do you understand it?’ I asked Dad, showing him a few of the letters Mum had sent. ‘Some people take their religion very seriously,’ he said. ‘She was getting that way before she left. I think.’ He started to say something but didn’t finish. He put his paper down and took his glasses from his nose. He smiled and winked at me and he looked just like the man from our childhood. ‘It’s her choice, Button.’ I shrugged and smiled back. I liked the feeling of being close to him, sharing something together that didn’t need speaking about. He didn’t judge anyone or anything and it was one of the things I most ired about him. Dad was the ultimate pacifist. I could have brought anyone home for dinner and he’d carry on as normal while rummaging through the cutlery drawer for an extra knife and fork. He always poured me half a glass of wine for special occasions and never treated me like a child. Just a person, the same as he was and, most of the time, I loved that about him. But sometimes I wanted to feel like a child, to know that he would stand in front of me while waves crashed towards us or arrows came at us. It should have been enough that he would take my hand, equal to equal, and we would face, whatever came, together. Yet I wanted him to climb a fence and sit on it, to raise a flag, hang a banner and stand for something. Anything. Leaving Mum was one of his few defining moments; a time he chose a road for himself. At first I wondered whether he missed Sally the way I did and whether Sally missed me. But I tucked those thoughts down, worked hard at school and filled my sketchbook with dress designs and matching accessories. Drawing by torchlight under the covers late into the night. Hiding my habit for no other

reason than it felt good to do it. ‘At least I have you, though,’ Dad said, placing his glasses back on his nose and adjusting the paper. ‘How ’bout you make us a cup of tea, Button?’ he said and I thought the warmth of an Earl Grey with lemon might just make me feel better. For a while.

6.

At first I imagined the kinds of wedding dresses my mum was sewing in Darwin. I’d flip through Beautiful Brides or Vogue or Woman’s Day and cut out photographs of wedding gowns and stick them inside my scrapbook. I imagined these were the creations Mum laboured over. I conjured up the sound of her sewing machine grinding as she sped the needle through the cloth. She’d sew silk flowers – I’d been studying how to make these myself – and stitch them to bodices and hemlines. For the groom she would stitch a miniature flower for the edge of his pocket handkerchief and it would only be the likes of us – seamstresses – that would appreciate the detail. I imagined us sitting in the back row of churches watching brides walk down the aisle in our gowns. Mum would catch sight of a tiny flaw beside the back seam near the zipper – it would have happened after delivery – and we’d whisper what a shame it was we weren’t called to the vestry before the service. What possibilities existed in us being together. Mum had always been handy with a sewing machine and fabric, though she was more suited towards practical, no nonsense projects. On occasion she’d make us matching smocked frocks or dressing gowns but more often than not she resorted to the sewing machine for the purposes of mending skirts or shirts, pants or socks that were otherwise perfectly adequate. She would sew costumes for school plays and Sally’s ballet recitals – primary school only – though she always used a pattern and followed each and every instruction. Including tacking seams before sewing. When I was old enough to use the sewing machine I found patterns and tacking – even pinning, sometimes – a waste of time and creative energy. I preferred to work a garment from an idea, pinning and tucking, so to speak, in my mind as I went along. Mum couldn’t stand this way of sewing and it was all she could do not to rip the project from my hands and finish it herself. ‘You’ll only waste good fabric that way,’ she’d say. ‘You’ll save yourself time in the long run.’

And she was right. I did waste fabric. I ruined as many outfits as I finished. But those that made it through from first cut to final fit were worth it all. ‘It doesn’t look like anything like this,’ Mum would say, looking at the pattern picture and then my sketches. ‘It doesn’t even look like anything I’ve seen before.’ But that was precisely the point.

By the time I had my first visit with Mum and Sally I had almost convinced myself that my fantasy was true. When I discovered the kinds of wedding dresses Mum made – and for what purpose – I wanted to catch the first plane back home to Melbourne. Every bride in the Aberdeen wore the same style; white A-line dress; neck-to-floor. Sally told me not to be so melodramatic. ‘Get a life and grow up, kid.’ It seemed like a decade since we’d turned thirteen. Together in Melbourne with a complete family. Twins with dreams. A silk moth with two wings. The Sunday before I flew back home we went to an Aberdeen wedding. Mum said she didn’t understand everything about this new religion yet but she wanted to. She said she’d discovered what it meant to be happy, since coming there. That, for the first time in her life, she thought she might actually have found the place she belonged. I was happy for her. It helped that the Aberdeen pastor, Brother Daniel, said, ‘Girls, God has blessed us by sending us your mother. One door closes and a better one opens. We think of her as one of the family already.’ I found him slightly creepy with his oversized smile and too perfect teeth. In fact, I found the whole thing was all a bit much and I was glad when the bride walked out of the church into the Darwin heat. No matter it was over 39 degrees and 80 per cent humidity, that bride wore long sleeves and her long hair flowing over her shoulders. Her dress was ruined with two wet patches under her armpits but I seemed to be the only one who noticed. Mum had tears in her eyes. Sally smiled, vacantly, like she was wearing a mask. In that moment I missed Dad so much it hurt.

Mum’s house was a small fibro box. The tiny kitchen took up one corner of the main living area. There were two bedrooms and a small enclosed room downstairs which was Mum’s sewing room. On my visits I slept in the sewing room, looking up at dresses and pieces of dresses draped on hangers from the roof all around the room. The heat was like a parasite eating me alive and at nights I could hardly sleep. I’d lie on top of a thin cotton sheet in my underwear, arms and legs spread so that no part of my skin touched. I’d splay my toes and my fingers and wait for the oscillating fan to complete its rotation and blow cool air across my body. The walls were made of besser blocks slapped over with white paint, the concrete floor was white. God knows why. Two days into my first visit I wanted to tear the dresses from their hangers and throw coloured paint bombs around the room. Too much white can give a girl a headache.

At first, when the separation was new, I flew to Darwin every school holidays. Dad always had to pay because Mum insisted she couldn’t afford it. Dad paid without complaint and I think it was his way of taking responsibility for the separation. But after those first few years my visits went from every holiday to once a year. Just six weeks over Christmas when Dad would fly to Phuket or Paris or Bali for a well-deserved holiday of his own.

7.

I hold Dad, and his wall-to-wall collection of black and white musicals, responsible for my fascination with clothes. While we were companions, together, on the couch with bowls of popcorn and cold lemonade, he hummed happy and familiar tunes enjoying the grandeur and music, and I fell in love, slowly and deeply, with fashion. We spent many a Sunday afternoon or Friday night in the company of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland and Lauren Bacall. There is something about movies made before the Technicolor era that enhance the fashion. Without colour the fabrics become more alive through their subtleties, their movements and textures, the way they hug and cling and flute around the female form. They are made more sensual with their feathers and sequins, small pillbox hats with tulle, satin gloves and beautifully tailored lines. Everything seems designed to flatter and worship the female figure. Fashion designers and the industry are like my version of royalty. Or Hollywood superstars. Colette Dinnigan, Morrissey and Jenny Kee, not to mention Sass and Bide and Alex Perry, are my idea of gods. Among the designs and sketches in my scrapbook I’ve pasted clippings, pictures and information I’ve collected about them from newspapers, books and the internet.

Every week I’d flip through magazines to see the latest designs in full-colour gloss, imagining what it might be like to see those models and mannequins wearing my designs one day. I had never been one of those girls who loved dres in frills and heels, I always wanted to be the one who created the dresses. Even when we were little I would find things around the house and dress Sally up, and she’d walk the length of the hall modelling an evening gown of scarves and kitchen-curtain lace, teetering in a pair of Mum’s shoes.

Pru Acton – she’s an Australian icon – is my hero. In the sixties, when she was just twenty-one, she had her own business in Flinders Lane selling to Australia and New Zealand. She was the first Australian fashion designer to show her range in New York. And then there’s the legacy of Molly Goodweather who set the Australian fashion scene ablaze in her day, establishing one of Australia’s earliest and most enduring fashion labels, Indue. Hers isn’t a name you hear very often anymore, she’s not as famous as Pru Acton, but women in the fashion business owe her a great debt. She crashed her way through the male-dominated industry of the thirties. She even had a brief stint in Paris. Molly Goodweather is Australia’s Coco Chanel or Valentino – if not quite as famous – and, like Chanel, she shunned marriage. Scandalously, Molly Goodweather even went on to raise a son on her own. Some nights I’d flip through my scrapbook then close the cover and hold it to my chest before going to sleep. Inside those pages were the people I most ired and looked up to in the world. At times, seeing their faces or reading about their accomplishments beside my own sketches and rough ideas, gave me hope enough to think it was possible I might be like them one day.

It was only five hours a week but working for Mr Grandy at Fashion Fabrics never felt like work. I loved the smell that a hundred bolts of fabric produced in the small room in Flinders Lane. I started working there soon after Sally and Mum left for Darwin. At first, Mr Grandy had me there to look after the cash and manage the simpler customer requests while he took time from the front counter to deal with istration. He’d manage the stocktakes, the ordering and delivery of fabrics and meeting with representatives selling everything from ribbons and lace to buttons and silk embellishments. In the holidays – if I wasn’t visiting Mum – Mr Grandy had me working full-day shifts. I felt like I owed Dad some of the money I earned in those weeks but he insisted the fruits of my labour were all my own. So I’d bring home something expensive and decadent on Friday nights for dessert. A gateaux or flan from Chevalier’s Patisserie. And he’d pour me a small glass of sherry to have with

coffee and dessert in front of a Friday night black-and-white video. ‘That Mr Grandy has you over a barrel,’ Dad would say, knowing I invested most of what I earned straight back into Mr Grandy’s pockets. I was given ten per cent discount on anything I bought from the shop but usually that meant I rewarded myself by buying a more expensive fabric. I had built up a considerable collection of fabrics and buttons, lace strands and fringing. I could never just buy what I needed for any one project and I carried Mum’s voice around in my head, Why do you need that packet full of sequins? The pattern doesn’t call for sequins of any kind. But I liked building up my own collection. Sometimes I don’t know what I’ll need until I need it. And I won’t know what I need until I’m in the middle of any one project. I’ll sketch out a basic design for a skirt and cut the pattern pieces from a plain cotton drill. And something in the cutting of it triggers an idea and I’ll rummage through what I have, pull the fabric to the left, lift it up and tuck it in, hem it with a tartan bias binding which I fold back and stitch to the skirt as a . Sometimes I think Mr Grandy knows me better than anyone. ‘You, Miss Ruby Moon, are a work in progress.’ I consider my sewing machine and overlocker to be the essentials – all of my initial earnings went on buying them. I’d studied brands and prices, flipping through brochures and leaflets, considering features and options, before settling for a middle-of-the-road priced machine of a reputable brand. I desperately wanted a mannequin, but there was no point having a mannequin with no fabric and no money for fabric. So I decided to invest in my textile collection first. I never discussed my working life with Dad. Not in any great detail. I think he saw it as a suitably consuming hobby and, so long as I wasn’t doing drugs or lusting after boys, it was fine. It was a surprise at Christmas, that first year we were on our own together, to find a mannequin underneath the tree. Not any mannequin, the best brand, top of the range. During the Christmas break, I converted Sally’s old room into my sewing room. I set the mannequin to my own measurements and between Christmas and New Year I sewed a second blue satin dress. It wasn’t exactly the same as the one I had made for Sally to go to Matthew Grayson’s formal – nothing I ever make is – but it is what I would have made Sally then, if she had asked. And was there to wear it.

If I was feeling lonely I would put that second dress on the mannequin and picture her swirling those frills and filling it with life. Imagining she had never sold the first one I had made her. And had never left.

Just after my sixteenth birthday, Mr Grandy said, ‘Come and look at this, Ruby,’ as he cast his eyes over the latest delivery of fabrics. He rested his glasses on the tip of his nose, his silver neck chain that was linked to the arms swinging. He brought his hand up under a red silk and moved it closer towards himself. He shook his head quickly and made a clicking noise in the back of his throat and I knew he was impressed. He moved it towards me and I ran my fingers along the surface, tracing the silver-grey embossing that formed a pattern covering the silk. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. It’s the highest compliment Mr Grandy can bestow. ‘Beautiful.’ I heard the doorbell tinkling behind us and glanced over my shoulder but Mr Grandy continued to hold the fabric out for my inspection. ‘You will be wanting some of this, Ruby,’ he said and I nodded. He knew me too well. But I was mentally calculating the price of this latest beauty and how many hours I would have to put in for just a metre. Mr Grandy shook his head again and removed his glasses. I put Mr Grandy’s age to be somewhere in his mid fifties, though I don’t know for sure. He is short and eccentric looking, a neat man with evenly clipped grey whiskers. Though he is generous and open-minded, he dresses in plain grey pants, uninspiring buttoned shirts and grey cardigans. He seems so comfortably at odds with himself. It’s not often I regard him in this way anymore. Having known him for four years, his appearance almost disappears and his personality is more reflected in the glow of the silks he imports or the sometimes garish window displays he installs with sequinned bodices and checkerboard skirts. He says the idea is to attract attention with window displays, let the customers know you have something unique on offer. It is not Mr Grandy’s window displays that bring customers through his door, rather his reputation maintained over three generations in the fabric business. The woman entering through the door waved. Her mouth puckered into a familiar smile and I waved back. Mrs Pratson was sewing entire bridal party

outfits for her daughter’s wedding. She pointed to the far corner of the shop that held the embellishments, lace embroidered doilies, pearls and beads. I watched her move towards the selection and caught Mr Grandy walking back into his office. He saw me and made a face through the glass, holding the telephone receiver to his ear. He moved his head from side to side and formed his hand into a talking mouth and I laughed, knowing he’d picked up the phone to find his mother prattling on the other end, presumably to tell him how much the rising price of bread and milk was a disgrace to a country she had ed through a lifetime of taxes and working her fingers to the bone. Mr Grandy suffers these attacks daily, sometimes twice daily, though I have never heard him speak to her in anything but an understanding voice. He shares his rebellion with me, through hand signs and head gestures. On occasion I feel privileged. ‘Ruby,’ Mrs Pratson called in a voice soft as lavender. ‘I can’t possibly decide between these.’ She held an assortment of pearls and beads in her hands for me to see as I walked over to her. ‘I’ll need a little more information than that,’ I said kindly and Mrs Pratson delivered the beads into my palms and began describing the bridesmaid’s dress as if it were on her body. She began at her shoulders describing the pale blue silk straps that would balance a v-shaped bodice of the same colour. The skirt would fall from a diagonally cut bodice sloping from the waist on the left side and the right hip. She finished with a flourish of hand strokes from her hips to the floor to indicate the fall of fabric, gathered and full. She placed her hands over her breast. ‘The detail goes here,’ she said, pointing to the beads in my hand. They were all pearl-white, four different sizes, and I tried to visualise the dress and wondered whether the beads would be sewn in clusters or scattered across the fabric. I turned towards the counter and motioned for her to follow me. Placing the beads in a small dish, I took a pad of paper and pencil and began to sketch the dress she had described. ‘Yes,’ she said, leaning over the counter in her excitement. I paused to tuck my hair – which had grown too long – behind my ears and blew on the paper. I finished the sketch – it was only rough – and she clasped her hands to her throat and I looked up to find her eyes blurring with tears. ‘Exactly,’ she said, her hands making flurried movements across her eyes.

I couldn’t help myself and smiled. I turned the sketch to face her and pointed to the bodice. ‘If you shape the bodice like this, in a “V”,’ I said, ‘then you could follow the shape with clusters of different sized beads.’ She stared at the sketch. ‘Anyway, that’s what I’d do.’ She looked up at me, nodding. ‘Perfect. Ruby, you are a wonder. Mr Grandy,’ she said, turning to see him arriving behind the counter, ‘Ruby is amazing.’ I felt myself blushing. I wasn’t comfortable with her praise and wished I hadn’t gone so far as to sketch the dress. ‘It’s not a very good drawing,’ I said, trying to minimise the fuss. Mr Grandy placed his glasses on his nose and inspected the sketch. He looked up, nodding. ‘We had better see photographs of this dress, Lola.’ ‘You’ll be sorry you asked,’ she replied, picking the sketch up from the counter and moving back to the bead section. It took her half an hour to count out the exact number of beads she estimated would be needed to cover each of the three bodices of the three dresses for the bridal party. After the wedding Mrs Pratson arrived with an album of photographs and a teacake from Bloom’s Bakery to share. Over coffee and cake, Mr Grandy chose five photographs he wanted to borrow for the window. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘would it be possible to borrow one of the dresses for a few weeks?’ ‘My dress in the front window?’ she said, misting up. Mrs Pratson didn’t seem the kind of woman uncomfortable with her own emotion. She produced a handkerchief from her purse and blew her nose. ‘I’d be honoured,’ she said. ‘And, if you like, you could have Mabel’s dress, too.’ Mabel was the bride. For three weeks the front window of Mr Grandy’s fabric shop was filled with five mannequins wearing the dresses sewn by Mrs Pratson for each of the three bridesmaids, the bride and the flower girl. I believe we personally met each friend, relative and acquaintance of the Pratsons.

Fastened to the glass was a sign typed and printed on pink card. From design to dress, we have everything you need. My sketch was Blu-tacked at the bottom of the sign with an additional note: Need a fresh design? Want a pattern altered? Ask Ruby. Mr Grandy charged a flat fee of $20 for my design service, which he split with me, fifty-fifty.

I had never given any thought to what Dad might want to do with his future. It seems silly, but it just never occurred to me that Dad would be interested in meeting someone else. I suppose it was because Dad was so private with his thoughts and emotions it was easy to mistake that quietness for disinterest. I’d become used to the way our family had accommodated my parents’ separation. It was neat, if not perfect. One parent with one child each was fair and balanced. Until Dad met Amona. Dad had broached the subject with me a few weeks before her first visit, mentioning he had someone he wanted to invite over for tea, but hedging any details about who she was. My mind raced through possibilities and eventualities before that first dinner. Dating, marriage, children? (I focused on that last thought to make myself feel as awful as I possibly could.) Though I said nothing to Dad, just mumbled something about how fun it would be to have another woman in the house. I knew saying that would please him. And it did. The first time I met Amona, Dad came home early, whistling along to the radio while he prepared dinner. I hid in my room for as long as I could, excusing myself with a mountain of homework. It wasn’t all untrue, I did have a mountain of homework, though I had never stressed about it before. I always managed to get it done. What I wanted to do was place my foot on the sewing machine and run a textured fabric through the needle as fast as I could. But then the sound of the machine would have given me away. So I banished myself to my room with no legitimate means of escape. I heard the doorbell and Dad’s footsteps in the age. The door opened, hellos and cheek kisses. A scuffle by the door as Dad offered to take her coat. Her laughter and their chatter. I pressed my ear to the door and wondered how long I could stay hidden away before it would be considered impolite. Boredom

overcame my fear. I came out of my room. She looked warm with smokycoloured eyes, honey-brown hair and an easy smile. ‘Button,’ Dad said, throwing his arm around my shoulders, ‘this is Amona.’ She extended her arm and we shook hands. ‘You can call her Ruby,’ Dad said, leaving me for the pot of simmering spaghetti sauce. I assumed Amona would feel like an elephant in the room. Someone invading a familiar space, but she didn’t. Dad ed her the baguette and pointed to the butter plate while I poured myself a glass of juice. I found myself wanting her to like me. So when Dad started on about my sewing, instead of letting that topic of conversation – like a normal teenager – I felt myself bragging. Just a little. ‘I helped design Mrs Pratson’s daughter’s bridal party.’ You know that little feeling you get when you’ve gone too far? Said a little white lie or something inappropriate or stupid? I don’t know why we get that feeling afterwards when, really, a warning bolt to your brain should strike ahead of time. Because what good can it do to know you’ve already been a moron? ‘Lola Pratson?’ Amona said, glancing at Dad and smiling. ‘Mabel? I was at her wedding.’ I dug into the mudcake, shrouding my stupidity with fat and serotonin – I read somewhere that chocolate is full of it (as well as magnesium).

‘So tell me where you met her, Dad?’ Dad focused on the TV before answering. ‘The cocktail bar at the Sheraton Hotel,’ he said. ‘But the reason I hadn’t told you earlier was because . . .’ he paused. ‘Well, I don’t want you thinking it’s all right meeting boys at hotels.’ I burst out laughing. ‘As a general rule,’ he added. I was thinking of all that Sally had gotten up to and it seemed so suddenly absurd

that Dad would be worried about me. ‘I like Amona, Dad,’ I said. ‘And besides, boys are the last thing I have on my mind.’ We were watching On Moonlight Bay with Doris Day from Dad’s collection and I couldn’t stop giggling. ‘What?’ Dad kept asking and I’d shake my head and continue giggling. Dad started it first. He threw a Cheezel at me and I threw it back. He laughed too and threw more. Soon there were Cheezels behind the cushions, under the couch and in the potpourri bowl beside the curtains. I got up to make tea while Dad collected the shrapnel. ‘But if you do go meeting boys at pubs you will tell me, won’t you, Button.’ ‘Yes, Dad,’ I said, kissing him on the nose and presenting him with an Earl Grey.

The next Friday I arrived home late and Amona was already there. I guessed there’d been some conversation about me already when she asked about my dresses. I shot Dad a daggered look, feeling like he’d betrayed me. ‘But what do you do with all those dresses?’ Amona said to me, reaching out to take a glass of wine from Dad. ‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘They’re in a cupboard.’ ‘No!’ she said dramatically, looking to Dad and then back at me. Amona has large eyes and every expression seems magnified and endearing. I could see why Dad liked her. She stepped a little closer to me and touched my arm. ‘Could I see them?’ I could hardly say ‘no’. And for the life of me I couldn’t think of any polite way out of it. After all, why did I make dresses to hang in a cupboard? Sometimes I think we are equally strangers to ourselves as to others. Amona followed me to the sewing room and as I opened the door I wondered

whether the mannequin might distract her from the intended destination. ‘Oh my,’ she said, pushing past me into the room, walking straight towards the mannequin wearing the second midnight-blue dress. I had a moment of looking at it, like Amona might have, seeing it for the first time and thinking how lovely it was, too. But then I retreated back into myself and could only see its faults. How I should have done something different for the shoulder strap and how the tulle – sprouting underneath the raised front hem seemed arrogant and misplaced. Too . . . flaunty. I wanted to stand in front of it, pointing out all the faults and have Amona agree with me, turn from the room and forget about it altogether. Surely Dad should call her back to be with him in the kitchen. Was there no baguette in dire need of buttering? ‘Oh, Ruby.’ She smiled, turning her head over her shoulder to look at me. I decided then that I understood what was happening. Of course, I should have seen it before. She was as bound to this masquerading as I was. She had to say nice things. How could she not? I felt better, knowing that. ‘Can I touch it?’ ‘Of course. It isn’t . . . ,’ I stumbled for the word. ‘Well, you know. It’s nothing. Go ahead. Take it off the stand if you like.’ ‘You must have made it for someone,’ she said, lifting the skirt a little, touching the fabric, letting it fall back, the air fluting along the hem of the fabric, rumpling slightly – as it was supposed to – across the fixture of tulle. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Where are the others?’ she turned to face me fully. Confidently. One hand on her hip, an eyebrow raised, wine glass in the other hand. Bugger. ‘Um. In there,’ I said, flicking my hand in the direction of the cupboard. I felt exposed. Like I was being opened up and displaced by a woman my father might prefer to me.

8.

I heard about Barry close to six months before our seventeenth birthday during a visit to Darwin. According to Sally, Barry was the sweetest guy she’d ever met and out of every boy she’d known he was the one she liked best. But the thought of it scared her. She wanted me to tell her about the times I ‘had done it’. All I had to share was the one time I had let Eric Barrada kiss me after our school performance of Grease that had been earlier that year. ‘He even touched my boobs,’ I said, and Sally laughed and I thought I was, perhaps, the most pathetic girl that ever lived. ‘The trick with Mum,’ she said, ‘is in letting her think you agree with everything she says and does. See,’ she continued, ‘Mum thinks I’m all over the Aberdeen rubbish. Even Brother Daniel thinks so, too. And because they think they have me under their thumb, Mum believes everything I tell her. Friday nights, when I head to the Humpty Doo Hotel, they think I’m going to Trisha’s new Home group. When Mum wanted to ban me from working at the Croc Jumping Cruises, all I had to tell her was how many tourists came through the place and what an advantage that was in being a living example of faith.’ ‘She bought it?’ ‘Of course.’ Something about the way she said it made me feel like she was scoffing at me, too. Sometimes Sally could be the sweetest person you’d ever known and then, just as she had you thinking that, she’d change. Right there. That night Sally pulled her mattress from her bed and dragged it into the sewing room beside mine. We lay down, arms and legs spread out from our bodies, our hands almost touching, looking up at a ceiling of white dresses in various stages of completion. ‘I’ve got an idea for your birthday present,’ I said. ‘Yeah?’

I’d decided to try and get the original midnight-blue dress back that I had made for her. I knew the friend she had sold it through. ‘I think he could be the one,’ she said. ‘Barry?’ ‘But I don’t want to ruin a good thing. I did something stupid.’ I wanted to understand what she meant. I wanted to ask her what it was like to go all the way with a boy, what was so special about Barry and how she could have grown so far ahead of me when we were twins. I wanted to stitch us back together, the way we used to be. Sally stretched out her fingers to mine and we pushed our hands against each other’s. That night we slept, closer than we had ever been in years. I woke the morning of my second last day in Darwin and Sally was already up, having breakfast in the kitchen. When Mum was having a shower, Sally whispered and said, ‘I’ve got a great idea for tonight. We have been twins all our lives and we’ve never pulled the substitution trick. How is that?’ she said, holding her arms up questioningly and swallowing the last of her toast. ‘We simply have to rectify this situation. You are going to meet Barry.’ That afternoon Sally dressed me up, ran a kohl pencil under my eyes, painted mascara on my lashes and stained my lips red. I hardly recognised myself in the mirror. She threaded silver dangles through my ears and swept my hair into a ponytail. I had to practise walking in her high-heeled sandals – I mostly wore Converse Sneakers – though, not surprisingly, her clothes fitted me perfectly. Still, I felt as stiff as a clotheshorse. Sally made me swing my arms – she took my hands and said to imagine a gust of wind blowing through my body. ‘There,’ she said. ‘See, your body is looser.’ I was a little swept up in Sally’s excitement, I suppose, because it didn’t occur to me until we were in her car driving towards Humpty Doo that it seemed strange she would play a trick on the boy she confessed to loving. And not only that, but the only reason this would work was because she’d never told her friends about me. That thought swept up through my body, from my feet to my neck, like a cold wave. I spent half my life trying to think up things to tell my friends about

Sally and she hadn’t even told her friends I existed. I wanted to yell at her, to demand an explanation. I wanted to throw all my stuffed-down pain at her. How could she? I wanted to cry and rant and I don’t even know what I expected or wanted in return. But I knew, somehow, that if I ever as much as placed a toe in those waters she would fly away. Completely. Sally pulled over to the side of the road before we reached the Humpty Doo Hotel. The music was blaring and the world seemed too silent when the track stopped, with the engine. The lights lit up a small arc of road in front of us and she pointed towards it, saying the hotel was not far beyond. Just keep on the road, I couldn’t miss it. My heart started pounding and I’m sure my eyes looked terrified but she was too excited to notice. ‘After, you have to tell me everything,’ she said. ‘Absolutely everything.’ That was our deal. I got to be her for one night and, in return, I had to tell her everything. ‘This is a blast,’ she kept saying. I don’t getting out of the car or how I managed to walk in those heels – which weren’t all that high really – over the uneven, rocky road shoulder towards the hotel. I was framed in her headlights for a time, then they went black and the light from the hotel didn’t seem all that far in front of me. What the bloody hell was I thinking? This was madness. The plan was this. I was to go to room number five, knock on the door and wait for Barry to answer. I had to be confident – to that Sally was confident – and tell Barry to me for a drink. I was to make him talk to me – that way there’d be no chance I’d give myself away. Sally described Barry in intimate detail. His dark skin, brooding looks. She said his body smelled of the best man scent she’d ever known and, while he wasn’t much of a talker, he was . . . she fumbled for the word . . . magnetic. Compelling. ‘But’, she had added quickly, ‘you’re only going to talk to him’ – the implication about anything beyond a public drink in the pub was clear – I had to feign tiredness or something to avoid complications. I approached the pub door questioning why I had agreed to this. I kept imagining Mum finding out, her look of scorn and disgust. I only had a few weeks a year with her and I couldn’t afford to have her hating me. It would have been so hard

to go back home with that hanging over my head. I felt like I owed her some sort of loyalty. And yet I walked towards the pub door, feeling nothing like Sally, but looking, I suppose, every bit like her. The doors to the hotel rooms were exactly where Sally had described them. Lined up one beside the other set back from the grey concrete path ing them together under a fibro canopy. The room numbers were large and black, like the numbers you’d find on letterboxes. I felt the urge to wash my face, which was greasy with makeup. Every time I blinked my eyes I felt them sticking together and worried I’d have trouble prising them apart. I licked my lips, satisfying myself by muting the red. I was overcome with an urge to turn around, run back to the car in my highheeled sandals and convince Sally to drive us home. I could anticipate our arrival, Mum grilling me about what we got up to at Bible study – or wherever it was Sally told Mum we were going. Sally promised to tutor me in the art of religious talk on the way home saying, ‘You can learn the gab in under five minutes. Trust me.’ I couldn’t decide what was making me feel more nervous; meeting Barry, whom I’d begun building up in my own mind, or the fear of being exposed and having no idea what to say. I managed to will my feet forward, thinking as loudly as possible, ‘God, Ruby, you’re such a freak. Just do it, will you!’ Before I could knock on the door, I heard my name, rather heard Sally’s name. I froze but turned around, forcing a smile I’m sure Sally would have found natural. ‘I was hoping to find you here.’ I had no idea who this guy was. At first he was shadowed by the backlighting from the street lamp, but as he came closer I could make out his features. I couldn’t ask who he was and felt sure it was going to get awkward. When I could get a closer look at him – he was almost chest to chest with me – I was disappointed. He didn’t feel like Barry, he just didn’t look right, didn’t feel right. ‘Good old Bob knows where to find you, right?’ and my first thought was relief. It wasn’t Barry. Bob grabbed me by the shoulders and led me away from Barry’s door in through the hotel, steering me with his weight through the crowd, past a haze of people to the bar counter. Bob felt like a creep and I was angry Sally hadn’t mentioned him or warned me or prepared me in any way. I felt

completely out of my depth. There was less of a crowd at the bar counter. There were only a few blokes sitting on stools that I could see. Most of the crowd were gathered around the pool tables and outside in the beer garden. The beer smelled strong and yeasty and my stomach churned. Bob had his arm firmly around my shoulders and seemed to be completely comfortable with Sally like this. Me like this. And I felt there was no other option other than to act confident. Overplay it rather than underplay it was what Sally told me. I forced myself to stand tall, I cocked my head to the side like Sally did and leant into Bob, no matter that I couldn’t stand him. Without knowing him I didn’t like him. Like I’d known this forever. What was Sally thinking? Bob stepped back from the bar a bit and I turned around slightly so I was side on, looking down the line of the counter. He kissed me on the cheek. Someone was looking straight at me, glaring at me it felt like. And I knew it was Barry. He was exactly like Sally had described him and yet nothing like him at all. I don’t know whether it was instant attraction or anything like that or I’d just built him up in my mind over the last week but there was something I felt. Bob’s arm tightened around my shoulders. I swallowed, ed to look confident. I overcompensated, laughed and pretended I hadn’t seen him at all, even though I felt Barry hating me from across the room. Even though I wasn’t Sally. We left, drinks in hand, and went outside. I downed my beer – I don’t know how I got it down so quickly – and said I had to go. Mumbled something about being sick and late and couldn’t explain. I ran in the direction of the car, Bob’s voice in my ears, ‘Oi, you little bitch. Come back!’ Somehow I made it back to the car and Sally opened the door, her eyes wild and mischievous. ‘Don’t tell me yet,’ she said. ‘Wait until we get home.’ Beside each other, our mattresses side by side, with the fan blowing across the room, Sally told me to tell her everything. She reached her hand towards me and our little fingers touched, like we were coned, though we splayed our fingers and toes, our legs and arms in an effort to deal with the heat. ‘It’s not very exciting,’ I stalled. ‘Everything.’

