

#

Floating Upstream

By Jo Vraca

Melbourne, Australia

Copyright © 2015 by Jo Vraca  
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is not a Memoir! This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anyone living or dead just goes to show that we're all pretty similar and share a lot of stories.

EBook Edition ISBN: 978-0-9941984-3-3

Thank you!

Thanks for reading Floating Upstream. I hope you enjoy it!

Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews. Please leave yours on Goodreads when you have a moment.

This book is also available in paperback ISBN: 978-0-9941984-2-6

Also available: Girls – A Collection of Short Stories

Dedication

This book began as a short story about a death. I have Karen Burns to thank for making me believe there was more to it. As always, thanks to Jeff for giving me the space to make it come together, and for believing that writing is a real thing, as long as I'm actually writing. I have all the love in the world for you.
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.  
Patti Smith, Gloria

# PART ONE

## Chapter One

The Tarantella

Once bitten by a tarantula, a woman may fall into a hypnotic trance causing them to dance frantically during the Summer Solstice in order to exorcise the affliction.

The day it all started, Julia tried her best to be inconspicuous in the back row, watching Grease for the third time. She found five dollars and a packet of smokes in the Ford's glove compartment, giving her enough change for popcorn and a Choc Top.

As the water licked at Sandy and Danny's feet on the last days of summer, while they rolled in the sand and waves crashed around their lovemaking, Julia remembered her grandfather's words about love. He warned her that love came only once in your life, and that love, the once-in-a-lifetime sort of love, was boundless. It wasn't the kind that you could hide in the third drawer along with the rest of life's souvenirs.

Real love felt like you were riding on a rickety, old roller coaster. It made you want to throw up your breakfast and last night's dinner. Real love gave you something to do on a Sunday, even when all you really wanted to do was turn over and go back to sleep. "Real love," he said, "could make you drunker than Father Gino's wine at Christmas."

But, he warned her, in that way that made her sit up and take notice, "You have to be on your guard, or true love might just slip past unnoticed. Even if you only look away for a second."

How could Julia deny he told the truth with those deep brown eyes full of nostalgia? Loneliness coloured the edges of his voice when he spoke, loneliness and the dark wine that stained her mother's tablecloths. His wife disappeared more than thirty years before; disappeared without a trace, maybe abducted, murdered, or she ran after a new love.

But like a disciple, Julia kept her eyes open, and her nose at attention to sniff every breeze. She'd learned from reading 17 Magazine that it took the right kind of chemicals and pheromones to fall in love. It wasn't easy to smell anything but cow shit in Goldburne. Cow shit and DDT. She did not want to miss the soft scents that were meant for her. True love didn't go away; Sandy and Danny were proof of that, right up on the movie screen, bigger than life.

Summer love was forever, and Rizzo was totally misunderstood!

"You're in so much trouble, Jules."

Julia turned to look at the black figure hovering in the aisle, just as Danny Zucco tried to cop a feel of Sandy at the drive-in.

"Come on, Joey, it's nearly finished." She pointed the popcorn bucket at the screen. But there was no way her brother would let her stay now.

"You're supposed to be with Susie," he whispered. "Mum's going to beat the shit out of you if you don't get home before Dad."

Julia rolled her eyes and took a long sniff of her sleeves for the tell-tale smells that would give her away to her mother. She turned back to the screen; maybe her brother would go away if she ignored him. But Danny Zucco's plaintive cry to Sandy ended with Joey dragging Julia by the arm through the cinema doors and into the stark bright foyer.

****

Julia's mother was a big fat drama queen. The fact she was big, but not fat, was beside the point. Nobody would ever doubt that she was a drama queen. What with all of her "God willings", her "Thanks to the sweet baby Jesus," and grand sign of the cross at every car that backfired within a five-mile radius.

Julia regretted going home at the sight of her mother hunched over the kitchen bench, kneading a smooth white lump of dough. A blue-checked apron hung loosely from Connie's neck, remaining untied at the waist as though she had no time for such frippery. Her usually smooth dark-auburn hair frizzed at the roots from the sweat of her labours.

The transistor squawked on the bench just inches from her hands and shuddered with every thwack of the dough. Julia reckoned there hadn't been a candle burning in front of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for some time, until today. All because Mick Camilleri plunged to his death from the balcony on the third floor of the pub he owned, which overlooked the town he helped build after the war. The guy supposedly had a heart attack in mid drag while he was out having a fag at the end of his work day. Then he toppled over the balcony like a sack of fertiliser. "Like the shithead he was," some said.

Julia and Joey waited for Connie's histrionic sobs and tears to simmer. She rubbed her face with the back of her hand, wiped the tears that fell to the floured bench top and continued to knead the dough. It all smacked of theatre.

Joe finally waltzed to the fridge and stood staring at its meagre contents. He stuffed a wedge of fried bread into his mouth, with fingers blackened by car parts, before speaking. "So Mick Camilleri's dead. Shocker."

"Don't you dare talk about the dead like that." Connie Marconi pointed a floury finger at him.

"Like what? The guy drank whiskey all day and smoked two fags at a time."

Julia shrugged. "I saw him yesterday," she said. "He gave me a lemon squash when I went in looking for Dad. He looked okay."

"Stop eating out of the fridge," Connie yelled. "Get yourself a plate."

"I'm finished, I'm finished," Joe yelled.

Joey sounded like a real wog sometimes, but he was all right. Mostly. He gave her rides into town, didn't tell their parents when she wagged school like today and gave her cigarettes. Julia saw why he gave girls butterflies, with his angled smile and thick black hair like their dad's. At least he didn't hit her if he found her talking to some guy. Not like other brothers. Joey left her alone with just a warning to not get caught. As though Julia was an idiot.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and waved goodbye with his cheeks full of greasy bread and olives. He could do that, Julia supposed. Just up and leave the house without begging first or even saying anything to anyone.

Julia sighed away the random thoughts, the ones where she'd been born a boy. The ones that dreaded having to clean the house with her mother on Saturdays before she was allowed to go to the pool.

Joey reckoned she was just like one of the guys, but Julia didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or not. All she knew was that if she'd been born a boy, Julia would lop off her stupid, long girl hair and would walk the same carefree walk her brother enjoyed every day. Wishful thinking, she thought, loitering around the stove to check what was simmering.

Julia breathed deeply as the spiced scent of Benson & Hedges drifted back into the house from the veranda. Those cigarettes smelled like freedom. One day, she'd show them that she was just like him.

"What floor was he on when he fell?" Julia asked.

"Third. Poor guy never had a chance." Connie slammed the dough hard onto the bench. "Just like that."

Julia sidled up beside her mother and patted her arm, obliged by the show of sorrow.

"It's sad, isn't it?" Connie whimpered. "He was a good man. He did so much for us all. Now he's gone, just like that. One day, the same thing will happen to your father, and he'll be gone, just like that." She waved a floury hand.

"Dad's going to fall off a balcony?"

"No, stupid, but he'll die before me. I know it. And he'll leave a big mess."

Julia knew better than to respond to her mother when she made those sort of solemn declarations. She poured a glass of water from the tap and sipped from pursed lips.

"I wonder if Michaela will be in class on Monday?" Julia asked.

"Well, of course she won't."

Her mother's grim stare said both "you're such an idiot" and "I'll kill you for saying something like that."

Connie straightened her apron as though realising for the first time that it was undone. She crisscrossed the strings around the back and tied them in a neat bow at the front. "Her father's dead, Julia. Where do you get such stupid ideas?" She straightened her apron. "It's as though you were brought up by those Skips or something. Even the Turks make more sense than you, sometimes."

Julia baulked at the words her mother spat so expertly while uncovering a small mound of resting dough and rolled it out until it was the size of a pizza tray. Connie Marconi was an expert with words; she couldn't deny it.

## Chapter Two

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.  
—Norman Cousins

Mick Camilleri's body rested in the poolroom at the pub, ready to receive visitors.

Weird tradition, Julia thought. The last thing she wanted to do was go see a dead guy in a coffin, in the very room she and her friends hung out. What would he look like? Stuffed with cotton? Embalmed and wrapped in cloth? The whole spectacle of it was just weird, but she didn't want to see the other end of a wooden spoon, so Julia accompanied her mother into town in the orange Falcon 500. She hoped they wouldn't be pulled over by the police again for her mother's erratic driving, which was the worst thing in the world for a woman without a license.

Julia ignored her mother's rambling and instead counted the ghost gums and wattles that lined Goldburne's uneven streets. Cheery evergreens sprouted fluffy and spiky flowers in winter, each one planted by prisoners of war during the last big one. It was strange to think that there was a POW camp on a farm just outside of town, amongst the grazing cows and big red roos, in a country so far from the front line. Julia's grandfather said the prison was full of his people: Italians who couldn't care less about Hitler or Mussolini. Because the Skips had to put on a show, they locked up around twenty new arrivals to demonstrate they were part of the allied war effort.

The POWs didn't just plant a few trees. They laid the roads and built the small church on Main Street with the stained glass windows that depicted the Virgin with glowing palms.

They did a nice job, Julia supposed. Of course, if she'd been one of the prisoners, she would have hidden landmines in the roads. Italian POWs in Australia; that was really stupid.

Connie parked a meter away from the curb and didn't bother to look for any cars when she swung open her door.

She took Julia's hand once they rounded the car.

"Mum," Julia cried and wriggled free her hand.

They waited as a leisurely wedding procession ascended the stairs into Our Lady's. The Catholic church was still the only one in Goldburne, because why would you need another one in a town of two hundred? Julia got to see the inside of the Gothic-inspired building more than she'd have liked. Besides every baptism, communion, confirmation and wedding she'd witnessed inside the bluestone church, she also spent plenty of time in confession. All thanks to her mother's phobia that they would go to hell if they didn't confess at least once a week.

The bridal party and the small group of witnesses shaded the sun from their brows—the women with wide-brimmed hats, the men with newspapers—as they climbed the three steps into the church that occupied the north end of Main Street. It was as if you were walking up Swanston Street in Melbourne towards the Shrine of Remembrance, only a lot smaller.

Because the wogs had made it, the church boasted baroque columns covered with leaves and flourishes. In one of its chapels, the statue of Goldburne's patron saint, Saint Lucia, held a small plate that contained her eyeballs. The very eyeballs that had been torn from her in the name of God.

Connie Marconi didn't hesitate to remind Julia of Saint Lucy's bitter demise. "She ripped her own eyes out because some man made advances, and she was already promised to God. And if a man ever touches you before there's a ring on your finger, that's what your dad will do to you, too."

Connie Marconi rarely had a decent word to say about love and marriage, explaining that it was just a big effort to be endured. Despite that, Julia knew that love was something to aspire to, filled with feats of romance that rivalled the greatest works of art in any European gallery. Love kept you afloat, even when everything around you conspired to keep your head submerged below water.

Julia's grandfather, Joseph Marconi, during one of his melancholy bouts, also said that love gave you the strength to walk over hot coals and even float upstream against the current. Julia never questioned a word that came out of her grandfather's mouth. He was ancient as time itself, and he wore a gold hoop earring and his wedding band on his thumb. You didn't want to question someone that old.

Oh, her, Julia thought when she focused back on the bride at the foot of St Mary's steps. The bride waited at the door of the church until an angry middle-aged man clutched her arm and led her into the dim church foyer.

Poor Maria Di Silva—that's how they talked about her now. Poor Maria lived near the milk bar with her varicose-veined mother, her aunt and uncle, grandparents and older brother in an extended miner's huts.

Julia never saw Maria anywhere but out on the front veranda of her house, especially on a Saturday when she had detention or sewing class. Until a few months ago, Maria would be painting her toenails in shocking reds and pinks while Skyhooks played on the record player beside her.

Sometimes Maria would call out to her. "Come here," she'd say with a flick of her ash-blonde hair. "Do you have a cigarette?"

Julia would shake her head.

"No? Well, next time tell that brother of yours to come and give me one. Say exactly that." Maria's broad grin hid hundreds of stories, and Julia wanted to be just like Maria when she was older and wear dark eyeliner and short shorts.

Julia's mother leaned in and whispered, "I was wondering if she'd wear a white dress. What a buttana."

A round posy of yellow marigolds only served to emphasise the whiteness of the dress. Maria looked like an angel with billowing folds of tulle that hid what needed to be hidden.

"She's no angel," Connie Marconi continued as the bride disappeared inside the church.

Julia trailed behind her mother, trying to catch a final glimpse of Maria.

What a dickhead, she thought. Pregnant and married at 19.

The heat bounced off the bitumen, and Julia caught up with her mother. She wished she was tall like her, so she could walk with real purpose too. She came from horse folk, grandpa explained. In her village in Italy, you were either short, squat and milled wheat, or you were tall, lean and bred horses. The Rossi lineage died young, but they were all tall with long, straight spines and blood redder than a cardinal's robe.

"Giovanni," Connie called out to a trio settled into the bucket seats out the front of the coffee shop. "Finished work already?"

"Waddaya talking about? I'm working right now," Giovanni Marconi said and slapped a card on the table. "Take that."

Julia's father turned back to the card game, and his face creased with the smile he reserved for card playing. The other men showed their hands and pushed a few loose cigarettes towards him. He was a loser at horses, but nobody could beat him at Briscola.

Julia sensed intrigue in his low tone, words she wished she understood, but he kept his voice hushed. A cigarette moved through the air like Zorro's sword. He turned to Julia and nodded as if to say, "See, that's how you do it." He raised a petite glass of amber liquid to his mouth and acknowledged Julia with a grin.

The cafe owner, Sam Saltinboca, placed three small white cups of coffee on top of the discarded cards. The Turks drank coffee that smelled like mud cakes and foreign spices that made Julia screw up her nose. Black Italian coffee had a sharp, bitter aroma and always evoked the very scene before her now. Dark-skinned old men, smelling of horses and dry hay bales; kids riding their hand-me-down Malvern Stars to the weir at breakneck speed, kicking up trails of dirt; boys and girls avoiding one another's glances on the way to the pool; and her father playing cards with the passion of a revolutionary.

Giovanni Marconi—John to the Aussies—could have been Dean Martin's long lost twin. He wore his thick black hair with a slight kink that he greased with Brylcreem and an open shirt, revealing a bumper crop of hair on his chest. A red kerchief, tied around his neck, served as a reminder of where he came from, marking his political allegiance. A fat Cuban cigar poked out from his shirt pocket, waiting for the right moment. Giovanni Marconi was always waiting for the right moment, so he smoked Benson and Hedges cigarettes instead.

"Where are you going, Julia? Is Mamma taking you to the wedding or to see the dead guy?"

Julia caught her mother's glance, as though she'd been asked for money by some bum. Instead, she accepted the Mintie her father pushed into her hand. She unwrapped the sticky lolly, saving the wrapper for later when he held out his hand again. A small oval pendant caught the sunlight. She admired the enamelled surface, which sparkled with the Madonna's vibrant blue.

"The Madonna," Julia said. "It's pretty."

"Where did that thing come from?" Connie asked in a suspicious tone.

"Don't worry about it."

With the chain secure around her neck, Julia pressed the enamel pendant between her fingers, cool and smooth as marble.

"That's alright," Connie said into the breeze. "I've already forgotten.

A breeze swept along the street and pushed away the heat for a welcome moment.

Giovanni Marconi considered the new hand he was dealt. "If you ask me, that Gervase girl's getting married a little too late."

## Chapter Three

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides."   
André Malraux

The heat was loaded with stink from the tip down in Walton Town. You got used to it, and locals stopped the pretentious show of revulsion within a matter of days into spring, as all the waste heated up. Julia reckoned there were worse things in the world than the smell of a rotten tip.

She stumbled along Cook Street behind her mother; her clipped, short steps failed to keep up with the long strides. The midday sun reflected off brand new street signs. You didn't need street signs in a town as small as Goldburne, but you did if you wanted to turn the place into a tourist destination. This was exactly what Mick Camilleri had tried to do before he fell off his balcony.

