Twenty-two

Tamborine Mountain, Australia, 1929

VIVIEN WAS PUNISHED in the first place because she had the great misfortune of being caught out front of Mr McVeigh’s Main Street shop. Her father hadn’t wanted to do it, anyone could’ve seen that. He was a soft-hearted man who’d had the last of his iron gutted out of him in the Great War, and truth be told he’d always admired the startling spirit of his youngest. But rules were rules, and Mr McVeigh kept crowing about the rod and the child, and spoiling and sparing, and a crowd was gathering, and hell but it was hot … Still, there was no way any child of his was getting hit, not by his hand, and certainly not for facing up to bullies like that Barker lad. And so he’d done the only thing he could: forbidden her publicly from going on the outing. The punishment had been rashly made and was later a source of deep regret and frequent late-night arguments with his wife, but there was no turning back. Too many people had heard him say it. The words left his mouth and as they arrived at Vivien’s ears she knew, even at the age of eight, that there was nothing left to do but set her chin and cross her arms and show them all that she didn’t give two hoots, she’d never wanted to go anyway.

Which is how she came to be at home, alone, on the hottest day of the summer in 1929, while her family set off for the annual Cedar Getters’ Picnic in Southport. There’d been strict instructions from Dad over breakfast, a list of things to do and a longer list of things not to, a fair bit of agonised handwringing from Mum when she thought she wasn’t being watched, a preventative dose of castor oil for all the kiddies, double for Vivien because she was bound to need it twice as much, and then with an excited flurry of last-minute preparations the rest of them had piled into the Lizzie Ford and headed off down the goat track.

The house was quiet for the lack of them. And darker some-how. And the dust motes hung motionless without the usual moving bodies to orbit around. The kitchen table, where they’d laughed and argued minutes before, was cleared now of plates, spread instead with a motley assortment of jars filled with Mum’s cooling jam, and the notepa- per Dad had laid out so that Vivien could write apology notes to Mr McVeigh and Paulie Barker. So far she’d written ‘Dear Mr McVeigh,’ scratched out the ‘Dear’ and put ‘To’ above it, and then she’d sat staring at the blank page beneath, wondering how many words it would take to fill it. Willing them to appear before Dad got home.

When it became apparent the notes weren’t going to write themselves, Vivien put down the fountain pen, stretched her arms above her head, dangled her bare feet back and forth a bit, and surveyed the rest of the room: the heavily framed pictures on the wall, the dark mahogany furniture, the cane daybed with its crocheted rug. This was Indoors, she thought with distaste; the place of grown-ups and homework, the cleaning of teeth and bodies, of ‘Quiet,’ and ‘Don’t run,’ of combs and lace and Mum having tea with Aunt Ada, and visits from the reverend and the doctor. It was deathly and dull and a place she did her best to avoid, and yet—Vivien chewed the inside of her cheek, struck by a thought—today Indoors was hers and hers alone, most likely for the only time ever.

Vivien read her sister Ivy’s diary first; combed through Robert’s hobby periodicals next; examined Pippin’s marble collection; and then she turned her attention to her mother’s ward-robe. She slipped her feet into the cool inside of shoes that be-longed to the long-ago time of before she was born, rubbed the slippery fabric of Mum’s best blouse against her cheek, layered strings of shiny beads from the walnut box on top of the duchesse around her neck. In the drawer she turned over the Egyptian coins Dad had brought back from the war, the carefully folded copy of his discharge papers, a package of letters tied together with ribbon, and a piece of paper entitled, Certificate of Marriage, with Mum and Dad’s real names printed on it, Mum when she was Isabel Carlyon of Oxford, England, and not one of them at all.

The lace curtains fluttered and the sweet rich smell of Out-doors pushed through the open sash window—eucalypt and lemon myrtle and overripe mangoes starting to boil on her father’s prized tree. Vivien folded the papers back into the drawer and jumped to her feet. The sky was cloudless, blue as the ocean and drum-skin tight. Fig leaves glittered in the bright sunlight, frangipanis sparkled pink and yellow, and birds called to one another in the thick rainforest behind the house. It was going to be a stinker, Vivien realised with satisfaction, and later there’d be a storm. She loved storms: the angry clouds and the first fat drops, the rusty smell of thirsty red dirt and the lashing rain against the walls as Dad paced back and forth on the veranda with his pipe in his mouth, and a shimmer in his eyes, trying to keep his thrill in check as the palm trees wailed and flexed.