She was completely still beside me. The fan grating on its rotator hinge, a moment of breeze and her deep and even breathing. ‘He wasn’t there,’ I lied. ‘But why the hell didn’t you tell me about Bob?’ Sally laughed. ‘Bob?’ she said evenly, as if he wasn’t worth mentioning. ‘He was very friendly.’ She was quiet. The fan struggled. ‘Why did you have to spoil it?’ she said and I didn’t know what to say. ‘Me?’ I stammered. ‘If you weren’t my sister,’ I said, indignant. ‘Too late for that.’ She laughed softly. ‘Bob is the complication between Barry and me. I’ve made a mess of everything.’ I still didn’t know what to say. Sally fell asleep before me, our conversation unfinished, neither of us completely honest with the other. Her breathing was heavy and regular as I choked with the humidity and an overwhelming weight of guilt. I hadn’t told her about seeing Barry and couldn’t decide whether I’d done it to punish her or myself. I couldn’t forget the image of Barry hating me. Not Sally, but me.

On the plane back home the next morning, I imagined a boy called Barry. And how, if you had a hundred boys to choose from, he’d be the only one you wanted. I couldn’t understand why Sally would have let a man like Bob ruin her chance with Barry. And what was she thinking wanting me to play a trick on him? There was so much I just didn’t understand about her. At least back then. None of us knew the real reason she thought she had lost Barry for good. And why she would keep a creep like Bob in her life. And it never occurred to me that I’d never get to ask her myself. For the rest of the flight I felt perverted and strange, stealing Sally’s boy like that, even if it was just in my mind. Though I think I just wanted someone to choose me, like Sally had chosen him.

9.

I wasn’t a standout at school. Despite doing pretty well in home economics and art – English and history were okay – I was never a teacher’s favourite. I was a consistently ‘high-achieving’ student in home economics, however, but it was run by a team of women moulded in the style of my mother. Their pride measured how well a student – almost always a girl (except for Harvey Muffet) – mastered the skills of precision and duplication. A method I preferred to call ‘monkey see, monkey do’. There wasn’t much room for creativity in home economics. At least not at the school I went to. But at least I got to sew clothes, participate in some design, and build a range of techniques and knowledge I felt sure would benefit me in the long run. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn the simpler skills of tacking and pleating, but I felt no need to sew entire garments just to prove my knowledge of these skills. ‘Very Highs’ were reserved for students who followed each instruction and delivered each stitch with meticulous care and considerate enthusiasm. Like my mother. In art, ‘Very Highs’ were reserved for students whose skill set covered the broad ranging artistic forms from oils to pottery. I wasn’t bad in the sketching and drawing department, but I could no sooner whip a pot into shape on a pottery wheel than kick a winning goal for the local AFL team. It didn’t bother me all that much as I didn’t like attention as a rule. Not like my best friend, Becky – poor thing, braces did hamper her – who tried out for every play, musical and theatrical recital the school had on offer. I ired her determination, though. And she was good. Really good. Earlier in the year she persuaded me to go with her – just to keep her company – to the auditions for the school production of Grease and I scored a part in the chorus solely on the basis that I turned up. I was mortified. Little did I know they were short on numbers and as long as you didn’t upstage the main actors and dancers, you were pretty much perfect chorus material. I hated every minute of it. I felt fake and pompous in my bobby socks and loafers, my hair pigtailed, rouged cheeks and bright red v-necked sweater. Typically I said nothing and went along with it. Dad enjoyed it, or so he said.

Eric Barrada was my dancing partner and letting him kiss me behind the hall seemed only fair. Besides, he wasn’t ugly and I was curious. The experience was less than satisfying. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a one-man kind of girl. I don’t know where or when this idea materialised, but I’d never been much into boys like my friends. Becky could get so excited about boys she almost asphyxiated. She liked us to go through the motions of talking in turn about each of the boys we were interested in. We would sit in a circle at lunch and begin talking about general things, nothing much at all, and then she’d say ‘Right. Out with it, girls.’ That was our cue. Usually I talked about Eric Barrada because he wasn’t not goodlooking and until I had a better option, he’d do. Becky usually rolled her eyes, though. I think she smelled a fake. In my sketchbook I once drew a line that started with Sally, then Becky and me on the end. Between us, I thought, we covered the full spectrum of teenage girl romantic behaviour. There was something in Sally making it almost impossible for her to be satisfied with any one boy at all. Ever. And Becky could be but she had to sift through a whole lot, which was fun in its own way, to find the one. Whereas me, I wasn’t much interested in the process. That’s why I thought there would be only one boy for me. And romance wouldn’t make much sense until I found him. I think that might be the one thing Mum and I have in common – apart from sewing. I think Dad was the one man for her. Becky initiated a spectrum for boys, too. And each boy we discussed we had to categorise as either a ‘Romeo’ or a ‘Casanova’. Eric Barrada was a Casanova. Likable but Casanova all the same. In fact, we found it hard to think of any boys we’d call Romeos. ‘It’s a dying art,’ Becky said. ‘Romance. Proper romance.’ ‘All boys want is a quickie behind the bike shed,’ said Rachel. ‘Well, you would know, sweetheart,’ Becky responded, laughing out loud so her braces caught the sun. ‘No, really. Can you think of one boy that could love a girl so completely he’d die without her?’ All of us shrugged, looked at each other. Considered all of the potential

candidates we had available, shared the last of the raspberry snakes and came up with nothing. ‘Well, Mr “Handsome”,’ Rachel said. But Mr Hanson – a teacher who looked a lot like Brad Pitt and was only six years older than us – was always our default response. That day Becky decided Mr Handsome was out of bounds for those particular conversations. Because, as we all knew, some men were just off limits altogether. And what good did it do a girl to think too far beyond herself. I think Becky liked Mr Handsome. Really liked him. She took home extension maths activities just to please him. I finished what was left of my sandwich ing the way Barry had looked at me that night at the pub in Humpty Doo. We had hardly set eyes on each other. But you didn’t hate someone that hard without loving them equally. Barry was my Romeo. Well, not mine, exactly. Just my idea of one.

‘We could meet at the tram and say we’re going to each other’s houses. We could get away with it. Come on, what do you say, Button?’ Becky said one afternoon at school. I don’t know how it came to be that my school friends called me Button. I tried to think back. Sally would have been around at that time, too. We were in the same class for grades one to three. We had intersecting groups of friends. Most of us ended up in high school together and I guess it just happened. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. Something about the risky adventure being proposed didn’t thrill me as much as it should have. I was approaching seventeen, shouldn’t I have been crying one minute and laughing the next? Moody with hormones like all my friends? I began to think there was something terribly wrong with me. ‘Oh, but you’ve got to come, Button. Won’t be the same without you.’ I shrugged and they were placated by the gesture – it was good enough for them. I was in. Becky clapped her hands together, smiled large around her braces, and leant over

to side-hug me. I wondered what Sally would have said if she had been there, instead of me. And the thought made me smile because it didn’t take much imagining to know she would have been leading the charge and anything they suggested would have seemed childish in comparison. I wondered what my friends liked about me. I never clashed with anyone. Peacemaker, I supposed. And Sally and I had been a double act, until she left. I wondered if they still liked me because I reminded them of her. I told them all sorts of things, when they asked, about what Sally was up to. So no one knew we hardly talked anymore. I told them everything I knew and more. Everything, except Barry. I kept Barry to myself. We didn’t hear from Sally very often. Sometime after I returned from Darwin after meeting Barry, Sally sent us an email – probably the longest ever – attaching a newspaper article about an incident involving Barry at the Top End Croc Jumping Cruises, where she worked, that had made headlines around the country. Just seeing Barry’s name there in print caused my heart to stir. The Croc Jumping Cruises gave me something to tell my friends about. Sally had been working there since leaving school. I don’t know how she convinced Mum to let her leave school. But I guessed – not that anyone had said anything to me – that she hadn’t left voluntarily and the option of her returning was not possible. Pretty soon after starting at the Croc Jumping Cruises she had enough money to buy her first car. Dad never thought I knew but, when Sally asked, he’d paid half. Trust Sally to have found work that made her sound exotic and wild. She had something not one of our friends had, or had even heard of. Even I had a job more unusual than most of our friends who worked at service stations or coffee shops, cafés and McDonald’s. But not Sally. She worked for a place that took people in glass-walled boats for tours along the river to see crocs jumping out of the water. Sally worked in the café and Barry worked on the boat. I liked the power of telling this story to our friends. Well, I guess they were just my friends by that time. The way their eyes widened, the way Sally sounded so much older and wiser by crocodile association. How the Northern Territory may as well have been another country for how different it sounded. Kangaroos running wild down the streets, Aborigines living on the land, black as ebony keys. Sally’s life was as exotic as any of us ever got. And I knew her. We had

shared the same body, once. I was as close to Sally as anyone ever got. ‘You ever have the same thoughts?’ people used to ask me. ‘How much the same are you? You got the same moles? You get the same pimples?’ People always want to know how far genetics extends. In history when we learnt about the Holocaust I went home and cried. Over six million people losing their lives for no other reason than they were born into a particular religion was reason enough to cry, I suppose, but my tears were for a small group of children I had read about. In Auschwitz the most terrible experiments were carried out on identical twins by a Doctor Mengele. One story still gives me nightmares. Two twin girls were literally sewn together by their backs, just to see if they could survive, and whether they shared a mysterious medical compatibility that regular people did not. Imagine their pain. I sometimes think that animals are incapable of the kinds of cruelty that humans willingly inflict on each other.

10.

One afternoon Amona was waiting for me when I finished my shift at Mr Grandy’s. She had come inside the store, just before closing time. ‘Fancy a lift home, Ruby?’ she said. I was tired and didn’t fancy legging it to the tram home again so it sounded good. A relief, actually. ‘That would be great,’ I said. Amona leaned on the counter while I wiped everything down and re-pinned bolts of fabric and returned button containers and lace wheels to their places on the shelves. In the office on the second floor, up three stairs, Mr Grandy turned out the lights and left, locking the door, meeting me at the front counter. ‘Amona,’ I said, turning. ‘Mr Grandy.’ Amona held out her hand to Mr Grandy and they shook. ‘Nearly done,’ I said, moving across the floor quickly to return the last of the items. I thought I’d have had some time to choose a few material samples and buttons for my collection, but I had accepted the lift and didn’t want to make her wait while I made my choices. Anyway, I told myself, no harm in waiting one more day. Dad and I hadn’t talked about Amona very much, though I knew that they had been seeing quite a bit of each other. This thought felt like a sharp sting, like I’d pricked myself with a pin. Her BMW smelt of fresh leather, polish and upholstery. It was so neat and shining that I didn’t want to sit on the seats. Dad had money, I supposed, and even though he could have afforded a new car, he got about in an old Datsun station wagon which – right then, at that moment on brand-new leather seats – felt like a hobowagon. Scrapmetal.

‘Now,’ Amona said as she pulled away from the kerb into the traffic. ‘I wanted to drive you home so we could have a little chat. I hope you’re not going to mind,’ Amona continued, stopping quickly as peak hour traffic swallowed us up in a slow and painful, bumper-to-bumper crawl through the city. I realised this trip was not going to be over quickly. ‘But I was so impressed with the dresses you made, Ruby. I mean . . .’ she paused and shook her head slightly while I squirmed on the seat and put my handbag on the floor beside my feet. ‘They are really something.’ ‘Ta,’ I mumbled. Amona laughed. ‘You don’t have any idea how good you are, do you?’ she turned her head to look at me. I shrugged. ‘What do you do?’ I asked, thinking I might be able to redirect the conversation. ‘I’m a distributer for a pharmaceutical company. We have offices in Melbourne, Brisbane, South Australia. I fly a lot. But I know talent when I see it. You should think about entering the Young Designer of the Year Award. One day.’ ‘How do you know about that?’ ‘You’re kidding? I watch it every year on TV,’ she continued. ‘I’ve always loved fashion. I love seeing designers showcase their latest.’ I was thinking back to every Fashion Week of every year since I was about eleven. Usually Dad and I were the ones who would stay up to watch the parade and announcements for every category: swimwear, evening wear, kids, and, of course, the Young Designer of the Year Award which was always last. Even before Mum left it was Dad who shared this with me. I could tell you the various winners of each category for the past four years. The winning designs and various notes about each one can be found in my sketchbook. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, having trouble thinking whether anything I had created would be good enough to enter. ‘I took the liberty of looking into it and they are sending out the entry forms.

You should think about it,’ she said before turning up the music.

‘So what do you think?’ Amona asked over dinner. Dad shrugged his shoulders and his meaning was clear. Whatever Button wants is fine by me. I glanced at him to see if there was anything else hiding underneath his reaction but, in true Dad-style, he was genuinely un-opinionated. I couldn’t believe we were actually having a discussion about this. Me actually entering the Young Designer of the Year Award at Fashion Week. I was having trouble eating. Each bite of food seemed to swell in my throat and no amount of swallowing could get it down. My body felt hot and awkward. I think my hands were sweating. I can only assume that Becky experiences something similar when she is caught up in her latest romantic fascination. I had an immediate and long overdue rush of sympathy for her. It was agony. Most days I’m so infatuated with these designers that I can’t bring myself to think of them as human. They can’t be, surely. They’re too good, too far beyond the likes of me and the people I associate with to be real. They are the stuff of legend and dreams. ‘You’d have to submit your designs like everyone else,’ Amona said, as Dad filled everyone’s glass of wine. Including mine. ‘But usually you have to go through TAFE and design colleges or industry avenues,’ she dabbed at her chin with her napkin. ‘But the organisers told me you can submit your designs if you have an endorsement from someone in the industry.’ She turned to look at me. My face felt bloated and red. Well, that settled it, then. Who did I know that could possibly provide an endorsement? Amona laughed and reached out towards me, taking my hand and squeezing it. ‘I was thinking of Mr Grandy,’ she said, and went on eating her pasta, just like that. After dinner I left Amona and Dad to their coffee and chocolates in the lounge room. I lingered by the doorway, at first, watching Amona slip her shoes off and place her stockinged feet on Dad’s lap. Dad switched his coffee mug to his other hand and took hold of her toes, kneading them as Amona lay her head on the pillow and made sounds like a purring cat. Dad smiled and the light from the television cast a rainbow glow across their bodies. I couldn’t help thinking of

Mum, then, in that moment. And I tried to bring back any memories I could of similar pictures. Dad with her on the couch. A feeling of contentment and rightness in the world. But I couldn’t find a single one. I caught snatches of images of them together, her leaning against him or the occasional hug. But there was no casual intimacy like I saw between Dad and Amona. I hadn’t seen them touch before, other than their hug and kiss hello. And I didn’t think it was possible they hadn’t been more intimate together. I didn’t want to watch TV or them for the night. I was so excited, in a surreal, bubbling way, by Amona’s proposition that all I wanted to do was hide away in my room with my torch and sketchbook. I felt like placing out snatches of fabric on the floor, overlaying ribbons and beads and embellishments. I could feel a design creeping up inside of me. But I also felt a sadness rise up from the pit of my stomach to my throat. Where did I fit in to all this happiness? We had been shared out evenly, all four of us. It was fair and neat, if not ideal. Mum had Sally and Dad had me. And now Dad had Amona. And they shared the two-seater couch. I don’t know where this sadness comes from. I could feel a tunnel of thoughts waiting for me to catch hold and follow them. To make me feel sadder imagining the two of them growing closer, forgetting about me altogether. And what if Dad couldn’t stand being with me anymore, just like Mum? What if I had only filled a temporary space? Had I only been keeping Amona’s seat warm? Perhaps if your parents never divorce, you don’t think these kinds of things. I don’t know. But in my situation, something permanent, something you could count on had unravelled. And so when the sadness came on, you couldn’t tell yourself you were being completely stupid. A teenager with nothing better to do than imagine the worst. Because the worst had already happened. And there was no rational reason why it couldn’t happen again. I knew Dad loved me. Dad loved Sally, too. But he was happy enough making a life without her around. I switched off the light and hid under my covers. I listened to the radio through my earphones and closed out the world around me. My body was a black, indifferent shape, a mountain of bunched-up sheets. Even my sketchbook was only an object in shadow. The only thing I could see, the only thing in the light was the small, oval-shaped illumination of my next design. I could make this perfect. It could be everything I could never be. It would last, like nothing real

ever could. I think that was the first night I thought about my future as something far away and separate from who I was then. Being on my own. And I knew, I knew it absolutely, that nothing lasted forever. If I had to pinpoint that one defining moment, it would be that night. Knowing I would not have my father forever. Or Sally.

I woke up twisted inside my sheets, my sketchbook placed neatly on my bedside table, my MP3 player and earphones curled up in a small, tidy coil on top. My torch rested beside it and underneath this was Amona’s business card. I pulled my legs and arms free and reached over for it. On the front was a small professional logo in the corner, her name, phone numbers and email address. Turning it over I found a message in neat blue biro: Call me anytime, Ruby. xx I opened my sketchbook and flipped to the very back page. I ran my fingers over the newspaper cutting that Sally left for me the day she moved to Darwin. She was the first person to ever take my sewing seriously, the first person to truly believe in me. Dad was eating cornflakes in the kitchen, whistling, when I came in. ‘Good morning, sunshine,’ he said and I smiled, despite ing my own troubled thoughts of the last evening when I’d resolved to be a colder, more distant person to everyone. I filled a cup with water from the tap and blinked against the sun pouring in through the window above the sink. And I couldn’t stop thinking that Dad and Amona probably had sex after making sure I was asleep. ‘You just missed Amona. She left her card for you,’ Dad said as if we had been a family of carefully synchronised timetables for some time. I nodded. ‘You’re okay with all of this? Aren’t you, Button?’ ‘Sure,’ I said, sitting down in front of the newspaper.

‘I mean, Amona’s great,’ Dad said. ‘And she thinks you are fabulous.’ ‘I like her, too,’ I said. And it was true. Perhaps that was what was wrong with the whole situation. I’d have been much more comfortable if I hated her. If I could have pretended my own mother had been a much better woman. That we had all ruined a perfect family. ‘I’ll go shopping tonight,’ Dad said. ‘Anything you need to add to the grocery list?’ I shook my head. ‘Amona will be back for dinner tonight. And then she’s off to Brisbane for two weeks.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Which,’ Dad said, rinsing his bowl in the sink, ‘means we get our Friday nights back. And just to prove I can share, you get to choose this Friday’s video.’ He waited for my reaction. ‘Actually, I’ve got plans this Friday night,’ I said, ing Becky’s idea to sneak out together in the guise of staying over at her house. And even though I had been planning to get out of it, somehow, I continued. ‘We’re going to get coffee at that little place near Mr Grandy’s after work and then go back to Becky’s house for the night.’ ‘Oh,’ Dad said and I couldn’t decide whether he was disappointed or just surprised. ‘About time you behaved like a teenager.’

‘What do you say, Ruby?’ Mr Grandy was really pleased with himself. I arrived for work the next day to find him waiting for me behind the counter. He was smiling from ear to ear, rocking on the balls of his feet. ‘Mrs Pratson has this friend who wants you to design her gown. It’s for an important dinner engagement for her husband’s firm.’

‘Me?’ ‘She was very impressed with your contribution to the wedding.’ ‘You can design it here,’ he said, pointing to the clear end of the long laminated counter top that was closer towards the stairs leading to his office. ‘I’m prepared to give you seventy per cent of the profit, Ruby. I think it would be a nice touch for the customers to see a work in progress. What do you say?’ ‘She wants me to sew it, too? But—’ Mr Grandy held up his hands. ‘I took the liberty of describing your skills.’ I stashed my backpack under the counter and folded my arms. ‘But . . .’ I felt my heart speed up. I was terrified at the thought of having to produce a dress on demand. ‘Just say, yes. Please?’ I didn’t know how to say no and ended up nodding my head. ‘We get to display it in the window for two weeks. After she’s worn it, of course,’ Mr Grandy added as he climbed the stairs towards the office where the phone was ringing. I couldn’t help but smile, watching him run towards the call. ‘Hello mother,’ I heard him say. If it all went horribly wrong, I could always quit and move to Darwin, I thought as the first customer of the afternoon came through the door. That evening after my shift finished, Mr Grandy gave me an armful of old pattern books to take home. McCalls, Butterick and Vogue. I’ve yet to find the exact word to describe the enjoyment that an evening spent riffling through old pattern books can bring.

That Friday night, what began as the first ambitious rebellion of a handful of nearly seventeen-year-old girls ended up being coffee and Hungry Jack’s, followed by a footpath tour of all the clubs we had pretended we were going to

get into. We caught the tram back to Becky’s house – just like we told our parents we would – and watched something horrible on late night television before falling asleep in our pyjamas on sleeping bags in the lounge room. I waited until they were all asleep – ignoring Becky’s enthusiastic snoring – and took out my torch and sketchbook to work on the design I’d begun the first night Amona stayed over. I seem to approach each new design from a different angle. Sometimes I’m inspired by a particular fabric – the colour and texture – and I’ll start with that, sensing a shape and feel of the design. I’ll match it with other colours, other fabrics, and then sketch what I think I’ve found. Other times I’ll sketch first and find that the fabrics and embellishments emerge from that point. The dress I worked on that night was a sketch first. I could feel the shape emerging. It wasn’t like anything I’d done before, in fact, I’d describe it more in the line of costume. Pieces of stiff fabric, large leaf shapes overlapping each other in a skirt hemmed to form a diagonal line across the flat of the body. Whether inherent in the fabric itself, or added on with textures and beads after, the skirt was alive with intricate detail. I imagined Sally in footless black tights. Designer black ballet shoes tied with ribbon bows across the bridge of her foot. A formal look, expensive fabric contrasted with casual tights. Though I could not settle on how the bodice of the garment would look and rubbed out a dozen attempts that didn’t feel right. When I could no longer focus on the page properly and had rubbed the paper too thin, I switched the torch off and went to sleep, tucking my sketchbook underneath my pillow. No sooner was I dreaming when I heard Becky’s laugh, felt her arm across my body and opened my eyes to see her childishly excited eyes, her blonde hair hanging around her face. ‘Pancakes,’ she said, jumping from my sleeping bag and disappearing out of the door towards the kitchen, her tissue-box-sized piggy slippers scuffing on the carpet.

11.

Becky’s mum dropped me home and I arrived to find Dad immersed in a fullscale clean-out. He had the garage door open and boxes divided into various piles inside the house and outside on the pavement. He waved as I came in through the door, asking me to grab his cup of tea from the bench. I threw my duffle bag on the kitchen bench and took his tea outside. I found him, excited as a kitten, busying through one large old box beside a brown leather suitcase the likes of which you’d find in a collector’s bric-a-brac store. ‘I need you to go through some of these with me,’ he said taking the tea. I sat down on the lid of a plastic box and watched him. He ran a hand though his hair and continued rummaging through his current box. I’d rarely stopped to look at Dad before. But I suppose he was handsome. I tried looking at him like Amona might look at him. As if we’d never met before, hadn’t known each other for as long as we could each . He was an easy man to be around, comfortable in himself. Sandy blond hair, lines creasing their way through his face around his mouth and eyes. A man more handsome in his older years than his younger years. I’d seen a few pictures of him as a young man, and he was lanky and lean, I’d say. Nothing especially appealing about him. I kicked my foot back and forth, banging the container like a drum. ‘Should have done this a long time ago,’ he said, straightening up from his task to sip his tea. ‘Some things we’ve never gone through since your mum . . .’ he left the rest of the sentence unfinished. ‘I think those boxes have your baby toys and things from primary school,’ he pointed to the far corner of the garage. ‘But I think these might have been your mum’s.’ I tried to what might have been stashed in each of the boxes and felt a glimmer of excitement about discovering things I’d long forgotten about. I leapt off the container to go have a look. Piggy and Scamper – stuffed toys I’d won at the show – were there and some of

my books from primary school. Report cards and awards. Class certificates and a few ribbons from relay races and the cross-country in grade four which were actually Sally’s, though there was no name on them. I couldn’t how they might have got mixed up with my things, though I didn’t rule out the possibility that I’d taken them. Sally won so many things. I hating her for that. Another blue ribbon, another green. They didn’t hand out ribbons for creative sketching and general fabric knowledge in primary school. At the bottom of the box was The Magic Faraway Tree. ‘Happy to keep it if you want, Button. But no point holding onto stuff for the sake of it.’ I pulled out a few things I didn’t really want. Things of no sentimental value. But most of it I really wanted to hang onto for no other reason than I wasn’t ready to let go. ‘Think you can take a look through your mum’s things?’ I looked over at the two boxes separated out. ‘We can send her what you think she might like to keep,’ he said. ‘Or you could write and tell her what’s in it and what she wants us to do with it all. Not sure how it got left here.’ I opened the lid of the first box and inhaled a dusty smell of age. I removed the books that sat on top, two photograph albums, to see what was at the bottom. I pulled out packets of fabric and patterns and placed them all around the box until I reached the bottom and there was nothing left. I glanced over to Dad, but he was busy with his own things. I left it all there, moving onto the next box. The first thing I pulled out was a large, woollen red coat. Underneath that was a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings, pictures cut from magazines. Scribblings in a child’s writing, handdrawn pictures. At the bottom of the box was an old hardback book. The History of Silk. ‘What’s this?’ I asked Dad, showing him the red coat. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know we had that. Belongs to your Grandmother Pearl, I think.’

Becky has her grandparents come to dinner once a month on a Sunday evening and she was most surprised to find that our circle of friends didn’t observe the same habit relating to family. ‘But don’t you have family get-togethers?’ Rachel’s family got together over birthdays and Melissa lived with her grandparents so they were there all the time. ‘Don’t you find it strange that your mother would leave you?’ Becky said. ‘I can’t imagine my mother leaving me.’ I’d never thought of it like that before. ‘I don’t think she knew what else to do.’ ‘Well, my mother, if it ever came to that, would never let my father keep either of us. She just wouldn’t.’ I didn’t know any other girl who only lived with her father. There were boys who lived with their single mothers, but that was relatively normal. Men were always leaving their families. Most men were, in our experience, most likely to be Casanovas. And Casanovas were always ready to move on to another woman. Perhaps there was something safe about honing our teenage senses towards identifying decent boys at fifty paces. If there was some way of knowing which boys were likely to turn out to be decent men, boys that could love us back as ionately as we felt we could love them, then we could banish the likelihood of divorce and unhappiness to a statistically unlikely outcome. It occurred to me, then, that I’d never heard my mother talk about her father. Only about Pearl. Mum talked of her mother in disappointing tones, and we knew she had done many things wrong or was the kind of woman we shouldn’t approve of. Though, on that day, I realised my mother had never told us anything tangible. There were no actual stories, or incidents, just her attitude and judgment. I taking a walk with Pearl through the Botanic Gardens, having high tea somewhere in the city, followed by a tram trip home. Mum had to take Sally to the bathroom to remove the markings of strawberry jam that had slid, like one complete mass, from the top of her scone onto her white blouse. My mother made audible ‘tut-tuts’ while she attempted to remove the jam with her handkerchief. When this failed she took Sally by the hand to the bathroom. All

the while my grandmother laughed. She had large brown eyes and there were deep lines in her skin when she smiled.