You especially didn't need a sign on Cook Street. It was the stuff of legends, named after the famous explorer. They said he came through Goldburne one day in the 1800s and swept up Kelly Durkin, the stationmaster's daughter, onto the back of his horse. He abducted her and the town named a street after him? He sounded like a paedophile as far as Julia could tell, But they were so proud to have Captain James Cook pick one of theirs to be his, that they even erected a bronze statue at the crossroads of Main and Cook Streets.

Connie Marconi slapped Julia's bare arm, leaving a red welt that burned from her sweat. "Come on, Julia. For God's sake, stop daydreaming."

Julia focused instead on the weatherboard cottages with empty chairs loitering around the doors. Empty packets of eaten Samboy chips poked out of the top of empty longneck VB bottles. She followed her mother onto Smith Street and into the third house, a newer brick building with a beaded curtain across its open doorway.

"Carla," Connie Marconi called out once she'd stepped inside the dark hallway.

"Here," came a throaty voice from the back of the house.

A bare arm poked out from a room at the end of the hallway and ushered them forward. Julia slid past her mother and into the cheerful kitchen where Carla Ventura stood over the stove, tasting the contents of a pot with a wooden spoon.

"Come and taste this, Connie," she said without turning around. "Have you been over there yet?"

"We're on our way now," Connie said, while Julia hovered over the feast on the table and sniffed the plastic-covered dishes. Rabbits poached in pungent white vinegar and dotted with green olives and capers; chickens stuffed with rice and mincemeat, their skin the colour of toasted wheat. There were also fried sausages, a platter of olives covered in green oil, broad beans stewed in tomatoes and limp, orange zucchini flowers, dripping with mozzarella that Julia picked at gingerly.

"Don't get a hair in that food," her mother warned.

"She's all right."

Carla Ventura's affable smile reminded Julia that her mother was a bore and a nag, and she didn't know how the two women could be friends.

"His house is full," Carla said. "You can barely get in to see the body."

Julia sighed with relief—today was not the day she would see her first dead body.

"He's not at the pub?" Connie asked, pressing the wooden spoon to her lips.

"No, his brother decided not to close the pub. What do you think of the sauce?"

"Fresh tomatoes?"

"Needs more sugar?"

"Yep."

"I knew it was coming," Carla said, tossing a pinch of sugar into the pot and giving it another stir. "He asked me for a reading last week."

Connie crossed her arms. Julia half expected her mother to roll her eyes—she didn't believe that stuff for a second.

"Really?"

"Yep. Came over right after Number 96."

"And?"

"And, what?" Carla's face reflected her fuchsia apron.

Julia crept around the kitchen table. "What did you see?" she asked, despite trying to remain invisible on the other side of the room.

The women turned to her as though seeing her for the first time.

Carla turned back to the stove. "So I lied. What was I going to do? Tell him I knew he'd be dead in less than a week? I told him some rubbish or other—the drought was about to end and the pub would pick up."

Julia stifled a laugh as the women crossed themselves.

"I've been in here preparing the death feast ever since. I swear I heard him fall."

"Ew."

"That's right, ew." Carla nodded at Julia. "A massive crack, like a tree. Disgusting. I went out there and saw this ooze coming from his exploded head."

Connie's hands shot to her mouth, covering a gasp.

"You poor thing."

"It's enough to scare you to death. But I just came in here, took a shoulder out of the deep freezer and got started."

Connie sighed. "One day, our reward will come."

Julia wandered around the room, gazing at knickknacks and gold-framed photos of bewildered old people. Peasants.

Carla poked Julia's arm. "Why don't you go to the shed? Your brother's there with Robbie."

"So that's where he went," Connie said.

"That son of mine's supposed to be shelling almonds, but he's probably working on that piece of junk bike he's been obsessed with since his father died."

Julia's stomach flipped like a pancake at the mere mention of his name.

Robbie.

She fought the impulse to run out to the shed, because that's what the other girls would do. Julia wasn't a loser or desperado like them.

"Oh yeah." Julia was impressed by her cool indifference. "I guess I can go check out what they're doing."

Oh my God, she thought, fighting the will to run. The last time she saw Robbie, he shelled a bag of peanuts for her while they watched a Catherine Wheel light up the sky for the St Joseph festival. He said something about her hair, how he could see a bit of a red hue in the black. Julia never saw red in her hair but the minute he mentioned it, it was all she could see.

Julia stood at the kitchen door and listened for her brother's voice. A bunch of garbled words echoed from the shed at the back end of the garden. She wasn't sure who it was because of the women huddled by the stove, clamouring to be heard over one another.

"I heard his youngest found him."

"That one's a selfish so-and-so."

Julia didn't have a clue what the old birds were on about; she was disturbed by another, deep, masculine voice carried on a gentle breeze.

Robbie's hair licked the edges of his ears and curled around his neck. He wore a silver ring on his thumb, just like Julia's grandfather. Although, Joseph Marconi got his ring from his father, who was once engaged to a Hungarian revolutionary. Robbie Ventura wasn't engaged to a Hungarian revolutionary or anyone else—as far as Julia knew—but he was cooler than her own brother, smelled of petrol and smoked Winfield reds. Just the thought that she was about to see him in a few seconds made Julia sick.

She stumbled off the back veranda, scattering a group of red-feathered chickens who had been pecking at fresh bread and seeds, and flew down the dirt path to the shed, watching for snakes in the tall grass. She peered around only to see the elastic on Robbie's underwear, which crept oh-so-slightly above the waist of his jeans.

Julia leaned against the shed and took long, deliberate breaths from her nose to stop from hyperventilating.

She was turning into a drama queen like her mother!

She smelled her own desperate sweat and raised her arms to give her pits some air before stepping out into the mottled sunlight.

Her brother lifted his head as she approached, but didn't budge from beneath the peppercorn tree where he lounged with a cigarette dangling from his lips, playing solitaire on the ground.

"Well?" Joe asked, shuffling a deck of cards.

"Well what?" Julia reacted a little too fast.

"What do you want?"

She tucked a stray lock behind her ear, self-conscious even though Robbie had barely turned around to look at her.

Of course, he doesn't notice you. You're a kid. He's... well he's a man almost. As though he even knows you're alive.

Robbie threw a wrench in Joe's direction, and it hit his foot. "Hey, watch it!"

"Watch it? Look at this shit lying around here." Robbie gathered the tools quickly and sat beside the bike, poring his fingers expertly over the motor. "You're supposed to be helping me."

"And you're supposed to be shelling almonds for your mum. What about it?"

Before she knew what she was doing, Julia turned over a milk crate and sat within inches of Robbie, who took a brief glance at her feet.

Joe straightened up against the tree. "Don't you have some cooking to do in there or something?"

"Leave her alone, dickhead," Robbie said. He startled Julia with what appeared to be a wink from eyes the colour of the Manifold River where the water was calm, and you could see the smooth stones sparkling on its bed.

Julia leaned in until the smell of motor oil forced a quick sneeze. "So, what are you doing?" she said, sniffling.

Robbie flicked his hair behind his ear and revealed a smile.

"Do you actually wanna know?" He laughed.

Julia couldn't care less what he was doing, but this was the man she was destined to marry. She was positive of it. She tucked a stray lock behind her ear and felt self-conscious in her black school shoes.

Julia held her hand out to her brother and he threw her a cigarette, which Robbie caught. He held it to her mouth and lit it with his Zippo lighter. His eyes smiled as his fingers brushed her lips, and they stared at one another in silence. Even the dragonflies stopped flittering, and the chooks stopped pecking.

"Maybe you can come and look at my bike some time?" Julia said. "Joey's supposed to do it, but he's an asshole."

"What's wrong with it?" Robbie edged a little closer and kept his voice low for her ears alone.

Julia shook her head and beads of sweat rolled onto her cheeks. Robbie took a handkerchief from his back pocket and gently dabbed her skin, and the corners of his mouth arched up gently.

"Nothing. I mean, I don't know. Just the brakes or gears or something."

"Oh, would you please go back inside," Joe yelled.

"Shut up," Robbie and Julia called back in unison, their eyes locked on one another.

Julia pulled her hair into a ponytail and held it behind her neck, grateful for the sun that dried her sweat.

"You sweat a lot for a chick." Robbie chuckled.

"Thanks for noticing."

Robbie rattled around in the guts of the bike for a while, picking up various tools, dropping them and choosing something else.

"How's uni?" Julia asked. "It must be so good to get away from here." She shaded her face and watched with jealousy at the sweat trickling down the side of his tanned neck, collecting just above his collarbone.

"It's all right," Robbie said without emotion.

He dug into the engine, and Julia heard a faint grunt. She held onto the crate to stop herself from fainting.

"I mean, I'd rather do this." He pointed to the bike. "But I guess I can come back and do it."

"Is it hard? All the essays and that?"

He had definitely cut his hair, and it wasn't some two dollar shave at the barber or anything. It was a proper, city haircut.

"It was okay. Lots of homework, if you can be bothered doing it." He looked away from the machine and stared at her thoughtfully. "I reckon you'd like it."

"Yeah? What would I like about it?"

He pointed a spanner at her and thought for a moment. "Just a lot of interesting people, cool classes. You like art, right?"

Julia nodded.

"You could study art until you couldn't take it anymore. And history and all that shit." Robbie smiled as though he knew what it meant to her. "And you don't have to do math."

"But you're good at math." She remembered.

"Yeah, but you're not." They smiled at their shared memory—Julia cramming for her end-of-year exams, hating the world and hating calculators even more. She almost hated Robbie with every "it's not that hard" and "just think about it logically," because no matter how she tried, the numbers and symbols became a jumbled, meaningless mess. She felt vindicated by her exam results, but Robbie was simply disappointed that he could not tutor her to get more than thirty-seven percent for her year 11 math exam.

"Anyway," he said, "what about you?"

Her?

"What about me?"

"One more year til you go to uni."

"Leaving Goldburne?" Julia sighed. "Like my dad's going to let me."

Robbie peered over the top of the bike.

"Bet you will anyway."

Julia shrugged and managed a chuckle.

"Like you?" she said finally.

"Yep. One more year and I'm out of this place, out of the city and the country."

Julia's heart jumped to her throat. "What?"

"Nothing." Robbie laughed. "Just this idea I've got to be a camp leader in the States for a bit."

"America?"

She didn't mean it to come out sounding so patronising.

"Sure. Why not?"

He looked at her with a blend of curiosity and perhaps assessment.

"I'm going to buy a cheap car and cruise Route 66. Head to New York to see what's there. Check out the music."

Julia admired the faraway look in his deep blue eyes but scrambled for a new topic. She didn't want to think about Robbie Ventura leaving before she had a chance to grow up.

She scratched the tip of her nose and did her best to look nonplussed. "What are you going to do here this summer?"

Robbie pointed a grease-stained hand at the motorbike. "Fix this piece of crap for your brother."

"Hey." Joe looked up from his cards. "I can still hear you."

Robbie shrugged his narrow shoulders. "I just want to hang out a bit."

"Wanna go down to the weir sometime?" The words galloped from her mouth before she had a chance to put on the brakes. Julia looked for a hole to throw herself into and concentrated instead on a trail of ants that circled her foot, waiting for the inevitable.

Except Robbie didn't laugh at her. He placed a wrench in his toolbox and plucked out another.

"Sure. Sometime."

"Okay." Julia flushed until she thought she knew exactly how Mimma Giancarlo described being overcome by the Holy Spirit. Tingling skin, shortness of breath, her heart in my mouth, the urge to throw up, visions of angels in the sky.

Except Robbie Ventura wasn't the Holy Spirit, he wasn't even Jesus. He was God with hair made scruffy by the constant flicking and delicate droplets of sweat on his t-shirt that read J. Farro & Son. Auto Mechanic.

"Julia!" Her mother's high-pitched voice filled Julia's head with warning.

"Better get going before she pulls you back by the hair," Joe cautioned with a self-satisfied smile.

Julia stumbled back to the house. Joey was right; it didn't pay to ignore her mother.

****

The thing about dead people, that nobody told you until it was too late, were the fluids. They might look like they're sleeping, but they leaked from their mouths and nostrils as though their life force oozed from them. Julia expected to hear a loud snore to accompany the thick drool that Mick Camilleri's widow mopped up with a pristine white handkerchief.

They say February is the hottest month. To prove it, the mercury on the plaque of the Virgin to the left of the widow, crept towards a stinking hot 42 degrees, despite the fan directed at the dead man.

"Shitty time of year to die," Julia's father said before they set out from the house.

"It's not like he planned it," her grandfather growled.

None of the Aussie kids were expected to go see the dead man, Julia lamented as she fanned her face with her hands. She watched the room full of women who fanned theirs with limp pages from the Sun, concertina-folded. Mick Camilleri's house heaved with mourners. The town's pub owner would always be a popular man.

Julia's cheeks ached from being pinched by all the olds who'd travelled from their farms to pay their respects.

"Haven't seen you in years..."

"Looks exactly like her father..."

"He still looks just like Dean Martin with that black hair and big curl..."

"Good-looking family..."

"Well of course they are. You know who they are."

"She's a heart breaker."

Above the deathbed, Jesus, with his Sacred Heart on flames in his hand, occupied a big chunk of the wall. His luxuriant, long hair was more John Lennon than ancient Saviour. His free hand was raised, displaying a neat stigmata and perfectly manicured nails. On his head, blood oozed from wounds produced from a circle of thorns.

Fuck, these people are gruesome, Julia thought.

The plaster Jesus beside her bed glowed red from a light wedged behind his heart. She covered it with a hankie when she read in bed and made sure to uncover it when she heard her mother's heavy footfalls outside her room.

Despite the differences, Mick Camilleri's Jesus and Julia's Jesus were pretty much the same guy.

Mick Camilleri's room smelled like rubbish day. Under the stink of sweat and rot, a sweet aroma almost overpowered death—Felce Azzurra. The perfumed talcum powder all the wogs brought back when they went home to Italy, and it reminded Julia of death as much as frankincense did. Those smells, mingling with the sweat of the living and food donated by neighbours, were death in a bottle.

Mick Camilleri's widow sat on the edge of a wooden chair, bent low beside the bed where her husband lay surrounded by perpetual sobs. The dead man's hands were folded on his sunken chest. Mick wasn't a big guy, but he'd shrunk since he'd died, making the well-tailored black suit and carefully starched shirt and tie a little big for his new frame.

"He looks the same as the day we were married," said the widow, tracing the thin purple veins that covered the backs of his hands. "Just perfect."

Julia released a sigh and a slow bead of sweat rolled down her spine. Mick Camilleri wasn't the first stupid death in Goldburne. With the drought taking everything from cattle to flyblown sheep and delicate seedlings, he wouldn't be the last man to consider death before the dishonour of bankruptcy.

She pursed her lips to stop any more loud breaths from escaping and spilled out of the room while her mother comforted the widow. The pub's beer garden reminded Julia of the enclosed courtyards she'd seen in Italy the time she'd gone back with her mother when her grandmother was dying. Big, stuccoed walls that kept out every type of interloper, but allowed a little sunshine to brighten its surfaces.

The mood outside was less sombre, as though the free beer made people forget what they were there for. Some played cards on benches, while others spoke jovially of the elusive rains and next year's seedlings.

Julia's grandfather stood at the exit with his shirtsleeves rolled up above his elbows, a lean and muscular reminder of farm life. She envied him, his honesty, his familiarity that he didn't care about Mick Camilleri's death. "Nobody liked him," he said. "He was popular because he owned the pub, but nobody liked him. Anyway," he'd said. "Don't be carried away by grief, because there's a lot more where it came from."

Julia nodded at him from across the throng and was busy contemplating her exit when a cool breeze tickled her ear. The face that appeared in front of hers was too close. She'd be dead if anybody noticed. She took a step back.

"What are you doing?" she asked Robbie. "Someone will—"

She covered her blushing face and looked away from the stray hairs that peered from his shirt collar.

Robbie pursed his lips and planted a kiss on her cheek. Julia vowed never to wash her face again!

What the hell was that about?

"Julia!" Her father called out from beneath a fig tree, almost concealed by the broad leaves that smelled of summer.