Vivien turned on her heel. She’d done enough exploring; there was no way she was wasting another precious second Indoors. She stopped in the kitchen long enough only to pack the lunch Mum had left her and forage for an extra couple of Anzac biscuits. A line of ants was marching round the sink and up the wall. They knew the rain was coming too. Without another glance at the unwritten letter of apology, Vivien danced out onto the back veranda. She never walked if she could help it.

It was hot outside, and still, and the air was muggy. Her feet burned instantly on the wooden boards. It was a perfect day for the sea. She wondered where the others were now, whether they’d arrived yet at Southport, whether the mums and dads and kids were swimming and laughing and setting up the lunches, or whether her family had boarded one of the pleasure boats instead. There was a new jetty, according to Robert, who’d been eavesdropping on Dad’s RSL mates, and Vivien had imagined herself dive-bombing off its end, sinking like a macada- mia nut, so fast that her skin tingled and cold seawater filled her nose.

She could always go down to Witches Falls for a swim, but on a day like this the rock pool wasn’t a patch on the salty ocean; besides, she wasn’t supposed to leave the house and one of the tattletales in town was sure to notice. Worse, if Paulie Barker was there, sunning his fat white belly like a big old whale, she didn’t think she’d be able to stop herself. He ought to try calling Pippin ‘simple’ again and see what happened. Vivien dared him to do it. She double-dared him.

unballing her fists, she eyed the shed. Old Mac the swagger was down there working on repairs and was usually worth a visit, but Dad had forbidden Vivien from bothering him with her questions. He’d enough work to do, and Dad wasn’t paying him money he didn’t have to drink billy tea and gasbag with a little girl who had her own chores waiting for her. Old Mac knew she was at home today, he’d keep an ear out for trouble, but unless she was sick or bleeding, the shed was out of bounds.

Which left only one place to go.

Vivien scampered down the wide stairs, crossed the grass, rounded the garden beds, where Mum tried desperately to grow roses and Dad reminded her fondly that this wasn’t England, and then, turning three perfect cartwheels in a row, she headed for the creek.

Vivien had been going there since she learned to walk, weaving between the silver gums, collecting wattle flowers and bottlebrush, careful not to step on jumping ants or spiders as she slipped further and further away from people and buildings and teachers and rules. It was her favourite place in the whole world; it was her own; it belonged to her, and she to it.

Today she was more eager than usual to get to the bottom. Beyond the first rock sheer, where the ground got steep and the ant mounds towered, she clutched her lunch pack and broke into a run, relishing the thump of her heart against her ribcage, the scary thrill of her legs, turning, turning, beneath her, almost tripping, sliding sometimes as she dodged branches, leapt over rocks, skidded down drifts of dried leaves.

Whip birds cheered overhead, insects burred, the waterfall in Dead Man’s Gully chipped and chattered. Fragments of light and colour jittered as she ran, kaleidoscopic. The bush was alive; the trees spoke to one another in parched old voices, thousands of unseen eyes blinked from branches and fallen logs, and Vivien knew if she were to stop and press her ear to the hard ground she’d hear the earth calling to her, singing sounds from ancient times. She didn’t stop, though; she was desperate to reach the creek that snaked through the gorge.

Nobody else knew it, but the creek was magic. There was one bend in particular where the banks widened to form a craggy circle; the bed beneath had been formed millions of years ago when the earth sighed and shifted and great rock slabs were brought together jaggedly, so what was shallow at the rims, deepened and darkened suddenly at its centre. And that’s where Vivien had made her discovery.

She’d been fishing with the glass jars she’d pilfered from Mum’s kitchen and kept now in the rotten log behind the ferns. Vivien stored all her treasures inside that log. There was always something to find within the creek’s waters: eels and tadpoles, drowned cats sometimes, kittens tied in bags and dumped upstream by farmers who didn’t want them, rusted old buckets from the gold-rush days. Once, she’d even found a set of false teeth.

On the day she found the lights, Vivien had been lying on her belly on a rock, arm stretched deep into the pool, trying to catch the biggest tadpole she’d ever seen. She’d swept at it and missed, swept at it and missed, and then she’d reached deeper still so that her face was almost touching the water. And that’s when she’d noticed them, several of them, all orange and twinkly, blinking at her from the very bottom of the pool. She’d thought at first it was the sun and squinted up at the distant scraps of sky to check. But it wasn’t. The sky was reflected on the water surface all right, but this was different. These lights were deep, beyond the slippery reeds and moss that covered the creek bed. They were something else. Somewhere else.