‘What do you know about Pearl, Dad?’ I asked, putting the red coat back in the box and sitting down amid the fabric and patterns with the scrapbook. ‘Mum never liked her much.’ ‘True enough. I’d say their relationship had been strained for a long time. Your mother moved around a lot as a child. She could never make many friends. Her childhood wasn’t very settled.’ ‘Why?’ Dad stopped what he was doing, picked up his tea and looked over at me. ‘I’m not exactly sure. I think Pearl followed a trail of casual jobs. There was a lot of pressure on her to give your mum up, you know,’ he sipped his tea. ‘Pearl was young when your mum was born. Not the done thing back then, Button.’ I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked Dad about this before. I was fascinated about all there was to know about Pearl and my mother. ‘What about Mum’s father?’ Dad sighed. ‘To tell you the truth we didn’t talk a lot about it, your mum and I. I don’t suppose I was ever the ive shoulder your mum needed.’ ‘But do you know who he is?’ ‘Your mum knows.’ ‘But she’s never said anything before. I mean, I don’t really even know if I have a grandfather at all. On Mum’s side,’ I added, thinking about Dad’s father whom we saw occasionally. ‘Pearl’s a good woman,’ Dad said. ‘Though don’t tell your mum I said that.’ He winked. I opened the scrapbook and flipped through the first few pages. Snippets of newspapers, haphazardly sticky-taped down, covered each page. The sticky tape had yellowed and obscured some of the newsprint. I turned the page and a few

clippings slipped free and floated down around my feet. Strips of tape fell out next, all the stickiness destroyed with time. Some of the clippings didn’t seem to mean much at all. Other clippings detailed dates and articles about bull riding and rodeos. I turned a few more pages to find swatches of fabric stapled to them. The edges had frayed and my fingers came away from the page coated in dust. I closed the book and turned it over. On the bottom right corner was written Property of Pearl Stafford. ‘What do you make of this?’ I said to Dad, taking the History of Silk book and holding it up for him to see. ‘That’s right,’ he said, stepping over a pile of discarded belongings, turfed out from different boxes. ‘Pearl left this box with us years ago. Last time we saw her before she decided to stay in Tonga. She started up a business of some kind . . . had this thing about silkworms and silk,’ he said, taking the book from my hands. He chuckled. ‘Your mother thought she had completely lost the plot.’

I had my homework piled up on my desk. Textbooks one on top of each other: maths, To Kill a Mockingbird, Biology of Life, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. I opened my diary to check which assignments absolutely had to be completed that weekend and was relieved to discover I could get through the weekend with only doing a book report on To Kill a Mockingbird. That wouldn’t be hard. Dad and I planned to watch the movie that evening anyway. I took out a clean sheet of writing paper that Dad had bought me and began my letter to Mum.

Dear Mum . . .

I was suddenly angry I had to write by hand. What kind of mother didn’t have a phone or computer or internet? At first she couldn’t afford the monthly fees, but after that she refused to participate in communications she referred to as ‘the breakdown of decent society’. The Aberdeen believed that the internet and all associated electronic devices divided people from what was really important. It was too easy, so they said, to hide away in one’s home and avoid human

altogether. I was tempted to point out how much more Mum and I could communicate if we had access to those evils but I said nothing. There was so much about Mum’s religion that bothered me but I could never really articulate – either to myself or anyone else – why it seemed wrong. I just felt this uncomfortable throb, like the feeling you get when someone is dangerous or creepy. And, by comparison, the Aberdeen always had a ready answer and explanation for everything. They never stumbled, like I did. And I could see how that kind of assurance would seem convincing.

Dear Mum, How are you? I hope everything is fine up north and your sewing is going well. I haven’t really told you very much but I’ve been doing a lot of sewing, too. We are the same like that, I think. I like to think I’m like you. I’ve made quite a few dresses with my sewing machine and Mr Grandy was so impressed with my sketching and advice with . . .

I was about to write about Mrs Pratson and Mabel and their wedding and I couldn’t. There was no way to write about that without seeming like I was comparing myself to her.

. . . customers he’s increased the amount of money I earn for some services. Dad was cleaning out the garage today and we found a couple of boxes that weren’t ours. One box contained patterns and fabric and the other one had a red coat, a scrapbook and a book called The History of Silk. Dad thinks the coat and books belong to Grandma Pearl and the other box is yours. What would you like me to do with them? I could send them up to you if you like. Just let me know.

Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to sew in the Darwin heat and I don’t know how you do it. Please tell Sally I said hello. I’ll write to her soon. Love

Button

I flopped on my bed and opened The History of Silk. It was a heavy book and I had to rest it against my knees as I started reading.

The origins of silk were a mystery for thousands of years and, for a time, silk was so highly prized a commodity, ounce for ounce, it equalled the value of gold. When the western world finally discovered China, they stumbled upon an ancient and mysterious culture rich with customs, laws and history, like nothing they had ever seen before. Apart from the myriad of new sensations – small women with bound feet, a new mystical religion, rice paddies and exotic foods – people of the West saw the most splendid fashion intricately embroidered and embellished. This fabric emanated a sheen and lustre like no other. The fabric was silk and its secret belonged to a small, white worm, born of a tiny egg. Tales of silk lured men from their Western homes, travelling great distances through the exotic Orient to find these little worms. Men gave up everything in the hope of turning a basket of eggs into hanks of gold. The legend of silk begins with a fourteen-year-old Chinese Empress, Leizu, in the 27th century BC, drinking a cup of tea beneath a tree. A cocoon fell into her tea and she began to unroll the first golden silk thread, having the idea to weave it.

I closed the book and decided to write Sally a letter and wrap her birthday present. I included her running ribbons and a much belated apology for taking them, as well as The Magic Faraway Tree, the blue dress – which I had managed to buy back – and money so she could call me from a public phone box. I wrapped the parcel neatly and placed it on my desk, ready to post, beside The History of Silk book. It felt as though I had been holding on to Sally all these years, by the tips of my fingers. Just holding on. She was like a moth, fragile and fleeting. One rough breath, one lurch, one tiny movement of your hand and she’d fly away from you.

12.

The first night after Mum and Sally left, Dad and I began a tradition involving Charlie’s Chinese Restaurant. And bad jokes. At first Dad and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves after their taxi had disappeared at the end of our street. We each sat in our own rooms and the house felt too quiet. Just before tea time Dad appeared at my door. ‘Come on Button. We’re going out.’ We got into the car and drove into town. Dad parked the car beside a newsagent. ‘Wait here a tick, Button, I’ll be right back.’ I was numb, like I understood very clearly what had happened, what went wrong and what our lives would be like from that moment on, though I didn’t feel anything. Only removed, somehow. Dad returned to the car with a small booksized package which he threw on to the back seat. ‘Here’s the deal,’ Dad said, forcing a confidence he didn’t feel. ‘Keep watch out the window and look for the first Chinese restaurant you see with a carpark out front.’ It wasn’t far until I saw Charlie’s Chinese Restaurant with a spare car space not far from the entrance. And ever since that night, Charlie’s has been the place we celebrate everything from anniversaries to birthdays, even slow weeks. ‘I know it’s a sad time,’ Dad said once we were seated. ‘But everything in life has two sides. You can sit around thinking about all you’ve lost or you can look forward to everything you might find. So . . .’ he said, unwrapping the parcel he’d bought at the newsagent. ‘I am going to tell you the very worst jokes I can find in this book. And while we feel sad, we are going to remind ourselves that there is always something to smile about, too. Order anything you like,’ he said, opening the book. Every birthday and special occasion after that night, Dad would begin preparing

weeks in advance, scouring book stores and bargain tables for joke books and, while the jokes were usually terrible, we laughed regardless.

The week after cleaning out the garage, Dad and I went to Charlie’s to celebrate my birthday. Life had been busy and we missed the actual day, but it didn’t matter. Mr Grandy had surprised me on the afternoon of my birthday with a small teacake at work. I had posted Sally’s parcel but hadn’t heard back from her at all. No letter, email, no phone call. Dad had found a book, The Darwin Awards. That birthday was Dad’s triumph. The Darwin Awards are given for the most interesting and unusual method of death. I know it sounds macabre, but it really is so funny that it’s hard not to laugh just thinking about it. Dad and I share a strange sense of humour. Funniest Home Videos was often the humour highlight of the week. Becky called me wicked. And strange. ‘What kind of person cries while laughing at people hurting themselves?’ ‘It’s the context,’ I tried to tell her. ‘And, besides, I must be among good company because the show is an institution. I think it’s outlived that Bert Newton show.’ We thought Bert Newton was a Romeo. For all the wrong reasons. ‘You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Dad. I don’t think I could stand to laugh one more time. My cheeks are killing me.’ Despite the humour there was an unspoken irony of those awards, too, given it’s where Mum and Sally had ended up. It was hard not to celebrate my birthday without thinking of Sally. ‘I sent her some money this time,’ Dad said. ‘I think she’ll like that.’ I nodded, flipping through the Darwin book. We finished our dinner feeling warm all over. ‘Let’s read them to Amona tomorrow night,’ Dad said and I laughed, thinking

how delicious it would feel laughing all over again with someone new. But I felt that sting again, too. Jealous for no good reason. We walked back to the car, Dad’s arm around my shoulders and I couldn’t think of a happier birthday. Usually Sally would email a thank you to Dad for her present. But Dad hadn’t heard anything either. We drove home from the restaurant and Dad chose a video to watch and I had made Earl Grey for us both. Amona was flying home the following morning and the garage was mostly cleared away. We’d hired a skip and thrown everything we’d wanted to get rid of into it. Mostly these were Dad’s things: old baseball bats, a few balls and mouldy gloves. Straw hats and disintegrating picnic rugs, rusty tools and moth-eaten blankets and coats. Dad had reduced the entire garage to a neat wall of plastic boxes. He’d laughed as he surveyed his work, telling me how good it felt to clear things out. Mum’s two boxes were left inside the house beside the front door, ready to either send to Darwin or add to the skip when we heard back from her. We had just sat down on the couch, our cups of tea on the coffee table, when the phone rang. I answered it. ‘Hello,’ said a male voice. ‘My name is Barry. Barry Mundy and I’m a friend of Sally’s.’ ‘I’m Sally’s sister, Ruby.’ I was so surprised and stupidly excited. I didn’t know why I over-explained who I was. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some bad news for you.’ I couldn’t speak. Or swallow. ‘Where is my mum?’ ‘There’s been an accident.’ A pause. ‘Is your father there? I was told to talk to him.’

13.

‘Do you sense things?’ Becky once asked me. ‘Do you and Sally feel the same thing at the same time? Do you go cold when something is happening to her?’ All our friends had asked the same questions at some stage. The truth is I wish I did. I wish we shared that kind of bond because I might have known or understood earlier. I might have been able to help. While Dad talked to Barry and I waited to find out exactly what had happened, I closed my eyes and willed myself out of my body and into Sally’s, but I was as trapped inside myself as she was in hers. I felt Dad go cold beside me. He lowered his head, picked up the TV remote and hit the mute button. Images and colours flashed from the screen through the darkened lounge room and the absence of sound exaggerated everything. Dad put his arm around me and pulled me close. I could hear the mumbled sing-song of a voice on the other end of the phone, but I had no words to dispel the images of every awful thing in my mind. My heart hammered inside me, but my body was heavy and frozen. Each breath hurt as I imagined the worst. The very worst. Dad made noises of acknowledgement. ‘Does Jan know?’ he said at one point, asking about my mother. ‘I see. Oh my god. I don’t know what to say. Thank you for letting us know.’ I’m her twin, I should have known something had been wrong, she should have called me. We look the same, but we are nothing alike. Not in any way that matters. Peel back the surface, unravel the fabric of our fragile cocoon and we are strangers. Over the next few minutes after that phone call, I pieced together what had happened from the snatches of phrases and words that came from Dad’s mouth. He finished, and I felt his arm slide from my shoulders as he stood up and walked to his room. I heard the door close and looked down at the coffee table where our cups of tea sat, still steaming. What a shock it must have been for that fourteen-year-old Empress, unravelling

that golden thread for the first time. That cocoon getting smaller and smaller, the strand of thread sticky around her hands, until all that remained was the halftransformed worm. Dead.

14.

Dad didn’t come out of his room all night, not even when I knocked, so I lay down in the hall outside his door. It was as though my brain couldn’t what had happened yet my body curled up around the truth and held it still. You have thoughts of running away when you’re a kid. Something makes you so angry, you convince yourself you have to run away. You pack a bag – probably with nothing suitable for anything beyond an hour stuck underneath the tree in the front yard – and you tell your parents you’re leaving. You actually manage to leave through the front door and they don’t stop you. They don’t say anything to try and keep you home, in fact, they agree with you. ‘Go on, Button, leave if you want. I’m not stopping you.’ You’re determined and your steps are fast-paced, backpack fastened behind you. You stride down the footpath, out the front gate and make it to the corner of the street where you stop. You hesitate. And the feeling changes. It’s not what you wanted at all. And you know you didn’t really want to run away, but your parents didn’t stop you and now you have to go back. I only did it once that I . And spent an hour in the front yard thinking I’d make them worry just a little, before going back inside. Mum hugged me and, other than that gesture, continued on with her day as if nothing unusual had happened. She didn’t mention it to Dad. Only Sally said anything about it. She laughed and teased me all afternoon saying, ‘I knew you wouldn’t go through with it. You don’t have what it takes. If I ever planned to leave, you wouldn’t catch me coming home in a hurry.’ I always wondered what made her say that. Even then she had secrets she didn’t share with anyone, not even me. For hundreds of years the secret of silk was protected in China by threat of death. And it took marriage to break it, when a Chinese princess was persuaded by her fiancé, an Indian prince, to smuggle cocoons out of China in her hair. It

seems to me that marriage, the having of it, the breaking of it, the disgrace and shunning and shame of it, has so much to do with everything. Barry had told Dad that Sally had left home without a word to anyone. She had been missing for five months and Mum hadn’t told us. After the phone call Dad had only managed to speak to Mum via an Aberdeen council member. When Dad asked why he hadn’t been informed earlier, Brother Marcus replied, ‘In our eyes Jan has no husband and Sally has no father. The Aberdeen are her family.’ I don’t know where that left me.

I woke to the sound of a key turning in the lock, the front door opening and Amona’s cheery voice, ‘Hello, I’m back!’ She laughed and began chatting as she walked down the age. I didn’t process what she was saying. Somewhere in my mind I realised she had let herself in. ‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Ruby?’ she said, finding me in the age. She knelt down beside me. ‘What’s going on? Where is your dad?’ ‘Sally,’ I said. ‘An accident.’ I felt her hand on my shoulder as she stood up and opened Dad’s door. ‘Oh Brett,’ she said. ‘It’s my fault,’ said Dad. ‘It’s no one’s fault,’ said Amona.

Later we sat together in the kitchen. ‘I’d been cleaning out the garage so Amona could park her car there,’ Dad said. ‘While she was gone I was supposed to talk to you about her moving in.’ ‘We don’t need to do anything right at this moment,’ Amona said. ‘I’ve booked

your flight, Ruby,’ she added, ‘I’ll take you to the airport this afternoon.’ ‘I still don’t understand why you aren’t coming with me,’ I said to Dad. ‘Your port is in the top drawer,’ he said avoiding the question. Amona reached over the bench and held his hand. ‘You know he would,’ she said so Dad didn’t have to deal with the details again. ‘The Aberdeen . . . he doesn’t want to make things worse.’ Somewhere I might have ed the sense of what she was saying but at that moment I felt like my father had abandoned me and Sally. What did it matter what Mum wanted? She was his daughter, too. ‘She’s completely involved in that religion, Ruby,’ Dad said, by way of explanation. ‘They’re . . .’ he fumbled for the word. ‘They’re a cult,’ I said. I stood up to go to my room and pack. I heard Amona say, ‘You have to know that it kills him, Ruby. Not going with you.’ Before we left for the airport Dad pulled me close to him. I felt his arms around me, holding me tight, not wanting to let me go. ‘Barry said he’ll meet you at the airport. Call me as soon as you land.’ I felt abandoned. I needed my dad with me. It was like he was sending me away. If he didn’t have the guts to stand up to some church just to see his daughter who was in trouble, I wondered what I could expect from him if I truly needed him. What if Mum refused to let me come back home? He’d loved one daughter from a distance; it wouldn’t be so hard a second time. I packed a few clothes and everything of value: my scrapbook, MP3 player, port, diary, all my savings, The History of Silk. I don’t know exactly why, but I packed Pearl’s red coat, too.

I saw Barry waiting for me as I walked off the plane. I felt like a traitor, my heart hammered so hard at the sight of him. He was like a magnet. I tried to think of Eric Barrada to dampen my own feelings, but even his incompetence couldn’t turn off my heart. Maybe attraction was aligned in heaven before our birth because there was no other way to explain my feelings. There were millions of boys on the earth. Why did it feel so strong? I had no right. And it was tasteless,

feeling this after what happened to Sally. But, then, she had left Barry as well as me. I still hadn’t slept and the world felt like foam around me. My head was groggy and my throat felt tight as I walked towards him. He raised a hand, tentatively, in my direction and I ed that I hadn’t ever technically met him. There was no way I could have known what he looked like. Except, maybe, from the newspaper article Sally had sent through. I realised that would have been just before she ran away. I flicked my hand in a return wave and tried to smile, but Barry could hardly look at me when we came face-to-face. If we weren’t meeting in these particular circumstances, I could only assume he found my appearance so offensive he was trying to hide his loathing. He flushed, cleared his throat and coughed, reaching down to take my carry-on case from my hand. He turned quickly, walking away from the terminal, my bag trailing behind him. I followed, realigning the handbag on my shoulders. ‘Oh god,’ I said, stopping beside him. ‘No one told you, did they. About . . . me.’ Barry slowed his walk, turned towards me, glancing quickly at me before looking away. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘It must be a shock. Seeing me.’ ‘It’s all right,’ he mumbled. ‘People never talk about the important things. Don’t you think? We blabber on about everything unimportant, but—’ I stopped, laughing slightly. I don’t know why, but I placed my hand on his shoulder and he had no other option but to stop. I stood in front of him. ‘I’m actually nothing like her. Sometimes I wish I was because people always want to think the way you look on the outside s for what’s inside but you can’t judge a person by . . .’ I trailed off. ‘I’m so sorry. I haven’t slept and . . . I’m so sorry.’ I turned to walk ahead of him until I realised I had no idea where I was going. Out of nowhere I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I was so angry with myself because it just wasn’t fair to be blubbering away to a stranger who was already freaked out. ‘I don’t know where to go,’ I said, my voice wavering. I dropped my handbag and rubbed my face, trying to swallow my tears down. But it didn’t work and out

they came anyway, trickling out from the corners of my eyes. My body betraying me. ‘It’s all right,’ Barry was beside me. I felt his arm around my shoulders and I leaned into him. And in the middle of the airport, somewhere between the terminal and baggage claim, Barry wrapped his arms around me and held me while I cried. Those tears should have been for Sally or Dad or Mum. But I think they were for me. I felt invisible.

In the car Barry was quiet as the world seemed to speed past the windows. He glanced at me every now and then, a nervous smile appearing on his face. I was careful not to be looking at him when he turned towards me. My mobile phone rang. It was Dad. It was so good to hear his voice, until I ed the situation. ‘Call me after . . .’ he didn’t say it, but I knew he wanted me to call him after seeing Sally. He should have been there with me so I hardly said a word and hung up quickly. ‘Can you tell me everything?’ I said to Barry. He didn’t say anything straightaway, just leant his elbow on the window and flicked his fingers against the steering wheel. ‘What do you know?’ he asked. ‘Not enough. I mean. Last time I was visiting her she told me about you. That must have been just before she left.’ I saw Barry’s body react, pulling back against the seat. ‘Why did she leave?’ ‘To tell you the truth I didn’t know that much about her,’ Barry said. ‘I’m sorry for that. I feel like such a . . .’ he fumbled for the word. ‘Well, I don’t feel exactly right about it, that’s all.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I might not know what happened since that last time I saw her, but I do know Sally. She’s always been like that.’ I didn’t elaborate but I could sense Barry understood what I meant. ‘Even when we were younger, she was like that.’ Barry nodded, absently. ‘I don’t think she let anyone know much about her.’ ‘I liked her, Ruby. I liked her a lot.’ I know it’s possible to have two halves of one thing fighting for equal space, and that’s how I felt hearing Barry say that. Right there beside me was, perhaps, the only living example of a Romeo left in the modern world. But he liked Sally. I began to tell him things . About her. Just silly things, things that came to me as we travelled and I talked. I told him about stealing her ribbons and the time she saved up her pocket money to buy the old lady who lived next door to us a cordless phone so she didn’t have to get up to answer it all the time. It was only second-hand but, still, that’s what Sally had done. And I told him how I’d sewed her that dress so she could go to Mathew Grayson’s formal. And how they’d had sex in the parking lot and it hadn’t meant that much to her. I told him everything I could think of. I didn’t censor anything about her and, on balance, I was thinking how much of Sally was wound up in her extremes. And that was who she was. I finished and felt like a balloon floating high that had been pricked. Flat and heavy and unsure of everything. Except it felt good to share her with someone. The real Sally. Not someone I pretended she was for Mum’s sake or Dad’s sake. Or someone I stitched together for Becky and my friends. Barry sat with what I’d said for a while. And then he began to talk. ‘I don’t know what we were to each other, really. She was the first girl. You know. My first. And it came out of nowhere. Sometimes I don’t know what part of it really happened and what part didn’t.’ ‘I know what you mean,’ I said. Barry had brought the car to a stop and I’d only just noticed we weren’t moving. He swivelled in his seat and looked at me.

‘I won’t lie to you,’ he said. ‘When I saw you walk off that plane,’ he shook his head and smiled. My heart melted. ‘I can’t believe no one told you we are identical.’ I laughed. ‘It’s something she’d do,’ he smiled. ‘I know.’ I was still laughing. ‘You do look exactly like her,’ he said. ‘But when I listen to you talk, you’re . . .’ he paused. ‘Well, you’re not her.’ ‘She was the most brazen person I knew,’ I said. ‘She had guts, she’d walk up to anyone, do anything.’ ‘I haven’t felt this comfortable talking to anyone in a long time,’ Barry said. His face flushed and he turned back to face the steering wheel and, despite my bad intentions, I said, ‘I know she really liked you, Barry. She told me.’ He was quiet with that. We were parked outside the hospital and Barry reached for the door handle. He went to open the door and then stopped, bringing his hand away and turning, again, to face me. ‘I feel responsible for what happened, Ruby. I think she left because of me. There were things I could have said and done differently.’ ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I said, thinking I could say the same thing. ‘No. You don’t understand. I mean. All the time, she was . . . well,’ he says, deflated. ‘I’m hopeless with words.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘I think she wanted to leave but needed a reason to stay. I should have stood up for her, you know.’ He was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were going white. ‘She needed to know someone would always stick by her no matter what. And, instead, I said that if she needed to leave then that was all right. I gave her my car and the caravan.’ ‘Is that how the police found you, then?’

‘They were still ed in my name.’ There was one part of this entire conversation we were both avoiding. And we knew it. ‘People of your mum’s showed up at work,’ Barry said. ‘A car full of these guys in suits got out and came into the office asking for me directly. They grilled me about Sally and what I knew. Jeez,’ he said. ‘That was a few weeks after she’d left. All I knew was that she’d gone. I didn’t know where.’ ‘So what do you think happened?’ ‘I have all these horrible thoughts,’ Barry said, ‘about what might have been happening and I had no one to talk to about it. Growing up I had this habit of making up stories to fill in things I didn’t know. I began to think of stories about her. Some of them I didn’t want hanging in my head.’ He stopped and breathed deeply. ‘Bloody hell. You must think I’m a complete moron,’ he said, running a hand through his hair. ‘No. Really. You couldn’t be further from the truth.’ He didn’t look convinced. It was hot in the car and I wound down the window for some air. And then I worried it might break us out of that cocoon into the real world and I didn’t want that. I wasn’t ready to get out of the car and face what was inside. ‘She was coming back to you,’ I said, not knowing if it were true at all. ‘We’d better go, Sally,’ Barry said, not ing the slip.

I think of Sally, sitting behind the wheel of the car, taking a quick glance in the rear-view mirror to see that the caravan is still following behind, before leaning forward to turn up the music. The window is down and her hair blows around her, free and unrestrained. The music runs through her veins and she’s singing at the top of her voice. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she uses her left hand to fumble on the enger seat for the packet of cigarettes and she manages to open the pack and take out the last smoke and put it in her mouth. She catches sight of the speedo but doesn’t the excessive speed because, as she flicks the lighter, the small erupting flame almost catches her hair alight. ‘Shit’, she says, taking her finger off the lighter switch. The flame disappears and she

laughs again, shaking her head to catch the wind full on, blowing her hair back from her face. She lights the cigarette easily this time, throwing the lighter on the floor on the enger seat side. She holds the cigarette in between her fingers, both hands on the wheel, pushing her back against the seat to stretch her muscles. But this image I have could all be a lie. We’ll never know. The only thing anyone knows for certain is that she was driving Barry’s old car, his old caravan on the back, coming back from whatever faraway place she had been to, heading towards Darwin. On a lonely stretch of road, she lost control of the car, swerved off the road and crashed head-on into a tree. When she was found, she still had a pulse, but it didn’t take long for the doctors in the hospital to realise she would never regain consciousness. Her heart pumped a cocktail of drugs through her body to keep her blood at the right pH level and her lungs expanding and contracting. But nothing could repair the damage to her brain. Or take away the stain of blood that burst and flooded inside her head, robbing her of any chance of making it out alive.

I followed Barry closely as we walked through the main doors of the hospital, down the corridor that smelt like disinfectant and false hope. We waited at the elevator and I pressed the ‘up’ button too many times. We watched the lights flick from one number to another, one floor to another, until it stopped, doors opened and we walked out. I don’t know if it was my imagination or not but I felt Barry press close to me as we neared the group of people waiting at her door. Our shoulders touched, our fingers brushed each other’s as we moved to let an elderly couple us by. I couldn’t see Mum at first, among the group of about ten people or so. They stood beside the door, holding hands. Their heads bent down, nodding in agreement with Brother Daniel who led them in prayer. I stopped well before them, felt my feet cling to the floor like glue. I could deal with Sally, with Barry, with what had happened, but Mum and the Aberdeen were a force I felt too small to negotiate alone. Barry noticed my hesitation and stopped soon after me, and turned back. Dad should have been here with me. I don’t know what Barry was thinking or what

he thought of me or my family. We hadn’t discussed Mum at all. But he knew something of what the Aberdeen were like. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, holding his hand out towards me. I wanted to believe him. Absolutely. I reached out and took his hand. And I saw Mum look up from the group. As Barry and I approached the Aberdeen group and my mother, Barry dropped my hand. Mum stepped forward and hugged me to her. Her arms felt stiff and angular and desperate. She ran her hands over my hair and held me like I was a child and cried. Brother Daniel stood behind her, resting a hand on her head, and asked me to pray with my mother. Trapped, I felt no option but to close my eyes. I didn’t hear their words, only my own heart thumping hard. Eventually I pushed away, through the crowd, towards Sally’s door. Before opening it I looked though the window to see her blanketed body flat on the bed, connected to cords and cables, surrounded by machines. I turned to look for Barry but I couldn’t see him through the crowd. ‘I want to go in by myself,’ I said to Mum. I felt her inhale sharply, although she said nothing. As I stepped into the doorway I felt her behind me, ignoring what I’d just asked her. ‘By myself,’ I said again. I watched her face dissolve into fresh tears. She shook her head and tilted her chin towards me. ‘Well,’ she said. But I was determined. I crossed the floor to Sally’s bed and took her hand, sitting down on the chair that was angled towards her. I don’t know what I expected, but part of me hoped I would find they had gotten it all wrong. That, once I saw her, it would be all right. I squeezed her hand, but there was no response. Her body felt warm but empty. I could not feel her at all. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open. She looked like she was asleep. Just asleep. And could wake up any moment. I had been looking at her face, holding her hand. Avoiding that other part of her altogether. And I thought about that image I had of her in her car, coming home with her music playing, her cigarette lit. Stretching her back and gripping the steering wheel, aware of the pressure low in her stomach. She felt the restless flutters of her baby, testing its legs or arms. The feeling spread a glow around her body. She put one hand on her stomach, took a drag, caught an image of what it

might be like to hold him. She fantasised about striking it rich and having everything they’d ever need so they could stay free and independent from the world. But the feeling melted and the taste of the cigarette soured in her mouth and the music hurt her ears and she was tired of driving. Her body slumped back in the seat and she watched the road. Endlessly stretching on before her. She ed a time when she thought Barry would be the one and how she had no idea how to hold on to that. She hoped he’d take her back. Then there was only the impact of the car around the tree. I looked down from Sally’s face to that small bump rounded under the blankets, level with my eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I whispered. I could hear my mother on the outside of her door. Her sobs and the low-voiced reassurance of Brother Daniel. ‘What did I do wrong?’ she said, over and over. ‘Everything is God’s will,’ responded Brother Daniel. I could feel the tension around me, like a nylon thread stretched tight. It was wrapped around us, caught in our limbs, Sally and mine, pulling in opposite directions, cutting our skin. It was as though she had climbed the Faraway Tree and disappeared through the clouds into some other land. Only it had taken her away. Without me. ‘Wake up,’ I whispered. ‘Please wake up and come back. Or take me with you.’