Julia crossed the courtyard, over to where her father played cards with Father Gino and the baker's son.

"Come here and meet my worthy opponent," her father said, a little too theatrically.

Vince Calvo hunched over an overturned crate between them and considered his hand.

"Vince," her father said, and flicked his cards so the boy looked up. "This is my daughter, Julia."

Vince pushed out his hand and Julia took it hesitantly. Well, that was the first time a boy had touched her in front of her father. His hands were as smooth as the dough, and his pale skin confirmed that he didn't get out much. Still, she was fascinated by his hand, the one that touched her and that also slapped down a hand of cards without missing a beat. His shirt was buttoned almost to the top and he smelled of Palmolive. Vince Calvo was cute, she supposed, in that neat and tidy way—a little too Donny Osmond, when she preferred Springsteen.

She smiled at him while her father studied his hand.

"We were just talking about you, weren't we Vince?"

"About me? Why?"

"Oh, you know, just talking about the future, and how Vince is going to take over his father's bakery one of these days. It's a good business, isn't it?"

"It's a very good business," Vince agreed.

"How old are you now, twenty, twenty-one?"

"Twenty-one in April."

"You'll be thinking about settling down soon, won't you, son?"

Julia tilted her head towards her father and wondered where the hell this was headed.

"Not too many good ones around these days though, boy. They're all going off to university and leaving town."

"Pretty dumb," Vince said. "If everyone left town then where'd we be?"

"In the middle of nowhere."

"We are in the middle of nowhere," Julia said, interrupting their restrained chuckles. "That's why everyone leaves this shithole."

She avoided her father's glare but sensed its weight, and she instantly regretted her words. She'd hear about it later.

"What makes it a shithole?" Vince said, barely concealing the pair of Kings poking from his crossed arms. "We've got everything, a school, a pool, a pub—"

"And a great bakery." Her father's lips were like two even pen strokes, and his face changed hue, from brown, resting on crimson. "You have no idea what a shithole is, sweetie. My family left it years ago. This place is paradise."

## Chapter Four

Prohasar man opre pirend - sa muro djiben semas opre chengende (Bury me standing. I've been on my knees all my life).

Old Romany saying

The carnies arrived the week after the funeral.

That's how you knew it was summer—either the carnival or circus came to town or some travelling picture theatre. They followed the summer workers who had nowhere to spend their extra cash after picking plums and tomatoes. They usually arrived quietly, pitched their tents, parked their caravans down along the river and got to work prepping for visitors who came from as far away as Violet Town and even Bendigo.

The morning they arrived was the colour of a fire-damaged fresco. Hardly able to make up its mind if it was going to be a scorcher or overcast and muggy, it wrangled between the two states resulting in an unnatural streaky and fluorescent sky. Like a smoky Turner painting, Julia mused.

She leaned against the wall of the milk bar, watching her frizzy-haired cousin, Susie, bash a frozen Sunnyboy block on the bricks and tear open the tetra-pak with her teeth to reveal raspberry ice.

"No free," Susie lamented and took the first bite of the ice block. "They probably put all the winning ones in the city."

Julia shrugged and waved away the Sunnyboy. She didn't like the frozen cordial pyramid—as if that was anything special—but there was something about opening up the thick packaging to find the faint stamp on the inner foil that announced you'd won a FREE. It made her heart race.

Today, though, her attention focused on a slow procession of jalopies and dented Airstreams that crossed the Manifold River and turned onto Main Street at the pub. A Ute stopped across the street to empty a group from its tray and they shook themselves off like dogs. They surveyed their surroundings with a quick glance, as though they just realised they were somewhere.

When Julia spied a pair of midgets, she pulled back her finger until she heard a satisfying crunch. A man in a tight black suit stared toward the river with his hands on his hips, looking like the leader boss or something, checking out the lay of the land. A woman with huge black-rimmed eyes, wearing a tight leopard print swimsuit with a bustle and train, approached him and hooked her arm through his. Others, shadows in coats and hats, full, long skirts and heavy boots with laces wrapped around their ankles, milled around the trees, smoking and drinking from amber bottles. A riderless Clydesdale rounded the street with its tail dragging on the ground like a swath of knitting wool, brushing along the dirt and debris, while a filthy Border Collie and red Kelpie circled through its legs, completely at ease with the heavy stomp of the horse's iron-shod feet.

"Circus?" Susie said. "Setting up at the river?"

The group followed their leader past the weeping willows towards the banks of the Manifold. Julia pulled up a sleeve and scratched her forearm.

"Jesus, Jules. What the fuck's that?"

Susie poked the lurid purple bruise on Julia's wrist.

"Nothing, Suse." She pulled down her sleeve and yawned, but Susie seized her hand and rolled it back up.

"Did your dad—"

Julia couldn't bring herself to look at her cousin, who was all shades of ugly right at that moment.

"Look," she said, pulling her arm behind her back. "Fuck off, okay. I got my wrist caught in the pig pen."

"Yeah, on your dad's hand. Shit. You really have to say something."

Julia leaned against the Paddle Pop Lion on the side of the milk bar. "Who to, Dickhead?" She concentrated instead on the deadbeats across the road who unloaded their gear and dragged it down to the banks of the river.

"Have a fucking bit of this at least." Susie thrust the ice to her lips.

"Fine then." Julia accepted the ice block, but kept her eyes trained on the curiosity on the other side of the wide street. She sucked on the flavoured ice until her lips were numb.

"What do you think they're going to do?" Susie asked with a slurp.

Julia shook her head. No idea. A motorbike came to a stop beside her, surrounded by a red swirl of dirt and flies, blocking her view.

"Hi, Nonno," she called to her grandfather over the engine.

"Would it kill you girls to work over the summer?" Joseph Marconi wiped his creased face with a stiff blue handkerchief.

Susie rolled her eyes.

"We're preparing for HSC, Nonno," Julia replied.

"By bludging?"

It was Julia's turn to roll her eyes.

"Who are those people?" Julia pointed at a derelict wagon, coming to an abrupt stop at the end of the procession. "They're not the same ones who usually come in summer."

Joseph Marconi shielded his eyes and muttered, "How the fuck would I know?" before disappearing into the general store.

"Your granddad's weird, Jules."

As though Julia needed reminding that. Her grandfather was nothing like the other old men in town. For starters, he smoked thin brown cigars and didn't drink. Not in the morning, not at noon and not at night; not a drop of wine as long as Julia had known him. They reckon it was because of the war. What about it, Julia had no clue.

Julia stepped out from beneath the awning and shielded her eyes. "That caravan is full on." The wagon was unlike anything she had ever seen: red with golden swirls and bunches of purple grapes painted across the front door. Spokes that once were white with thin red trim were muddied and peeling. A woman sat at a window whose shutters were thrown open. She had the air of some bored beauty queen in a parade, except she looked nothing like a beauty queen, with that mess of red hair that hung around her face like fairy floss.

"Why is she staring at us?" Susie asked, pulling her hair across her face. "Is she a witch or something?"

"So what if she is?" Julia said casually and sucked on the ice block as though it still had flavour.

"My dad says the circus freaks are liars and they steal."

Joseph Marconi reappeared under the shade and lit a cigar. "And I suppose he told you that they eat dogs, and they would take the clothes off your back and the mattress from under your sleeping body if you give them half a chance."

Susie turned to face the old man. "Well, if she's a witch she could give us the evil eye."

"Don't be stupid," said Joseph Marconi, staring back at the woman in the window. "She's just some old carnie."

"How do you know she's not a witch?" Julia asked. But her grandfather disappeared into a cloud of dust as quickly as he had arrived.

"I'm going home," Julia announced, balancing on her bicycle.

"God, I thought we were hanging out."

"We were counting cars, Susie."

Susie clicked her tongue the way Julia hated. "Do you want to go to the pool later or something?"

Julia shrugged. "Depends."

"Depends on what?" Susie waited while Julia straddled the bike and hopped onto the back of the banana seat. "Holidays are nearly over, Jules. So if you want to spend the rest of them doing nothing, go ahead, but I'm going to the pool."

"Maybe if we go to the river."

Susie scrunched her face up like she'd eaten a sour plum. "The river's filthy and full of snakes and leeches."

"But it's quiet, and we can take the radio."

"Quiet? It's fucking boring, and you just end up reading and not talking to me or anything."

In fact, Julia thought as she dropped Susie off at her front gate, I'd be more than happy to spend the rest of the holidays alone, or checking out the carnies, as long as I don't have to see the same old faces down at the pool.

Julia pulled off the sidewalk and pedalled slowly until she picked up some momentum.

"What if Joey comes with us?"

"As if your brother wants to hang out with us."

"Yeah, I guess."

"So let's go to the pool," Susie whined.

Just one more year of this shit. I can try to handle one more year.

****

Julia flew down the hill with her eyes closed. How long could she keep them closed this time? Her flimsy cotton dress fluttered over tanned thighs, and the air cooled her skin. Small stones struck her back as they flew up and around the mudguard. The sound of the channel water gushing was an easy sign that she wasn't close to the intersection, so she didn't need to look yet.

She was plunged into a deeper darkness, which meant she was rolling under the ancient gums near the Holt farm. She listened closely for the splash of the water wheel and opened her eyes in time to pedal round the bend into the long driveway to her house.

"What are you doing home already?" Julia's mother asked from the stove where a pan spluttered with golden schnitzel. "I wasn't expecting you til much later."

Julia brushed her grandfather's thick head of hair on her way to the bench and picked at a piece of celery in the salad bowl.

The clink of tools drew Julia's attention to the shed. She marched from the kitchen and followed the smell of petrol, past the outhouse to the rusted iron shed where her brother sprawled on a banana lounge with a cigarette dangling from his lips, surrounded by his Honda's scattered guts.

"Well?" he asked without looking up from his cards.

"Well what?"

"Has he told you anything?" Joe asked, throwing down a card.

"Who?"

"The old man."

"About what?"

"Jesus you are dumb as bat shit sometimes, Jules."

Or deliberately evasive, asshole.

"The carnies. He's been crapping on about them since he got home earlier. He never bad mouths anyone."

Julia sat at the end of the banana lounge, avoiding her brother's dirty feet.

"Maybe they cursed him or something," Julia said without thinking. "You know, voodoo or something."

Joey laughed. "Yep, they gave him the evil eye."

Julia leaned back onto her elbows. The sun prickled her legs and sweat flowed down her thighs.

"He was just so full-on about them when he got home before. Said they shouldn't be here, that they should go to Violet Town instead, and that they weren't the usual bunch. He wouldn't stop so I came out here."

"Doesn't sound like Nonna," Julia said.

"I know."

"Maybe you could ask him if he's ever been cursed by a midget." Just the thought of midgets made Julia's skin crawl, and she instantly regretted bringing it up.

"Shut the fuck up. Don't you think he's hiding something? He drank whiskey straight from the bottle."

Julia glanced at her brother with suspicion.

"Really?"

If Joe was telling the truth, something was up. Of course, you could never be sure he was telling the truth.

"Talking of hiding shit—what's going on with you and Rob?"

Julia sat up and stretched her spine. "What? Who? Nothing's going on with anyone."

Joe shuffled the cards and sighed. "You know how this works, Sis. I don't say anything, and you don't say anything. We've got a deal, remember?"

Yes, she remembered. But trusting Joey was like trusting yourself to not scratch a mosquito bite. You always did it, and it always made it worse. "Not sure I trust you all the time."

Joe sat up and eyeballed her with a fierce glare. "When have I ever given you any reason to doubt me?"

"Yes, I know, but I get the feeling that you'd turn on me in a second if you were cornered by Dad."

"That's bullshit," Joe spat.

Maybe, Julia thought. Up until that moment, he'd been loyal as you could get. Problem was Julia didn't know where the line was until she'd crossed it. Nobody did.

"Where do you think it's going to go, you and Robbie?"

"Who said anything about it going anywhere? I'm going to uni at the end of the year and—"

Julia was startled by his laughter and turned to see a broad grin.

"What!" she roared. "Why are you laughing?"

Joe took a moment to compose himself and took a deep breath. "You seriously think Dad's going to let you move to the city so you can go to uni? You actually believe that?"

"Why not?"

Joey tilted his head; a look of awe covered his face. "You think he's going to let you hang out in the city to be with your new boyfriend?"

"Well if nobody says anything about that—"

"Jules, it's not just that. The old man'll never let you out from under his thumb."

Julia frowned at her brother's assertion, trying hard to block her own insecurities about the matter.

"You're still here," Julia grumbled.

"Maybe, maybe not for long."

"Sis," Joe said, rubbing her arm, "don't go making any of your fancy plans like you always do."

"Shut up! I'm not staying here after I finish HSC." No freaking way.

"Maybe you'll find a nice boy to marry. You know, someone with money or maybe with a nice local business that—"

"Is this about Vince Calvo?"

"Maybe."

Julia straightened up again when she felt herself slouch.

"But you know, if you play your cards right, you could have everything you want."

She turned just as Joe cut the deck in half.

"Let them think you like the baker's son but keep planning a way out."

She squinted at the deck in his hands as he continued to cut it. "Are you helping me?"

"Don't be an idiot," Joe said, turning one card over and placing it neatly on the ground, followed by another until he had four columns. "I just want everyone to be happy." He leaned in until she felt his moist breath on her cheek. "But listen, I couldn't give a shit who you fuck and even less who you marry, but if you fuck with my friend—"

"If I fuck with Robbie? What about him fucking with me?"

"Robbie's a saint, Jules. You—I dunno."

"Prick!" Julia stood and brushed her legs, and Joe laughed at the sky while the sun glinted off his mirrored aviators.

"Can you be trusted, eh Jules?"

Julia kicked his kneecap and enjoyed the pain that appeared on her brother's face.

"See, you bitches are all crazy."

She didn't deny it, but she wasn't about to let Joey get away with it. Even though, she reminded herself, he now held a big secret.

"Now," Robbie continued. "Do me a favour, and find out what's going on with Nonno. Off you go."

He poked her calf and pushed her away. What was she going to find out? Well, at least it would give her something to do.

****

Some people, the olds, said that drinking coffee late at night gave you insomnia. Well, Julia wasn't an old woman, but it sure as hell gave her such hard core dreams that she woke up exhausted, as though she'd lived a double life at night.

Or maybe it was love or even Joe's warning.

Jesus towered over the clock on her bedside table, and Julia pretended it wasn't three in the morning. By four, even the geckos had stopped darting across the ceiling. She had the window open a few inches to let in some fresh air that you only got at night during that time of the year. Fresh air tagged onto the back of high winds, making it harder to close her eyes and stop staring at the clock to work out how many hours she could actually sleep if she fell asleep RIGHT NOW.

Julia fell asleep once, only to be sucked into her dream world. It was the same dream. The one she'd had the night her father threw a basket of oranges at her, one by one, for coming home late from sewing class. She smelled like oranges for days, and the smell continued to plague her dreams.

Not the train again, Julia thought as she fell into a deep sleep. She floated over the railway station, like one of Marc Chagall's painted brides, with a posy of blood-red roses that pierced her hands with their fat thorns. Overhead, the sun burned her eyes, but she could still make out the dark-skinned man with a drooping black moustache and unshaven jowls who paced the small raised platform. He stopped abruptly, looked left and right, and then stared straight ahead past the row of gum trees. He was some sort of Arab or Indian and even wore a checkered cloth around his head.

A thunderous sound startled Julia, and she plummeted from atop the cloud she'd dragged beneath her and landed like a cat beside the man. A particularly pungent waft of air made her pinch her nose tightly. The dawn buzzed bright with phosphorescent flies and a sky that shimmered with promises and hot, hot heat.

Beside the narrow platform, a cluster of pale-green papyrus wilted over a clean pond the size of a wading pool into which a set of train tracks disappeared. Julia wasn't sure if they were the ones coming or going.

The man handed her a pair of leather reins. "You'd better take these if you want to make plans," her grandfather said.

The camel at the end of the reins fanned its eyes at Julia.