Vivien had given the lights a lot of thought. She wasn’t one for book-learning, that was Gerald’s thing, and Mum’s, but she was good at asking questions. She’d sounded out Old Mac, and then Dad, and finally she’d run into Black Jackie, Dad’s tracker mate, who knew more than anyone else about the bush. He’d stopped what he was doing and planted a hand on the small of his back, arching his wiry frame. ‘Ya seen them little lights down deep in the pool, did ya?’

She’d nodded, and he’d looked at her hard without blinking. Eventually, a slight smile had skimmed his lips. ‘Ever touched the bottom of that pool?’

‘Nah.’ She swatted a fly from her nose. ‘Too deep.’

‘Me neither.’ He scratched beneath the rim of his broad hat, and then he made to start again on his digging. Before he drove the shovel into the ground he turned his head. ‘What makes ya so sure there is one, if ya haven’t seen it fer y’self?’

And that’s when Vivien had realised: there was a hole in her creek that ran all the way to the other side of the world. It was the only explanation. She’d heard Dad talking about digging a hole to China, and now she’d gone and found it. A secret tunnel, a way to the earth’s core—the place from which all magic and life and time had sprung— and beyond that to the shining stars of a distant sky. The question was, what was she going to do with it?

Explore it, that’s what.

Vivien skidded to a halt on the big flat rock slab that formed the bridge between bush and creek. The water was still today, thick and mucky in the shallows round the edges. A film of sludge from further upstream had settled across the surface like a greasy skin.

The sun was directly overhead and the ground was baking. The limbs of the towering gums creaked in the heat.

Vivien tucked her lunch beneath the thick ferns arching over the rock; something in the cool undergrowth slithered away unseen.

The water was cold at first around her bare ankles. She waded through the shallows, feet gripping to the slimy rocks, suddenly sharp in places. Her plan was to catch a glimpse of the lights to begin with, make sure they were still where they ought to be, and then she was going to swim as far down as she could to get a better look. She’d been practising holding her breath for weeks and had brought one of Mum’s wooden clothes pegs for her nose because Gerald reckoned if she could stop the air escaping through her nostrils she’d last for longer.

When she reached the ridge where the rock floor dropped away, Vivien peered into the dark water. It took a few seconds, a bit of squinting and a lot of leaning, but then—there they were!

She grinned and almost lost her footing.

Over the ridge a pair of kookaburras chortled.

Vivien hurried back to the edge of the pool, slipping some-times in her haste. She ran across the flat rock, feet slapping wetly, and dug about in her pack to retrieve the peg.

It was while she was deciding how best to fasten it that she noticed the black thing on her foot.

A leech—a big fat whopper of a thing.

Vivien bent over, gripped it between her thumb and finger, and pulled as hard as she could.

The slippery mongrel wouldn’t come off.

She sat down and had another go, but no matter how she squeezed and tugged, it wouldn’t budge. The body was slimy in her fingers, wet and squishy. She steeled herself, screwed her eyes shut, and gave it one last wrench.

Vivien cursed with every forbidden word (Shit! Bloody! Bugger! Bum!) she’d gleaned in seven years of eavesdropping on Dad’s shed. The leech had come free, but a stream of blood flowed in its place.

Her head spun, all woozy-like, and she was glad she was al-ready sitting. She could watch Old Mac take the heads off chooks, no worries; she’d held her brother Pippin’s severed fingertip all the way to Doc Farrell’s place after it got chopped off by the axe; she gutted fish faster and cleaner than Robert when they camped down by Nerang River. Faced with her own blood, though, she was worse than useless.

She limped back down to the water’s edge and dangled her foot in, swishing it this way and that. Each time she withdrew the limb, blood still streamed. Nothing for it but to wait.

She sat on the rock slab and unpacked her food. Sliced silverside from last night’s roast, gravy glistening cold on its surface; soft potato and yam that she ate with her fingers; a wedge of bread and butter pudding with Mum’s fresh jam smeared on top; three Anzac biscuits and a blood orange, fresh from the tree.