15.

I watched Barry drive off from the hospital and I didn’t know what to do. I felt completely numb and drained. I couldn’t face going inside again to where Mum and the Aberdeen hovered outside Sally’s room. So I called Dad. ‘You should be here,’ I yelled at him. ‘You could still come, you know.’ ‘Your mother—’ ‘But she’s your daughter, too!’ There was no response. ‘What do you want, Dad? What is going to happen to her?’ ‘It’s complicated,’ he paused and cleared his throat. ‘There’s just no point prolonging . . . I mean . . . the baby is too young and there are all those drugs pumping through—’ ‘Please, Dad,’ my voice wavered. ‘I want you here with me.’ ‘If you want to come back home right now, that’s fine, Button. You can do whatever you need to do. I love you,’ he added before hanging up. But I wanted to hear him say he loved Sally. I wanted him to fight Mum for her. I suddenly felt so guilty for having Dad when Sally didn’t. It wasn’t fair. It was crazy, this whole situation was wrong. I waited outside the hospital, sitting on the small garden wall until Mum was ready to go home.

In the backseat of a car driven by someone from the Aberdeen, I sat beside Mum wearing a plastic smile, nodding and agreeing with whatever was said. Mum took my hand, squeezed it tightly and held it to her chest. I wanted to reach out to her somehow, but I didn’t know what to say. I don’t think she was aware of me. I mean, she knew I was there – and in some way was glad of it – but it felt

like there was no room for me or my feelings. She was just glad I was there for her. I left the Aberdeen, seated around Mum’s couch, took my suitcase downstairs into the sewing room and shut the door. I closed my eyes against the white space, still as I’d ed it from my last visit. There was no mattress on the floor – I guess there was no time for Mum to get my room ready – so I sat on the chair at her sewing machine. I ran my hands over the frame of the machine, my fingers making silent circles around the wheel. The house breathed loss and emptiness already. I felt secrets wedged in between the bricks. On the floor above my head one man’s steady footsteps walked from the lounge down the age to the bathroom. I followed his movement with my eyes. At that moment I wished I had been in that car with Sally. And we were dying together on that bed in the hospital. I took out my mobile phone and scrolled through the names in my s list. I wanted so desperately to talk to someone but every name felt wrong. I was too angry with Dad and I wanted something more than any of my friends could provide. Becky would want the drama of it all and I would still be left, aching with the need for someone to understand. I lay down on the concrete floor and the shock of cold creeping up my spine almost hurt and the pain felt good and as real as I felt. Pressure built up in my chest, my heart actually hurt. I put my palms across my heart for comfort. But it wasn’t enough. I flipped my phone open again and dialled Barry’s number, the one he’d given Dad before I’d arrived. ‘Hello?’ ‘Barry. It’s me, Ruby. I’m sorry—’ He cut me off. ‘I’m so glad you called.’ ‘You are?’ ‘I wanted to see how you were.’ ‘I know it’s a lot to ask. But. Would you come and get me? I can’t stand being

here by myself.’ I was sure I had become someone else. In my normal life I would never have talked to a boy like this. Only, it didn’t feel like that with Barry. ‘Um.’ ‘But if it’s too much trouble, really, it’s fine.’ ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just—’ I could hear the voices of other people in the background. Barry hesitated, listening to something they were saying. ‘You’re busy. It’s okay. I—’ ‘No, I’ll be over soon. I’m with friends. But you can us.’ ‘As long as it’s okay with you. Thanks.’ I trod up the back stairs and in through the kitchen door, the glass door sliding noisily along the ball bearings. I didn’t think it would be fair to slip out without telling Mum, but I suddenly feared she would hold on to me and not let me go. ‘I’m sorry,’ I began. ‘But I just have to go for a walk. I can’t sleep.’ Mum looked up from the group and I could see she was wrestling with herself. ‘Barry is going to come with me.’ ‘I think you should stay with your mother,’ Brother Daniel said. My heart ached again. I knew if I stayed any longer I would start crying and they would descend on me and the thought of that was overwhelming. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ I took a pen from the bench and scribbled my mobile phone number on a shopping list held to the fridge with a magnet advertising pet food. If they really wanted to get in touch with me they would find a phone. I left quickly before my mother found her strength and demanded my obedience.

‘This is Boof,’ Barry said, introducing me. ‘And Cassie.’ I took a seat on the couch beside Barry, as he sat down. The room was quiet. Boof and Cassie stared at me unashamedly. ‘It must be a shock,’ I said, glancing at Barry. Boof shook his head and blew air out through his mouth, slowly. The pair of them looked mismatched. Boof was skinny and smallish while Cassie was large and full. She sat, shoulders back and legs slightly parted, stomach out. She was heavily pregnant. That thought made me swallow and look down. My fringe fell across my eyes and I tugged at my shirt. There were a few empty beer bottles on the coffee table and a splattering of playing cards, discarded hands and a small pack, upturned. ‘You play five hundred?’ Boof said and I shook my head. ‘That’s too bad. We could have played partners,’ he added, smiling. ‘We’re really sorry for what’s happened,’ Cassie said, leaning forward awkwardly. ‘Thanks. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening. It’s just. I don’t know anyone else in Darwin and I couldn’t take being at home much longer. Bit selfish, really.’ ‘Not at all,’ Boof said. ‘Just you’ll have to excuse our gawking. Sally worked for us, you know.’ I nodded again. Barry was quiet but he felt like an anchor beside me. I felt the same fluttering in my neck being beside him. ‘Barry was kind enough to keep us company,’ Cassie says. ‘Thought for a minute it was time.’ She glanced at Boof and they shared a warm smile. You can tell some people love each other just by looking at them. They share an invisible glue that separates them from the rest of the world. Cassie and Boof were like that.

‘Oh,’ I said, feeling even more uncomfortable, forcing myself on people who thought they were about to have their baby. ‘You’re very welcome,’ Boof said, standing up. ‘Hasn’t been any action for more than an hour and a half.’ ‘Do you play cards at all?’ Boof asked me. ‘Um,’ I said trying to the last time I played cards. Names of games were ing through my head, canasta, euchre, bridge. None of them I had ever played. It wasn’t ever something our family did. Sally and I went through a Monopoly phase, intense, but short-lived. I named the only card game I could actually play with any confidence and that I might the rules. ‘Fish,’ I said a little too confidently. Boof laughed from the kitchen and Cassie held her stomach as she laughed, too. Barry’s laugh was quiet and restrained, but no less enthusiastic. I blushed, thinking they were laughing because Fish is a kid’s game. Not serious cards. ‘Bit childish,’ I said. ‘Na, it’s not that,’ said Boof, returning with a plate of milk coffee biscuits. ‘Do you know Barry’s full name?’ I looked at Barry. ‘Barry Mundy,’ said Boof. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Barry said, trying to downplay it all. I smiled. ‘Not that he’s been a fish out of water for a long time,’ Cassie said. Boof placed his hands on Barry’s shoulders and shook them affectionately. ‘So Fish it is.’ Somewhere over the next few hours, we stopped playing cards and turned on the television. I must have felt so comfortable being with them all because my eyes became heavy and I drifted off. You can never tell how long you’ve been asleep,

but the sound of a glass being placed on the coffee table woke me. Before I opened my eyes, I heard Boof say, ‘Bit weird if you ask me. Freaky how much they look the same.’ Boof lowered his voice. ‘I can tell you like her, mate. Better be careful you’re not wishing for the past.’ I pretended sleep for a few minutes so there was no chance they’d worry I heard what was said. I was genuinely alarmed when I ‘woke’ and apologised for sleeping on the couch. ‘I’ll take you home,’ Barry said, standing up. ‘Thanks so much,’ I said to Boof. ‘You’re welcome, love.’ ‘I guess the baby’s not coming tonight, then,’ I said. ‘Na, false alarm.’

All the way home Boof’s words echoed in my mind. The possibility thrilled me and I was completely irrational, imagining moments we might share together. Holding hands, kissing. I couldn’t stop thinking about it even though I felt like a traitor. And then I realised it was Sally he loved and I was just an impossible reminder of what he once had and could never have again. I would never be me, I would always be the girl who could have been Sally. ‘How do you stop it hurting?’ I said, then felt stupid for saying it. ‘I wish I knew,’ Barry said. ‘But it must be worse for you.’ ‘Really?’ His concern ripped through my defences and I melted. Tears pooled in my eyes. ‘You wouldn’t believe this if you read about it, would you? I mean. It all sounds so absurd.’ ‘I know what you mean.’ ‘I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I just want to stitch everything back

together just the way it was.’ We pulled up outside Mum’s house and I closed my eyes and opened them slowly. I wanted it all to disappear. I was leaning on the window, looking outside, away from Barry. ‘Do you ever feel like you just want to drive forever, away from everything?’ Barry was quiet. I had this moment of clarity, of understanding something of Sally. I could see her inside that house, trying to reconcile herself within the world our parents had created for us. I could understand how she must have felt. I was no longer the same girl that lived with Dad and the thought of going back felt hard, even though I longed for it at the same time. ‘I’ve spent my whole life feeling like that,’ Barry said. I wiped the last of my tears from my face. I felt a little calmer. ‘That’s a lot of loneliness.’ ‘I’m not the father of her baby, Ruby. Even if I wanted to be, I’m not.’ A sickening feeling crept up inside and I thought of Bob. I didn’t want that to be true. ‘But you could have been,’ I said and it sounded hopeless and weak. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference.’ ‘It’s only a few weeks. That’s what they said. A few more weeks and the baby might have survived.’ I felt a glimmer of hope, a light of possibility. ‘But no one would know you weren’t the father. You could plead with them, tell them you couldn’t live without your child. You have rights, too.’ Even after I said this I heard the stupidity of it. I didn’t want to be practical. I didn’t want to think through the details of anything that would happen next. I didn’t want implications, I wanted a possibility, to give her a chance. ‘Tomorrow is her last day.’ I felt like a tornado of opposite feelings. I wanted to hate someone, to make it someone’s fault, all because I didn’t want to lose her. And my feeling for Barry flooded up in a rush. I leapt across my seat to him. I kissed him, hard and clumsy and god knows what I expected from him. There was nothing ionate or warm, there was no space, no response. Shame was quick and instant. I pulled back and fumbled for the door handle, muttering apologies as I made an undignified exit from the car. I heard him call my name

as I ran across the grass around the back and up the stairs. But there was no way I was going back to him. In fact, there was no way I wanted to see him again. Ever. I wanted to get as far away from here as I could. The Aberdeen were gone. The door to Mum’s room was slightly open and I saw her lying on the bed. ‘I’m home,’ I muttered. ‘Will you lie next to me?’ I lay down on the bed beside her, but there was a turmoil inside my body. Grief and shame were thundering inside me. ‘My baby,’ Mum kept saying over and over again. I wanted to say it was all right. That she still had me. But I didn’t. I wasn’t Sally. Sometime in the early hours of that next morning my mother’s breath was even and steady and I slipped off the bed and out of the room. I had brought two suitcases with me. One containing my own belongings, but the other was full of the contents we had pulled from the boxes in our garage. Mum’s patterns, some of her fabric and Pearl’s red coat, her History of Silk and her scrapbook. That suitcase was still beside the front door. I laid it down on the floor and opened the zipper. The red coat was on top and I took it out and shook it. It was worn and faded, something you would find in a jumble sale at St Vincent de Paul’s. I slipped my arms inside and fastened it, threading the large buttons through the buttonholes. I had rarely seen buttons this large. They were covered in the same fabric as the coat. One was missing in the middle of the jacket. I began to sweat soon after putting the coat on. I tiptoed up the age to the bathroom and examined my reflection in the full-length mirror. I tried to imagine my grandmother inside this coat, but I couldn’t. And why, when there were so many possible things, had she held onto this coat for so many years. I let myself sweat, forcing myself to suffer with the discomfort. It was nothing compared to what Sally would have felt at so many times in her life. I thought about what it would feel like to die from overheating. Shame was like heat. I kept thinking of my ridiculous attempt at kissing Barry and wished I could take

it back. ‘Please,’ I begged the moon. ‘Please make it all go away.’ It seemed so long ago that my mother had been that woman I ed at the kitchen window looking at the moon. It was tragic how life had sucked her down to the bones, all her spontaneity, her laughter and freedom had vanished. I knew then that I didn’t ever want to be like that. Whatever happened, life was something too precious to give up on so easily. Sally may have had too much of it, but she lived life like a flame might, always burning bright. Fearing nothingness more than regret. I heard somewhere that the reason why makeovers never last is because people secretly prefer familiarity over change. They might profess to wanting to look beautiful, but if you cut and colour their hair, apply the right makeup and clothes and reveal their stunning potential, it scares them witless. It doesn’t feel right. I don’t think happiness ever felt right to Mum. Ruby, I thought, looking at myself in the mirror. I decided that red was my favourite colour. I heard my phone, muffled somewhere inside my bag, beeping to let me know there was a voice message. It was almost dawn. Call me when you wake up. Please call. It was from Barry. I fell asleep on the couch, waking to find Mum standing in the age looking at me. I was still wearing the coat. She blinked and blinked again. I don’t know if she was seeing me or not. ‘Take it off,’ she said and I lowered my head feeling stupid. I undid the buttons and slipped my arms out and folded it slowly, not knowing what to say. ‘This is all a punishment,’ she said. ‘Sins of the father.’ I didn’t know what to say. ‘I should have been a better mother. If I had been a better mother she would never have left. After everything I did for her . . .’ she trailed off. ‘Sit with me,’ she said and I sat down, placing the coat on top of the suitcase. ‘I won’t make the same mistake with you, though.’ She stiffened, sucked in a deep breath, sitting up straighter on the couch. ‘You’ll have to go back to Melbourne to get your

things but I won’t make the same mistake. We’ll have to get you baptised,’ she turned to me and smiled and my skin crawled. ‘We’ll find you a nice Aberdeen boy and you’ll be my bride in white and everything will be fine. I didn’t keep a close enough eye on her. I won’t let that happen again.’ I tried to tell myself that grief was twisting her in knots and I shouldn’t read too much into what she was saying. I tried telling myself that she needed me just to be there, to listen. That what I felt and needed didn’t matter right now, but I felt a vice tightening around my throat and panic rising in my guts. My head began to spin as though my whole world had been whisked away from me. A thousand thoughts thundered in my brain and I wondered whether Dad was in on this, whether he had planned to give me to Mum all along. I felt like I had no one I could trust, that the ground underneath my feet had turned to sand and I was slipping and falling. Mum was looking at me, wanting me to say something but I was mute. Nothing would get past the lump in my throat. The only words I had were tears that came rushing, hot and sticky, rolling down my face. Mum stood up and pouted, stepped sideways to where I was sitting and squashed herself to me, tapping me forcibly on the back and blocking my nose and mouth with her chest. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’m here and I’ll never leave you. We have each other and God and that’s all we need.’ I called out for Sally in the silent space of my mind. I shouted and called and begged her to listen. My need was crazy and desperate and no matter how much I shouted inside the shell of my own being, she was not there. She was gone forever and I had never felt so small. We were a pair, there were always two of us. There was never a moment in the memory of our bodies or minds that we had been without the other though this knowledge had no words. I closed my eyes and waited for my mother to let me go. And when she did, I leapt off the couch. I looked at her and realised something of what must have happened. ‘You wanted Sally to get married, didn’t you?’ ‘He would have looked after her, he was willing to marry her and accept her into the Aberdeen family.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. No wonder Sally ran away.

‘Where is her present?’ My mother stared blankly towards me. ‘I sent it for her birthday.’ I saw her shoulders rise slightly, the tilt of her head before she raised her chin. ‘We don’t believe in birthdays,’ she said, folding her hands over each other, clasping them firmly on her lap. ‘What did you do with it?’ I was shouting. Calmly, my mother replied, ‘I got rid of it.’ Something about that ission gutted me and my voice faltered. ‘Did you even open it? Did you look inside?’ She turned her head away from me towards the kitchen without answering. I left her, running downstairs, taking the red coat with me. I opened the outside door to my room and locked it behind me. I threw everything into my suitcase, expecting my mother to follow me, to hear her banging on the door. But she was too caught up in herself. Perhaps she thought I would come around if she left me alone. Perhaps she was praying for me, asking God to make me see sense. I called a taxi. While I waited I heard Mum’s footsteps upstairs. I heard a few cars pull up and looked through the window. It wasn’t the taxi but people from the Aberdeen. I heard their doors open and close, their footsteps climbing the front stairs. I felt trapped and abandoned all at once. I scribbled a note and left it on the sewing machine. I’m going home. When the taxi arrived I raced outside pulling my suitcase behind me. We were driving away before faces appeared at the window upstairs and I saw Brother Daniel step out onto the front landing and run quickly down the stairs. I turned away from the window reducing my options and future down to the bare essentials. I had money, I had a port, a phone and clothes. I had everything I needed to get out.

Strange how little things come back into your mind. Far off things, inconsequential things that have almost nothing to do with what’s happening in the moment. I thought of Becky and the musical and how Dad laughed so loud I could hear him from the stage. I thought of Mr Grandy and the phone conversations with his mother. I thought of Amona sitting on the couch with Dad and wondered which video they had chosen to watch. I thought of Mum, when I had loved her, pretty and free, framed in the sunlight of our window when we were kids. And I thought of Sally and the last night we had spent together, our hands touching and how she had been gone for so long. I felt the breath go right out of me as I let her go. And I thought of Pearl and the last card that had come from her last year.

Hello! Birthday greetings to you, my heart. How is life, how is it all? Would love to see you sometime. Come for a holiday, Tonga would love you. Grandma Pearl xxxx

When I arrived at the airport I was propelled by one thought only, I had to get home, back to Dad, back to where I felt safe. But when I went to buy the ticket I couldn’t do it. I panicked with a sudden thought that Dad might send me back. ‘If we were rational creatures we would never get out of bed or live or love,’ Mr Grandy once said to me. Nothing I felt seemed rational or fair or right. A voice message came through just before I boarded the plane but I turned the phone off. I might have stayed if I’d got that message earlier. I thought about that Empress discovering silk for the first time, pulling that thread, further and further, more and more, wanting to see what was wrapped inside. I could not see a way forward. Every door seemed closed and the walls were caving in. I was blind to everything, save that flimsy thread of an idea that could take me away from it all. So, just like Sally, I ran. Far away. What Pearl must have thought, seeing me on her doorstep, drenched from the rain, like that. No warning, no announcement. She could have put me on the next

plane back home, that’s what my own mother would have done. But not Pearl. She took me inside, put that red coat across my knees and told me something of herself. And that first night, far away, I dreamt of the moon turning to confetti over me; a bride in white.

16.

I woke badly. My body had been curled around the pillow, my left arm was numb and all I wanted was food. The red coat was on the floor as I swivelled my legs over the side of the couch and I ed arriving the night before, Pearl crushing me to her, the pulse of rain and the tang of dye as she told her story. The air was sweet and breathing it in reminded me I was so far from home, tempting me to get straight back under the covers and forget. Instead I smoothed my hair down, looking vaguely for a mirror, but then I’d never much cared for how I looked. Standing in the corner of one large room, the house appeared to be an all-in-one kind of room. A sink and bench top on the far side, small table and two chairs, the couch I had slept on. A few bookshelves against the walls. The sweet-smelling air, blowing through the open window. The faint sound of the ocean. I thought about tucking my shirt into my jeans, but left it out. At the door I found my purple Converse Sneaker and noticed the flooring for the first time. Squares of rattan fibre woven or plaited together. It was an odd sensation walking barefoot across it, the uneven corrugations pressing into the soles of my feet as if I were paper pressed to a lino print. But, then, I was in Tonga; a small island in the archipelago, a girl from Melbourne. I was Fanny or Betsy, waking to the world at the top of the Faraway Tree in the Enchanted Wood. ‘You’re awake,’ Pearl appeared at the front door. Her hair was long, completely grey and held fast in a ponytail. The edges of a blue sarong, wrapped around her body, flapped in the breeze. ‘Come on,’ she said before I could speak. I hesitated at the door, reaching down for my shoes. ‘Don’t need those,’ she said, smiling. I followed her out the front door, which I attempted to close behind me, but it banged against the doorframe, opening slightly. Ahead of me, my grandmother laughed. ‘Come on, there’s lots to do.’

I glanced back at the door but followed her anyway. It was too dark when I arrived to see much of anything. It was all shadows and shapes in the rain. I ignored a sinking feeling in my stomach because I should have told her everything, right then. About what happened to Sally and how I had run away from it all. I thought back to what she told me the night before; the red coat, her mother. How life was a cycle you just couldn’t fight. I wanted so much to believe her. We walked around the side of the house, clad in blue shingles, to a smaller room attached at the back. I heard it before I stepped inside, a sound like the rustling of a thousand miniature trees. I had dreamt of that sound, I thought. I decided that I would talk to Pearl about why I’d come, just as soon as there was the right moment. ‘Take a seat, Ruby,’ Pearl said, when we were inside the room. She pointed to a small timber chair against the side wall and seated herself beside a table which was covered in leaves. Beside her feet were baskets, woven with a fibre I didn’t recognise, filled with more leaves. She took a knife to a wad of leaves and hacked into them roughly, sweeping them into another, mostly empty, basket on the other side of her legs. She turned back to glance at me. ‘I can’t say it wasn’t a surprise to find you on my doorstep last night,’ she said, laughing softly. ‘What time is it?’ I said, realising how hungry and thirsty I was. ‘Sometime in the afternoon, I think,’ she said non-committally, shoving another pile of chopped-up leaves into the basket. ‘I always thought it would be your mother who came looking for me, seeking more answers to the wrong questions.’ ‘Mum is in Darwin,’ I said. I felt suddenly stupid and wished I hadn’t left. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was insane. If I didn’t eat I was going to out. ‘You picked a great time to come find me, darlin’. Busiest time of the year right now. I’m committed to these little ones,’ she pointed around the room, her finger not indicating any one thing in particular but the general contents of every basket

lining the many shelves – stacked from floor to ceiling – around the room. The smell of the room made my stomach churn. It was earthy, farm-like. ‘If you help me we can have this sorted quickly and we could slip away into town to get some supplies.’ I stood up, smoothing down my T-shirt. ‘You must be starving,’ Pearl said. ‘Dry crackers in the tin on the bench inside. Butter and jam in the fridge.’

Pearl hummed as we worked, chopping through the baskets of leaves that we stacked into other baskets. She stopped humming to explain what needed to be done. ‘Silkworms are as fragile as newborns, you know,’ she began and I just listened. ‘You’ve got to feed them every two hours, and feed them well so they’ll produce fine silk.’ I nodded, taking in her instruction, wondering a great many things I felt unable to explain or ask. ‘We’ll clean out their baskets, keep a close eye on them, make sure they shed their skin and, most of all, keep eating,’ she said. ‘We want them fat and strong.’ My fingers were green with the moisture of the leaves. ‘Right,’ she said, stopping and wiping her hands on her apron. She ed me a cloth and bent down to pick up the first basket, pointing to the next one for me to pick up. We began at the far side wall, starting with the baskets on the top shelf, moving down each basket until the floor. I watched her dish out even handfuls of the green leaf mulch and spread it around the basket. I began on the next row, pulling the first basket towards me. The inside of the basket was alive with movement. A hundred or more tiny worms wriggling their way through the leaf matter. I spread a handful of the food from my basket into theirs as Pearl had done. Looking over to me, she nodded, pleased.

I closed my eyes briefly and imagined an impossible future where nothing that had happened ever happened. Where we were two precious gems, cocooned in silk. And the world was a heartbeat, outside, filtered by golden light. Before I ran away, when I saw Sally, she was just like that.

Pearl and I emptied the baskets of chopped leaves, sharing the food between the baskets of silkworms that filled the silkhouse. We headed out, Pearl still dressed in her sarong, walking along the road, ing small thatched dwellings she told me were called fales. There was nothing familiar there, everything was strange and arousing. The air was a heady perfume of gardenias and frangipanis that grew beside roads and rockeries and houses. We ed groups of people, sitting, cross-legged, on patches of lawn. They struck me as large and warm-hearted and the sound of their laughter was infectiously joyous. I heard music, though I couldn’t locate its source, rich voices in harmonies, accompanied by a steady beating rhythm. ‘Close your mouth, Ruby. You look like your eyes might pop out of your head,’ Pearl said and I closed my mouth, pulled back my eyes and laughed nervously. ‘It’s like . . .’ I couldn’t find the words. ‘I know,’ she said, hoisting the banana-leaf basket more comfortably on her hip. ‘I felt like that the first time I came here. I thought, “Pearl, you are in another world entirely”.’ ‘How long, exactly, have you been here?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged absently. ‘I’ve lost count,’ she tilted her head. ‘Ten years or so, I’d say. Tongans aren’t as bound by time as we are. Didn’t take me long to figure that out.’ There was a lot I wanted to ask her. We arrived at the markets, an open space between a few rough buildings in the main part of town, a ten-minute walk from her house. Displayed on rough trestle tables was an array of foods from taros and green bananas to fish and mussels. Hanks of grass-like fibres, wooden handicrafts and drums. Ornate carvings, tables of fabrics dyed in bright colours bearing floral imprints or Tongan words.

Pearl filled her basket with food, talking in Tongan. She hugged a large woman with a mat wrapped around her waist and an insane number of fresh floral wreaths about her neck. Her smell was overpowering, like I was doused in perfume. She walked around the table and embraced me warmly. She pulled away and held me by my shoulders as she talked to Pearl. ‘Kalo here says I have much work to do to fatten you up. She is so worried by your skinniness,’ Pearl laughed and Kalo spoke sternly to Pearl, punctuating her meaning with a finger directed first at my lanky frame, then at Pearl’s nose. ‘Eowee,’ Kalo said dramatically, or at least that was my translation of what she said. The Tongan version of ‘Oh my god!’ Pearl ed me her full basket as she left Kalo to scour another food stall. I tugged at my shirt and waved goodbye. I watched Pearl disappear, engrossed in her potato selection, while I stopped at a table laid out with fabrics. I placed the basket on the ground and ran my hands over the fabrics. ‘You like?’ the Tongan lady said in English. I nodded and smiled. I thought of Mr Grandy and my whole life before Sally’s accident. I’d brought my sketchbook with me, but I hadn’t touched a piece of fabric or sewn anything since that last week before Amona came home and Barry called. It seemed a lifetime ago.

17.

We had to tend to the silkworms around the clock and Pearl explained to me that at least, with me helping, she’d get more of a break around her two-hourly schedule. As we worked, she taught me her craft, how silkworms only ate the leaves of one variety of tree – the mulberry. And while the variety of mulberry known as the white mulberry is the most common variety to feed silkworms, the Islands of Tonga have an abundant supply of paperbark mulberry leaves that she collects, chops and feeds to her babies. She didn’t ask about why I’d come or press me for details and we never discussed how strange it was that I’d arrived out of the blue, like I had. She seemed to accept my arrival as normal and continued on, regardless. I was relieved and began to relax. Each time the wind blew, I smelt gardenias or frangipanis and it was so beautiful, so startling, all the thoughts I had disappeared. It was hard to think of Pearl as my mother’s mother and I began to understand something of their conflict. I could not imagine two more different people. My mother was fine-featured, controlled and routined. She searched the world for details and answers and neat equations. Whereas Pearl was rough and overflowing. Her skin sagged around fatty arms and legs. Her feet were calloused and her sarong was tied carelessly around her body. ‘Silkworms’, she continued to tell me, ‘will eat continuously for months, and shed four times before spinning their cocoon. It’s not strictly true that silkworms eat only mulberry leaves’, she added. ‘You can feed them beetroot leaves and their silk will spin red. Or a version of red. But if you feed them right and love them, they will spin you silk of the highest quality.’ My arms ached from the chopping and leaf-spreading when we took our next break. ‘I’ve promised to help my friends with their tapa,’ she said, cleaning her hands and splashing water on her face. I followed her, leaving the silkworms to gorge

on their latest batch of leaves. Inside that room it sounded like perpetual rain.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,’ I said to her as we walked. ‘Everything has an answer in its own good time,’ she said. She took my hand and squeezed it, clasping it to her chest and we walked a good way, like that, bound together. She began to sing, which was a mixture of Tongan words and some humming. It was awful and I laughed. She let go of my hand and said. ‘Never was much of a singer but I love it.’ ‘Go on,’ I said, turning to watch a group of children run up to the edge of the road to stare at me. She said something in Tongan to them and waved her hand in their direction. ‘I’m really going to have to fatten you up,’ she said. ‘In Tonga, the fatter you are the more you are loved by your family. Your little body is enough to make a Tongan weep,’ she said, clicking her tongue. ‘My friends will think your mother neglects you.’ I swallowed with that thought. But Pearl began singing again and I couldn’t help but laugh. At the end of the road we turned left and ed three small fales before coming to a group of women seated around what appeared to be a large piece of beige fabric, on the grass. Pearl waved as we ed the group. The women shuffled to make room for Pearl who dragged me down to sit beside her. ‘Tapa,’ Pearl said to me, indicating the cloth. I looked closer, touching it, gently. It didn’t feel like cloth at all, just thick paper. ‘The women make it from the bark of the mulberry tree,’ she said. ‘They tear off long strips of bark, soak it, pound it out into flat strips, glue it together and decorate it with family designs and crests. Just think, one living tree produces this,’ she said, taking a pot of black ink and dabbing a thick brush into it. ‘And me and my babies use the leaves to make silk. If you ask me,’ she said, ‘this, right here, is God. Nature’s great creativity.’