"There are no more trains," he said, as though that alone was explanation. "Either take it or go back home."

Julia released the reins and flapped her arms, hoping the wind and will alone were enough to propel her back into the sky where it felt safer than it did on the ground.

"There are no more trains. Don't bother waiting." Joseph Marconi's lips formed words that he was not speaking, like a poorly dubbed movie.

Julia hung her head. "Did I miss it?" she croaked.

The old man crossed himself with his left hand. Julia crossed herself too. You always had to.

"Did you miss the train?" His thick eyebrows straightened across his forehead. "There were never any trains, fool."

****

Julia peered into the empty white cup as though staring with all her will would make it fill with coffee.

Ugh. Another day without a decent sleep.

She plucked a worn paperback from beneath her mattress and opened the book to the poem she knew by heart already but liked to read as if it were the first time.

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold...

How many times had she read The Outsiders? She turned to the book's endpapers and continued her scribble while a baby gecko scampered over the wall, stopping at the cracks and then continuing around them at lightning speed. The window undulated like a wave beside the rocking loquat tree, its glass thin as paper.

A transistor under Julia's pillow played a gentle jazz melody. Tinny and baseless, but with a voice warm like Billie Holliday's, trailing through Julia's meditations.

Julia rubbed her face and cursed the empty coffee cup. She was startled by a tree branch at the window. No wind to be heard outside, but the branch continued to slap the glass.

Julia admired the drawing, every line a stark reminder of the solid bars to her little cage. If her mother saw what she was doing and reading, she'd be in for it! She heard the deadly words as though her mother was in the room, poring over the mess, pulling her by the hair while Julia picked it up and tried not to cry.

You're always so messy. Always ruining your books, ripping out pages and writing all over them.

They're from the library; I lied. Someone else did this. I would never write in a book.

Julia concentrated on the window to rid herself of the thoughts. She rehearsed these conversations regularly, so she wouldn't be caught off guard if they ever came up. If you're going to lie, be convincing and really believe it yourself.

She climbed out of the bed at a light but urgent tap at the window. Checking that it was latched, Julia stumbled back to the bed just as a large shadow pulled out from behind the tree.

She approached the window, and a sheepish face smiled back at her.

"Robbie?"

Julia slid open the window, long slow movements of steel sliding on steel, and listened out for any rumblings from the other rooms of the house.

"What are you doing here?" Julia didn't know whether to let him in or to lock the window back up, pull down the blind, go back to bed and pretend he wasn't there.

Wild tufts of uncombed hair fell across Robbie's eyes, making his sharp cheekbones stand out in the darkness. "I couldn't sleep." He leaned right up close to the window, and the sweetness of his cologne brought Julia to the edge of a sneeze.

"Joe's room's next door. You know that."

"I didn't come to see him."

Can you get heatstroke at night? Inside? Or maybe I'm having a heart attack?

Julia took a few deep breaths with her nose and pulled back from the window before she did something, well, something stupid.

"Are you dressed?" Robbie asked.

"What?"

"I mean, are you in your pjs or clothes?"

"I was in bed."

"So put some clothes on and let's go."

"Go where?"

He shrugged, and that was enough to propel Julia to her wardrobe. She slid across the wooden floor and caught her socks on a splintered floorboard, so she ripped them off.

Shit.

What the hell did you wear when you were about to sneak out of the house with Robbie Ventura? Should she change her undies?

Julia tugged on her Wranglers and tucked in a checkered shirt as she slowly opened the bedroom door.

Doors only squeak in the movies, she reminded herself, but it didn't stop her from panicking. She stuck her head out of the room, stopped breathing and listened for any sound coming from the other rooms of the thin fibro house.

Oh my God, if they ever find out! Thing is, she thought while tiptoeing to the laundry, what's the worst thing that can happen?

Even so, you didn't want to fuck with her father; no matter how many times he'd thrashed her, the fear of it never went away.

Staring at the unlocked laundry door, Julia finally wondered what the hell Robbie would want with her. Other than a bad tongue kiss at her Confirmation when she was ten, the guy had never paid her much attention. After all, she was just his friend's little sister and he was at uni, where the chicks were older, beautiful and available without their parents there to get in the way.

She stood on the threshold, the door open just wide enough to edge through and took in the humid night and the black country road with no streetlights. The stars and moon were enough to light her way. Julia's mind went blank, completely void of thought, judgment, or even fear. She sighed and slid through the door, gently closing it behind her.

Leaning against the fig tree, Robbie's shadow was darker than night. Julia took a deep whiff of cigarettes and Old Spice mingled with petrol.

Manly smells.

She kept her hands tucked behind her back and tapped her fingers together. She took Robbie's hand when it was offered and held it so firmly that she could feel his fingerprints.

They continued in silence towards the hay shed and squeezed through the rectangle bails, until they were wedged into a gap towards the middle of the stack. Julia could not distinguish Robbie's face in the dark, but she knew every crevice from the thin white scar on his chin, to the soft dimples when he smiled, just like his father's.

If Julia had any bravado, it was long gone. She stiffened when he touched her face, taking in the heady mix of straw and cologne. Instead, she pretended he didn't send shivers across her skin, that this was perfectly fine.

She leaned back, thankful for the walls of straw that towered around them. His fingertips brushed her lips, which were sticky from the lip-gloss she slathered on them in her room. Julia resisted the urge to lunge at him and tumble in the hay like some bawdy Benny Hill wench. Instead, she hooked her finger into a belt loop and drew him in, trying to be more Rizzo (but not too much), less Sandy. His breath was deliciously minty and warm as he kissed her eyelids, her earlobe, then his hot tongue against her jaw.

Julia sighed and pressed against him more, allowing their bumps and crevices to connect. She laughed inwardly at the absurdity of the situation. One minute she was in bed doodling, the next she was there; her face on fire and her mind suspended in mid-air to watch for a moment, until she returned to her body and sensed every stiffening hair follicle.

Robbie hesitated when their lips touched, but he pulled Julia's leg around his waist and pressed his pelvis against her until it was painful. Julia pulled away slightly.

"What's wrong?" he began before she pressed her hand between his legs, stroking his thighs, while she watched his face turn from panic to bliss. He sighed.

It doesn't take much to shift a boy's attention.

Robbie tugged her shirt out from her jeans and promptly slid his hands up, reminding Julia that, in her haste, she'd forgotten to put on a bra.

She blushed uncertainly. She didn't want him to think she was some femmo or hippy, but he didn't seem to mind. He caressed her breasts before withdrawing his hands again to unbutton her jeans.

She'd let him finger her, but that was it. For now.

Could she even tell Susie?

Julia continued to stroke him as he pushed his hand into her undies.

Robbie chuckled and kissed her before she had a chance to take a breath. She closed her eyes as one finger, then another, penetrated—

"Shit!"

Robbie gently pulled away with a frustrated sigh. He zipped up Julia's jeans and looked up at the corrugated iron roof.

"Did I do something wrong?" Julia asked, mortified. Was she too forward? Did he think she was a slut? What was she thinking?

He sighed and pressed against her. His tongue lightly brushed her earlobe and he whispered, "I don't think we should do this."

"Why not?" Julia fought with her body to keep still, and she could only mutter single syllables.

"It's stupid."

A shaft of moonlight wedged between them.

"What's stupid?"

"I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, you're my mate's little sister. You're just a kid. This..." He pointed back and forth between them. "This is probably illegal."

"I'm seventeen, asshole!"

"It doesn't matter. Come on." He took her arm. "I'll take you back."

"What have I done?" Julia wanted more than anything to sound determined, a strong chick who didn't care, but all she could think to do was run back to the house to bury herself under her satin comforter and stay there until she was forty.

They made their way out of the haystack and Robbie caressed her face. "I just don't want to fuck this up," he said.

"Fuck what up?" Julia's voice was on the edge of slipping, of giving her away.

"This. You and me. It's getting complicated before we even start."

It wasn't supposed to be like this, Julia thought, fighting back the frustration as Robbie kept talking. She couldn't hear anything over the committee in her head. The past few minutes seemed like nothing now—fleeting, dreamlike and unreal. She finally lifted her hand to brush his fringe back and looked into his eyes, glistening in the moonlight.

"Don't worry about all that," she whispered. "Don't over think it. Mum says that's what happens when you go to uni. You start to think too much."

"It's true." He sighed. "Everything gets serious, even billiards."

Julia laughed with her head nestled in Robbie's chest.

"Let's promise to play pool when I start uni and never take it seriously. Deal?"

"Deal."

She believed him. They kissed on it.

## Chapter Five

They come every year. They set their roots and steal our souls. Every year; without fail.

Anonymous

By the end of summer, the Manifold River was shallow again, with a few barren trees poking through along its route. Fig trees embraced one another like lovers across its expanse, and caperberry bushes cascaded over the banks.

Having Joe around was a nice reminder of Robbie. Dark hair that rarely saw a comb, unshaven until church on Sundays or some other special occasion. They both loved cars and motorbikes, doing things with their hands. Julia blushed at the thought of Robbie's inquisitive fingers on her skin. The rendezvous in the hayshed felt like a lifetime ago, now that Robbie was back in Melbourne.

She sucked the stem of a lemon flower and dismissed that morning's image of her mother's bruised bare arms. She made her own bed. So did Julia, which is why she went to confession. Maybe Father Gino could help her mother get rid of her demons the way he helped Julia.

Julia surrendered herself to the warmth from the sun and the nice batch of pot her brother had managed to find. Flies played around Joe's ears, but moved away when he breathed out a thick cloud of smoke from the joint.

There was no way Julia could remain immune when the guys made it look so cool. Joe and Robbie were the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of Goldburne, running amok together down at the weir or at some party after the olds had gone to bed.

Julia turned on her side, taking care not to slip off the towel and onto the hot boulder. "Do you miss him?" she asked her brother.

Joe took another deep drag before passing the joint back to Julia.

"Who?"

"Robbie."

Joe inhaled deeper and smirked. "Why would I miss him?"

"Because he's your best friend, dickhead."

Julia lay back on the towel, spreading her toes to the sky and relaxing into the slab of bluestone, as the river travelled slowly around them.

"We're not like you chicks," Joe said. "We don't miss each other."

"Really?"

Weird, Julia thought. She couldn't imagine not missing someone you spent so much time with. Not seeing Robbie for weeks at a time, turned her off food and made her want to jump in the river and hold her breath. She couldn't stand the times he was away. Not even the letters she wrote to him buoyed her enough to keep her focused on just getting through the year and passing with a decent HSC score. Stay focused, she reminded herself when she went to bed at night. Remember the goal.

Julia closed her eyes, thinking once more of Robbie's hands, his eyes, mouth.

"Maybe you're the one who misses Robbie," Joe said after a while.

Julia waved her fingers to her mouth, wordlessly asking for a cigarette.

Joe lit one and took a drag before passing it to her. "What's going on with you two?"

"Nothing." Julia took a couple of quick puffs from the cigarette and felt a satisfying rush to the head. "I'm here. He's travelling and working in the city. What could be going on?"

"And Mum and Dad are planning your wedding."

Julia lifted her head and found her brother smirking. "Don't be such an asshole."

She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. She'd had enough of sunbaking. It was getting hot.

Joe smoothed back his damp hair. "You know they're planning it, right?"

"With who, dickhead?" Julia spat.

"Like you don't know. Vince."

Julia frowned. "The baker's son? The one who dropped out of school in Year 9? He's blond."

"You can't choose who you fall in love with, Sis."

"I'm not in love with the baker's son," Julia sputtered.

"Then you better talk the talk, little sis. Or the olds will never let you out the house all year. Then what'll you do?"

Julia threw the bottle of baby oil at Joe, and it bounced off his chest into the river. "That's not funny. Anyway, last year that gypsy at the show told me I'd be pregnant before 23, and I'd marry someone from out of town."

"Listen, Jules, I warned you not to get involved with Robbie."

"You did?" Julia laughed. She picked up a heavy stone and lobbed it into the water like a shot put. She watched it quickly sink.

"Yes, idiot, because he's my fucking friend, and you're my fucking sister, and you're both fucking each other. That's not something a brother wants to know about."

Julia straightened out her legs. Maybe they needed a few more minutes.

"Has Robbie said anything?" she asked, cautiously feeling her way.

"Are you serious?"

"Then forget about it."

"Foggedaboudit. Who are you, the Godfather?"

She turned onto her back again and closed her eyes to the sun.

"Jules, please just don't do anything stupid."

She brushed his hand off her shoulder. "Like what?"

"You go on and on about moving away after HSC, but you have to let the folks think that you're going along with their plans okay. If they find out about you and Robbie—"

"I'm not an idiot, Joseph. They won't find anything out."

"Except these things have a way of coming out."

"What things?"

"Like Aurora Minuzzo. Remember how she was Don Carmelo's mistress before they got married, and she killed his first wife?"

Julia bit her lip and glanced across to her brother, who pulled his swim shorts a little lower. "What?" she asked. But his expression told her he wasn't lying.

"Remember how he owned the milk bar?"

Julia nodded.

"And his wife used to serve behind the counter. She was a Skip, remember."

Of course she remembered. Wogs didn't marry Skips around here.

"And instead of helping him, she'd be in the house watching Days of Our Lives and smoking his cigarettes. And her family would come and stay all the time, and he'd be serving and stacking shelves. Anyway, so one day he decides to hire someone to do the work that she's supposed to be doing."

"Who?" Julia asked.

"Aurora Minuzzo. She was around your age, sixteen, seventeen. Her parents worked on a farm out near Bendigo. They sent her off to get a job, but she didn't know how to sew or clean or do anything useful. So Don Carmelo hired her, and he's pretty happy by now because he's got this pretty young worker and she's not bad company either."

Joe tells stories like mum, Julia thought. Long and all over the place.

She tossed the chewed-up lemon flowers into the shallow river. "What did his wife say about it all?"

"Well, she's not happy, and she's starting to spend a bit more time in the milk bar, which isn't good for anyone. She's always behind the counter and complaining about how she doesn't know how many scoops of ice cream to put in a milkshake, that sort of thing. But I guess she doesn't know that the store's dirty, because her husband's been a little busy with little Aurora."

"What a prick." Julia admired the curlicue of smoke that tickled her lips, only to float listlessly away, over her head.

"Well, could you blame him? Do you remember his wife?"

Julia scrunched her face. "Yes, she was ugly, ugly, ugly and had that piece of skin hanging from her armpit along with the hair. Fucking disgusting."

"I found her using one of the Johnson's baby powders on her pubes in the shop once. Right in the middle of the aisle."

"Oh my God."

Joey twirled the cigarette though his fingers and it glowed. "Anyway, so the old man and Aurora are at it for a while, maybe a year, and Aurora's parading around town in nice clothes. She's having her hair done every week and even her parents are looking like they've won Tattslotto."

"By this time, Don Carmelo's wife was a real fool and everybody knew it. You'd hear her every time you went into the shop." Joe cleared his throat and patted his hair. "'Carmelo! She's putting everything on the wrong shelves. Carmelo, tell her to put some clothes on, she's sweating like a pig all over the pies.' It was like television, but better."

"And you reckon Aurora killed his wife? Didn't she have lung cancer or something?"

"Yeah, she did, but Aurora was sick of getting his leftovers and wanted him to marry her. He'd been promising her holidays, but couldn't because of his wife. So she went to their house one night while the wife was asleep and covered her face with a pillow. Suffocated her. I heard that she did it with him in the bed right next to the dead woman. Said if he didn't, she'd tell everyone that he'd raped her and killed his own wife."

"Really?"

"Well, who would you believe?"

Julia toyed with the chain around her neck. The blue Madonna pendant was still cool. "I think you're making it up."

Joe crossed himself. "I swear on our grandmother's grave, Julia."

Julia rolled her eyes. As though that means anything.

"He's dead now," she said.

"Who?"

"Don Carmelo."

"Yeah."

"He was all right. He let me read the Archie comics even if I didn't buy them."

"That's because he liked to look at your little ass."