A clutch of crows materialised in the shadows as she ate, staring at her with cold unblinking eyes. When she’d finished, Vivien tossed the last of her crumbs into the bush and a weight of heavy wings beat after them. She dusted off her dress and yawned.

Her foot had stopped bleeding at last. She wanted to explore the hole at the bottom of the pool, but she was suddenly tired; extra tired, like the girl in one of those stories Mum read to them sometimes in a faraway voice that grew less like theirs with every word. It made Vivien feel strange, that voice of their mother’s; it was fancy, and while Vivien admired Mum for it, she was jealous too of this part of their mother they didn’t own.

Vivien yawned again, so wide that her eyes smarted.

Maybe if she lay down, just for a little while?

She crawled over to the edge of the rock and crept beneath the fern leaves, deep enough that when she rolled onto her back and shimmied a little to the left the last patch of sky disappeared. Leaves lay smooth and cool beneath her, crickets ticked in the undergrowth, and a frog somewhere panted the afternoon away.

The day was warm and she was small and it wasn’t surprising that Vivien fell asleep. She dreamed about the lights in the pool, and how long it would take to swim to China, and a long jetty of hot wooden planks, her brothers and sister diving off its end. She dreamed of the storm that was coming and Dad on the veranda, and Mum’s English skin, freckled from a day by the sea, and the dinner table that night with all of them around it.

The beating sun arced over the earth’s surface, light shifted and sifted through the bush, humidity pulled the drum skin tighter and small beads of sweat appeared at the little girl’s hairline. Insects clicked and clacked, the sleeping child stirred when a fern leaf tickled her cheek, and then—

‘Vivien!’

—her name came suddenly, skimming down the hillside, cutting through the undergrowth to reach her.

She woke with a start.

‘Viv-i-en?’

It was Aunt Ada, Daddy’s elder sister.

Vivien sat up, brushing strands of hair across her damp fore-head with the back of her hand. Bush bees hummed nearby. She yawned.

‘Young miss, if you’re out here—for the love of God, show yourself.’

Most times, obedience was of no concern to Vivien, but the voice of her usually unflappable aunt was flapping so hard that curiosity got the better of her and she rolled out from beneath the ferns, snatching up her lunch things. The day had darkened; clouds covered the blue sky and the gorge was now in shadow.

With a wistful glance over her shoulder at the creek, a promise to come back as soon as she could, she started for home.

 

Aunt Ada was sitting on the back stairs, head in hands, when Vivien emerged from the bush. Some sixth sense must’ve told her she had company because she glanced sideways, blinking at Vivien with the same perplexed expression she might have worn had a bush sprite appeared on the lawn before her.

‘Come here, child,’ she said finally, beckoning with one hand as she pushed herself to standing.

Vivien walked slowly. There was a strange swooping sensation in her stomach for which she had no name, but would one day come to recognise as dread. Aunt Ada’s cheeks were bright red and there was something uncontrolled about her; she looked as if she were about to shout or to clip Vivien across the ears, but she did neither, bursting into scalding tears instead and saying, ‘For God’s sake, get indoors and wash that muck off your face. What would your poor mother think?’

 

Vivien was Indoors again. There’d been a lot of Indoors since it happened. The first black week when the wooden boxes, or caskets, as Aunt Ada called them, were laid out in the sitting room; the long nights during which her bedroom walls retreated into the darkness; the stale muggy days as grown-ups whispered, and clicked their tongues at the suddenness of it all, and sweated into clothes already damp from the rain that bore down outside the steamy windows.

She’d made a nest against the wall, tucked herself between the sideboard and the back of Dad’s armchair, and that’s where she stayed. Words and phrases buzzed like mosquitoes in the fug above—the Lizzie Ford … right over the edge … incinerated … hardly recog- nisable—but Vivien blocked her ears and thought instead about the tunnel in the pond and the great engine room at its centre from which the world was spun.

For five days she’d refused to leave the spot, and the adults had humoured her and brought plates of food and shaken their heads with kindly pity, until finally, with no obvious sign or warning, the invisible line of leniency was reeled in and she was dragged back into the world.