The women – there were no men – were dressed in a variety of clothing similar to what Pearl wore or I had seen worn on my brief trip into town. Fabrics or dresses draped around their bodies, overlaid with some form of matting or weaving tied around their waist. Some of the women in town had longer dresses with smaller bands securing lengths of long, woven tassels. Pearl turned to me. ‘Luisi over there,’ she pointed carefully, ‘this tapa is for her daughter’s wedding. Tapa is very valuable and given on special occasions. It’s a measure of wealth and regard,’ Pearl said. ‘I was here for the King’s tenth year celebrations,’ she said, laughing. ‘Oh, my, you have never seen such feasting or so much tapa. For weeks there were tables and chairs set out along the foreshore for as far as you could see.’ I nodded, but the details seemed almost far-fetched to me. I ran my hand over the edge of the tapa. The entire piece was as large as ten metres square, I thought. Pearl spoke Tongan for a moment before returning to English. ‘If you are still here,’ she said, ‘you can come to the wedding.’

Pearl opted for a quick nap after we chopped and fed the silkworms double so we could stretch out our next shift for an extra few hours. I lingered in the silkhouse, cleaning up and taking a moment to catch my thoughts. As well as the baskets containing the silkworms, the room held wooden spinning looms and taller baskets. There were boxes piled up on top of each other, a refrigerator and some chairs. Beside the main work table was an old metal filing cabinet. I moved around the room, lifting lids on baskets and peaking underneath sheets draped over looms. The sound of the feeding worms was a comforting, rhythmic sound, and made the room feel alive. Their smell didn’t bother me any longer. In two of the baskets I found what appeared to be tufts and hunks of raw silk resembling dirty, matted cotton balls. Kilograms of it. I took hold of it and ran it through my fingers, squashing it, kneading it. My mind drifted into thoughts of how it could be woven into thread and fabric, and I was trying to recall the different ways silk was produced. I became aware that I had no idea what Pearl did with all her silk and decided that, with the looms I’d found, she probably span the cocoons into thread of some sort. I really knew so little about her.

I slumped into a chair beside the door and felt a wave of exhaustion that was as much from the physical work I’d been engaged in all day as the weight of what I was avoiding. I thought of Barry and how my leaving must have felt to him. I wanted to cover myself in blankets, to be locked inside something safe and not come out. I longed for it despite realising how selfish and cruel I’d been. I wanted that land to swallow me whole and keep me. I didn’t want to climb down that Faraway Tree at all. I wanted it to move on, with me wrapped up inside.

It was dark by the time we arrived at Pearl’s friend’s house. Pearl took great delight in telling me how much Tongans loved their food. Shortly after arriving in Tonga herself, Pearl had been invited to a dinner where plates and platters of food had completely covered a trestle table set low on the ground. There was so much food, she told me, that there was no way the guests could possibly get through even a small proportion of it. The dinner was to celebrate the return of a daughter back to Tonga, who had been studying in New Zealand. The girl’s mother had addressed the guests, expressing her love and pride in her daughter. Soon after starting she burst into tears, weeping and wailing that she could not provide enough food. ‘The abundance of food is an expression,’ Pearl said, ‘of the amount of affection or esteem or value. She could not afford a quantity of food suitable for her love for her daughter. Tongans aren’t perfect.’ I felt there was so much more underneath this simple statement. Pearl continued, ‘But I love them anyway.’ I couldn’t help thinking of Dad and our trips to Charlie’s Chinese Restaurant for our birthdays and how it would feel wrong to let a birthday go by without that ritual. Pearl and I were greeted warmly and much fuss was made over me, again, though I still couldn’t understand what was being said. I thought about asking Pearl to teach me just a little Tongan, like how to say my name, how to talk about the weather. We were outside, the air was warm, filled with a soft breeze and people gathered about the open space in different groups and huddles. I felt self-conscious in my Western clothes and skinny body. I thought of Becky and her constant claims of being too fat, despite being a small size eight. A dose of

Tonga could be good for her. I found myself smiling and feeling warm about my friends, all of them, and it surprised me. In a corner underneath a large tree a group of people were singing. Some sat cross-legged, clapping and swaying. A few men beat sticks on upturned buckets. Pearl pointed to our left where a group of men formed a circle around a spot on the ground. I watched as they bent down to lift something from the ground. Steam rose, they strained and retracted backwards with the weight. They shuffled sideways and their steaming load was placed on the ground. I leaned over to get a closer view and watched them remove smoking banana leaves. Once finished, small bundles of food, wrapped in silver paper and other leaves, were placed on plates and ed around. A dozen or more children ran and played around us. Their laughter was wild and unrestrained. Halfway through dinner I heard what I thought was the sound of pigs and found a group of piglets running free beside a cluster of fales. ‘This food is cooked underground,’ Pearl explained. ‘Tongans heat rocks, dig a hole and line it with banana leaves. They pile in the bundles of food, cover it with more leaves and fill it with dirt. Underground oven,’ she said, finishing the last of her sweet potato. ‘Called an umu.’ A group of boys were looking at me, pointing and laughing openly and I felt embarrassed. Pearl straightened up beside me and glared at them. ‘Tongan boys,’ she said with a sniff. ‘Gorgeous,’ she said, shaking her head slightly. ‘But trouble. Big trouble. I’m sure one of them will be asking you to marry them before you leave. They try it on with any foreign girl.’ I looked down at my plate and felt my face flush. I imagined Becky there with me and couldn’t stop a smile coming to my lips. Casanovas for sure. We finished with dinner and wandered home. Pearl and I were content in each other’s company. The moon glowed, like a white promise, above us. The silkworms, ever ravenous, had to be fed and we tended them in the near dark, kerosene lamps lighting our workspace and the smell of burnt fuel stinging the

back of our throats. My eyes blurred and dragged, heavy with the need to sleep. When each basket was full of leaves, we extinguished the lamps and trudged wearily back inside to fall into our beds. Sleep came in an instant and my dreams were pleasant and vivid. When I next woke, I found Pearl seated on the chair beside me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes and she presented me with a hot cup of tea. I could hear the ocean, steadily drumming the shore beyond our window, a relentless, present rhythm and through the window was the small bead of a moon watching over us. ‘I have never loved another boy like I loved Jack,’ Pearl said. ‘We’d known each other since we were tots and our mothers would leave us to play together while they drank tea and chatted on. He’d be waiting on the corner near my school for me every afternoon. And he’d walk me home. If my mother had known,’ she said and smiled just slightly, ‘well, she would have put a stop to that, to be sure.’ ‘My mother never had much room for kindness.’ I found myself marvelling at the woman she was, sitting comfortably inside herself, holding the threads of an inconsistent world. ‘I don’t think it was something she had known herself or understood how to give to anyone. My elder twin sisters got what little of it she ever had. Life was hard,’ she added. ‘There was no denying that. My days were filled with getting up early, tending chores, walking to school, those brief moments with Jack, then chores till dark. I wasn’t allowed out to play. I don’t want you feeling pity for me,’ she said. I didn’t interrupt her to acknowledge that pity was the last thing I felt for her. I sat up straighter in my lounge bed and sipped my tea quietly. ‘But there was a way of these things, you know. We didn’t go to dances or school outings. My parents weren’t religious. They were hard and I pity them for that, now. I snuck out that one night, with Jack. He showed me the jar of money he’d been saving up for us. He said it would be another six months before he’d have enough for a ring and a wedding. Even with everything that happened after, if I ever had to go through it again, I would still have gone with him that night. The feeling of his hand on my cheek and his lips on mine. His body holding me tight and the knowledge that out of everyone in the world, we had found each other. It only takes one night. And the world can change. I didn’t have time to tell Jack before I left. And in my childishness I thought I could find a way back

to him. ‘I’ll never forget that moment on the train station. Standing in my red coat with people looking at me. And you know, Ruby, I could have let their hatred eat at me. Scorn is a physical thing. But I had Jack and a baby growing inside me and that small glimmer of joy was enough. There were places they sent girls like me back then. We were supposed to give our babies away but I couldn’t bear that thought. So I escaped before my time and your mother was born inside a railway station.’ She was quiet and sipped her tea. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it as a rule,’ she said as a small laugh rocked her body. ‘Your mother always hated that coat. But it kept her warm for those first few days.’ I didn’t know why she was telling me. Or perhaps I did. I wasn’t sure how to react, it seemed so barbaric and cruel and I was torn between a deep empathy for her and iration and something else I couldn’t understand. But she leant forward and cupped my face. ‘Anyone ever tell you how absolutely perfect you are?’ I reached out and hugged her to me, I held her tightly like she was the only raft I had. ‘They say that Sally has no chance of ever recovering,’ I said, feeling Pearl cling to me as tightly as I held her. ‘There was a bleed in her that caused the coma. She’s on so many drugs to keep her body alive and the baby won’t survive anyway.’ Pearl pulled back and I told her everything. ‘I can’t help feeling like she’s there inside. You know? That if we save her baby we save her. I feel like part of me is there.’ ‘There’s a lot of things we can never make right, Ruby, love. No matter how much we wish and hope.’ ‘Or pray,’ I added. Pearl took my hands in her own. ‘We’ve got work to do.’ I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a baby growing inside me. I’ve never been one of those girls to go all clucky and stupid over babies. Again, that’s more like Becky. And if there was one thing Sally and I shared in common it was our shared feeling in this regard.

I talking about it one night before Mum and Sally left. Sally had come into my room after lights out one night, bringing a packet of chocolate biscuits – god knows where she got them from and how – but we shared them together, my doona forming a tent above us held fast with my torch. ‘Can you imagine a creature growing inside you?’ she started. ‘No.’ ‘Something pushing you out further and further from the inside.’ I pulled a face in the dark. ‘Knowing that at some point it is going to have to come out!’ ‘A watermelon though a pee hole.’ I started laughing and couldn’t stop. The thought of giving birth to a baby, of pushing it out with doctors and nurses and your own husband – presumably – watching was something akin to a horror movie. And yet we were girls and our bodies were supposedly built for that. ‘Poor Aunty Karen,’ Sally said, though I was still laughing too hard to answer. Dad’s sister in-law had been due to have her baby any day. A matter of weeks after that night our cousin James was born. I heard Aunty Karen tell my mother that the only thing good about childbirth was an epidural. Our conversation deteriorated into grossing each other out with the most embarrassing scenarios we could invent for ourselves. ‘Imagine going to kiss a boy and sneezing in his face,’ I said. ‘Or knocking teeth.’ ‘Or having a bird fly past and crap on your hair.’ ‘Or you’re on a date and you get your dress caught in your knickers and you don’t know.’ ‘Imagine going into labour in the supermarket.’

‘Or your waters breaking in Myer.’ ‘Gross.’ ‘Gross all right.’ All that sugar from the biscuits had given me a headache and my mouth felt dry and furry. ‘I’m leaving home as soon as I possibly can,’ Sally said. ‘How about you?’ I don’t think I said anything.

You don’t talk about the details of life when you’re young, only the bigger picture. You talk about sex and boys and babies and what you’re going to wear to the Royal Easter Show and how, if you ever got picked for Australian Idol, you’d sing Total Eclipse of the Heart on ‘Eighties Night’. You have opinions on whether it is possible an Australian could ever win an Australian Open tennis final. You listen to your favourite bands and talk at lunch about whether you’d be considered pretty in the standards of beauty in the eighteen hundreds. You spend too many hours on geometry and algebra and the poetic genius of Shakespeare, but you never talk about things like imminent death and certainty and how, when the dice of life roll against you, you might not be ready. You draw sketches of dresses in your sketchbook and dream of fame and reputation, but you never dream your twin could be part dead and part alive, all at once. Or your mother could believe in a god with rigid moral lines who could strike you down for being disobedient. We don’t talk about those things, yet they were happening to me. At seventeen I knew that life and death were split seconds apart and the world could crash in on your shoulders one night while you weren’t looking. And shame could run you through like a dagger, it could stab you in the back years before you were ever born. I knew that love made no sense at all. We want it neat and uncomplicated; we want simple rules and no mistakes. It was love that had Sally tied in knots, a twisted love that kept Dad away, and Mum outside her door. I wondered if love was the reason Sally had kept her child and the reason she was coming home; love like Pearl had for her boy next door. I would never know.

18.

Pearl talked continuously as we worked and I was glad for the distraction because I still hadn’t called Dad. I learnt that the silkworms consumed her life for a little over two months of each year when she would take thousands of eggs and nurture them as they grew into fully grown worms that eat and grow, eat and grow. They shed their skin four times and Pearl would feed them, clean their baskets and watch them for signs of change. She described the end of the process with something akin to awe, the moment a worm would stop eating and begin waving its head in lazy figure eights. She would place each worm, tending them by hand, into spinning baskets – a little like egg cartons – which encouraged each worm to spin well-formed cocoons. The thread comes from the top of their head, a fine silken strand rich in seracin glue that bonds the thread to the spinning surface. They lay the foundations first, she said, a spread of dense, mesh-like strands that suspend the cocoon. As we finished our shift she put her arm around me as we headed back inside the house for another few hours sleep. ‘You see a beautiful silk thread or fabric and you don’t realise how much can go wrong on the way. If there’s something not right in their environment, or the temperature suddenly changes, it can throw their entire equilibrium off and there’s no com to guide their spinning and their cocoons are like flat rods, instead. You can’t spin rods.’ ‘Is that what’s in those baskets,’ I asked. She nodded. ‘So what can you do? I mean how do you make sure they spin the right cocoon?’ ‘Love ’em, give them plenty of food. But you can’t control the weather, you know. Sometimes things just go wrong.’

‘Did you ever find him? Jack,’ I asked. My voice barely a whisper because I wasn’t sure I should even be asking. But all the same, I had to know. ‘When I did find him he was already married with a son a few years younger than your mum.’ ‘But how—’ She cut me off. ‘They told him I had died giving birth. He was a good man, you know. Life is never a neat parcel.’ It didn’t seem right. Somehow I hoped there would be some kind of happy ending. I thought of what it would be like, having gone through everything on her own, only to find he’d moved on without her. I didn’t have a fraction of her courage. Inside, Pearl rummaged about in her cupboard by the sink. ‘Now where did I put that,’ she said more to herself. ‘Ah,’ she said, taking a small parcel and moving over to the couch where I had curled up against the arm, clutching the pillow to my chest. ‘I don’t get them very often,’ she said sorting through what appeared to be a handful of letters. ‘But your mother does write to me occasionally.’ I sat up a little straighter, totally surprised by this. I didn’t think Mum talked to Pearl at all. ‘Yeah, there’s a bit of religious stuff, but . . . Ah,’ she said, reading from one of the letters. ‘Button is doing very well. You know she sews, don’t you? It’s not always to my taste, but that girl has talent and I know her father is as proud as can be.’ Pearl glanced towards me. ‘Sally tells me that her sister wants to enter the Young Designer of the Year Award. Turns out I have a very talented daughter.’ I was speechless. Truly speechless. Mum had never even hinted at this before. I had no idea she even thought much about me, let alone felt something close to pride. ‘What’s it like?’

‘Huh?’ ‘The dress or whatever it is you’re entering. Tell me what it’s like?’ I took my sketchbook out from underneath the couch. I held it on my knees, tucking the pillow behind my back. But I couldn’t bring myself to open it or show her anything. And it had nothing to do with feeling inferior or not good enough. It just didn’t seem right anymore. How could I think of those things after what had happened. ‘I’m not entering,’ I said. ‘Not with everything that’s going on. It wouldn’t be right.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Pearl.

I was so tired yet I couldn’t sleep. I had two halves of me fighting it out inside. For the first time since the accident, I had ideas and thoughts and designs running through my head, but the other part of me was so heavy with sadness it wanted to drag me down. When we were working together, or Pearl was talking or taking me somewhere in this new place, I felt free and uninterrupted. But when it stopped and I was quiet with myself I thought back to that moment I bought a ticket for Tonga instead of going back home to Dad. I had a childish need to fly free from the real world and lose myself in some faraway place. I had run away. It wasn’t even clear to me what I wanted other than to turn back the clock, to thread myself through the needle of time and find Sally before it was too late. I missed her with an aching futility. I loved her wildness, her confidence. I loved her without restrictions. I couldn’t stand the thought of her finality. The future had been my comfort, that one day we would make it back to each other like it once was. I was such a child. I wanted to stamp my feet and yell and scream and cry and ignore reason. I wanted to blame them all for letting her die. And for leaving me. I exhausted myself with this tug-of-war and my last thought before sleeping was of Barry.

‘I don’t know why I came,’ I told Pearl.

‘Yes you do, honey,’ she said. ‘It just doesn’t make any sense, now. I just ran away.’ ‘Let me show you something.’ Pearl put her knife down on the table, wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist. She edged her way between furniture and baskets, bits and bobs in the room, before reaching the two large baskets in the corner. After removing the lid she reached in and removed a handful of the tussled silk I had seen earlier. ‘I had two years back-to-back where something went wrong and damned if I could figure out what it was,’ she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Remind me to show you how to spin sometime,’ she said absently. By then I knew that after the silkworms had spun their cocoons, Pearl spent her next few months spinning the silk into hanks. These were boxed and posted to various cottage industries in Australia that sold raw silk in all its forms and fashions. There wasn’t much money in it, she told me, but that wasn’t her motivation. ‘Thing is, you can’t spin broken thread. All these rods and throwsters waste can’t be spun. You ever seen silk paper?’ I shook my head. ‘The natural glue in this form of silk means you can fuse it together with heat,’ she ed me a hunk of the silk rods and I held their hard, irregular form in my hand. ‘Fluff it out and use the other stiffer silk pieces to form shapes and patterns. Iron it together and, voila, fabric.’ Despite my anxiety about explaining myself and my reasons for being here, I found my mind sparking with ideas. They came as tingles of possibility, a sense of energy about what sort of dress I could create with it. ‘Bit like tapa,’ she said, watching me. I looked up and listened. I didn’t know if it was my imagination or not, but the

sound of those worms eating seemed louder that day. It felt urgent, that sound, like it would build to a crescendo before it released. ‘You called your parents?’ I looked down and shook my head. ‘Think you’d better do that. With everything going on. Don’t you?’ ‘I’m going to have to go home.’ ‘They are probably going out of their minds with worry.’

I called Dad and he was rightfully furious with me. I told him about what Mum said about trying to marry Sally off and wanting me to come live with her as well. He was stunned. I told him how angry I was that he didn’t come with me and left me to deal with Sally and Mum and the Aberdeen all on my own. ‘Listen, Button,’ he said. ‘You are seventeen years old. You’re not a kid anymore. You get to decide what happens to you.’ I can’t believe I conjured all sorts of things about him. That I really thought he would push me away and force me to live with Mum after we’d been together so long. I realised I’d betrayed him. ‘I’m sorry. It was really stupid. I just felt like I was going crazy.’ Dad did something completely unexpected, then. He cried. I could hear his voice waver a little, before his words came in small sobs. ‘I love you both so much it hurts.’ ‘I know.’ ‘There’s a flight back home for you leaving tomorrow afternoon. Can you make that?’ ‘Yes,’ I mumbled.

‘And I will be there to meet you at the airport. You were right, I should have gone with you. I shouldn’t have let you face it all on your own, okay?’ ‘Thanks. I love you, Dad.’ ‘I’ll get a message to your mum.’

I felt a sense of peace as Pearl and I tended the silkworms. In the afternoon we headed out, arm in arm, to pick fresh leaves. Together we walked through small groves and bush land stripping the leaves from mulberry bark trees. We were followed by small groups of children, giggling and laughing at us. Pearl chattered with them and enlisted their help in picking the leaves. At home we continued chopping and feeding until the late afternoon. I left Pearl napping and walked down to the water, taking my shoes off to let the sand in between my toes. I forgot about time as I walked, concentrating on the sound of the water hitting the beach, the far-off cry of birds and that sweet smell. I inhaled deeply, willing its peace and promise into my soul. I wanted it to fill me, to chase away my shadows. I thought of Barry. Despite throwing myself onto him and not replying to his text, I couldn’t help the same fluttering feeling inside. I couldn’t turn off the feeling of liking him and wanting to be with him. I knew it was futile, but I felt it all the same. Why couldn’t I like a boy in Melbourne, someone who went to my school? Someone with whom there was the vague possibility of kissing without Sally and death and grief wedging its way between us? I felt more at peace as I walked back towards Pearl’s house. But as I sat down on the couch I felt the tears come again. A flood of them. Pearl sat beside me with her arm around my shoulders and she cried too.

In the morning I packed my belongings into my suitcase ready for the afternoon flight, resting it beside the front door. I found Pearl in the silkhouse. She was winding tape around cardboard boxes, stacking each finished one on top of the others beside the door. ‘Oh good, you’re finished,’ she said. She straightened up and looked me up and down before making a disapproving clicking sound with her tongue. ‘No. That

will never do for a wedding.’ I looked down at my shirt and jeans and back at Pearl. ‘Had you forgotten?’ I shrugged. I hadn’t put any details together except for catching the plane back home. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking me back inside. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’ In the house, Pearl opened her wardrobe and rummaged through her clothes. I sat on her bed and watched her, with some amusement, considering each gaudy dress she pulled from inside, with serious attention. ‘No. No that won’t do,’ she said to each item and I was glad. I laughed and she spun to face me. ‘What’s so funny?’ ‘Nothing.’ She returned to the cupboard. ‘Ah, here is what I was looking for.’ She removed a simple apricot cotton dress covered in large hibiscus print. ‘Try it on.’ ‘Me?’ I said, thinking there was no way I would ever wear something as ostentatious as what she was holding. It wouldn’t have been far from my size – though clearly something she had held on to for quite some time. She thrust it towards me and nodded. I changed in the lounge room, tugging at the puffy sleeves and skirt that felt too full around my legs. I could only think of one other time in my life when I had voluntarily worn a dress and that was to my junior formal. It had been simple, straight and black. I might have made ornate and elaborate creations for others to wear, but there was no way I would wear them. I wasn’t that kind of girl. I felt awkward and gaudy unless I was in jeans and shirts. At least no one I knew would ever see me in it. ‘Take off your sneakers,’ she said, laughing and pointing to my feet.

Reluctantly I obliged, though I couldn’t see sneakers making any difference to my ridiculous appearance. What was one more odd accessory? She threw a pair of sandals towards me and disappeared back into her own room. I slipped them on to my feet and, while they were a smidgen too large, they were not too bad a fit, considering. I looked at myself in the mirror and played with my hair, pulling my fringe evenly across my forehead and the length back over my shoulders. I sat on the couch and waited for Pearl to come out of her room. I heard her singing, the same discordant sound, endearing and irritating at the same time. I smiled and began thinking of home. I’d been in Tonga for two full days, almost three, though it felt so much longer than that. I’d been so selfish and gutless. Sally would have been dead. Truly dead. She would have been disconnected from her machines, the medication ceased. Her body left to pump its final blood, breathe its final breath. I had the image of her body on that hospital bed and tried to blink it away. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. I couldn’t undo what I had done or what had happened to Sally. Somehow I was going to have to come to with that. I realised I’d forgotten to ask Dad about the funeral but I was sure they wouldn’t have done it without me, surely? I wondered what would have happened if the accident had occurred a few weeks later than it did. If her baby had lived, who would have looked after it? I wished Barry was the father because, in a way, he and I would still have had Sally. Or something of Sally’s.

It was a fair walk to the wedding. I felt awkward in my dress and sandals, dirt and small stones flicking up, getting stuck under my feet and between my toes. Apart from the floral dress I was wearing, I had a woven belt with tassels fastened around my waist. Pearl added this to my outfit before we left the house saying it was a sign of respect. She called it a Ta’ovala – if I pronounced it correctly – and her only comparison was to liken it to wearing a tie in Western cultures. ‘I’m so glad you came,’ Pearl said, linking my hand over her arm. I wasn’t sure how to reply. Part of me was glad, too. I felt close to Pearl, like we

shared something of each other and I couldn’t imagine going through life without her being a part of it anymore. Though a bigger part of me felt guilty for being there. For running away and leaving my family like that. There was no excuse for what I did. Mum must have been out of her mind with worry. ‘I could have picked a better time.’ ‘Ah, there’s always better times for everything.’ ‘Why did you come here? I mean, why here, exactly?’ ‘It’s where Jack and I spent our only year together.’ ‘But I thought—’ ‘Sometimes life gives you second chances. His wife had died of cancer and,’ she laughed softly, ‘you wouldn’t believe it but we met by chance, one day, at the cinema in Sydney. His children were grown and, well . . .’ she shrugged. ‘We came here for a holiday and liked it so much we stayed.’ My mind was busy thinking. ‘So his children would be Mum’s half-sisters. Or brothers?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Has she ever seen them?’ Pearl hesitated. ‘I think that’s what put the final rift in our relationship, you know. I wanted her to get to know his kids. I had this stupid thought that we could be a family of sorts. Silly,’ she added. I couldn’t believe I didn’t know anything about it. I thought back to the memories I had of Pearl and her visits. But I didn’t hearing any talk of this other family. ‘Your mother didn’t want anything to do with them. She met Jack once, but . . .’ she trailed off. ‘She was such a wild thing as a kid.’ ‘My mother?’ I said, incredulous.

‘Oh yes. She had a wild streak in her, that’s for sure. Never listened to a word I said. Always getting into mischief.’ I couldn’t believe it. For a minute I thought she must have been telling me lies. ‘I couldn’t imagine it.’ ‘Boy, I could tell you some stories about her. I never wanted her to marry your father,’ she said, her voice turning softer and more serious. ‘That was the final straw, so to speak. She was determined but I didn’t think he was the man for her.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘She married him. Quickly. Said he was the love and light of her life and I should mind my own bloody business. Your mother always needed something else to believe in. She never trusted that she was enough. First your father, then the church. If there’s one thing I know, Ruby, it’s that we have to live by our own light. There’s nothing else we can do.’ I could see the church up ahead of us. There were people standing in small groups around the entrance. I didn’t feel so strange in my dress. There were women wearing dresses with various mats and tapa and taovalas tied around their waists. Men, too, in cloth skirts covered with woven mats. Garlands of flowers were strung around necks. I could hear singing, deeply melodious, rich harmonies. ‘She didn’t cope too well after you girls were born. And I was travelling a lot. And then I found Jack.’ I still couldn’t believe what my mother was like as a teenager. ‘She loved Sally. More than me,’ I said and I was surprised at where it came from. ‘Now, you are wrong there. She never had to worry about you like she had to worry about Sally. Boy, that girl was worse than her mother, from what I hear.’ ‘I never thought Mum knew.’ My mind was reeling with this information. It was like I was looking back at my life with a totally different lens.

‘You kidding? Why do you think your mother took Sally with her?’ I stopped walking. I’d always thought it was because she loved Sally more. It had never occurred to me that there was any other reason. ‘She always hated my name.’ Pearl smiled. ‘I think your mother needed to blame something for how things turned out. She really loved your father.’ I felt guilty with that thought. Like I was somehow responsible for hurting her too. ‘No one is responsible for our happiness or lack thereof. No one but ourselves.’ ‘What happened to Jack?’ ‘He ed away three years ago. I wanted your mother to meet him again but she never would.’ I felt a change in Pearl. Like she had exposed a vulnerability inside herself that she didn’t know what to do with. It was only slight but her body slumped, she felt heavier against my arm. I was thinking how complicated life is and how there are no simple roads or paths. We are a fabric of mistakes and hurts; a family tree of fumbled attempts, successes and failures. As we entered the church, making our way through a hundred or so guests, their faces alive with smiles and tears, I had this moment of clarity. Knowing that I’d ed though something, or crossed over something. An invisible marker in life. I could never go back to who I was. Only forward towards who I would be. We stood and the timber pews creaked and groaned. An organ began to play and the feeling of being surrounded by a hundred Polynesian voices singing was a physical experience, the sound resounded through my body, and my response was emotional. The sound of happiness, a joyful sadness. I was surrounded by love in all its mysterious chords. The bride arrived beside her soon-to-be husband. She was wrapped in tapa,

decorated in flowers and woven wrappings. Barefoot, her ankles and wrists were enclosed in circlets of flowers. Her skin shone, luminescent with oil. Her face glowed with promise and expectation. I felt transported outside of myself into this community. I could not understand a single word either spoken or sung yet I felt at home.