"Don't be gross." She threw the lighter at his head, but he ducked in time, and it bounced off the rock into the water.

"So what's the moral of the story, Joey? Keep my mouth shut and go along with the wedding plans?" Julia watched Joe's face turn serious.

"Keep everything shut, Jules."

"Or what? They'll stone me?"

"You'll end up with Aurora's reputation."

"I'd rather be a slut than be boring," she mumbled, hoping he didn't hear. "Maybe I'll get lucky, and Dad will kick me out."

Joe laughed and poked her with his toe. "You're an idiot. We're wogs; we don't get kicked out. They just bring us in tight and strangle us until we become exactly what they hoped for."

"Is that what they did to you, Joey?"

"Seriously, Sis, it's like you were born yesterday. I don't count, but I'm a better liar than you." Joe stood and shook the sleep from his body.

"How do you know that?" Julia followed her brother to the edge of the rock and watched him jump in, before jumping in feet first. They emerged from the water, spluttering with laughter. Joe turned onto his back and floated against the current, kicking his feet so they made a gentle splash.

"Well, did you know that I'm going to America next year?" he said.

"What?" Julia waded towards him and treaded water by his side, while Joe continued with his eyes closed.

"Nothing. Just that I've been saving."

"Saving what?"

"Money, dickhead."

Julia slapped the water. "From where?"

"I work."

"You fix cars."

"That and stuff." Joe pulled his arm away and swam back to the riverbank.

Julia followed him from the water. "You can't leave, Joe. I am." She shook as she spoke, and Joe dried himself on their towel.

"You're not the only one with big plans. See, I am better at keeping secrets, aren't I?"

"I'll tell them," Julia said, and snatched the towel from her brother.

"No, you won't."

She rolled her eyes. He was right. She wouldn't.

"We can't both leave them," she continued.

Joe wiped his hands and lit a cigarette. He passed it to Julia and lit another. "Why not? You'll feel sorry for them?"

"Maybe. A little."

He sniggered and shook his head. "Well, you just remember how bad you feel for them next time the old man's kicking your head in, okay?"

Julia took a deep drag, enjoying the razor sharp sensation in her throat.

Fuck 'em. You don't owe them anything.

****

Julia woke from an afternoon nap beneath the fig tree that shadowed a third of the back veranda. She couldn't remember the last time she dreamed of feathers and branches floating over the river on its way to... Where did it go exactly? That's what she wondered when her father threw a sack full of puppies into the water that one time. She knew now that they didn't float down the river and live happily ever after with another family.

Cherie Curry screeched from the transistor. The first stanza from Eliot's "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" filled the top of an otherwise blank page. She promised her teacher that she'd practice shading, but her head wasn't in it today.

"It's what you don't draw that's important," Miss Hart said. "Shade around the form to bring it to life."

She could shade. That was easy enough in this heat. But her head would only think and thinking made her hesitate. She wished she could paint like Rothko or Chagall, but she was no painter. She pretended to draw and shade when really, all she was doing was waiting for something to happen.

The dappled sun caramelised her skin and prickled her face like Robbie's skin when he kissed her body. Everything reminded her of Robbie, even sunburn.

The branches of the fig tree hung low. Julia felt the urge to climb into its core, hide in its secretive sap that smelled of summer. Her legs trembled like a bowl of jelly as she drew herself up onto the trunk. The first knot was the smallest, the most difficult to wrap her toes around. She held onto the lowest branch then tumbled to the ground, biting her lip to suppress a yelp. Twisting her foot around, Julia found a small but thick splinter embedded in her heel, which began to throb the longer she held her foot up. She pulled on the splinter and blood trickled into the ground. Her hair was moist from the afternoon heat and stuck to her neck, but she wiped away the prickly sweat, thinking how nice it would be if she were Cleopatra, with someone to wave palm fronds over her.

Julia tied a handkerchief tightly around her foot and continued up the tree, now more determined to scale it. With her toes firmly positioned above the first knot and her arms around the lowest branch, she raised herself carefully, swinging her legs over the branch, scraping the insides of her thighs. She wedged herself between the tree trunk and the branch with her legs hanging down either side of the knobbly limb.

"This will do." She puffed, satisfied and safe as when she was little, hiding from her father up the gnarled trunk with wide leaves that smelled of rain and honey. The broad, furry fig leaves smelled of freedom too, because no one knew where to find her amongst the dark leaves, not even her brother. She would come down only when she knew her father had fallen asleep after lunch and her skin was sticky from the milk of the figs.

Julia's hair was damp with sweat when she slipped through the back door. Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she skipped lunch, but the sound of her parents talking in the kitchen made her reconsider food.

Later, she thought and tiptoed away. She stopped short when she heard her name.

"What's wrong if they start? Julia needs a focus this year."

"She's just seventeen," Connie grumbled. "She has a focus—her HSC."

"School," Giovanni spat. "What difference is school going to make? Look at the Gervase girl. She went to school and still got into trouble." Her father sounded angry, not the sort of rage where he held it all in until he burst. He sounded normal and, oh so satisfied. Like he knew he had the upper hand and no amount of persuasion or argument could shift him. This was his everyday anger.

"She wants to go to university, Giovanni."

Julia peered through the doorframe. Her father looked at the ceiling, the wall, the floor, anywhere other than the woman who seemed to Julia, to be questioning his authority. Until finally, a backhander—that's the Giovanni Marconi she knew well. It came as a relief when he did it. At least he was consistent.

Giovanni leaned into his wife. "What makes you think I'll let her go to university? Move to Melbourne? So she can be with that Ventura kid? Have a great time with her friends?"

"Do you honestly believe she'll be satisfied with the baker's son? What about her plans?"

"Plans? I make her plans. What sort of plans could a girl like her have?" Giovanni marched to the stove and lit a cigarette with the flame beneath a simmering pot. "We owe that family."

"So buy them some flowers, say thank you. Don't offer up your daughter as payment for some story they helped your father concoct—"

"That's enough. Or do you want a little more of this?"

Julia hurried to her room and closed the door gently.

Shit, Joe's right.

****

"You stop that," Julia's father cautioned, the minute she put pen to paper. How did he manage to walk past her bedroom the minute she started writing to Robbie? It's like he sensed it. Whenever she had the urge to spill her guts to Robbie or any one of her faceless pen pals, he was there to remind her that it was a dangerous pastime. That you can't trust your emotions. That everything you say in a letter is a fantastic lie that'll come back to bite you one day.

What did he know about writing letters? Julia wrote to Robbie. As though he knew how to write one, anyway. He was nothing but a farmer, a labourer, who would never have the urge to reveal his real feelings in any way, let alone in a letter. As though he had any feelings that didn't revolve around the farm, betting on horses and playing cards. What would he have to say anyway?

He says that words are just like a map, not the territory. What the hell does that even mean?

Does he mean that you say all sorts of shit you don't mean in letters? That if you write down what you're feeling before you have time to work it through, before you've slept it off, that the events of the day feel like black monsters the size of a skyscraper.

Writing it down, Julia wrote, is a promise that you look back on. Indelible as cancer, malignant words that serve as a spiteful reminder that you are the best liar on earth, if only you didn't have to speak to anyone face to face.

Unlike her father, whose brain was reduced by monotony and anger, Julia was a mess of activity and thoughts that drowned out the crap someone like her dad could spew at her on the best of nights. She thought of Robbie and her head spun with the same emptiness that plagued her growling belly. She woke up throughout the night, every night, listening for his rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat at all hours.

He was such a bastard for not writing back. Bastard.

Maybe he was busy with uni, essays, exams and whatnot, Julia reminded herself with a shrug of her shoulders. But he could drop her a line, even just a blank postcard to show that he was thinking of her. Something.

Julia waited for her father's pine scent and heavy footfalls to disappear, and she pulled the paper out from under the bed.

Write to me if you can. It hurts me not to know what you're thinking. You promised to write, and you know it means the world to me to get a letter. Plus, you said you would. Tell me you're thinking about me a little. Or have I faded from your memory like a Polaroid picture? Perhaps you didn't think of me at all. Perhaps I've faded from your memory like a watercolour. I guess things are so cool in Melbourne, and you have tonnes to do, so the last thing you want to think about is this stupid place and me.

School's a bore. Stupid sex ed with Sister Margaret—can you imagine how funny it is when Lisa Mannerington asks her to explain how to put on a condom! She got detention for that. Worth it, I reckon.

Susie's still the biggest bore, but at least I have someone to hang out with. She just doesn't get me. She doesn't get why I'm dying for next year to come quickly. Dying to move to the city. Just plain dying. She doesn't even have a mother—no wonder she's okay with everything. As if her dad gives a shit what she does. He probably can't wait for her to get out of the house, so he can remarry some Filipino. That's what my mum thinks anyway. Except there are no Philipino ladies here. Where would he find one? Where the hell would they even meet?

Where did we meet? I don't remember the first time I saw you. I think you were always there, like my brother. I don't remember a time when you weren't a permanent fixture.

I think I had my eyes closed the first time I really saw you—Dad reckons I sleepwalk in life—during the day! He could be right, because sometimes I have no idea how I got where I am.

Anyway, I heard some really weird news the other day, and it has me freaked out so much that all I want to do is yell the words to every song by the Runaways at my dad. I don't want to write about it, 'cos if it's not true, that could make it true. You know?

So anyway, see you super soon at Carnival!

Shit! How could she not have noticed him at the door? Julia was in the middle of a promise. A dare. An enthusiastic pledge and her pen barely left the paper. She scribbled like a mad woman. So when her father slapped the pen from her hand and snatched the page, her heart leapt to her throat. Although, that could have been her father's fingers.

"If I see you writing another letter to anyone, I'll cut off your fucking hands."

## Chapter Six

For enduring Friendship: Fill two small charm bags with cloves and tie them on a chain to wear from the neck. Give one to a friend and wear one yourself. As long as you both wear them, your friendship will endure.

Julia pulled Anna Rossi by both hands. The doors, leading out to the first floor terrace, were flung open to a calm day that revealed dark clouds in the east. There was nothing Julia enjoyed more than the smell of rain on bitumen on a hot day. Well, that and a cooling swim in the Manifold.

Susie's spastic sister dug in her feet and held onto the bedpost.

"Jesus, Jules. Leave her alone," Susie called from the bed where she lay on her stomach kicking her legs in the air to the quick tempo of the music.

"No, no, no, no, no," Anna wailed, hanging onto the bedpost.

"It's good for you," Julia yelled above the music. "It's not that hot. I promise you won't get burned."

Susie looked up from her writing. "What do you care if she goes outside, Jules?"

"It's not normal to stay inside."

"Well, she's hardly normal."

Julia let the statement dangle over her and went back to pulling on the thin arms that seemed like they would be so easy to snap, just like a thin twig.

"What's this song called?" Susie asked.

"Anna!" Julia lost her patience and gently let go of the girl, careful not to let her fall.

"Julia!"

"What?" Julia turned to Susie who was rewinding the tape while it was still playing, which made it squeal.

"What's the name of this song?" Susie's pen was poised for a response.

"Oh, I don't know."

Julia's hands were red from pulling on Anna's skin and bones. Sure, she felt some remorse, especially when the girl scampered off to crouch behind a chair, trying to hide. But there was no way she was going to spend the rest of the weekend stuck inside, even if the house was luxurious with running hot and cold water and an indoor toilet. You could lose yourself in it for days.

Julia marvelled at how it could be possible that their mothers were twins, for she and her cousins could not have been more different. Plus, Aunt Celia used to tell them stories about the boys she'd known before she got married, of sneaking out of the convent when she should have been in sewing class. While she was still alive, the house at the edge of Goldburne was a bright reflection of its mistress. After her death, the fragrance of frangipani wasn't enough to mask the decay. Big glass bowls, once filled with exotic fish, remained empty and cracked; empty birdcages hung from rusted hooks, their doors left ajar.

Somewhere at the edges of her memory, Julia remembered her aunt's scent. Not cheap perfume from the chemist, but real, foreign spice and flowers she couldn't name. It still lingered here and there, in the curtains and furniture in unused rooms.

Her cousins didn't know how good they had it. They had everything, including a dead mother and a dad who was hardly ever around. The dickheads could do whatever they liked, but they never did. They could buy all the clothes they wanted, but they couldn't care less. What a waste. Why did some people have everything, while others had to piss in a pot at night?

Susie's dad didn't do much for his money. He got it from his family and was now spending the spare change at the track. Julia's mother hated the man more than she hated the mid-summer heat. He killed his wife, Connie's sister, by letting her starve to death. Julia supposed it was true. Aunt Celia was the skinniest adult she ever saw and had skin the colour of lemons. Still, the girls didn't know how lucky they were without parents checking on every move they made. Susie had the best life ever but didn't appreciate it. Their brother, Paul, got it. He lived in Sydney and drove a blue Mercedes the size of a boat, with a picture of Farah Fawcett hanging from the rear view mirror. His flared pants and tight shirts with deep V-necks were all the proof you needed that he didn't live in Goldburne. And the girls all loved him, hung on every word at the pub when he was around. Julia hung around too and listened to his stories of the city—clubs that played disco music, brawls on the streets at night, girls in super short skirts and high heels who talked about sex and music with the same enthusiasm.

Before Robbie, Paul Rossi was Julia's link to the outside world, the city. The proper city where you could walk the streets for days without running into anyone you knew.

Anna Rossi cowered like a pile of cow shit beside the bed; her sister continued to scribble the lyrics of the song with a pencil.

"Let's just leave her here then," Julia said.

Susie rolled her eyes and turned up the volume on the radio.

Julia wasn't going to spend another day in the house because of Anna. She managed to get her down the stairs last time, pulled her down each step, her hands white-knuckled on the balustrade. But she lost her grip on Anna for a moment, and they ended back upstairs.

A loud horn interrupted the girls' singing.

"Come on," Julia begged. "Joey's here and I gave him a pack of smokes if he'd come and get us."

"She's not going to come."

"Well, I'll go without you then."

Susie looked up from the tape deck. She didn't have to say anything. Julia knew that look.

Julia marched up to Anna and glared down at the crumpled figure.

"Listen, Anna, we're going to the pool. You can wrap a towel around you for all I care, but let's go."

Julia thrust out her hand. She wasn't taking no as an answer. After a few minutes of determined silence, Anna's frail form straightened up and took Julia's firm grasp.

Joe's horn sounded long and bored.

"Come on," Julia insisted and dragged Anna from the room before her brother left them in the middle of nowhere.

****

The adults had the pub and the kids had the pool. It was as simple as that in Goldburne. They each tried never to cross over unless there was an emergency, and how many of those could you have in a town with the population of 200?

You could see the Manifold River from the ten-foot platform of the Goldburne pool. If it wasn't packed, you could even hear the river gushing along on its way to the bay. You also had a clear view of the boarded-up cellblock, enclosed by barbed-wire cyclone fencing.

They say that the bodies of the prisoners of war were left to rot in their cells at the end of WW2, if they had no family to collect them. Hundreds of them—Japanese, Italians, Germans. Even after the war was over, and it was clear that the farmers posed no more threat to the Australian landscape than the roos that roamed wild in the area, they were virtually buried alive in that camp. Julia's grandfather got out, but he didn't talk about it because it was nobody's business.

Julia stood on the 10-foot diving platform and shielded the sparkling sun from her eyes. A series of trucks and caravans lined the cemetery's eastern wall, over which loomed a red and yellow striped circus tent.

"Are you going to jump or what?" Susie called up to Julia. Julia glanced down at the water. Ten feet seemed more like a hundred on this dizzying hot day, and her cousin's encouraging smile at the other end of the platform reminded her of a game show hostess, happily describing the prizes on offer. Anna held onto the bottom rung of the ladder, a guardian against anyone even considering a quick dive, because it was easier to wait than to have to deal with a halfwit like Anna Rossi.

A fire smouldered from a pit between the itinerant homes and the faded circus tent.

God, Julia thought, don't they know there's a total fire ban? She supposed it must get cold at night when you're sleeping in a car though. She wondered why they weren't sleeping underground, in the catacombs. Although she'd heard the carnies were turning the underground city into a haunted house.