The wet season had set in well and truly by then, but there’d been one day when the sun had shone and she’d felt the faint stirrings of her old self, sneaking out into the glare of the back yard and finding Old Mac in the shed. He’d said very little, laying a big gnarled hand on her shoulder and squeezing hard, and then he’d handed her a hammer so she could help with the fencing. As the day wore on, she’d thought about visiting the creek, but she hadn’t, and then the rain came back and Aunt Ada arrived with boxes, and the house was packed away. Her sister’s favourite shoes, the satin ones that had sat all week on the rug, same spot she’d kicked them after Mum said they were too good for the picnic, were tossed into a box with Dad’s handkerchiefs and his old belt. Next thing Vivien knew there was a ‘For Sale’ sign on the front lawn and she was sleeping on a strange floor as her cousins blinked curiously at her from their own beds.

 

Aunt Ada’s house was different from her own. The wall paint wasn’t flaking, there were no ants wandering the bench tops, cascades of garden flowers did not spill from vases. It was a house where spilling of any kind was not tolerated. A place for everything and everything in its place, Aunt Ada was fond of saying, in a voice that shrilled like a fiddle string wound too tight.

While the rain continued outside, Vivien had taken to lying under the sofa in the good room, pressed against the skirting board. There was a droop of hessian lining, invisible from the door, and to squeeze beyond it was to become invisible herself. It was comforting, that torn sofa base, it reminded her of her own house, her family, their happy tattered clutter. It brought her as close as she ever came to crying. Most times, though, she concentrated only on breathing, taking in the smallest amount of air she could, letting it out so that her chest barely moved. Hours—whole days—could be passed that way, rainwater gurgling down the drainpipe outside, Vivien’s eyes closed and her ribcage steady; sometimes, she could almost convince herself she’d managed to stop time.

The room’s greatest virtue, though, was its designation as strictly out of bounds. The rule was laid out for Vivien on her first night in the house—the good room was to be used for entertaining, only by the aunt herself, and then only ever when the status of the guest demanded it—and Vivien had nodded solemnly, when prompted, to show that yes, she understood. And she had, perfectly. Nobody used the room, which meant that once the daily dusting was done, she could count on being alone within its walls.

And so she had been, until today.

Reverend Fawley had been sitting on the armchair by the window for the past fifteen minutes as Aunt Ada fussed over tea and cake. Vivien was stuck beneath the sofa, more specifically pinned by the depression of her aunt’s backside.

‘I don’t need to remind you what the Lord would counsel, Mrs Frost,’ said the Reverend in the cloying voice he saved usually for the little baby Jesus. ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so you may be entertaining angels without realising it.’

‘If that girl’s an angel, then I’m the Queen of England.’

‘Yes, well,’ the pious chink of a spoon against porcelain, ‘the child has suffered a great loss.’

‘More sugar, Reverend?’

‘No—thank you, Mrs Frost.’

The sofa base slumped further as her aunt sighed. ‘We’ve all suffered a great loss, Reverend. When I think of my own dear brother, perishing like that … falling all that way, the lot of them, the Lizzie Ford going right over the edge of the mountain. Harvey Watkins that found them said it was burned so bad he didn’t know what he was looking at. It was a tragedy …’

‘A terrible tragedy.’

‘All the same.’ Aunt Ada’s shoes shifted on the rug, and Vivien could see the toe of one scratching at the bunion trapped within the other. ‘I can’t keep her here. I’ve six of my own, and now Mum’s moving in with us. You know what she’s been like since the doctor had to take her leg. I’m a good Christian woman, Reverend, I’m in church every Sunday, I do my bit for the fete and the Easter fundraiser, but I just can’t do it.’

‘I see.’

‘You know yourself, the girl’s not easy.’

There was a pause in conversation as tea was sipped and the particular nature of Vivien’s lack of easiness considered.

‘If it had been any of the others,’ Aunt Ada set her cup on its saucer, ‘even poor simple Pippin … but I just can’t do it. Forgive me, Reverend, I know that it’s a sin to say so, but I can’t look at the girl without blaming her for all that’s happened. She ought to have gone with them. If she hadn’t got herself in trouble and been punished … They left the picnic early, you know, because my brother didn’t like to leave her so long—he was always too soft-hearted—’. She broke off with a great gasping wail and Vivien thought how ugly adults could be, how weak. So used to getting what they wanted that they didn’t know the first thing about being brave.

‘There, there, Mrs Frost. There, there.’

The sobbing was thick and laboured, like Pippin’s when he wanted Mum’s attention. The Reverend’s chair creaked and then his feet came closer. He handed something to Aunt Ada, he must have, for she said, ‘Thank you,’ through her tears, and then blew her nose wetly.