At the wedding feast, we sat on the ground at what appeared to be giant toolboxes. In the cavity of them there were trays and trays of food. Garlands of sweets and flowers were strung across the handle and under nets to keep the flies away. Baskets and baskets of whole cooked pigs were brought out among the guests. The bride and groom were at the front, facing us all seated on large mats. They were presented with metres and metres of tapa, some lengths taking ten or more people to carry them, opened, displayed, then folded and placed before them. I could not help thinking of my mother sewing white wedding dresses for people in the Aberdeen and how alien that whole concept felt among this wedding. Pearl began talking to me about how religious Tonga was, how, since the missionaries came, Tonga embraced religion wholeheartedly. ‘It’s quite a conservative country,’ she told me. But I could only see the beauty of that day and moment. There was so much food in front of us that we could only eat a fraction of it. As we were eating, a girl stood before the bride and groom. Behind her, to the side, was a group of musicians. They began to play and sing and the girl danced. Her knees bent, she moved her head and arms in little flicks, the small movements of her feet moving her to one side, then the other. Guests began to stand, move forward and dance around the girl. A feeling of warmth and excitement spread through the crowd. We ed in, clapping. More people stood, moved to the front and either danced with the girl for a time, or placed paper notes on to the girl’s oiled skin. Some of the money dropped to the ground. People dancing around her picked it up and tucked it into the fold of the matting and tapa wrapped around her body. Pearl told me that the money would be given

to the bride and groom. I was only vaguely aware of the time. Soon I would have to leave that faraway place and all its mystery and magic. I would have to push through the small cocoon that had protected me from all that was real and present back home.

A friend of Pearl’s drove us to the airport. Pearl clutched me tightly to her and cried openly. ‘Oh my girl,’ she said. ‘I wish I could make everything better but I can’t.’ I nodded, feeling tears coming to my eyes. ‘Give your mother my love,’ she said, nodding as though I understood much more than she was able to communicate. ‘Tell her I will write to her.’ ‘I’ll try to come back. Next year,’ I said, thinking I’d like to see the efforts of all our leaf chopping and gathering, all our love and attention bearing silk. ‘My babies are calling me,’ Pearl said, turning and walking out of the airport, towards the sunshine and her silk.

I had so much to think about on my way home but my head was a whirlwind that wouldn’t settle on anything coherent or reasoned. Instead, I closed my eyes, plugged in the earphones, and concentrated on my breathing. In and out. Unfortunately there was no time to change my clothes before the flight and I had to fly home in a gaudy ill-fitting apricot dress and beige sandals. I decided to leave the taovala fastened around my waist too.

19.

Both my mother and my father were waiting for me at the airport. They stood apart, Mum surrounded by a few of the Aberdeen, and Dad was alone. My heart lifted at the sight of him. I ran the last few steps and saw Dad’s face crease as he looked at me. I ignored it, rushing straight into his arms. He held me close and firm. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s all right, Button.’ Mum came towards me. I’m not sure what I expected, her onishment and disappointment, but she said ‘I’m glad you’re all right.’ The Aberdeen kept their distance as I walked between my parents towards the baggage claim. I wasn’t sure if they’d spoken in person but I felt their tension. In that moment it was hard to imagine they were ever married, that they held each other and talked to each other with an uncomplicated familiarity when they seemed so different and so distanced. It was hard to imagine they were even acquaintances. I began explaining my clothes to break the tension. I kept mention of Pearl to a minimum and focused on the people, the wedding, the silkworms. Dad put his arm around my shoulder and laughed. ‘I can’t say it looks good on you.’ Despite herself, Mum smiled. We left the terminal for the carpark and I couldn’t help but glance around for Barry.

I went with Dad to his motel where he left me alone to unpack and change. I hadn’t touched my phone since the flight to Tonga and I turned it on. The screen

flashed and beeped with the unanswered calls from Dad and there were a few voice messages, too. It’s Barry. Please call me. I know it’s wrong but I really like you. I threw the phone on the bed and lay down. I wished a lot into those words but humiliation rose up inside me. I was totally out of my depth and wished I had someone to talk to about it. I considered Dad but it wouldn’t have been fair to him at all. I considered Becky but decided she’d get wound up in the excitement and turn it into something superficial and childish. I picked up the phone and texted Barry. I waited. And waited. Then I dialled his number. The phone rang out. I dialled again, the phone rang out. I could only imagine the questions and complications that Sally’s condition presented at the hospital, my parents and the Aberdeen. I didn’t really want to know, I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help those thoughts going around in my head. It was the night before the funeral and I wondered where her body was and how she went from that body on the bed, still warm, yet gone to wherever she was, waiting.

Dad and I caught a taxi to Mum’s house. Somehow all of our combined raw emotion had become a shroud of melancholy. Like a deep and peaceful sadness. Mum’s house was lit with candles. I recognised many of the same people from the Aberdeen but they appeared different to me now. We were enveloped in a community of singing. Quiet, unaccompanied voices. The song never ended, it resonated with the same rise and fall of sadness. That steady, pulsating rhythm of endless emotion. We sat on the couch and, after a while, I didn’t feel strange at all. No one was looking at anyone but rather we were made to feel alone and connected all at once. For a moment I glimpsed something of what my mother found so compelling about her religion. My mother wasn’t in the lounge room and, after a while, I stood and left my father, walking downstairs to her sewing room. I heard the machine, the staccato of needle bursts running fast, then stopping, running fast, then stopping. I stepped into the doorway and she turned her head a little, acknowledging my

presence, without fully turning to see me. I walked over to her and sat on the floor beside her legs. We didn’t talk, the singing and the sound of the machine spoke for us, guiding us along an invisible track through the river of our sadness. I leant my head against her legs and felt her body pause before continuing with her task. I leant in closer and let my head rest against her skin. I felt her warmth and was reminded of this exact moment so many years before when I would have been no older than four or five. The feeling of my mother at her sewing, the sound of those needle bursts imprinting themselves within my skin? Is this where I first sat, dreaming of what I could create? Was this moment my formation? When I was young I wanted so much to be like her. What a blessing are those moments when there is nothing to worry about, no thought of trouble or grief in the world. I stood and looked around the room. There were drawers and tables containing materials and threads, needles and bias bindings, bobbins and dressmaker’s chalk. I took some material and scissors and thread and made something for Sally.

At some point in the early hours of the morning we stopped. I heard my mother sigh and felt her release as if a tangible weight shrugged free from her shoulders. She turned on her chair to look at me. Her eyes were heavy and swollen with black rings. Her skin seemed heavy too, but underneath those surface things, she had melted from her composed determination. She was vulnerable but free and I had not felt that close to her for so long. ‘She did things,’ Mum said. ‘Things I can’t even begin to—’ ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know. Sally was who she was and we can’t change that.’ Mum looked at a silk moth I held in my hand that I had made while she sewed. She took it from me. It was all white, stitched from the remnants of different silks and satins, its wings stiffened with visafix as if that creature were about to fly free. She held it in her hands, cupping it carefully, as if it was fragile and real. I took it from her and placed it on the bodice of the dress she had finished sewing. It would be the last thing Sally ever wore and I almost smiled with the thought that she would have hated that dress beyond words.

There appeared to be nothing to distinguish it from an Aberdeen wedding dress, but Mum took it from the machine, held it up and explained the differences. The shape of the bodice was shorter, the sleeves were longer and the embroidery on the bodice formed a garland of thorns. On the back, just below the neckline, was a small embroidered circle. That, she told me, was a pearl. The pearl of great price. A funeral dress would usually be cream in colour, as opposed to the white of a wedding dress. But, in Sally’s case, she would go to heaven as the bride of Christ, being unmarried on earth. Mum said this with such certainty, as if it were force of nature, like gravity and air and water, that we needed the completion of a man to make us whole. I wanted to tell her she had it all wrong, that love was a higher value, surely, not entrapment for the sake of social standing or some atonement for being born female. I wished she had read Jane Austen and discovered what women like her had been telling us for so long. I felt that marriage, in those , makes a mockery of love and reduces it to nothing. I decided if it were possible I would never ever marry at all. Mum opened the top drawer of the sewing cabinet and took out a needle, threading it quickly with a strand of white thread she pulled from the bobbin at the top of the sewing machine. Holding the silk moth in place, she stitched it carefully to the bodice, ensuring the body was held fast to the dress but the wings remained outstretched. I could not bring her back or save that small life inside her. I could only leave her with a token as fleeting and as beautiful as she was. A moth that spent an entire life preparing for but a few days of magnificent flight. I was back at the hotel in bed before I realised what it took for my mother to have sewn my silk moth onto Sally’s funeral dress. There was no moth mentioned on the pattern or in Aberdeen custom. It must have felt right, for all the wrong reasons, for her to have stitched it to the dress. For me.

20.

Sally’s funeral was held at the Aberdeen church and we were bound to their rituals and rules which seemed strange, at best, and cruel, at worst. As I’d never been to a funeral before I didn’t know whether there was anything particularly unusual about the way the Aberdeen did it. Two rows of seats were reserved for non-Aberdeen . A member from the council showed Dad and me where to sit and explained that we were to follow the cues from the rest of the congregation. We followed the usher inside and sat together, just Dad and me on a long pew at the back of the church. I had never felt more excluded in my life. I glimpsed Mum at the front of the church. Since our brief moment of connecting the night before, she had slipped back inside her shell. Like she was someone I could never completely reach. It felt like Dad and I were surrounded by clockwork, something abstract yet well timed and perfectly orchestrated. There was a lot of singing, we were all dressed in black, candles lining the front of the church were lit and their flames flickered and danced behind Sally’s coffin, which was open. Our names were not mentioned in the service, I do that. Only Mum’s. There were places out the front of the church that only she could go and I being overwhelmed with the details and deciding to stick close to Dad and stay in my spot. Throughout the service, the congregation stood and sat, and Dad and I never seemed to manage the routine without being either the last to stand or the last to sit down. This movement seemed to be guided by some secret knowledge that Dad and I did not have. No one attempted to explain it to us. Somewhere in the middle of the funeral, Brother Daniel climbed the stairs at the front of the church to stand in a box that was gilded with gold leaf, painted with Renaissance-inspired cherubs and symbols. I glanced about the rest of the church and found a similar style repeated on the walls, ceiling and even the windows. None of it looked real. All of it looked sterile and strange, as if I had been dragged back into someone else’s life, someone else’s past. I didn’t belong.

The volume of Brother Daniel’s voice and the anger in his words scared me from my haze. He struck an imposing figure, looming over the rest of us, his hands either pointing at us, at the sky, at some symbol or painting, at the Bible he held up. Or his arms were outstretched as widening our own understanding. I don’t what he said after the first few words, only being aware of a poisonous feeling spreading low in my guts. The tone of his message and his voice was clear. This was a punishment, terrible and tragic, yet a clear message all the same. There was one antidote for the pain of what we all felt. That was to embrace God as he understood him to be – comionate, all-knowing, allwondrous. If there was a god, I hoped Sally felt him close to her in the moment of her death. I hoped that God closed her ears to all the spiteful words and thoughts and feeling around her and gave her a feeling of pure love instead. As we left the church I saw Barry seated on the very back pew behind us. I felt our eyes lock, there was a feeling of strength in that moment, like we had been forever known to each other. I smiled but I was caught in the river of people pushing us through the small aisle of the church, out into the sunshine, away from Sally, away from Barry. We did not see Sally’s coffin lowered into the ground. We had been warned the previous evening that, in the way of the Aberdeen, only those sanctified by faith could be present as a body was laid to final rest. Dad and I just nodded, feeling powerless and small against their authority. The bonds of a father for his daughter, a sister for her blood were a small matter compared with a sinner and her god. It bothered me to think what was said at her final moments. What could the Aberdeen possibly have to share or say to someone we loved, that we could not be present to hear? My only consolation was in knowing that Sally had spent her last years building an immunity to such talk. I’d like to think God might have been there to block her spiritual ears. Dad and I watched from a distance as her coffin was carried from the church – only the elders were allowed to bear the coffin – and placed in the back of the hearse. The Aberdeen filed into their cars and followed the procession from the church to the cemetery with as much precision as they stood and sat throughout the ceremony. We were mute and empty, Dad and I, as though we were watching a movie play out before us. ‘Who is that?’ Dad pointed to Barry, standing at the far end of the carpark, as most of the cars had left.

‘Barry,’ I said. ‘I want to meet him.’ Dad walked over towards Barry and I followed. Dad held out his hand and he and Barry shook. ‘I want to thank you, Barry.’ ‘No need—’ ‘No. I want to thank you for what you meant to her.’ I felt awkward standing there beside them, knowing there was no easy fit between us all. Being reminded that Barry was Sally’s boy. ‘I say we go get a beer,’ Dad said.

I had never heard Dad talk so much in one sitting to another person. Especially someone he had never met before. Barry sat and listened, you got the feeling he was used to listening. He did it so well. I sipped my coke while Dad and Barry had a beer. I felt quite forgotten and excused myself to find the ladies bathroom. I felt Barry’s eyes stray from his beer towards me, saw his hands fumble against his glass before tuning back into Dad and his chatter about Sally and Amona and our life in Melbourne. I wondered how long I could politely absent myself before causing them to worry. I locked the toilet door and felt myself breathe out long and slow. I began thinking that there wasn’t a lot of crying at Sally’s funeral. Mum cried. But Dad and I didn’t. It felt like tears were held back behind a wall of sadness and the heavy reality of life. When I returned, Dad turned to me and smiled. I sat down beside him, Barry on the other side. The silence felt uncomfortable, like I’d interrupted a conversation neither of them knew how to return to in my presence. ‘Thing is. A father always dreams he’ll meet the most significant man in his daughter’s life.’ He sipped his beer. ‘I get the feeling I’d have liked you, Barry.

I’d have liked you a lot.’ I didn’t know what Barry had explained of their relationship to Dad, whether Barry had embellished what they had for his own benefit or Dad had just assumed a storyline of their being together. ‘Thanks for helping Button,’ he added. It felt wrong and ill-timed to bring me into the conversation. ‘It was no problems Mr Moon. Really.’ ‘Call me Brett.’ Barry nodded. ‘I want to ask you something, Barry. I’m her father. You loved her, right?’ Barry took a while to respond and I could hear Dad letting out his breath. ‘Yes,’ Barry said quietly. ‘I did love her.’ I couldn’t help but look at Barry and found him looking at me, too, before lowering his eyes. ‘Bloody hard thing to take. Losing her, hey?’ Dad continued. I could feel their grief as if it were a beast holding us down. Barry nodded again. He drank the remainder of his beer and raised his hand to Dad’s shoulder. He gripped my father firmly and the affection of that gesture made Dad cry. Barry looked at me again and I knew I had made a mistake. It wasn’t any feeling of love for me that I felt from him. It was an apology. There would never be, could never be, anything between us. He belonged to Sally. Even more because she wasn’t here.

21.

The days and weeks that followed Sally’s funeral were a blur. There was never any further mention of me moving to Darwin and Dad and I stepped forward, we opened doors, we ate. But part of us was removed from ourselves, from each other, from the world. And, yet, strangely, we were drawn closer to each other in our silence and grief. Dad and I would be together, without talking, without moving. I was plagued by nightmares. They would come suddenly, violently, and then leave without explanation. I would go many nights without one, then they would return, worse than before. When I woke drenched with sweat, my heart hammering under my ribs, I would bring to the surface of my mind every memory of Sally that I could. We would be eating at the table, kicking each other’s ankles. We would be lying together in bed talking about babies and birth and devouring an entire packet of chocolate biscuits. She would be wearing each of my dresses, twirling and posing, and in each of those memories she was perfect. Too perfect. But the nightmares didn’t end. No matter how much I tried to visualise Sally dressed in that white dress with my silk moth stitched to her bodice in the casket the morning of her funeral, I couldn’t. Dad said I had stood beside her, looking down for a long time, though I didn’t it at all. I could create a picture of it, I could impose my notion of what it would have looked like, but that memory didn’t come from inside. I believed that it happened but it was like my body just wouldn’t accept the experience. Dad told me not to worry, but somehow I knew I had to be able to her that morning. That without it, my memory of her was incomplete.

22.

‘What do you think, Ruby? Hmm?’ Mr Grandy said, showing me the latest delivery of fabrics. I took the end of the chiffon and ran it through my fingers, watching the way it slid, dream-like, floating free from my fingers. Mr Grandy took his glasses from his nose and rested a finger on his chin as he looked around his shop. ‘Yes,’ he said more to himself. He turned back to me and clasped his hands together. ‘We should make a display of red over there,’ he pointed to the entrance row of fabrics just behind the window display. ‘Today I feel very Valentino,’ he said, exaggerating an accent and flamboyantly waving his hands. I laughed and ed how I used to feel before the accident. He clicked his fingers and I followed him, assisting him in removing bolts of drill and cotton, patterned satins and polyesters. We placed those bolts on the counter while we carried each of the red bolts to that display. There were plain silks and satins, embroidered silks and brocades. Every shade of red, from cherry to maroon and, of course, the colour made famous by the Italian designer himself, ‘Valentino Red’. ‘Have you changed your mind?’ Mr Grandy said awkwardly, his mouth full of pins which he took out, one at a time, to fasten each end of fabric back on itself. ‘I just can’t do it,’ I said, bending to help him with the last of the pins. ‘It’s just such a shame, my dear girl. Your formal is a once in a lifetime occasion. You only get one chance.’ I shrugged. I’d already made up my mind. Dad and Amona tried a thousand ways and quiet conversations to encourage me to reconsider, but I just didn’t want to go to the formal. I was adamant. They didn’t want me regretting it later on; they knew Sally would have wanted me to go. And while they may have been right, I knew I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to dress up, I didn’t want any boy

pretending to like me for an occasion that only reminded me of Sally for reasons I couldn’t discuss with anyone. It was hard settling back into my normal routine when Dad and I came back home after Sally’s funeral. On the plane coming home I felt a longing for my old life, for everything familiar. But once I returned it didn’t feel that way at all. I felt awkward and out of touch with everything and everyone.

I returned to school amid the excitement and anxiety of the imminent end to our school days. The end of high school and the beginning of the rest of our lives had almost arrived. Everyone seemed to be cramming study notes or finishing assignments, filling out application forms and making appointments with the guidance officer and career counsellors. Becky and Rachel were both applying for courses in hospitality with dreams of touring the island resorts up north where, they assured me, there were bound to be good-looking men. It was as though they’d planned the rest of their lives in the short space without me. They were so excited about the opportunities they could see in their immediate future, they quickly lost interest in Sally and me running away to Tonga. I hadn’t told them about Barry. They were good to me at first and I found their company comforting. They wanted all the details and it felt good to talk about it with them. Sally had once been their friend, too, and we’d shared some tears together. But I couldn’t or explain for why I still felt trapped in the events of those weeks so long after I returned. It only took a few weeks before they seemed to have forgotten that Sally had died, while I could not let it go. I found myself making excuses for why I couldn’t spend lunchtimes with them. By the time the end of the year came rushing towards us in a blur of exams and parties and university applications, it wasn’t so easy to lose myself. I took to finding quiet corners and shady spaces in the far corner of the school grounds. I longed for quiet and darkness and space. Strangely, once I was tucked away in some forgotten corner for more than a few minutes, I felt an overwhelming gratitude for what I had, all the people who were in my life and I would dissolve into tears. I felt like a see-saw that had no fulcrum for balance. Becky came over one afternoon about a month before the formal and, after

watching something mindless on TV and finishing an entire bag of Cheezels, she asked me if I would make her dress. She began by describing the design in intimate detail – she had it all worked out – she had even been down to see Mr Grandy about material, which I knew must have been on one of my afternoons off because I hadn’t seen her and Mr Grandy had never said a word. From the moment she asked I felt a bitter taste rise up in my throat and all I could think of was how I could get out of it and refuse without ruining what little of the friendship remained between us. Her excitement was palpable, she grabbed my hand and squealed when she described it to me. I realised she absolutely expected me to say I’d do it. But I hadn’t touched my fabrics or sewing machine since I’d returned. Every time I thought about it I grew heavy and tired, it just felt too hard. Dad and Amona had been tiptoeing around that subject. I’d heard them talking about it one night but I was glad they kept their distance and never confronted me directly. If it was meant to return, then it would. At that point I honestly didn’t care if I never picked up another piece of fabric in my life. To sew, that is. I was perfectly happy working with Mr Grandy, in fact, on those afternoons and occasional Saturday, I felt better than at any time during the week. Mr Grandy seemed to understand that you couldn’t spring back from something like that too quickly. I’d noticed he’d quietly removed any sign suggesting my design services and he’ll probably never know how much that small gesture meant to me. Of course the other reason I felt so comfortable around Mr Grandy was in knowing we shared a certain kind of mother. And he knew about Barry. I told Becky how much I would have loved to make her dress but I just didn’t think I could do it after everything that had happened. She blinked at me, clearly stunned, for what felt like an uncomfortably long time without words, before I added to my previous statement by saying that somehow I just couldn’t sew like I used to, blithering about how it was wound up with Sally and how I knew it sounded silly, but there it was. All her excitement, her energetic hand movements stopped. She turned her body to face the television, pulling her feet off the couch to position her body in an overly controlled stillness. ‘Oh,’ she said bitterly. ‘So you won’t make it for me.’ There was no questioning in her voice, no trace of understanding or empathy. There was nothing I could say.

She stood, announcing she had really better be going, and left. It was not so hard to find reasons to excuse myself from the group during lunchtimes after that. Becky, I’m sure, invented many reasons of her own. I could not decide if it was a fair and reasonable thing to have said I wouldn’t make her dress or whether I was just being mean and unkind because Becky had really given me no choice about the matter at all. It was too much like my mum. If she needed me to do something, give her something, help her with something, believe in what she believed, then there was always something wrong with me if I didn’t do it. Too selfish, too unkind, too stubborn. Mum’s latest letter at that time reminded me that she only wanted me to come to the Lord for my own good. She knew what was good for me and so did God, and she would continue praying for me until I matured enough to realise this. I longed for her to talk of Sally but she never did. Not once.

Mr Grandy and I stood looking at the handiwork of our display and I could tell he was happy with the result. He rocked, slightly, on the balls of his feet and puffed his chest out. He was a man of simple achievements and I loved him for his quiet satisfaction. I suppressed an urge to hug him, right there. You could make Mr Grandy’s day with a kind word or flattering comment or a simple teacake. He was one person I knew who seemed truly content with himself and his own place in the world. ‘Well, if Valentino Red can’t inspire you, my girl, then I truly think there is no hope for you.’ I smiled. Mr Grandy waved to a customer disappearing out of the front door, the small bell tinkling as the door closed. ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I think the classification you girls have for boys is one man short.’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘Your Romeos and Casanovas,’ he said and right then I regretted ever telling him.

‘Oh.’ ‘A Valentine, by way of expanding your mind to understand another type of gentleman altogether, takes pleasure in the happiness of others.’ I didn’t quite understand. Mr Grandy turned from the Valentino Red display towards the office where he had been printing out some of the latest Valentino designs to hang in the front window. ‘Legend has it,’ he continued as he collected his posters then returned down the three stairs to the counter again, ‘that the first Saint Valentine was killed for disobeying the orders of some Roman Caesar-or-other and marrying young lovers in secret. Something about thinking that single men made better soldiers or some-such-rubbish.’ I’d never been one to embrace the romantic notion of Valentine’s Day, though, as you can imagine, it had always been one of the major highlights of Becky’s calendar year. She’d begin preparing weeks in advance, making a list of potential valentines from whom she might expect some attention. She would highlight the names of particular interest to her, narrowing this list down to the three names to whom she’d entrust with her romantic aspirations. Throughout our entire high school years she never once received anything on Valentine’s Day. Even when she was officially dating one of the science students at the beginning of February in grade ten. Come February fifteenth of that year she had dumped him. I followed Mr Grandy to the window display and held the posters in place while he attached them to the fishing line suspended from the ceiling. ‘Well,’ I said, wondering how to accommodate this new information. ‘I’m just saying that some men show their character in ways you couldn’t classify as Romeo romantic or Casanov . . .’ he stumbled for the correct word ending, ‘. . . ian.’ I laughed. ‘I don’t think that’s a word.’ ‘It is now,’ Mr Grandy’s mouth creased to one side and his smile made him appear playfully youthful. ‘So what you’re saying is—’

‘What I’m saying,’ Mr Grandy, straightened up, ‘is that Barry might be thinking he’s doing a gentlemanly thing in giving you some space.’ At first I convinced myself that not calling Barry was because of the way my return had become a black hole, pulling me into it. It may have been true, but there were opportunities and moments I could have done what I longed to do and call. Yet it was the one thing I refused myself. And one afternoon at work I found myself telling Mr Grandy about Barry. He had a way of luring me into conversation. I’d begun identifying boys in my year and considering their virtues. I willed myself to feel something for one of them. That sweeping, silly fluttering I had known once, if only briefly. But I couldn’t feel it at all. I knew it still existed within my experience because thinking of Barry brought it back. Sometimes it was only a faded, memory-like feeling. And other times it was louder and insistent. But my emotions were like an arrhythmic ocean, anyway. Running hot and cold, overwhelming and distant at any one moment, any one day. Eric Barrada seemed like the most logical attachment so at night I willed myself to see him in my mind and imagine the feel of his body next to mine. I tried to convince myself that if I learned how to feel like that, if I prepped my body for that experience, then it might come true. What I wanted was for something, someone, to sweep me away. I wanted a wind to run through me. I wanted the feeling of being propelled forward and lifted up from where I was. But I could not find it. One evening Dad said I could see a counsellor if I wanted to. He said he’d been seeing someone and it really helped to talk things through. He made it sound as normal and inconsequential as visiting the dentist, though I couldn’t be convinced. It would have been one thing to talk about Sally – there was no denying what had happened to her and what kind of effect that might have been having on me and my life – but Barry seemed like something shameful. He was complicated. He belonged to Sally, not me. Perhaps what I feared was being told I was right. That the intensity of what I felt for him was really a reflection of my feeling of loss for Sally. It made sense. And I could see how it might have been true. But it wasn’t. So I’d open my phone and listen to Barry’s message over and over.

‘And another thing,’ Mr Grandy continued as if our Barry conversation was already over. ‘You should consider a future in this business, you know, kid.’ Mr Grandy had been suggesting in subtle – and not so subtle ways – that I should think about making a step towards a future in the fashion industry. I had trouble deciding what I might do the following week, let alone the next year or the rest of my life. I seemed stuck on a simple wheel that was turning round and round. And there was something comfortable in that. But Mr Grandy could challenge me with ideas whereas Dad and Amona could not. I wasn’t to know then that Amona had taken the liberty of chatting to Mr Grandy – with Dad’s encouragement – and through him she gained a quick appreciation for all levels of the fashion business. Mr Grandy knew much more about wider opportunities in fashion, too, given his connections. I wasn’t to know then, either, that Mr Grandy had been making some inquiries of his own.

23.

I was so relieved when the formal night finally arrived because it meant an end to Mr Grandy and Dad and Amona’s attempts at persuading me to go. By the evening it was too late to reconsider, there was no way anyone could change my mind. Even if – by some deranged notion – I decided I wanted to go, it was too late. Tickets had been sold, places booked, tables arranged. There was no placecard at the Beachside High School Formal for Ruby Moon. I had been anticipating this night, thinking about which video I’d choose to watch. I had been leaning towards something with Ginger Rogers because it seemed to be the kind of evening only her grace and poise could restore. I was standing in front of the wall of videos when Dad poked his head around the door. ‘We’re going to Charlie’s tonight, Button,’ he said. ‘What?’ ‘And you have to dress up.’ I was totally confused and turned away from the wall of videos to face Dad. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I said, crossing my arms. ‘And even if I did, why would I dress up?’ Dad held his hands up and shook his head. ‘Not an option,’ he said, smiling. He turned and walked towards his room, whistling. I was furious. Who was this person? I was too confused with my father’s uncharacteristic stubbornness to form any specific words to argue with him. By the time I had followed him to his room, he’d gone inside and the door had closed. So I did what anyone in my situation would have done. I sat down on the floor beside his door, my back to the wall. And crossed my arms for good measure. I was suddenly so angry. It felt like there was a vortex made of steel wool in my guts. It clouded my mind and thumped in my veins. This was not my dad, the man of predictable diplomacy. This was Amona.