Julia rubbed her tingling shoulders, which dried quickly after her dive, while Susie wrapped a towel around her head.

"Have you talked to them yet?"

"What?"

"To your mum and dad, about us sharing a house next year while we're at uni?"

Julia didn't want to think about that yet. She wanted to get through the year, pass her HSC, and then tell them her plans.

"Jules! Are you listening?"

Julia had one ear stuck to Lou Reed on the transistor, and the other one fielded the magpies in the scrub.

"I'm serious. Have you told them yet?"

Julia clutched her cousin's bikini. "No, and if you say something to your dad before I'm ready, I'll fucking have you."

Susie pulled herself away and pouted.

"Sorry, Suse," Julia said. "I just don't want anything to ruin it, you know."

"How couldn't I know? It's the only thing you talk about, Jules."

"I know." Julia rubbed Susie's wet hair. "I just couldn't handle it if something fucked it up, you know. I just don't want to get stuck here."

"I know, Jules," Susie assured her. "I really do. I just think it's going to be harder than you think. I mean, what about the whole Vince thing? You can't just ignore that."

Julia felt around her knapsack for the packet of cigarettes. "Yes I can," she snapped. "They haven't even said anything to me yet, so maybe it won't happen."

"What'll happen to me if you have to stay here and get married?"

Julia tempered the adrenaline that felt like rage. "Don't worry so much, Suse," she assured her. "I'll work something out."

She had to work something out, because there was no way she was going to marry the fucking baker's son and stay in this shithole.

"Your parents are a lot more manipulative than you are, Jules."

"Only cause they've had more practice. But I've observed them." She smiled and tapped her head.

"Does Robbie know?"

Julia pinched her cousin's forearm. "Know what? There's nothing to know."

Susie shook her head. "Your folks are fucked. I can't believe they're getting you into an arranged marriage."

"And with Vince Calvo."

"I guess you could do worse than Vince Calvo."

Julia leaned into Susie. "What did you say?"

"Well, at least he's cute."

"Cute," Julia hissed. "Who wants Donnie Osmond when you could have Springsteen?"

"Ugh, he's so... sweaty and messy."

Julia sighed. Her cousin would never get her. "Hey, let's go have a ciggie," she suggested, with a vast smile. The shirt clung to her bathers as she slipped it over her shoulders.

"What about Anna?" Susie moaned. "You know she'll dob if she sees you."

Julia shrugged her shoulders. "Leave her here."

"Alone?" Julia cast her eyes at the horde of kids kicking their legs in the water with effortless precision. "Look." She pointed at the kiosk where a thin blonde in a black one-piece Speedo bit into an icy pole. "Leslie Cameron."

"What about her?" Susie unwrapped her head; a frizzy mane floated across her shoulders.

"We'll ask her to look after Anna."

Julia could see that Susie was thinking about it.

"And we could go see what the carnies are doing," Julia whispered.

Anna bit the inside of her bottom lip.

"What if Dad finds out?"

"How's he going to find out?"

Susie's good-natured laughter was the answer she was hoping for. "You're so lucky you've got me, Jules, or you'd never do anything on your own."

Susie wasn't right about that, Julia thought. She's not completely wrong either.

****

Julia took a long drag of the cigarette, stopping only when her lungs burned. She held onto the rope bridge, trying not to freak out at the row of ants that climbed over her hand when she stopped for long enough.

She jumped off the bridge at the end where Susie waited. Sweat trickled down her spine, but Julia refrained from wiping it.

A flag poked out of the top of a blue porta-loo. A boy of around ten climbed barefoot up one of the wooden tent poles that held up the circus tent. From up close, the tent looked dull and tired, but it didn't matter at night when the fairy lights sparkled and made everything look magical.

The girls circled the outside of the tent and approached a row of caravans. The redhead she'd seen, the day the carnies arrived, was fluttering a skirt from the small window of her bright wagon.

"Come inside," the old woman said, as chirpy as a robin.

Julia didn't hesitate, and stepped onto the gilt steps of the caravan, but felt a hand pull her back.

"Are you serious?" Susie hissed. "We can't just go in there."

Julia looked up at the small door. "Why not?"

"What if she kills us?"

"Why the fuck would she kill us?"

"Because that's what gypsies and carnies do, Jules."

Julia pulled her arm away and waited in front of the doorway. She shook her head at her cousin's idiocy.

The small red door opened out, and Julia stepped back to make room. The old woman's stiff red hair hung like a wad of fairy floss around her narrow shoulders. Green cat eyes, smudged with thick, black eyeliner looked like it was never removed. Old-fashioned Crewelwork in vivid colours covered her black skirt. Julia knew the stitch but hadn't learned it yet. She expected the nuns wouldn't like all those bright colours and thick stitches.

The carnie waved them inside. "My name is Liliana," she said in a monotone while studying Julia from head to toe, seemingly unimpressed. "What is your name? Or do you want me to guess?" She took Julia's hand and turned it over to stare at her palm. "That's what you've come for, isn't it, Julia?"

"How do you know my name?" asked Julia.

"Oh jewel, my little diamond, people must tell you that you are the spitting image of your father," she said with a hint of melancholy. "In some ways, you are. In others, you are not. Still, I would know you anywhere. Your lot is still here. More than ten years since I had been here, just passing through. Although, I'm thinking of staying awhile to become part of the surroundings, you might say." Her smile exposed a row of gold fillings. "Have you and your friend come to have your fortunes told?"

"Well, we didn't come for that but—"

"You," the old woman pointed her chin at Susie. "Who's your father?"

"Lou Rossi."

"Ah ha, yes. I should have known. That chin. Your father, has he remarried or is he enjoying his widowhood?"

"N-no." Susie hovered around the door, avoiding an open suitcase piled with dark clothes.

Liliana cocked her head to one side. "No, he's not enjoying his widowhood or—"

"No, he's not married," Julia interrupted.

"Hmph, I see. Poor man with three kids—anyway, come in and sit down."

Julia couldn't tell if the woman was for real or putting on an act. On the one hand, she wore all the right clothes and heavy, rose-gold earrings so she looked like a gypsy. On the other hand, Julia had no idea if the cliché was true. How many gypsy palm readers had she come across in her life? None.

"Try not to break anything," Liliana warned Susie as a statue of a black-faced Madonna teetered on the edge of a shelf. "Truly, best not to touch anything at all."

Julia sat on a foldout canvas stool while Susie waited by the door, ready to run from the cramped wagon at the sign of anything weird.

Except things were already weird, weren't they? Julia thought. She focussed on a brushed copper pot with a long handle that rested on a narrow shelf with three ceramic cups no bigger than thimbles. She stretched out her legs, and her foot bumped into something. A porcelain doll with dusty white skin and black hair, holding a crumbling posy of miniature rose buds.

"Oops, sorry," she mumbled. She didn't really feel sorry though, because the old bat shouldn't leave shit lying around like that if she didn't want anyone touching her stuff.

"So you've been here before?" Julia brushed her fingers across the surface of a mother-of-pearl frame and studied the black and white photograph of a young family. The man's dark, hollow eyes and slack outfit that looked to be a size too big, and the woman whose long dark hair and formless black dress created a nest for the infant hidden on her lap.

Julia pointed at the sepia version of the redhead. "Is this you?" she asked. "Who's that man, he's—"

Liliana snatched up the frame. "So many questions. Not everything has an answer." She settled into a heavily cushioned chair at the far end of the crowded room. "But you do have a lot of memories at my age, and I do like to collect them."

"And things." Julia picked up a piece of coral, its mauve tips intensifying with the heat from her moist fingers.

"I collect small frogs," said Susie from the doorway, opened a crack by the tip of her foot.

Liliana looked up from her cards with a mixture of curiosity and impatience, as though she wasn't sure what Susie was doing there at all. "Put a frog at your doorstep to attract wealth. Make sure it faces inwards or the fortune will fly from your home. It's a common mistake." She turned to Julia. "What about you, dear? What do you collect?"

"Me?" Julia turned back to the woman. "Oh, I don't collect anything."

"What about books?" Liliana reached over to a shelf and removed a glossy hardback, its jacket torn.

Julia shrugged her shoulders.

"What about art? Do you like art?"

"Sure," Julia said, her interest piqued. "Some of it."

"Bernini, Michelangelo, Giotto."

Julia shrugged her shoulders. "Newer stuff, maybe."

"Ah, you young things aren't terribly nostalgic, are you?" Liliana leaned back into the seat, as though settling in. "That's good. If your spirit dwells in the past, often you find yourself bound by it, and your soul is restless in the present."

Julia wiggled her fingers at the cluttered walls. "You seem to cling to the past a bit."

"Oh you do have a whole bunch of personality, don't you?"

Julia opened her mouth to respond but changed her mind.

Liliana patted her chest and pulled out her necklace. "I cling a little, but then I let it go with a sprinkle of cinnamon, curry powder and oregano for a quick and peaceful separation. Sage for an emotional bond that does not break easily. And I carry this amulet. It shields me both from the past and the present, like confession."

Julia wasn't a fan of the direction the conversation had taken.

"We really can't stay long," she said. "My mother doesn't know where I am."

"Of course not. If anyone asks, I'll tell them you were at the convent, sewing with the nuns?" Liliana laughed heartily, holding her stomach. "Young girls haven't changed at all since I was one. So," she said, shuffling a deck of oversized cards. "What did you come here for?"

Julia turned to Susie, but the look on her friend's face told her she'd be no help.

"We came to check out the circus," she said after a while, mesmerised by the slow shuffling of the cards.

"But the circus doesn't start until twilight."

"So you're a fortune teller?" Susie blurted out.

"Something like that." Liliana set aside the cards and reached over to a silver teapot. She raised the lid and nodded at it as steam poured out. From a jar, she took a pinch of dried red leaves, crushed them into a chipped teacup and filled it with hot water. "Now, drink that and leave a few drops. Then turn the cup three times, like this. When you're done, turn it upside down onto this dish."

Julia sipped the tea, expecting it to taste bitter, but she was met instead with a deep, thick syrup-like honey. She drained the cup of all but a few drops, as instructed, and turned the cup, looking to Liliana for approval. They waited in silence until Liliana picked up the cup and examined the dregs, turning it carefully in different directions.

Julia folded her hands on her lap, suddenly self-conscious of this eagerness to hear her future.

What a load of shit, she thought and rolled her eyes at the theatrical way in which Liliana turned and stared into the cup, squinting, frowning, smiling. Matte red lipstick matched the woman's hair and nails. She might have been as old as her grandfather, what with the heavy lines around her eyes and lips, but it was hard to tell with all the makeup.

Julia thought again about the photo and wondered who the man was. The woman was Liliana, that hair was unmistakable, even in black and white. But the man, obviously her husband—

"Your friend collects ceramic frogs while you collect boys, isn't that right, dear?"

Julia sat up straight. Her eyes were finally accustomed to the filtered light that shone through a tiny window and gleamed off a glass vase of dried roses. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Oh, you know. Vidi ch'un s'affaccia quacchi fungi. Do you understand your grandfather's old dialect?"

Julia shook her head. She understood some of it, but not the way this old bag spoke it.

Liliana stifled a laugh. "It means watch out for the appearing mushroom. You know? Be careful for things you don't see coming, that end up pushing out of the ground unexpectedly."

"Can't you be more specific?" Susie blurted the words that Julia could not force from her own lips.

"Just watch out for those boys, treasure. They like the sway of your hips and your familiar eyes. But they will only lead to misery."

"How?" Julia muttered.

"There are some unsettling times ahead. I think I see a cat—treachery, or maybe a horse. Ah yes, a lover, but something keeps him at bay."

"Robbie," Susie whispered.

"Shh," Julia snapped without taking her eyes off Liliana.

"Mischief is brewing," said Liliana.

Julia looked up and couldn't resist the urge to laugh.

"Do you find that amusing?"

"No. No. What do you mean? What kind of mischief? It just sounds so stupid and cliché."

Liliana rested the cup back on its saucer and took Julia's hands into hers. "There's always mischief in life, always some sort of tempest that afflicts one's future. And in a town like this, there will always be heavy weights that pin you to the river's bed, keeping you trapped."

Julia tugged her hands away, but the witch's firm grip proved stronger than she expected from someone like her.

"I've got no idea what you're talking about," Julia said. "My life's fine. It's planned."

Liliana watched her with curiosity, and Julia could tell that she thought carefully before speaking. "Is it? And you've picked the man of your dreams to take you on a dazzling road?"

"The road's mine. I don't need anyone to take me anywhere."

"Ah yes. It's the modern era, darling. You can get on a train and do as you please."

Julia chuckled. "You clearly don't know my father."

"Sure I do. I know them all. And there are many men, darling. Your life is fertile ground for them."

"Many men?" Julia frowned. "Are you saying I'm a slut?"

"Is that what you think of yourself?"

"Jules, I think we should go." Susie's cautious whisper barely caught Julia's attention.

"It's just that you said "many men." Sounds like I'm a scrubber, that's all."

"What's wrong with loving many men?"

"My grandfather says 'you only love once.'"

Liliana reached out to a shelf and placed a jar and two square pieces of cloth on the table. "Once!" Liliana shrieked. "What a silly old man he is. Just because he's always been afraid to look for it again. You can love more than once. In fact, go out there and love time and time again. What is love anyway? Except the bonds that tie two people together like a wretched chain, that has no beginning or an end. Your grandfather's a twerp."

Cloves, Julia thought as Liliana sprinkled some of the contents into each of the squares. Cinnamon, all those spices we never use.

Liliana tied the squares into pouches and gave one to each of the girls.

"Wear these on a chain around your neck."

"What are they?" asked Susie.

"For long-lasting friendship. Don't take them off."

Julia twirled the pouch in front of her face, inhaling the scent. "What happens if we do?"

"Just don't take them off," said Liliana, "or you'll find out. Now, be on your way before your daddy finds out you were here."

Julia dug into her pocket and pulled out a few coins.

"I don't want your money, dear. Think of it as some advice from an old family friend."

Julia followed Susie to the door.

"Tell your grandfather hello from an old gypsy."

The sunlight from the open doorway shone through Liliana's red hair, creating a glowing halo around her head.

Julia cocked an eyebrow at Susie.

Yeah. Sure. I'll tell him you said hi.

****

Asafoetida: Put into a small, red bag some asafoetida and sulphur, anoint the bag with camphor, and wear it from a thong on the neck. This talisman keeps away vampires and werewolves as well as protecting from the evil eye.

Something about Liliana made Julia nostalgic. Maybe it was the worn tapestry cushion with a peacock on the front and rich burgundy velvet on the back. Or perhaps the collection of medicine bottles, some with peculiar-coloured liquids, but mostly empty. Or the ancient photos of unsmiling people.

Every few years, Julia's mother got nostalgic too. She would drag Julia to the shed where she stored the suitcases and old trunks full of hand-knitted socks, embroidered pillowcases and Julia's baby clothes. Connie Marconi liked to stash her really old photos in the shed, said they were safer than they would be in any album.

Julia fingered the old relics, her mother's creamy chiffon wedding dress with heavy glass beads and sunray pleats. It smelled of mothballs, just like the pile of men's undies from Italy, still in their crinkly plastic wrappers.

There was nothing in the old suitcase except for a bunch of old clothes, certainly nothing interesting. Julia spied the magenta trunk covered with a black tablecloth. The trunk didn't need a lock. Her mother's warnings made it the safest object on the property next to the button tin.

How could it be so important if she could leave it in the shed? Julia reasoned. There couldn't be anything in it worth securing, right?

Julia crouched low and listened for footfalls on the dirt outside and, hearing only a light breeze, she peeled back the cloth to reveal the purple steel with gold latches. She expected to be struck by lightning when the steel latches came open with a loud flick. She leaned the lid onto the wall.

Thick sheets of butcher paper covered the top to absorb moisture. Julia moved the paper to one side, taking care not to create any new wrinkles, and clenched her jaw before plunging her hand down the side of the trunk, past linen tablecloths and silk nighties, until she felt what she was looking for. She tugged the box, careful not to shift the rest of the trunk's contents.