‘No, you keep it,’ the Reverend said, retreating to his chair. He sat with a heavy sigh. ‘One does wonder, though, what’s to become of the girl’

Aunt Ada made some small sniffly noises of recovery and then ventured, ‘I thought perhaps the church school out Too-woomba way?’ The Reverend crossed his ankles.

‘I believe the nuns take good care of the girls,’ Aunt Ada went on, ‘firm but fair, and the discipline wouldn’t do her any harm—David and Isabel always were too soft.’

‘Isabel,’ said the Reverend suddenly, leaning forward. ‘What about Isabel’s family. Isn’t there anyone who might be contacted?’

‘I’m afraid she never said much about them … Though, now you mention it, there is a brother, I believe.’

‘A brother?’

‘A schoolteacher, over in England. Near Oxford, I think.’

‘Well then.’

‘Well then?’

‘I suggest we start there.’

‘You mean … to contact him?’ Aunt Ada’s voice lightened.

‘We can but try, Mrs Frost.’

‘Send him a letter?’

‘I shall write to him myself.’

‘Oh, Reverend—’

‘See if the man can’t be prevailed upon to act with Christian compassion.’

‘To do the right thing.’

‘His familial duty.’

‘His familial duty.’ There was a new giddiness in Aunt Ada voice. ‘And what kind of a man wouldn’t? I’d keep her myself, if I could, if it weren’t for Mum and my own six and the lack of room—’. She stood up and the sofa base sighed with relief. ‘Can I get you another slice of cake, Reverend?’

It turned out there was indeed a brother, and he was induced by the Reverend to behave correctly, and so, like that, Vivien’s life was changed again. It all happened remarkably swiftly in the end. Aunt Ada knew a woman who knew a fellow whose sister was travelling across the ocean to a place called London to see a man about a governess position, and she was to take Vivien with her. Decisions were made and details moored neatly together in the stream of grown-up conversation that seemed always to flow above Vivien’s head.

A pair of almost-new shoes were found, her hair was forced neatly into plaits, the rest of her into a starchy dress with a rib-bon sash. Her uncle drove them down the mountain and on to the railway station to meet the train for Brisbane. It was raining still, and hot with it, and Vivien drew with her finger on the steamy window.

The square out front of the Railway Hotel was full when they arrived, but they found Miss Katy Ellis precisely where she’d arranged to meet them, beneath the clock at the ticketing window.

Vivien hadn’t guessed even for a second that there were so many people in the world. They were everywhere, each one different from the other, scurrying about their business like bull ants in the damp muck where a rotten log used to lie. Black umbrellas, and large wooden containers, and horses with deep brown eyes and flared nostrils.

The woman cleared her throat and Vivien realised she’d been spoken to. She chased across her memories to recall what had been said. Horses and umbrellas, bull ants in the wet, people scurrying—her name. The woman had asked if she was called Vivien.

She nodded.

‘You mind your manners,’ scolded Aunt Ada, straightening Vivien’s collar. ‘It’s what your mother and father would’ve want-ed. You say, “Yes, Miss,” when you’re asked a question.’

‘Unless you disagree, of course, in which case “No, Miss” will do perfectly well.’ The woman gave a neat smile that signalled she was making a joke. Vivien looked between the pair of expectant faces staring down at her. Aunt Ada’s brows drew together as she waited.

‘Yes, Miss,’ Vivien said.

‘And are you well—this morning?’

Compliance had never come naturally, and once Vivien would have spoken her mind and shouted that she wasn’t well at all, she didn’t want to go, it wasn’t fair and they couldn’t make her … But not now. It struck Vivien now that it was far easier simply to say what people wanted to hear. What difference did it make anyway? Words were clumsy things; there were none she could think of to describe the bottomless black hole that had opened within her; the ache that fed upon her insides each time she thought she heard her father’s footsteps coming down the hall, smelled her mother’s cologne, or worst of all, saw something she simply had to share with Pippin …

‘Yes, Miss,’ she said, to the lively woman with red hair and a long, tidy skirt.

Aunt Ada handed Vivien’s suitcase to a porter, patted her niece’s head, and told her to be good. Miss Katy Ellis checked her tickets carefully and wondered whether the dress she’d packed for her interview in London would do as well as she hoped. And, as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else’s shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform; people waved and hollered; a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada—who some might’ve expected to be shepherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen.

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