Amona didn’t move into our house straightaway after Dad and I came home. They didn’t discuss it with me but I know they decided to ease into the change for my benefit. After losing Sally I’d been finding it hard to adapt to anything new and it seemed as if the whole world was changing around me. School was finishing, my friends were all moving on and I had to scramble to catch up on work I had missed, as well as completing all the current work. Even before Sally, I hadn’t given all that much thought to what I would do with my future. I wasn’t the kind of person to think too much ahead of myself. I was like Dad in that regard. We had a comfortable rhythm between us, treading small wheels to get us from one day to the next, one week to the next. But Sally had changed that for me. I knew I had to take responsibility, because I didn’t want my life slipping by and falling away, but I didn’t know what to do with that thought. I didn’t want my world coming to a sudden end, but, if it did, I wanted to know I had lived every day of it. I didn’t appreciate Amona’s presence in our house at first. The thing was I liked her, I liked her a lot, but I was trying not to like the situation, making myself feel sad and unwanted. I’d been taking every opportunity to turn what might have been a positive experience into a reinforcement of my loss. Inwardly, I blamed Dad for appearing too quick to move on and forget. Amona made him happy; you could see that they both made each other happy. I’d go to sleep with my thoughts turning black at myself and anyone I felt didn’t understand. It was strange, part of me understood what I was doing, but the other part of me didn’t know and didn’t care. Dad and Amona never confronted me about it and I could think of a dozen justifiable reasons they should have confronted me with a parental lecture. But they didn’t and I’m so glad. It would have only made it worse and harder to come back out of the small dark hole I was digging around me. I heard Amona’s car pull up into the garage. Her car door opened and closed, her heels clicked on the concrete and the door from the garage into the age opened and closed in a rush. I didn’t move. Amona scurried down the age, her arms laden with bags. She stepped over me – as if I wasn’t there at all – opened the door to their bedroom and closed it again. There was definitely a

conspiracy. The door opened again and Dad appeared. I looked up to find him dressed in his best black suit, bow tie fastened about his neck. He smelled of sandalwood and spice. He looked so handsome. He stepped over me and headed towards the kitchen. I followed behind. ‘You either get dressed up and us for dinner or I’ll have to make you starve,’ he said, the determination in his voice rattling me. It verged on scorn. He was toying with me. ‘Starve or feast on chow mein and curry puffs.’ I decided I knew how to handle this. If I had to go along with this half-baked idea, I’d change into clean jeans and T-shirt. For the sake of good Chinese and the semblance of a happy – if not demented – household, I’d go along with the plan. To a point. I turned and stormed off towards my room. I heard Dad following me, so I stopped. ‘You have to wear that midnight-blue dress you’ve had hanging on your mannequin for months.’ I swallowed. No way. Absolutely no way! ‘You don’t have a choice, Ruby,’ he said quietly, behind me. The shock of hearing my name, of Dad actually saying my name. ‘I think it’s about time I called you by the name I gave you. Don’t you?’ Something cracked inside. Like I’d been hit hard from nowhere. I turned and faced him and blubbered. I thought I was over all of that. I didn’t think anything could reduce me to tears anymore. Certainly not in front of anyone. Dad pulled me close. ‘Oh my darling Ruby,’ he said. ‘Tears are not going to get you out of wearing that dress.’ Despite this tone of instant sadness, I laughed.

It was still a stupid idea. But, inside my room, I told myself that wearing this midnight-blue dress, the one I made after Sally had gone, wouldn’t be half as strange as wearing that apricot floral disgrace of Pearl’s. I told myself it didn’t mean anything. That all I had to do was undress and redress, get in the car and go out. I tried telling myself it meant nothing more than that. I had not removed that dress from the mannequin, long before Sally’s accident and it felt wrong in a way I still couldn’t explain. But I was hungry and perhaps part of me really wanted to go because I unhooked the clasps and the zip and slipped the dress away from the mannequin. I had an overwhelming sense that Sally was in the room. I held my breath. I didn’t want to breathe or blink or think anything that would make her disappear. I felt like I could almost see her, hear her talking to me, saying things like ‘What do you think you are doing? I can’t believe you’ve made all this fuss over a stupid dress. Well, all right, it’s beautiful but, jeez. Really? You always did hold on to everything too long. Your baby blanket, your dummy, your doll. I’ve been gone for ages, Button. I’d have already let you go.’ I felt her smile and there was that same sense of warmth and peace she could give you in that gesture. I knew then that she might say the kinds of things that made you think she didn’t care or didn’t take much to heart, but everything she really wanted you to know and feel and understand was right there in those moments when she looked at you like there was no other moment in the world. Her smile could wash away a thousand doubts as soon as light up a room. That was her; that was Sally. I kissed my fingers, held my palm flat beside my mouth and blew it into the air that surrounded her memory. I closed my eyes, thinking this was one of those moments you see in movies or read about in books where everything comes together. I expected to seeing her in that white dress, my silk moth stitched to the bodice, but I still couldn’t. What I could do, only just, was slip that dress over my own lanky frame, pull the zipper up and look at myself in the mirror. I looked like her. I did look just like her.

24.

We were an odd sight in Charlie’s Chinese Restaurant. The three of us sitting in our finery around a lazy Susan filled with chicken chow mein, fried rice, garlic prawns, honey chicken and Mongolian lamb. The remains of our entrees of satay sticks, prawn toast and spring rolls were on one small plate in the centre. The restaurant was full, the rest of the patrons dressed in casual jeans, even thongs. Amona drank green tea from a small cup that had no handle while Dad had white wine. ‘Ignore them,’ Dad said as people turned to look at us. ‘We’re multi-millionaires,’ he said, ‘and it’s our custom to dress like this and eat wherever we like.’ That brought the first laugh of the evening. Then Dad produced his joke book. ‘This took me a week of scouting in lunchtimes to find.’ I couldn’t the last time I laughed so much. Yes I could. It would have been my birthday dinner before Sally’s accident. We grew full pretty quickly and I was aware of how fitted that dress really was. It wasn’t like wearing my usual jeans and shirt, something comfortable that stretched and moulded to my shape. This dress felt prickly and awkward. It had me sitting straight, being careful about how I let my legs rest under the table. Dad pulled out his camera and we leaned into each other while Dad held the camera and took snaps. Of the fifteen or so that he took, there was only one where he’d managed to get us all in together. In all of the others at least one of us was missing a head, or all of us missing our heads entirely. I think we found those pictures funnier than the joke book. Dad held up his hand to signal the waiter and I didn’t think I could eat anything else, but Dad ordered dessert. I was thinking he’d gone a little overboard with the quantities until he announced that there would be two extra people ing

us. I didn’t think it would be anyone from school – there was no way any of my friends would have given up a moment of their formal time to come here. Surely. And neither should they. But I didn’t have to wait long to find out who it was. I saw Mr Grandy accompanied by an older lady coming through the main door. He waved enthusiastically as he saw us and I waved back. I turned to Dad and Amona; they were smiling. ‘My dear Ruby,’ Mr Grandy said, arriving beside me. He leant down and kissed me on the cheek before presenting me with a small bunch of roses. ‘Oh but you didn’t have to,’ I tried to say but he waved away most of it before I’d finished the sentence. He turned to the woman. ‘Ruby, this is my mother, Molly Goodweather.’ ‘Hello,’ I managed to say, holding out my hand. She took it – her fingers felt cold and fluttery, but her grip was firm. I felt as though the room was spinning around me. Molly Goodweather! One of the greatest names in the history of Australian fashion was Mr Grandy’s mother? ‘I’ve been so longing to meet you, Ruby,’ she said, pulling out a seat beside me and sitting down. Mr Grandy moved to a spare seat beside Dad. The dessert arrived and I looked at Mr Grandy for some kind of explanation. Why had he never told me? ‘Okay, Mother, how about you tell Ruby.’ I could not swallow my ice-cream. Molly Goodweather? My hands were sweaty. All those times Mr Grandy and I had rolled our eyes toward one another during her phone calls. Molly Goodweather! Tell Ruby what, exactly? ‘I’ve set up an interview for you with the Melbourne School of Fashion, Ruby,’ Molly said. ‘You can thank me when you’ve made a name for yourself.’ Molly dipped her spoon into her dessert. She consumed a considerable amount of wine and engaged us in a lengthy discussion about everything wrong with our country, politics and the general state of affairs. ‘Mothers,’ Mr Grandy whispered as we were leaving.

Not long after school finished, five boxes addressed to me arrived at our house, all from Tonga. Inside were all of the damaged rods, cocoons and throwsters waste I had seen in the baskets in the silkhouse. Kilograms of silk waste, collected and saved over those seasons when something disturbed the equilibrium of those worms and their cocoons were improperly formed or they emerged too early in the season, ruining the cocoons by biting through the ends before Pearl had time to boil and spin them. She had boxed all of the raw, unspun silk and sent it to me. There was a brief letter.

Dearest Ruby, Life is about taking what’s given to us and creating something wonderful. Love always, Grandma Pearl xxxx

I stuck the boxes back up with masking tape and stacked them in a corner of the garage. I hadn’t heard from Becky or any other of my friends much at all. There was a phone message, left hurriedly, from Becky saying she and Rachel had been accepted for work on Hayman Island and would be off in a matter of weeks. I was relieved she sounded happy and there was no trace of the bitterness that existed between us since the formal and I was so glad she seemed to have forgiven me. I managed to catch her before they left and we chatted happily for an hour and it felt good to be connected to her again, even if I could feel us drifting apart, inevitably, as we found worlds of our own. We reminisced about school, the musical and made each other promise that no matter where we moved to, wherever life took us, we’d always find time to catch up. I don’t know how much of that either of us actually believed, but it was more important that we really meant it. She promised to write and tell me everything that happened. I reminded her that Casanovas were a trap. She owed it to females everywhere to resist their evil ways and pursue the true Romeo. Becky assured me that her life held no greater purpose than that.

I hung up, musing on the notion of a Valentine and considering – to my shame – whether there was any truth in what Mr Grandy had said. I know I hadn’t called Barry since returning from Darwin, but he hadn’t called me, either. It was easy to interpret this as his general disinterest. Surely he’d rather put the entire Moon family far behind him, but Mr Grandy may have had a point, too. What if he thought I needed space? After all, by his own ission he’d given Sally exactly that.

One day, a few weeks before Christmas, I spent longer than usual at the beach. I walked along the shore, my jeans rolled up to my knees, my Converse knotted around my neck, letting the water rush over my feet and between my toes. I trod on shells and dug footprints in the sand, watching them slowly shrink and dissolve into the sand as if they had never existed at all. I forgot about Sally and Mum and Dad and everything definitive about my life. I felt the sun caress my skin and the wind whip against me and I was no more or less in that moment than any other one thing. Creativity and ideas fired between every synapse underneath my skin and I felt radiant from the inside out. I walked home barefoot, feeling every rock and pebble, every patch of broken asphalt and paver, every ounce of soft grass and broken ground. I threw my shoes in the corner beside the front door and ran a bath. While the tub filled with hot water I dug out every candle I could find in the house and covered the floor, the shower top, the soap holder, the basin and the floor with them. I stripped free of my clothes and balled them on the floor in my room. I switched on the CD player, turned the volume up and let Vivaldi fill every crevice and space, every inside and out of the house. I lit every one of the candles and sank my body under the hot water, bubbles clinging to my skin, the sudden change in temperature sending goosebumps radiating along my arms and neck. I sank beneath the water and closed my eyes and Vivaldi was muted inside my cocoon. I held my breath for as long as I could, felt my need for breath build fire inside my lungs. I lurched out, gasping, sending water slopping onto the floor and pooling around the candles. I laughed. Without reason. I let my hair hang lank and wet around my face, drips of water falling free and sliding along my skin, sliding my arms into my bathrobe and knotting it around my middle. In the sewing room I opened the cupboard and took every dress from its hanger, spreading them across the floor. I fluted the skirts and bent the

bodices as though invisible mannequins were wearing them. They overlapped and bumped and danced one into the other. I stood on the sewing table and photographed them from different angles, narrowing the zoom and widening the scope until I had, perhaps, a hundred photographs. That night I printed and cut and pasted and drew. By the time the sun rose and Dad and Amona had stumbled out for their morning coffee, I had a folio of sketches and photographs, material swatches and descriptions linked by an unbroken silk thread which I had sewn, ducking and weaving around every carefully placed picture, on to every black page. The next morning I took my folio and attended my interview for the Melbourne School of Fashion.

25.

A year after Sally’s death I returned to Tonga. I had intended on being in Tonga for the whole silk season, but as it turned out I had to miss the first few weeks and, all the while, I was as restless for the company of those ravenous worms and their insatiable pursuit of life. It felt as though I had never left Tonga at all, arriving at a similar time in their development as I had left them, though, I was tending the hope of a new generation; the eggs that had been laid by those worms I never saw grow fully. Pearl was still wrapped in the same sarong, her hair pulled back into a grey ponytail and her feet still bare. The ocean pounded, as ever, against the shore in the distance and the same intoxicating perfume filled every breath I took in the first hours. There was no rain when I arrived, no heavy weight hanging over my head. No guilt sitting in my stomach and no sister waiting, dead already, in a hospital bed back home. Pearl met me at the airport, crushing me to her, along with the same friend who had driven me to the airport last time. She had rearranged her house for me. There was a partition around the couch, a small wardrobe and mirror. A set of drawers – each of the three painted a different colour – beside my bed which was neatly made with clean sheets and a velvety blanket picturing an exotic scene of palm trees, blue water and cool sand. There was no time to unpack my bag, not straightaway, as Pearl quickly disappeared out of the front door around the side of the house towards the silkhouse, calling my name. A warm glow spread inside me, beginning at my toes and rising all the way through my body. My skin tingled and I felt like a thousand cobwebs and sad thoughts, complicated memories and tensions inside me were loosened and set free. I slipped off my sneakers and ran to her, making a pact with myself to dedicate these two months in Tonga as part of every year from then on.

I could hear the sound of those ravenous worms, a steady, thumping rain, at the door of the silkhouse and my skin prickled, and goosebumps ran up the length of my arms. I had forgotten that earthy, pungent smell which, again, overwhelmed me as I stepped through the door. Pearl had also rearranged the silkhouse. There were more shelves, more baskets and worms – I was sure of it. The chopping bench was longer, a second board and knife waiting for me. Smiling, I ran to my side of the bench, tying the apron around my waist, and taking the knife in my hand, knowing exactly what to do. We didn’t speak much at all over the next hours, binding ourselves to each other once more by the efforts of our labour. Strips of light streamed in through the door and the broken window, our chopping sounding like muted Tongan lali drums. I took to the task with vigour, chopping roughly, quickly, to fill my basket. I felt the life of those worms pulling me forward, along their golden thread, towards a glorious new beginning. Those worms and their lives were like promise and hope. I began to understand what bound Pearl to their simple mystery because I felt the same connection. In front of us, all around us, was the energy of life and growth. Beauty was only a month away and it depended, in part, on what I could do.

For the first few days, Pearl and I slipped into an easy routine and it was clear she enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed hers. I liked her sense of humour, the way she found simple things amusing, as well as the kinds of things that were not polite to laugh about. She would be good company at Charlie’s Chinese Restaurant on special occasions. We had the silkworm baskets numbered, after my suggestion to do so, as I found that occasionally Pearl would skip one basket for the next, not realising her mistake. Knowing her ion for these little creatures, she’d be mortified to find she hadn’t been giving each batch equal attention. I was noticing different things about her this time that I hadn’t seen before. She seemed elderly in a way I hadn’t appreciated on my last hurried visit and I had a sudden understanding that she wouldn’t be here forever. Pearl took me to visit each of her friends and I felt the same iration for their

generous affection. I took photographs of everything. We walked into town and shopped at the markets and collected baskets of mulberry leaves. At night, between shifts, we talked together and Pearl made me tell her details of everything. She taught me how to play cards. Her favourite game, five hundred, and I laughed to myself thinking of Barry and that night I visited Boof and Cassie. I wondered about their baby. Whether it was a boy or a girl, realising that baby would be almost one year old.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said, moving between the silkworm baskets, where my task was to remove each worm to a clean basket, which had been lined with freshly chopped leaves. I disposed of the leaf litter and droppings into a larger basket, which I emptied out the back in the compost pile once it was full. Once one basket of worms had been transferred, I began with the next. ‘You’ve held onto that coat for a long time.’ Pearl looked up from her task and wiped the back of her arm across her brow. She nodded, absently, as if she’d rather the acknowledgement went unnoticed. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking since Sally. And being here last year. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you then. Sometimes I think that what has happened to me is so bad but I wouldn’t have been as strong as you.’ I heard Pearl sighing softly. ‘You don’t know how strong you are until you need it, Ruby.’ I moved onto another silkworm basket and heard Pearl begin to hum behind me. I understood what it meant to hold on to something for so long you couldn’t imagine doing without it. I was just eighteen and yet things from my childhood – which seemed a lifetime away – felt too hard to relinquish. Even small, inconsequential things. Needing those things was probably an irrational attachment to what I truly longed for but could never have, but then grieving is all about feeling irrational. I’d kept Barry’s message for much the same reason.

‘There must be someone special in your life,’ Pearl said and I shrugged. ‘You can’t tell me there aren’t at least some appealing boys at college.’ ‘I study fashion,’ I told her, raising my eyebrows. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, then if not college . . . Well, there must be good-looking boys somewhere in Melbourne,’ she said, somewhat defeated by the logistics. ‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘Don’t lay your hopes on a Tongan boy,’ she said, lowering her voice. I laughed. ‘No.’ Pearl busied herself at the chopping table, shrugging as if I was making this conversation more difficult than it had to be. She stopped, suddenly, looking up at me. ‘Oh,’ she said, knowingly as if she’d guessed the answer. I had no idea what she meant. ‘It’s perfectly okay with me,’ she said as she scraped her leaves into the basket. ‘You know the Tongans have a perfectly civilised way of dealing with this,’ she said. ‘Though they’re all men from what I understand. I don’t think it’s occurred to them there might be female equivalents. They let them dress up as women and everything. Quite odd. For a religious culture they’re surprisingly—’ I cut her short. ‘You think I’m . . . that I don’t like boys, that I like—’ ‘You don’t?’ ‘No,’ I said adamantly, laughing. ‘I’m not gay.’ ‘Oh,’ she said again. ‘Well, what’s the problem?’ ‘It’s complicated.’ ‘Really,’ she said as if it couldn’t be further from the truth.

She put her knife down and walked around the table, wiped her hands on her apron and took me by the hand. She pulled me out of the silkhouse, back into her house. ‘Sit down while I make us a cup of tea.’ ‘What?’ ‘Have you thought about it?’ she said, sitting down opposite me. ‘You don’t like wearing dresses,’ she said, sizing up my T-shirt and jeans, ‘you don’t seem particularly interested in boys. I’m just wondering. Maybe you’ve had no one to talk to about this sort of thing.’ Pearl was so serious. Her forehead was creased with worry lines and behind her, at the kitchen bench, the kettle began steaming from the spout, framing her head as though it was actually coming from her ears. I started laughing. Really the whole thing was so absurd. I laughed harder and was caught in one of those moments where I really couldn’t stop. I pushed my chair backwards to hold my stomach. It was really not that funny, but I just couldn’t stop. Pearl considered me with confused amusement, which added to the hilarity of the situation. She leant back on her chair. The kettle stopped steaming, the automatic shut off clicking in, and she smiled. She laughed, too, her boobs shaking under her sarong and I found it all the funnier. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Oh my god,’ I managed to say in between my spluttering laughter. ‘You actually thought I was gay?’ ‘You’ve got to it, you tick all the boxes!’ ‘Except I’m in love with a boy called Barry!’ I said without thinking. I felt the peak of laughter break, you know when you feel like you’ve run out of gas and you try to hold on to that feeling but it subsides. I was catching my breath, making little groans and realising I’d said more than I meant to. And underneath that laughter was a feeling of sadness and confusion. ‘Barry?’ Pearl said mockingly. ‘What kind of a name is that?’

I slumped forward on the table, resting my head on my arms. ‘Oh my god. My stomach hurts.’ Pearl stood to make the tea. ‘And what does this “Barry” do?’ But I shouldn’t have said anything. I felt stupid and ashamed. How was it possible to be in love with your dead sister’s boyfriend. It just sounded wrong. ‘He works on a croc jumping boat,’ I said, though I don’t know why I did. ‘Hmmm,’ Pearl said, not knowing what to make of his job. ‘I know it doesn’t sound much.’ I put my head on my hands at the table and sat like that for a minute. I felt ashamed. It was all wrong and yet I couldn’t help it. Why did love have to be so precise, so disarming and wrong? And tears came to my eyes, taking me completely by surprise. Pearl turned from the bench to see me. ‘Oh you poor darling,’ she said, coming to stand beside me. I felt her hands around my shoulders. ‘Bad as all that, then,’ she said. ‘I know all about that.’

Pearl and I took time out between tending the silkworms to go down to the beach. We lay down on our backs, closed our eyes and soaked up the sun. We wore ridiculously over-sized sunglasses that Pearl must have had for years. They actually looked antique. ‘When Jack died,’ Pearl said, just after we’d closed our eyes, ‘I’d come down here every time I felt overwhelmed. Nothing better than feeling the sun on your skin to know you’re alive and breathing. A bit of warmth to chase away cold feelings.’ I lifted my sunglasses above my eyes. Pearl looked like a beached whale, her large, round body wrapped in one of her colourful sarongs and the sight of her made me smile. I hoped I would be like her when I reached that age,

unencumbered by fashion and futility. Bound to my own simple ions and myself. I lay back down again and closed my eyes. I blamed the sun and Pearl and her capacity to lull me into her own sense of security. But I began talking about Barry. I told her everything and when I was done she reached over and took my hand. ‘I don’t know what it is with the girls in our family, Ruby. Not one of us knows how to take an easy road,’ she laughed. ‘All I know is there was truly only one man for me, one man for your mother and it seems there’s only one for you. There’s nothing to be done except to let him know how you feel. I often think how differently life might have turned out if I had kicked up merry hell to find Jack before my parents put me on that train. You’ve got to ring that boy, Ruby. You don’t know how it will turn out, you don’t even know that he hasn’t found someone else. But you’ve got to give it a chance. You know, it would mean the world to me if you did.’ We sat up and the sand fell from our backs. I leant forward, resting my hands on my knees. ‘Why silk?’ I asked her. ‘I mean how is it you’ve ended up growing silk in this little place?’ ‘Your mother always hated moving around when she was small.’ Pearl sighed. ‘But I was restless. I could never settle in one place for very long. She always wanted a dog and I was forever telling her we couldn’t have one. She wanted a father, too. And she couldn’t have that, either. You know, even when you’re a parent, Ruby, you don’t lose being your own self. Part of me knew it would be better for her if we settled down somewhere permanent, but I could never manage it. I’d feel this wind inside. See, moving on was how I felt settled. She had this one friend in a place we stayed for a while, Sally. They got on so well. They had mulberry trees in this town, all over, and Sally and your mum got to keeping them. Once a year these little eggs would hatch and you could love something into life for a while. We kept those eggs in a box as we moved around each year. When we came here and after Jack died, for the first time in so long I didn’t feel like going anywhere. In fact, I haven’t left this place since. I saw all these mulberry trees and it reminded me of Jan. And I understood what she must have felt,’ she paused. ‘She came home from school, once, and her homework was to draw our family tree. She was supposed to put her parents in the trunk, her grandparents in the roots and her siblings as the leaves on the branches.’ She

laughed but it was the sound of someone trying to maintain a veneer of indifference. ‘I always told her she had no grandparents. After what they did to me, I didn’t think,’ she stopped and cleared her throat. ‘I found her piece of paper screwed up in the bin. Two names don’t make much of a tree. When I asked her what she handed in for her homework she opened the silkworm box and said . . .’ Pearl genuinely laughed, ‘she said “I told the teacher we fed our family tree to these worms”.’ Despite the years of pain and complications Pearl had just revealed, I smiled and we laughed together. ‘Your mother could be as hard as nails,’ she said. ‘I loved her spirit, Ruby. I always hated the trouble she caused me but I loved her spirit.’

Pearl and I settled into a comfortable rhythm. We had the silkworms and the leaves, we played cards and drank tea. Each morning we strolled into the markets. I began to understand what Pearl loved about those worms. I could see them growing bigger each day. I fed them, changed their baskets, watched them shed their skin and grow. My goodness how they grew. We began anticipating the day they would start to change and Pearl was visibly excited by the prospect. Her face glowed. One morning when we went out into the silkhouse to check on the first basket, we realised we wouldn’t be waiting any longer. We took the first basket from the shelf and the fattened worms were still and slow. Some of them had their heads raised up. Their heads moved slowly as if they were looking for something above them. Pearl quickly took them from the basket and placed them into the spinning baskets she had made ready on the other side of the room. It took us all day to check through the baskets, taking worm after worm from their home of leaves to their new place where they would begin to spin. I hardly had time to watch the progress of the ones that had started, so busy were we with transferring the worms. We didn’t want them spinning their cocoons in the feeding baskets. Rather we wanted them spinning at a place where their initial silk would form a stable, flat platform to encourage a perfectly rounded, perfectly moulded cocoon. We took a break to get something to eat and drink, though we were quiet. I ed what Pearl told me about those two seasons when something went

wrong and the worms spun flat half-formed rods instead. I hadn’t thought of Sally all that much since I’d been there, certainly less than I had been doing before I arrived, but it had been a year since the accident and now she came back to me. I had this new image of her driving home, one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on her stomach where there was a small and expectant life growing beneath her skin. I would so love to have known where she had been, what she had been thinking and why she was coming home. But I would never know. Something went wrong and she swerved off the road, lost control and wrapped her car around the tree. If she had put off coming home just one more day, one more week she might have made it. I was fascinated by the progress in the silkhouse. I lit a kerosene lantern and sat beside the worms as they turned their faces upwards, making slow and steady figure eights above them, pulling that beautiful thread from their bodies into a cloak around themselves. I wished Sally was there with me, both of us together. Two wings of the one moth. For days we watched those beautiful creatures complete their cocoons, each of them becoming slowly invisible. We were surrounded by thousands of golden orbs that, to the outside world, appeared inert and lifeless. But it was as though I could almost hear them, feel them, deep inside. Where everything was changing. Pearl brought me tea and toast with jam to eat and, though she said nothing, I wondered what she thought of me. I had been there beside them for days. Rarely leaving, just watching and keeping silent vigil. To anyone else it would have appeared as though I had lost my mind. But those golden cocoons, with their almost life inside were, to me, my Sally. Every last one of them. I wasn’t there with Sally in those days I should have been. I wasn’t naive enough to think it would have mattered much to her, but her baby was alive in the same way those babies were alive. They were not fully changed, or emerged, nor were they unliving. It should have mattered to me that I was with Sally and her baby for all the moments it was possible. I had spent so many years longing to be with her, wanting her back and I gave up those last days. Perhaps I was like her after all. Perhaps I was just like my own dear Sally after all. ‘I suppose you think I’ve lost the plot,’ I said to Pearl who ed me.

‘Nah. I’ve seen stranger things.’ ‘I can’t explain it.’ ‘I know.’ ‘We have to do it soon,’ Pearl said. I nodded. Because I didn’t trust my voice to respond. ‘I can do this part alone. I don’t mind.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to.’ Inside my head I was telling myself to stand up and choose the first basket at random. But I was rooted to my chair. Pearl stood. ‘How about I start and you me when you can.’ I nodded, thinking it sounded like as good a plan as any. Pearl moved to take one of the baskets. ‘Not that one,’ I said, instinctively reaching out my hands towards it. ‘Not that one.’ ‘Okay,’ she said slowly. She moved to take another one but I couldn’t let her. ‘No, not that one either.’ ‘Ruby,’ she said slowly and lovingly. ‘I know, I know,’ I said. I felt Pearl standing behind me. She rested her hands on my shoulders. ‘You know how many people never get to say goodbye to those they love? You got to see her, you know. You held her hand.’ ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We should attack this differently. How about you go inside and call that Barry of yours and I’ll make a start in here. me when you’re finished and tell me everything he says.’ So, I either chose that hard thing or another equally difficult thing. It was hardly a choice.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Actually,’ she said, her voice tinged with a tone of confession. ‘I’ve already called him. I told him to wait while I went to get you.’ I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not but I wouldn’t have put it past her. ‘But how did you find his number?’ ‘Your phone.’ ‘But how did you call him, I mean the cost of it?’ ‘My dear if I let you stay in here protecting these worms any longer, you’ll cost me a great deal more than a long-distance phone call.’ ‘But it’s been over a year since I’ve spoken to him!’ I jumped off the chair and ran inside, too many thoughts coursing though my mind. What on god’s earth had Pearl told him? What would she have said? I almost tripped on the doorstep into the house, catching the doorframe in time to avoid a tumble on the floor. My heart was pounding as I looked over into the kitchen and saw that the phone was off the cradle, the spiral cord swinging between the handpiece on the bench and the phone fixed to the wall. I rushed to pick up the phone. ‘Hello,’ I said too loudly. ‘Hello?’ ‘Ruby? Is that you?’ ‘Barry?’ Slight laughter. ‘Oh my god. I’m so sorry. My grandmother. She found your number and called. I’m going to kill her. I am going to kill her for doing this to me. I’m really sorry.’ ‘It’s all right. It’s so good to hear from you.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Where are you? The line sounds shaky.’ And so while Pearl began unwinding the first fragile thread in the silkworm house, I tested the fragile connection between Barry and myself.