The embossed lid of the shirt box was a little crushed along the edges, probably from the weight of all that linen that covered it for decades. Julia wrestled with the choice: close the trunk and take the box somewhere safe, or just open it right then and there and think of a good excuse if she got caught.

Screw it!

She'd seen the photo box so many times, but her mother hardly ever looked in it. Said it was full of nothing but old, dead people who she barely remembered anymore. Those were exactly the people Julia wanted to know about now so she rested the box on the floor and knelt over it, pulling back the lid to reveal a white handkerchief covered with fine, elaborate blue stitches. She recognised her mother's signature embroidery, the tiny empress stitch at the corners, which adorned their sheets and pillowcases. Beneath the hankie lay a thick stack of photos.

BINGO.

The first photo brought a smile to Julia, a hazy sepia portrait of a sailor. Her grandfather in white shorts and t-shirt, balancing on the ship's balustrade while her grandmother looked on. They were childless and cheerful, a matinee idol and a starlet, setting off on a new adventure and, they hoped, paid work.

What would that be like? Julia wondered. To leave everything behind in the hope of finding something better.

She continued through the photos until she found a sombre bride and groom, stiff and unsmiling, as though they didn't even know one another. The man's thick black moustache framed the ever-present frown that stared back from every old studio photo. The woman, Julia's grandmother, stared into the camera, and her thin lips mirrored the detachment of her betrothed.

Why didn't anyone smile back then? Her parents still didn't like to smile in photos, not even in a Polaroid!

Julia flicked through the stack of pictures with scalloped edges until she found what she was looking for. A sombre group surrounded a couple, maybe her grandfather and some woman, the one in the photo at Liliana's, not her grandmother.

The man looks like Nonno, Julia reasoned, except that he's smiling. She flicked back to the wedding photo—Nonna and Nonno—nope, this was not the same woman. The woman in this photo, holding a baby in a dress over a horse trough filled with water, didn't have her hair in a tight bun like her grandmother always did. The woman in the weird baptism had wild hair to her waist and hands stacked with rings.

It hurt Julia's head to think about it. So she folded the photo, put it in her jean pocket and returned the stack of warped photos into the box before tucking it back at the bottom of the trunk. She closed the lid with care, replaced the cloth as she'd found it and followed the gravel path back to the house.

Just as she was about to enter, she heard a cough that sounded like her grandfather.

"Julia," he called out. "Where are you going now you're here?"

Julia peeked out to where her grandfather grinned back from the converted underground room that began life as a bunker and was now his wine cellar. She descended the rough bluestone stairs into the earth and found her grandfather with a smile to light up the sky, turning wine bottles. He took a swig from the gallon bottle beside him.

"Come and help me turn the bottles."

"It stinks of rot down here." Julia laughed.

"So why'd you come down?"

Julia rolled her eyes and suppressed a sigh. "You called me down here, Nonno."

"So help me then."

Julia reached into her pocket, feeling for the photo. She had to ask, didn't she?

Before she realised what she was doing, Julia thrust the photo at him.

"Hmm." His eyes flickered in recognition. "I haven't seen that photo in long time."

"What is it?" Julia asked, getting accustomed to the darkness in the bunker and seeing a flash of surprise on her grandfather's face.

"Your father's baptism."

Julia felt a glimmer of excitement. "Over a horse trough?"

He continued to turn the bottles, only a quarter turn, slow and steady to avoid disturbing them too much.

"We were poor, Julia. The church wasn't available at the time."

"And that's Nonna?"

"Of course." He shook his head. "Who else could it be?"

"Nonno-"

"Yes?" He turned to her.

"Nonno, I saw another wedding photo today that looked like you and another woman."

"Oh."

The photo fell between them, but neither of them reached down to pick it up.

By the time she saw her father at the bottom of the stairs, it was too late. He'd heard enough.

"Who are you talking about? What other woman?" Julia's father pushed past her to pick up the photo.

"What are you doing with this photo, Julia? Why are you upsetting your grandfather," he said, pointing at the old man crouched beside a wine barrel. "Look what you've done."

Julia winced as her father reached for her hair, bunching it tight in his fist until the pain shot to her eyes. With his free hand, he slapped her face. Thwack. It didn't matter how often it happened; it shocked her every time, sending vibrations over the bridge of her nose, down her spine and to her legs, and lifting her feet off the ground. His tight grasp of her hair kept Julia from falling, and she felt instead, hair follicles ripping from her scalp.

It's okay, it's at the back. You can hide it.

"Giovanni! Leave the girl alone."

"I've told you a million times, girl" her father spat. "Mind your own business or I'll kill you. Okay?"

"Yes." Julia leaned in closer as he took a better grasp of her hair. "Okay, please, okay."

"You leave the old man the fuck alone or I promise you, you'll regret it."

Too late, Julia thought and ran from the bunker, taking two steps at a time.

## Chapter Seven

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.  
Buddha

Some said that the carnies were mostly foreign gypsies who left Europe after the war and travelled to see the Eiffel Tower, even the Statue of Liberty. Julia had never left the state. Although she went to Melbourne a few times for a wedding and communion. Even visited McGills with her mother to buy one of her Italian romance novels with deckled edges that she usually ordered by mail. Her father got her an art book once and she disappeared into the Louvre and the Uffizi galleries, hiding amongst the shadows of Caravaggio and medieval allegories of Hieronymus Bosch. She'd travel soon enough.

The carnies would have seen the real things, Julia reckoned, maybe even the Rosetta Stone. If you travelled that far, you got to see a lot of things. Some of them looked like Turks with skin as dark as carob beans. Some of the women carnies wore big rings in their noses, like Indians, and rose-gold chains around their anklets that jangled when they walked. Some even had tattoos on their arms, vivid swirls that resembled gusts of wind and rudimentary text.

Liliana tempted her with tea and tales. That's what she called it. And she was certainly a storyteller if ever Julia had met one. She told her of India, where women wore red spots on their foreheads and painted their hands with elaborate henna swirls. And of Egypt, where men wore dresses, and women veiled their faces and entire bodies.

"Wouldn't they be hot?" Julia had asked.

"God protects them," Liliana said.

Julia returned to the carnival by the river the night after she found the photo. She came upon Liliana between the laughing clowns and acrobatic dogs and, it felt to Julia, she had not left the place since.

"I had a dream," Julia said while Liliana lowered the teapot onto the fire.

Liliana nodded her head. She may have been old, but she understood more than Julia's mother, that's for sure. Liliana didn't shoo her when Julia asked too many questions.

"I had a dream that this little red cat had fallen down a well."

"Red?" Liliana asked. "That's the colour of sexual energy, inner strength, courage."

"She just plummeted, and I thought surely she would be dead after such a fall."

"Ah, poor gioia, haven't you heard anyone say that cats always land on their feet?"

Liliana stoked the fire and continued to stare at the sparks.

"Then I heard its small mews, and I got on my knees before the well to thank God that the kitten was unharmed. I sat there marvelling at the dirt beneath my skirt and under my nails, and I wondered how to free the cat."

"Did you work it out?"

Julia picked her nails, wondering when they'd become so familiar. As though they'd known each other forever, not mere weeks. "No, I just sat there and waited."

"Julia, you won't get anywhere by waiting." Liliana pushed her hair back from her face and studied the back of her hands, reading the lines across her knuckles for hidden messages. "I used to dream," Liliana said after a while.

"Don't you dream anymore?" asked Julia.

"No. I stopped dreaming a long time ago."

"Why?"

"I lost interest in knowing my future."

Liliana's face was a mass of fine creases; even so, Julia knew she wasn't as old as she looked. Like a shaman who looks ancient because of all the knowledge. Julia never asked her age—that was anyone's guess: fifty, sixty, one hundred. Maybe she was forty.

"Do you remember your last dream?" Julia twisted a cigarette in her fingers.

"Yes." Liliana flashed her a deep smile.

Julia blew smoke loudly.

Liliana made a heavy sigh. "Why do you huff?"

"I'm not huffing, I'm smoking. Can't I smoke in peace?"

"So smoke in peace."

"Has that water boiled yet?" Julia said, not that she cared.

"No."

"How long will you be gone?" Julia asked.

"We'll be back before summer."

They sat beside one another, shoulder brushing against shoulder and watched the embers shift colour from white to red.

A dark figure approached from behind a tent and lit a cigarette, tossing his match into the fire.

"Stop staring," Liliana cautioned.

But Julia couldn't look away from the dark skin and lowered eyelashes. A pair of snakes writhed across his hands in blue ink and travelled to his firm biceps. His hair hung loose around his cheeks. He watched the fire with his head low and solemn. If he noticed her, he didn't let it come across.

"Who is he?" Julia whispered and thought she saw a telling smile cross Liliana's green eyes.

"Just a labourer. He's related to the trapeze flyer or something."

"He works here?" Julia asked.

"Yes."

"What does he do?" Julia continued to dig, all the while keeping her eyes from gazing back to the black earrings that poked through his damp hair. "I've never seen him before."

"He's just arrived. He's a drifter."

Nothing wrong with that, Julia thought. The idea of moving around from one place to another sounded wild. She could do with some of that instead of the calculated, super-organised life she was looking down the barrel of. What would it be like to be that free?

Liliana gazed at him and narrowed her eyes when he drifted back to the big top.

"Oh my God, he's gorgeous," Julia said wistfully.

"Ah Julia, May kali i muri may gugli avela."

"What?"

"The darker the berry, the sweeter it is. You had better watch yourself, or that lover of yours will be down here quickly enough with a spade in his hand. It's rarely good for a woman's eyes to wander."

Julia laughed. "There's always a lesson you have to teach me. What about that love potion you've been talking about?"

"It's hardly a potion. Let's do it next time."

"Always next time."

"Maybe I just want to make sure you come back." Liliana smiled. "An old woman gets lonely, you know."

Julia watched a trail of ants scamper around her bare feet. "Tell me about your family, Liliana."

"There is so much you want to know, gioia. Well, I was once an ordinary Italian woman." She moved her head closer to Julia. "My name was Agata then, you know. Like the patron saint of Catania. You know they tortured her on the rack and cut off her breasts. Then they rolled her naked on burning coals. Just in case she had any fight left in her."

They laughed. Julia threw the cigarette into the fire.

"I lived in a stone house with my husband, and I ran away one day. Ran to the ocean liner in Catania, right into the arms of the gypsies who were taking off overseas. They said, 'Agata, you have a gift. The gift of sight'." Liliana tapped her temple. "So they taught me, encouraged me, nurtured me."

"And what about your husband?" Julia asked.

Liliana peeked into the teapot, which blew steam from its spout. "My husband, bless him. He had big, warm hands. I remember his voice—he would sing beautiful melodies. He would whisper them into my ear, as though they were only for me. For me alone."

Liliana removed the teapot and rested it on a trivet on the ground. "Oh how I miss his smell. It was like those donuts you get at the carnival, soft, sweet and sticky on your hands. I miss his big, warm hands on my face. But he just worked and worked. I was at home, and I hated those walls that always felt like they were caving in. That old house smelled like mould and the start of war."

"So, I left with the gypsies on a long journey to Australia."

"Then what happened?"

Liliana laughed softly. "I met another man. He was a traveller, a knife thrower, with skin like chocolate gelato. So thick and smooth, I thought he would melt on me. He had a long moustache and in summer, he wore a coloured cloth wrapped around his waist. Oh, he was a wonderful man. I adored him. I cooked his food and mended his clothing. We made love like it would be our last day." She turned to Julia. "I miss him too."

Julia played with the lines on her hand, embarrassed by the direction the conversation was going.

"The thing is," Liliana continued into the embers. "You never know what's ahead until you're in it." She took some tea leaves from a canister beside her feet and added them to a ceramic cup. She poured in the steaming water and gave the cup to Julia. "Now, we wait."

Julia held the cup expectantly, waiting for the leaves to infuse.

"I had so many dreams, Julia. They got into every crevice until I reeked of them. I can smell them now, you know. I can smell them on you."

"Liliana," Julia looked deeply into her cup and saw a dog.

The old woman's face opened benevolently. "Yes, child."

Julia withdrew a crumpled photo from her jacket and unfolded it for Liliana to see.

"This man, he's the same man that's in the photo in your wagon. How do you know him?"

"Oh dear." Liliana turned the photo over in her hands and returned it to Julia. "That is a very long story, and I don't much feel like telling any more stories today."

"That's my grandfather, you know?"

Liliana smiled that half-crooked smile that made her seem sad. "Yes, I know."

"And that's you, isn't it?"

Liliana didn't bother to look back at the photo, and she didn't reply. She didn't have to.

****

Julia dropped all talk of the photo as soon as the costumer arrived from Adelaide and reminded her that she needed something to wear to Carnival.

Maria Gervase would be the sexist Marilyn this year, now that Maria Di Silva was out of action. That dirty scrubber could make anything look hot because of those great big tits. While Julia made everything look infantile and adorable. She didn't want to look adorable. She wanted to look like Suzi Qattro or Blondie, without her parents finding out.

Still, Carnival was the best party of the year. You did what you had to for a costume, even if it meant stealing away to Melbourne for a day when she was supposed to be at school. So when her brother emerged from his room brandishing a thin plastic sword and mouthing the lyrics to the ACDC record thundering from the record player, Julia couldn't help but think that he really didn't go to that much trouble.

"Oooo," Julia teased. "Look who shaved for the occasion."

Joe's eyes peeked through slits cut into a narrow black band tied around his face.

"Do you know who I am?" Joe asked over the music.

Giovanni Marconi sat up and narrowed his eyes. "Stalin," he said.

Connie Marconi adjusted the part in Joe's hair. "Giovanni! Don't make fun of your son like that. You look very handsome, Joseph."

"But who am I? Come on, guess."

A cheeky expression knitted Julia's brow. "Saint Francis?" she asked.

"I'm Zorro, stupid. En gard!" Joe stabbed her stomach. "Who are you supposed to be anyway?"

"Well if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you," Julia said, swinging her basket.

"Little Red Riding Hood? What are you, twelve?"

She expected him to hate it, because he hated everything, but her outfit--especially the bits he couldn't see-- wasn't for her brother.

****

Julia pulled the lace around the top of her stockings as Joe parked his bike behind the church.

This had better be worth it. The only thing keeping them on her thighs was a used garter belt that was a size too big and sat below her stomach. It was the best she could do with the pittance she'd squirrelled away out of her mother's 50-cent coin collection.

Joe rounded the church to Main Street and laughed. Julia caught up and stared, open-mouthed, at the carnival effigy the primary school kids had created.

"That's bullshit," Joe said between breaths.

"No horns, no red eyes, no cloven feet." Those were Father Gino's instructions every year, but it seemed someone had finally taken him seriously. Or were terrified into creating a most congenial looking carnival effigy, with a broad smile fashioned from pink ribbon, a straw-stuffed magenta heart, and coarse yellow straw hair draped over its shoulders.

By the time they arrived, late thanks to Joe's detour to buy weed, the festival was in full swing. Trestle tables lined the street across from the church to the pub, with out-of-towners selling everything from leather belts, music tapes, sparkling jewellery, trinity candles and saints' charms. Strings of paper lanterns hung from the streetlights and danced with a breeze that gently twisted the trails of smoke from the chestnut roasters.

Maria Gervase whizzed by on roller-skates and the shortest shorts in history.

Slut.

Julia found her cousins in front of the milk bar, blowing on a cone of hot chestnuts. Susie peeled a chestnut and handed it to Anna.

Anna swung her dress to the music. When the next song faded in, she squealed and covered her face, like it was the first time she'd heard sound. The first time was always the best moment, and nothing was the same again after that. You yearned for that initial feeling again, like the first time Julia opened her eyes to see Robbie watching her, or the first time she'd snuck out of the house with him. Lucky Anna; everything was like the first time every time.

Young lovers danced on the spot lit street that had been closed off to cars and tractors. Julia wondered how soon it would be before one of them ended up forced down the aisle. Who would be next?