I found Pearl busy in the silkhouse. In the container of boiling water at her feet bobbed a cluster of golden cocoons, twirling and swirling in the water as she fished out the end of the silk strands with a wooden spoon. Catching them, she pulled them long and threaded them onto a set of spools and wheels. She wound the wheel, unravelling their golden robes. On the wheel the fine silk threads clustered into an expanding, glowing hank of silk. She finished one batch of cocoons, removed the hank of silk, binding it carefully, and placed it into an open box. She looked up, seeing me enter, and smiled. I didn’t say anything – intending to punish her with my silence – and dug my hands into the pocket of my jeans. She moved to the pot of boiling water and scooped out what remained of those worms. I knew why it had to be done but all the same it seemed so cruel and unusual to me. That we fed those little beings, we doted on them for so long, only to take their silk long before they’d ever fly free. In the wild, silkworms will fully transform inside their cocoon, then eat their way out of one end. For a brief time they will mate and lay the eggs of a new generation. But the means of their escape destroys the single, unbroken thread that has formed the silken womb of their protection. ‘So,’ said Pearl. ‘What did he say?’ I sat down on my chair beside the baskets of still intact cocoons and folded my arms. I considered holding my tongue for hours. I knew she was dying to hear the details of our conversation. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Oh well. Perhaps I’ll line you up with a nice Tongan boy. They’re not all bad, you know.’ There had been a steady stream of boys sniggering at me since I got there. They’d brush past me in the street or the markets or cluster together on the edge of our grass. I tried to ignore them as much as possible but, truly, their attentions were relentless. ‘They think Western girls are easy. Here there’s a fairly strict protocol between the sexes, but the general impression of the West is unrestrained sexual expression,’ she laughed. ‘My friend, Luisi. Now her son is a darling.’ She

looked at me. It’s like she was sizing me up. ‘Yes, I think he’d do nicely. So he’s not Barry,’ she exaggerated his name. ‘Who knows. Maybe he’s even better.’ I tried not to look at what she was doing with the remains of the halftransformed worms. I felt queasy just thinking about it. It didn’t seem to bother her, though. She scooped them out and tossed them into another basket without any hesitation. Perhaps years of this ruthlessness had accustomed her to the brutality of it. Or then perhaps I was being overly dramatic. Despite my resolve – thin as it was – I relented. ‘He wants to see me.’ Pearl took another cluster of cocoons into the water and fished among them with her spoon for their end. I glanced at the thousands of cocoons waiting for the same procedure and thought it would take us weeks to get through them all. Pearl huffed triumphantly and looked at me again. ‘You got them inside your chest?’ ‘What?’ She pointed towards me with her spoon. ‘Moths.’ I shrugged sheepishly and nodded. ‘I knew it.’ She put the spoon back to work among the cocoons. I crossed my arms self-consciously. It was as though the feeling was louder now that Pearl had pointed it out. I did have moths inside my chest. A thousand of them. Drumming with their insistent wings, thumping inside my heart. It was the feeling of something struggling to get out, to fly free. To wrap themselves around that one person in a cocoon of their feathery affection. Love is a thing like that, fragile and light. No wonder it rests upon our hearts in intangible moments, bids us follow fleeting thoughts and ideas and pursue our abstract imaginings. This feeling warmed me, radiating along the inside of my limbs. It spread and bled into my skin, flushing through my face and my mouth, lifting it into a smile. Those cocoons were like golden moments, every last one of them. Not every one makes it out, or finds love and hope outside their own small shells. But there, among the thousand chances, is but a few who could. And who would. I had spent the past year holding on to one thought above all else, something I

had buried down deeply inside myself. The insidious thought that I should die to everything I loved because Sally could not live. Her death wasn’t fair. I wanted to scream to an angry god that he should have taken me. She was better, she was lovelier. I had less to lose. I thought back to that night I arrived in Tonga the first time, Pearl crushing me to her, wet as I was with that coat across my legs, living those moments that were hers all those years ago. I closed my eyes and Pearl began humming. I heard the sound of her spoon moving through the water and had the image of her running through the back door of her house outside in that cold Sydney air. The water in the washtub bleeding red. Her coat bundled and stuffed into the dye, pushed around the tub with her mother’s heavy hand on the long wooden paddle. So much of our life is bound in moments over which we have no control. I would not have been there without the determination of that sixteen-year-old girl and the love she had for the boy next door and the baby she carried. We are, all of us, tied to the simple threads that stitch our lives together, patches sewn and fused to the fabric of our existence. We are grown from the generations before us, grafted, for better or worse, to our family tree. And we are born of moments of love, however forbidden, precarious and unlikely, and, if you think about the unlikely event of our own beginning, is it any wonder we are here to love and live at all? How far do genetics go? That is what everyone wants to know. Because Sally and I were identical in every physical way, we shared the same womb, the same egg, the same mother and father. We even loved the same boy. For whatever reason, whether it was a time bomb ticking away inside her that chose at that moment to erupt or whether it was the accident, a red cocoon formed and broke inside her brain, and she died. But I did not.

I couldn’t stay with Pearl until the final cocoons were spun and wound, bundled and packed. Together we spun our way through most of the cocoons, but I had to get back home. Pearl promised to take photographs of the silkworms that we had left to grow and change and hatch. Those moths would mate and lay the eggs of the next generation. On my last night with Pearl, she invited what felt like half of Tonga to my farewell. For a whole day the house was involved in preparing the food and umu. The men prepared the fire pit early in the day, digging a great hole in Pearl’s

backyard. The hot stones were laid down and covered, left to smoke and heat throughout the morning. When the food was prepared and wrapped in banana skin or foil, we took the parcels on trays out into the yard. The pit was uncovered and all the food placed inside. We placed banana leaves on top, then dirt. The food was left in its cocoon to smoke and cook all day. The silkhouse was left idle for the entire day while we chatted – I could make out a few words here and there – played cards, ate and drank. I was hugged and presented with so many flower leis and pieces of tapa, I was barely visible beneath all the foliage. Plant my legs in the earth and I could have been the Faraway Tree itself, bearing flowers and foliage of every colour, shape and variety, my arms reaching out towards a distant future full of expectation and imagining. In the evening, when the food was brought out of the house and out of the ground, Pearl stood to address the crowd. She cried, unashamed tears rolled down her withered cheeks, her belly rocked as she sobbed. I could not understand most of what she said, though I picked up on her sentiment and found tears coming to my own eyes. I felt a sense of peace inside my soul. Contentment in where I was, where I had been and a longing, all the same, to go back home. I stood and Pearl embraced me before ordering everyone to eat. When the meal finished I was dragged to my feet and made to dance. I protested, knowing my body could never make the graceful and artful movements I had seen. But I was ignored, made to bend my knees, hold my hands out and follow the other girls. Despite my awkwardness I laughed and pretended to know what I was doing. Singing a tune I did not know, words I did not understand, in a body that looked completely unsuited for anything that poised. The last guest didn’t leave until late into the night. We hugged them goodbye and retreated to the house which felt too quiet, too empty now that we were alone. I made Pearl a cup of tea and we talked until the sun came up and a new day took me home.

26.

For the first few weeks after my return I was consumed with completing my major project for college. I sifted through my hundreds of photographs from Tonga and spread them across the entire floor of the sewing room, shuffling and sequencing them. There were pictures of Pearl chopping leaves into the woven baskets, reaching up to take down baskets of worms. She was feeding them, changing their old leaves. She was singing, laughing, holding her knife out towards the camera as we shared a joke. She was hugging Luisi at the markets, standing before a table of sarongs, printed with blues and greens and silkscreened hibiscus prints. She was sipping milk from a coconut, her neck thick with floral wreaths. She bent down beside a Tongan man, his legs covered with the wood shavings from the drum he carved, beside the main gate to the markets. There were groups of children, barefoot and smiling, their teeth white against their dark, shining skin. Women clustered on the grass around giant spreads of tapa, seated in pairs with mallets in their hands, pounding out strips of mulberry bark into flattened lengths. They were glueing lengths together, dipping their brushes in candlenut dye and applying family crests in repeating patterns over the sheets of tapa. The worms were fatter, their heads raised and some pictures caught the first fine threads that began to emerge from their heads. I had a dozen pictures of golden silk orbs, masses of cocoons. I was dancing, my body copying the graceful positions of dancers, knees bent, my hands making rounded actions. Men bent low over the umu, their taovalas swinging around their waists. Roasted pigs emerging from the smoking pit, trestles of food. I examined my photographic record of my visit to Tonga and, as I sequenced the pictures into the story of silk, I realised it could not be separated from Pearl or her friends or myself. It was not just about the thread or the fabric it produced. It was about a community of people. Their hopes and dreams, their lives and loves. And, perhaps, it was even more about fragility; the precarious balance of hope and life, and the inevitability of death. Each picture ignited powerful memories and connections within my body. I was bound to them all with threads of a shared experience. But it was the last picture I bent to pick up off the floor and

hold in my hand that told the true story. It would be easy to overlook this picture because, at first glance, there was nothing extraordinary there. Just a picture of a tree; a simple, indistinguishable tree among a grove of similar trees. Thin brown trunk and sapling branches with green leaf hands open, waiting. The paperbark mulberry tree. I realised that without its silent existence and patient belonging, its unsung glory, its steady growing, there would be no silk, no tapa, no life and love that breathed in every other picture spread around my floor. The essay on culture and textiles, silk and tapa almost wrote itself as I struggled to keep up with writing down the ideas and thoughts that sparked in my mind. I sat at my keyboard right through lunch and dinner until I was finished. I cut the essay into sections and mounted the information beside photographs in my folio. I opened one of Pearl’s boxes of silk that I had stored in the garage and spread it over the floor. I held the different textures and shapes in my hands. I placed hanks of it between baking paper – like Pearl had explained to me – and ironed it together. The bulk of the silk flattened and fused together into stiff paper. I painted the paper with different coloured dyes and cut shapes and strips and assembled them together into bark forming a trunk and branches, and leaves. I glued it to the front of my folio: The Family Tree by Ruby Moon.

When I arrived at work, Mr Grandy was busy with a customer but his smile was warm and I felt so glad to be home. He flicked his fingers towards the office and I looked up to find the door open. I caught sight of someone’s legs seated on the chair, the door obscuring their body. I stowed my handbag under the counter and took the stairs to the second level and the office. I pushed open the door to find Molly Goodweather. ‘Ruby, dear,’ she said, lifting her hands towards me. Her fingers shook, heavy with gems on every finger. Her arms rattled with an array of gold bracelets and bangles. I reached down to hug her. ‘So lovely to see you, dear,’ she said. ‘You too.’ I was still a little awe-struck in her presence and was never sure of what to say.

‘Now,’ Molly said, ‘I want to hear your thoughts about what you’re making for the Young Designer of the Year Award.’ I laughed. ‘I really don’t know.’ ‘Then get talking,’ she said, pointing to a pencil and paper on the desk. ‘Or rather deg.’

Dad and I were alone for the first evening in a long time as Amona had just flown to Perth for a week with her job. Dad appeared at my bedroom door, holding up a video and his favourite sherry. ‘Want to me?’ he asked. I’d been pinning a bodice together and I had pins in my mouth. I rested the material down on the table and removed the pins to smile. ‘Sure thing.’ I sat close to Dad, resting against his shoulder. His body was warm and familiar and comforting. He lifted his arm and put it around my shoulders and together we watched Fred Astaire who was my Dad’s very idea of the model man. He hummed beside me – he’s not bad with a tune – and I could feel the sound reverberating through his body. ‘What do you think Sally would have done with her life?’ I found myself saying. ‘I don’t know. I really can’t imagine,’ Dad said. ‘I’m so glad I have you, Dad.’ ‘And you always will.’ We were quiet for a while before I broached a conversation I’d been avoiding. ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I said and his concentration strayed from the TV as he turned to glance at me before looking back at the screen. He murmured in his throat and I continued. ‘There’s this boy and it’s complicated.’ I had his full attention as he shifted his to turn and look at me. ‘Barry?’ he said and I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say next.

‘Pearl wrote and told me,’ he said. ‘With very specific instructions about making sure I knew how important it was for a girl to follow her heart. And be with the man she loves. And that if I so much as put my little toe across your path of love she would personally fly here and . . .’ he paused, ‘and sort me out.’ ‘She did what?’ ‘I know,’ he said, smiling. ‘Though what she actually said about what she’d do to me if I stood in your way was a little more specific.’ I couldn’t believe it. What a nerve! But I felt a wave of affection, too, in feeling loved and looked after. ‘Well,’ I didn’t know what else to say. ‘And Barry called me too.’ ‘He did?’ It seemed as though everyone was busily involved in my own life, except me. ‘He didn’t want me thinking—’ he didn’t finish. He sighed. ‘You like him, Ruby?’ ‘More than like,’ I said a little quietly not sure how Dad was going to react to this whole situation. Though the fact that he hadn’t brought up Barry’s phone call with me until now was a good sign, I thought. ‘You’re a big girl,’ he said. ‘He lives in Darwin,’ I said and it sounded ridiculous. But that’s how I felt. We sat in an awkward silence while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were graceful and poised inside the small television box, their movements together so fluid and choreographed. And perhaps that’s what was so enjoyable about it. Even the unrequited loves and failures, fights and misunderstandings were part of a planned story. And life just wasn’t like that at all. Dad had stopped humming and we were consumed in the feeling like we should be saying something to the other, but neither of us sure what that should be. The need and expectation sat heavy around us, bringing our hearts into our throats.

‘I like him,’ Dad said eventually and I moved on the seat to fit my head under his shoulder. ‘I’ve never gone very far with a boy, Dad, but I think Barry is going to change all that.’

It had been a week since I told Dad about Barry. I was alone in my room with the sound of Dad’s last footsteps on the hallway still echoing, his voice, his hug. His last words before a week apart. ‘Look after yourself, Button,’ he said, not ing the slip. Amona had called saying she’d been offered a complimentary weekend at a guest house just outside Perth and asked if Dad could her for a week. Dad had a stash of holidays up his sleeve and organised a week off. There was discussion about me going with him but I had less than a fortnight to make the dress for the fashion awards. And Mum’s latest news meant I no longer had a place with her either, so for the first time ever I stayed home by myself. The day before a letter had arrived announcing that Mum was getting married. To marry again in the Aberdeen, a man and woman involved must renounce their old lives completely and give up any remaining family, friends or ties from their previous lives in order to receive the sanction of marriage as complete newlyweds. To be honest I wasn’t shocked about the marriage itself or that Mum had surrendered all sense of herself to be consumed completely by her religion. But what upset me was that after everything, after losing Sally, Mum would be prepared to give me up so she could get married in her church. I could have coped if she had found a wonderful man and rushed halfway around the world to marry him, that being with him meant she would not easily be able to see me. I would understand that her happiness meant compromising between being near me and being with the man she loved. But there was no sound reason why she couldn’t marry this man and still see me. Except that her version of church and God demanded she pretend she had never been with any other man so she could present herself, white and clean, before the altar. Mum had given me up for a god that demanded control and domination. A god who believed it was right for a mother to abandon her daughter. What was worse was that the letter hadn’t even been written by her but her husband-to-be whose duty, he said, was to protect his future wife from any pain and complications involved in taking up

and honouring her duty. By inference I was the pain and complication. This situation, he explained, was not without hope for me or my mother because each and every day they would pray for me, that I would accept my own salvation as freely as they had done, accept God into my heart, and them in their community of Aberdeen faith. If I renounced my own life, I could be, once again, ed with my mother and we would bask together, forever, under the loving light of God. When I showed Dad the letter he hugged me, not knowing what else to say. ‘It’s unbelievable, Ruby,’ he said shaking his head. ‘It’s a cult, you know. They’re all brainwashed.’ Barry emailed me an article that had appeared in the Darwin paper exposing the Aberdeen as a fraudulent cult. It likened them to other cults that had made headlines around the world and told stories of families torn apart by their fanaticism. I took that letter and every other one she had ever sent me and burnt them all. It was a strange feeling watching the smoke snake up from the metal bin. I expected to feel anger or sadness but really what I felt was emptiness. I had been losing my mother for so long that it felt like just another thing I had to do. It occurred to me, as the flames burned bright then died quickly, that my mother would get to have her bride in white after all. What a price to pay. I wondered if I was the kind of girl who would never fully grow up. Unlike Becky and Rachel I wasn’t itching to rush headlong into the world of my own independence. I wasn’t ready to leave Dad and Amona. I thought of the coming week alone as my first test. I pulled out my scrapbook from underneath my bed and opened it to the back page where that newspaper clipping Sally had left behind had yellowed with age. It came away from the page easily, and I fixed it to the fridge with a magnet. I took all of the boxes of silk from the garage and put them in my room. I walked around them for a while, thinking, hoping some inspiration would weave itself through the fibre and into my imagination. I took some of it in my hands and felt its strength and tested its resistance, pulling the fibres apart and fluffing the silk. I opened my folio on my bed and flipped through all of the pages. I lay out the tapa I had been given, the apricot dress, Pearl’s sandals and the taovala. I spent

the next hour wandering through the house, touching faded family photographs, running my fingers over the wall of Dad’s videos. I tried to look at the house as if I hadn’t lived every year of my life there. What might it have looked to a stranger, how might they have read us? I ordered pizza and sat on my floor with the open box beside me and my sketchbook on my lap. I picked up my pencil and began experimenting with a design.

I woke in the morning. My neck hurt from where I had fallen asleep against the leg of my bed. The pizza box was still open and the smell of cold cheese and oil was strong. Somehow I had wriggled free of the blanket I pulled around my shoulders at some stage of the night before and I was freezing cold. My hands felt almost numb. I sat up and pulled the blanket around me. It must have been dawn, the air was colder and the first streaks of light appeared through the window. I ran down the hall to the bathroom, feeling as though my body was in slow motion and I was still partly dreaming. My breath blew white fog in front of my mouth and I thought of Pearl and that morning she woke to a foggy world, the smell of dye and the shaky beginnings of our whole lives. I cleared out a space in the laundry and filled the washing tub with hot water, pricking the pods of red dye with a fork and tipping it in. I watched the water bleed until the tub was full. The blanket fell from my shoulders and I left it on the floor, running back along the age, barefoot, to take up all of the silk in my arms and return to the laundry. It took me all day to dye the silk, spreading the bleeding wet hanks on old white sheets on the grass out back to dry. The wind howled through the gaps in our doors and the slices of sky between our houses. As the silk dried, the wind whipped it like tumbleweeds and I raced around the yard catching up red puffs in my arms. I piled them in the sewing room and alternated between tinkering with my design, rubbing out lines here and there, and adding new ones. I started again, ripping out sheet after sheet of paper before the shape on the page began to resonate with my subconscious idea of what I wanted. I ignored the phone. I snatched bread and apples from the kitchen. I napped through the afternoon.

I made s of silk paper, each of which involved hours of meticulous design and placement. I extended the dining room table to its widest length and pushed all the chairs to the edge of the room. This way, each would be a continuous length that could fall from the bodice at the waist, to the floor. I twisted silk into long, tight threads, which I coiled and threaded over the base silk . I cut cocoons in half and placed them along the coil, I added silk moths – that I had cut and stitched – as well as silk shaped into leaves. With each completed, I added more fluffed silk and ironed it together. The shapes and leaves, moths and cocoons were a deep red pattern, buried between the lighter red of the bonding silk. It took me a week to make all the s and I called Mr Grandy and asked for the rest of the week off my shifts. I made similar s for the bodice, stitching them together over a camisole, stiffened, along the length, with boning. I sewed the s of the skirt together by hand, so that the skirt was fat and stiff and full, falling from the fitted bodice. It took shape on my mannequin. The strapless bodice curved around the breast line in the shape of a moth and I stitched cocoons and embroidered more detailed coils and twists of deep red cotton. On the back of the bodice, I added stiffened lengths of silk tubes that stuck out from the dress, forming a halo around the back of the head. I added leaves and silk moths to each tube and sewed them together, at intervals, so they were a mass of silken branches. They fluttered in the breeze, like feathers. Tiny pearls stitched, haphazardly, around the shape caught the light quite unexpectedly, depending on the movement of the dress and the angle of light. I was woven into every inch of that dress. Every fibre, every colour, every curve and weave, nip and tuck. It was my mother and Pearl and Sally. It was Ruby; beautiful because it was made entirely from imperfection; a fusion of halfformed ideals and broken threads, dyed and forged into something new. A fabric from all that was left after life emerged and fluttered her wings, if only briefly. I twisted some of the silk branches and leaves across the shoulder and attached them to the front of the bodice and, for the first time in my life, I was unashamed to view what I had created. It glowed and hummed on the mannequin.

My dress was ready to enter into the awards. I had no idea whether it would be good enough to be shortlisted for the award night itself or not. But I did know that that dress was my family tree. Right there, living, beautiful. Completely red.

27.

Before dressing, I booked my flight to Darwin to spend four weeks with Barry. Barry and I had already planned to take a camping trip to Kakadu and the thought of being alone with him made my skin tingle. Becky and Rachel were planning a few days in Darwin on their backpacking trip and I was really looking forward to seeing them. Becky assured me she had so much to tell me. I smiled, thinking of all she might have seen and done. I hoped she was happy. The cold had come suddenly to Melbourne and, out in the streets, people were rugged up in their winter coats, boots, hats and scarves and, while the cold was a depressing annoyance, at least it wasn’t raining. Pearl’s red coat kept me warm. Dad had his hand on my arm as he steered me through the traffic to the footpath and up the stairs into the auditorium where the fashion awards were in full scale rehearsal mode. Dad delivered me into the foyer and stood there, awkwardly, for a minute, looking around him nervously. ‘I still can’t quite believe I made it on the shortlist.’ ‘I can,’ Dad said. I waved him away and he smiled. I turned and flashed my VIP to the guard at the door, took one last look at Dad before disappearing into the auditorium.

Orchestrated chaos is how I’d explain my next few hours. Models and designers, techie types running here and there, racks and racks of clothes, sound tests and lighting tests. A woman wearing high heels, holding a notebook and readjusting her headset waved me into a dressing-room where my dress was hanging on a rack beside

the far wall. She tapped on her wristwatch and I took a deep breath. I ran my fingers over the fabric, making sure the leaves and stems were in place as it would be my last chance to alter anything. I fought the urge to unstitch parts here and there, to re-do the bodice. The desire for perfection was never far away. But it was finished, it was as ready as it would ever be. There was a large free-standing mirror in the corner of the room and I examined myself quickly, before leaving. I was wearing the midnight-blue dress and a pair of blue silk stilettos Amona had bought me. Initially I had decided on ballet flats but Amona suggested I try on her heels – just to see the difference – and even I could see how much better the dress looked with heels. It changed my posture completely, it forced my small body into its most curvaceous advantage and I looked almost womanly. I had spent various afternoons hobbling around the house in those high heels, hoping, over a few short days, to learn how to: 1. Walk. 2. Walk forward. 3. Walk forward without falling over. Dad and Amona tried not to laugh as I teetered down the hallway but even I could see how funny the situation was. Walking in heels required years of practice. It’s harder than learning to drive a car. Stilettos should come with licences and chiropractic supervision. I prayed for the poise and grace of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Looking in the mirror was like seeing Sally in myself and the thought made me smile. I glanced back at my dress hanging on the rack and left.

‘Come on, Ruby,’ Dad said, linking his arm though mine. ‘It’s time.’ Dad, Amona and I made our way through the auditorium foyer into the main ballroom which was decorated with balloons and lights, giant vases of flowers.

Round tables were covered in white linen, set out with silverware and crystal glasses, individualised placecards and an evening program. Our table was relatively close to the stage. Molly Goodweather and Mr Grandy insisted on coming and I felt so privileged to be surrounded by the people I loved most in the world. All except Pearl and Barry. ‘Ruby, you look beautiful,’ Molly said as we arrived at the table to find them already seated. ‘And so do you,’ I said, bending down to kiss her cheek. ‘Divine,’ said Mr Grandy, blowing me a kiss. ‘I can’t say I approve of the centerpiece,’ Molly said, waving a heavily jewelled finger towards the vase of flowers in the middle of our table. ‘How am I to see over them?’ As we took our seats the waiter arrived and filled our glasses with champagne. Music played, the room filled with people, fashion and the most colourful buzz I have ever known. It would be a long wait through dinner, then the parade of fashion, which would run through categories, and the winners, from everything from daywear, swimwear, businesswear, wedding, formal and evening. The Young Designer of the Year category was last. It was going to be a long night. I couldn’t imagine being able to eat much at all, my stomach was in knots. ‘Ruby.’ I heard someone call my name from behind and turned to see Barry walking towards me. At first I thought I must have been imagining it, there was never any mention of Barry coming to Melbourne, let alone the award. I spun back to face Dad and Amona and they were both beaming, leaning into each other. Dad had his hand around her shoulder and I knew from their faces I wasn’t dreaming. I stood up to meet him as he crushed me in a hug that felt so warm and right. I didn’t want to let go. ‘I can’t believe you came,’ I said.

‘I nearly didn’t. I’ve never worn a suit before.’ I smiled. ‘But I didn’t want to miss it.’ ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

Dessert had been served and eaten when The Young Designer of the Year category was announced. Barry took my hand as the models began emerging from behind the curtain, one at a time, wearing each of the ten different designs. The category allowed each designer to create any piece of fashion they desired. The first model wore a flowing lavender chiffon dress with small diamantes set on a scooped neckline. A small fishtail of frills brushed the floor behind her. Following this was a grunge business suit look, pants at odd lengths, chalk tack marks visible on the outside seams, a shirt half tucked in at the front then hanging loose at the back. The tie had been cut off with a pair of scissors and a pair of suspenders hanging down completed the look. We watched as seven more models paraded eveningwear, business suits and one masquerade costume. When the model wearing my dress emerged, my heart jumped into my throat and my head felt giddy. I held Barry’s hand. My ‘Wedding Dress in Red’ looked just as I imagined it would. Branches of twisted silk rose from the back of the dress and folded over the shoulder, attaching to the bodice with small leaves. Tiny pearls caught the light. In her hands the model held a bouquet of seven rose-shaped cocoons made from the tapa given to me before I left Tonga. They were surrounded by tapa-shaped mulberry leaves, wound tightly together with long threads of silk paper fused and fashioned into roots that snaked down the handle and fell as long as the dress. There was one rose for each member of my family tree. Pearl, Mum, Sally, Ruby, Jack, Amona and Dad. And a small fish was caught in the roots because Barry swam headlong into our family tree and was caught in the tangle of our lives.

The model walked to the end of the runway, around me I heard clapping and I saw Amona and Dad smiling. ‘. . . The last of our entrants for the Young Designer of the Year Category,’ said the presenter who turned to watch each of the models appear once more, one after each other, walking down to the end of the runway then back to the stage where they spread out to await the announcement of the winner. I felt as though I could barely breathe. I watched the presenter open the envelope, remove the card and smile. ‘And the winner is . . .’ he paused. ‘Ruby Moon. “Wedding Dress in Red”.’ Dad and Amona jumped up from their seats and hugged me. It all felt surreal but I managed to stand and make my way towards the stage to accept my award. My feet were numb and my hands shook. I started to sweat. My makeup felt clammy and my hair – pinned and poked and sprayed to within an inch of its natural life – felt heavy. Light flooded around me, defining and shaping and drawing me into it. My body moved where it was supposed to move. Forward. I was aware of the audience, their cheers and clapping. I walked up the stairs and paused at the edge of the runway and the world in front of me was alive with pearl-white lights; a thousand false moons, and cameras flashing diamonds. I knew I’d never have another moment like this. Just a single place in time where everything had come together to breathe in harmony. Time slowed and I had gathered all her restless strands in my hands; where I had come from, where I was and where I was going was one long thread as I emerged to make my way into the world. I moved towards the presenter who had his hand out towards me. I shook it and he presented me with a small trophy and an envelope. I looked down from the stage to see Dad’s wide smile. And Barry. I turned and, whether I was tearing up – or Ginger and Fred had been listening – those pearl and diamond lights flashed and blurred into the shape of a dress, a person in that dress. I saw fragments of

the moon turned upside down and let loose, like confetti. Sally in that white wedding dress with my silk moth pinned to her chest. She smiled. ‘You didn’t fall,’ Sally said. ‘In fact, Ruby, you just flew.’ I blinked and she was gone. Sally always had to have the last word.

Acknowledgements

This book has been an interesting journey and to the many people who have been part of this book, and the strange parallel it mirrored with my own life, I owe you my thanks and gratitude. A few years ago, on a road trip to Bundaberg, Megan Adsett veered our car off the road and encouraged me to track down my grandmother whom I had not seen since I was a teenager. We found her in a small retirement village in Hervey Bay and, in her small living room, she told me the story of the red coat which begins this novel. I thank her for sharing her story with me. I would never have started this story about Ruby if Katherine Lyall-Watson had not asked me one night, ‘Why don’t you write about girls?’ And this story may never have had an ending if she had not given me a room to stay in when I needed one. Thanks also to Pete, Jack, Bridie and Kirra. Thanks to Krissy Kneen for your friendship and , and Anthony Mullins for your couch. Thanks to my sister Michelle, Guy, Sebastian and Joshua, and to Mum and David. To my wonderful friend, Ruth Ladley: I could never do without you. To the breakfast club and Chris Somerville. Thanks to Michael Jeffrey for always believing in my writing. Thanks to my wonderful children, Caleb and Luke. To the people I met in the middle of this story; to Michael, Rob, Vera, and the people on my bus tour to Dover who may never know just how timely our conversations of love were. Many thanks to Kerry B, John D, Dave H, Sheryl G, Katherine B, David S, Chris B, Molly P, Nick E and Ben L. To my publisher and the team: Kristina Schulz, Kristy Bushnell, Meredene Hill, Simone Bird, Jody Lee and my agent Sophie Hamley who were all there in the beginning. My love and thanks to Krisz Somogyi who was not there when this book began, but was there with much chocolate at the end.

First published 2012 by University of Queensland Press PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

www.uqp.com.au

© Belinda Jeffrey 2012

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This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australian Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data National Library of Australia

Jeffrey, Belinda.

One Long Thread / Belinda Jeffrey.

ISBN (pbk) 978 0 7022 3892 5 ISBN (pdf) 978 0 7022 4792 7 ISBN (epub) 978 0 7022 4793 4 ISBN (kindle) 978 0 7022 4794 1

Young adult fiction.

1. Twins – Juvenile fiction.

A823.4

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