Julia caught a glimpse of a black cape and that stupid plastic sword.

"Hey Joey," she called over the din. Maybe he'd let her have a drag of his joint or something to pass the time before Robbie arrived.

He waved for her to follow and kept walking away from the centre of festival.

Julia weaved through the crowd to catch up.

"Hey, Zorro, would you wait a second. I'm wearing heels."

"What else are you wearing?"

Fingers found their way under her cape and touched her leg.

"What—"

"Meet me on the church steps when the fireworks start."

"Robbie? Why are you wearing the same costume as Joe?"

"Shh." He pressed his finger to her lips. Julia was thankful for the cover of night that couldn't reveal her blush.

"If my dad sees us together, he'll kill me."

"Why do you think I'm dressed like Zorro?" Warm smooth lips brushed her earlobe.

Ooh, Julia sighed and made her way to the milk bar where Susie twirled Anna in time to the music. She couldn't breathe. She'd been thinking about tonight for ages. Now that it was here, she could hardly believe it.

"What's Joey up to?" Susie asked.

"Nothing." Julia closed her eyes and listened to the melodies that whirled in her head, punctuated by the buoyant notes of trumpets. "Looking for someone, I think."

Julia didn't wait well. She couldn't talk if she was in a queue, the apprehension made it impossible for her to concentrate on anything else. She waited with a singular thought: fireworks. How could she focus on Susie's inane chatter about the last year of school? Blah, blah, blah, when she could still feel Robbie's effortless touch on her thigh.

Her head swirled with a million possibilities. What would happen when they met up during the fireworks? What were they going to do? Would Robbie think she was a slut when he saw what she had on under the cape?

Julia heard the end of Susie's sentence

"—looks upset, Jules."

Julia's mother stretched her neck over the crowd.

"I think she's looking for you."

Susie slipped into the store and left Julia alone to deal with her mother.

"You, come with me," Connie called out as their eyes met.

Julia looked away. Maybe her mother was talking to someone else, except the hand that seized her arm told her otherwise.

"What did I do?" Julia whimpered. Was the cape too short? Had her mother seen her with Robbie?

"I need help with your father."

Julia pulled away her arm, dismissing the scratches from her mother's tatty nails.

"What?"

"He's at the pub and he's sick. We need to get him home."

Julia stepped back and glared into her mother's weak eyes. "Why don't you just say he's drunk?"

Connie reached out, but Julia backed away in time.

"He's your husband. You deal with him."

"Are you an idiot? You can't talk like that in front of all these people."

"Nobody's listening to us."

Oh, God, the fireworks.

"I can't get him home on my own," her mother moaned.

"Then get Nonno to help you, or Joe or Father Gino."

A burst of yellow stars rained from the sky, and Julia started for her rendezvous.

"Julia!" She caught her this time and dug her nails into the back of Julia's hand.

"You have to help me with him."

Julia didn't care if she tore the ligaments from her fingers. She pulled away, running with the crowd towards the Catherine Wheel.

She caught sight of a black cape on the church steps and followed it past the church, stepping on damp, just-mowed grass.

"Hey," she called over the blasts.

Robbie smiled with a thin cigar between his teeth. He took her arm, and they walked through the crowd of faces raised to the skies, expelling uniform "ohs" and "ahs" and the occasional "That was a good one!"

He released her and trotted ahead to the dark police station. Even the cops had taken the night off for Carnival. Robbie pointed to the back of the building, and Julia followed. She stopped at the entrance to the old prison.

"Here?"

"Don't worry," Robbie said. "I've got a key."

Hidden in a haystack, the back of a car, an abandoned jail. That's how it had to be while she was still under her parent's roof.

Rust drips stained the donkey-grey walls of the Goldburne jail, which hadn't seen an inmate since they were relocated to Durringhul in 1967. At the far end of the corridor, a dark flight of steps led to the cells upstairs.

"Come on." Robbie pulled her up the stairs and Julia followed, despite the cobwebs and darkness so grim, she couldn't see her own feet on the steps.

Robbie pushed his key into the steel door at the top of the stairs, locking it back up when they were through. A flame appeared in the space between them, and Julia was relieved to see Robbie's grin.

Julia had never been to the jail. There was a single cell in the police station, mostly just for drunks. That she'd seen, thanks to her dad. But the old jail was the stuff of myths. Some said that Ned Kelly had been locked there for a bit before Jerilderie. Every town around these parts had a Kelly story. Goldburne was proud of theirs. There were other stories of communist detainees in the 60s, maybe even a bordello. Every town had one of those stories, too.

The lighter cast an eerie glow over shapes inside the cells.

Beds? Sinks? Chamber pots?

Robbie steered her into the last cell with a mattress on the floor.

"You prepared?"

"For you, Juliet."

Julia forgave the musty air, the crumbling walls, the scratchy used mattress on her skin. She forgave the entire derelict building because when Robbie called her by that name, her mind went to jelly.

He leaned over her and touched her face like a blind man, neither of them accustomed to the darkness yet. Julia wriggled her nose at the peppery scent of his cigar mingled with 4711. He hummed, but the fireworks were too loud to make out anything.

"You prepared, too," Robbie said with his fingers under a garter. He covered her mouth with his. Lips as soft as lemon meringue pie. Spongy, sweet and sticky like hot kisses piped on lemon curd.

Robbie untied her cape and guided his mouth over her neck, lightly tickling her ears with his tongue.

There was less fumbling this time. The darkness grounded Julia, gave her the nerve that too much light couldn't. A storm of amateur firecrackers discharged outside the building as the real fireworks subsided, like the last few corn kernels of popcorn in a hot pot.

She bit his lip; apologised with a whispered moan. He breathed in time with her. Soft, moist breaths. A gasp of air and he slowed until she assured him with her hips that she was fine.

A rush of blood to the head, arms and legs. Julia sunk her nails into his slim, muscular back, but he didn't hesitate this time. He slowed his movements, and Julia hitched her legs around him. He lowered his body and they turned together until she was on top.

Nobody talked about going on top. Only whores and chicks in porns did that.

"We can stop for a sec," he said.

"I'm okay," Julia whispered. He didn't need to think she was scared or was having second thoughts, like she was a prick tease or something.

She rocked gently against his thighs until she wasn't sure if what she was feeling was pleasure or intense pain. Robbie guided her hips, slowly at first, until her sighs vibrated from wall to wall just as the crunch of his pelvis against hers travelled on a gust of summer breeze from the room, through the entire jail and into the piazza where hundreds, maybe thousands, of revellers turned their heads in unison to listen and mouth 'slut.'

Julia heard every single voice, even Maria Di Silva's, but could not have cared less. She felt only Robbie's smooth hands on her hips, guiding her back and forth until he released a single, long sigh onto her neck.

Julia gradually relaxed her hips and wondered what they looked like, connected like this. She slid back her legs until her entire body stretched out over his and nestled her head into Robbie's neck. He was the perfect height, not like Vince, who appeared to her short and squat.

How was she going to explain it to Robbie?

He wrapped her cape around her shoulders, and soon his regular breaths eased Julia into slumber. She wanted to talk to him about what was about to happen. About Vince. But she was overwhelmed by immense wellbeing.

Surely, this is how it feels to be in love.

Or maybe you're just filled with the Holy Spirit, idiot.

## Chapter Eight

There are worse things I could do,  
Than go with a boy or two.  
Even though the neighbourhood thinks I'm trashy,  
And no good.  
I suppose it could be true,  
But there are worse things I could do.

Rizzo, "There are worse things I could do" from Grease.

Julia found her mother in the courtyard under the shade of the lemon tree, her dress scrunched above her knees and a tin bucket between her legs. She plunged her hands into the black water.

Connie Marconi grinned at Julia's approach. "Calamari," she said. "Your father's favourite. We'll have a good spaghettata on Sunday with the Calvos." Her eyes carried the smile, taunting Julia. "Father Gino is joining us."

Julia's face throbbed. She removed the transistor from her pocket and put it on the ground between them before sitting on a crate.

"They're coming to meet you first," her mother continued. "Before the priest gets here."

Julia turned away to hide a grimace. "I've met them a hundred times."

"Not in this capacity."

Fuck, fuck, fuck. How can I change this?

Julia opened her mouth and breathed silently, belying the panic that overwhelmed her.

Don't let her see you cry, she thought.

"You're playing that Gianni Morandi record," Julia said, and it stopped short any potential crocodile tears.

Her mother grinned. "I used to love Gianni Morandi when I was young. He was so handsome, and his music was always about love. There was him, Little Tony and Celentano, and then there was Al Bano. That was music, not this rubbish that young people listen to now, disco and punk—meaningless rubbish."

"Did Dad catch the calamari?"

Good. Keep changing the subject.

"Your father? Your father couldn't catch a calamari even if he was dying of starvation. Toto brought them. Can you imagine? A whole bag of them."

"Where's Dad?"

"Taking out his anger on that clump of lilies next to the chickens. He says they're like weeds."

"I've read you should never harm a lily, or it could result in the purity of a female member of the family being damaged."

Julia's mother stared up from the stinky pail. "Did the sisters teach you that? Where have you been, anyway? You're late."

"Stayed back at sewing. Sister Francasca made us sweep the courtyard. It's really dusty, and Sister Francesca always has piles of dirt dragging from her robes."

Geez, Julia. Keep the lies simple.

"Mum," Julia said after a few minutes of silence. "Was your marriage to Dad arranged?"

Julia waited for a slap or a pinch. Something to tell her that her mother was pissed off.

"Julia, sweetheart, this is different."

"Why?" Julia whispered, hoping it might temper her mother's anger. But she wasn't angry, it seemed.

"Forget about it. It is going to happen, unless you or someone else dies." Connie Marconi crossed herself. "And God willing that won't happen."

"Mum, tell me the story of how you met Papà?"

"How I met your Papà? Why do you want to hear that old story?"

"I just like to hear it."

"I'm sure I've told you this before."

"Tell me again."

Connie lifted the head of the calamari from the bucket, the uneven tentacles dangled in the water.

"Will you eat some?" her mother asked, pointing a thin knife at the fish.

"No." Julia pinched her nose.

"Then I won't tell you the story."

"All right, all right," she said in a high-pitch, which forced a smile from her mother.

"See. Well, where do I start? I barely knew your father. He worked with your uncle, and sometimes he would bring wine to Zia Cecilia. I knew his family, but they were from the other side of town." She lowered her voice, "Where all the farmers lived. Why would I have any reason to go there? I lived in town. His mother would pop by my mother's house now and again, making some excuse or other. Sometimes, she went to the shops or came back from them. She made up stories depending on the weather. But she was fishing."

Julia frowned. "Fishing?"

"Yes, looking for information. She would say to me, 'Why do you study? You had such a good career as a seamstress. Because you know, I went back to school after I learned to sew."

Julia shook her head. "No, you never told me before."

"What? You think that this is all I wanted to do?" Connie lifted her hands, dangling tentacles from her fingers. "Ah, Julia, before this," she looked at her blackened hands, "before this, my life was different. Your grandparents, on my side, never worried about anything. Your grandfather came from a good family. Landowners. And we ate lobster and pineapples whenever we wanted, even bananas! He didn't get caught up in the war like your other grandfather who—

Anyway, your father's mother would come over and ask about my studies because she knew that if I was studying, I probably wouldn't want to get married. My mother, your Nonna Julia, bless her soul, she may have known something was going on. I would ask her, but she would just tell me to keep quiet about the visits, that if anything were going to happen, it would come to light when it needed to. So, you know, I was a serious girl then. I still am, but back then—well, your father had just returned from overseas."

"Where was he?"

"He went home with his father, back to Italy."

Fascinating! Julia thought. You can hear the same story so many times but still pick up new details with every retelling. She didn't remember hearing that her father went to Italy. EVER.

"Why?"

"Just tidying up a few things. A lot of loose ties. Property. That sort of thing. Anyway, the adults had obviously talked and my sister said to me, 'Tomorrow, come over to my house at this time because I have something I want to talk to you about.' So the next day, I went over there straight after school. She was devious, your Zia Cecilia. Just because she got married at fifteen, she thought everyone should, too."

Seventeen. Julia couldn't imagine anyone getting married at fifteen. She was in Form 4 at fifteen. Ugh. But that was the old days.

"I couldn't think of anything worse," her mother continued. "I wanted to be a teacher."

"So why didn't you?" This was something new.

"Ah Julia, our greatest desires are like weight—sometimes you put it on, other times you lose it. Just like that. I married a farmer and had babies. It was the right thing for me to do at that time. I went back to school when your brother was a baby, but your father didn't like it, so I stopped. It was a stupid idea. Anyway, we needed the money after your father sold the land and lost so much ..." she paused. "So I started sewing again."

"But maybe if you didn't get married, you might have done so much more."

Julia caught her mother's attention, and she stopped peeling the mottled skin from the calamari.

"What could I have done, darling? Tell me?"

Julia scrambled to answer without giving anything away. "I dunno, university, travel—"

Her mother's raucous laughter startled Julia. "University! Before Gough Whitlam, university was for rich people. And anyway, you think my parents would have let me move to Melbourne just so I could go to university?"

"But what happened after you went to your sister's house?" Julia asked, deflecting the conversation away from the subject of university and leaving town.

"Yes, so Zia Cecilia told me she wanted to talk to me about something. But I could tell there was something going on. She was acting strange, telling me to wear something nice and I thought, 'Wear something nice? On a weekday? Just to go and help my sister with dinner or something?' She fooled me though. It was an ambush."

Julia sat up straight, stretching the kink from her spine. "What happened?"

"Bring that other bucket a little closer, I'm getting ink on my feet. So I went over there. She lived a few houses down, next to old Pete Hetherington. His wife used to take in washing. Remember?"

"No."

"What do you mean, you don't remember? Of course you do. She used to wear those dresses that cross over the front and tie on the side, and it was never closed properly so you could see half her chest."

"Oh yes." And she always wore a slip the colour of ripe tomatoes.

"See. My mother was still alive, but she was at the post office, I think. I can't remember what my mother was doing. Well in the end, she was at my sister's house, but I thought she was at the post office."

Julia tapped her fingers impatiently on her leg. "What happened when you went to Zia Cecilia's house?"

"When I got to Zia Cecilia's house, she looked at me and said I looked all right. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and you should have seen the look on her face, like her chicken had just laid an egg. I knew then that there was definitely something going on. Oh, I never forgave your aunt for what happened next."

"What happened?" What Julia wanted to say was "Get on with the story!" Julia crossed her legs and rested her hands on her knees to stop them from bouncing.

"Don't be so impatient. I'll tell it."

"You just always tell stories the longest way," Julia complained. "Stop laughing!"

"Do you want to hear the rest of it?"

"Of course I do."

"Do me a favour and roll up my sleeves. They're getting wet. Now, where was I?"

"You were at Zia Cecilia's and there was a knock at the door."

"Ah yes, there was a knock at the door, and I asked her, 'Are you expecting anyone?' She had the nerve to say 'no'! Do you know even until she died, she never admitted that it was all planned?" She flicked a slippery calamari hood into the second bucket. "Sorry Julia, can you fill this one with clean water."

"Yes, yes," Julia mumbled.

Julia filled the bucket and clean calamari tentacles floated serenely to the surface.

"So there was a knock at the door, and who was there?" Julia urged her on.

"Who was there? Your auntie told me to get the door because she was doing something. Sure, she was doing something. She was fixing herself up in the bathroom, that's what she was doing. She ran out just before I got to the door and sprayed me with perfume. I still can't believe she tricked me like that, my own sister."

"What kind of perfume was it?"

Connie let a calamari slide into the bucket of clean water and stared at it for a moment as it sank. "Miss Dior. I always wore it. Your father liked it so much that he bought it for me a few times. Anyway, I opened the door and who was standing there? Your father. Oh, you would never imagine it. He had just returned from a few months in Italy. I hadn't seen him in years, since the last time he proposed, and I barely knew him anymore."

"He proposed to you before?"

"When I was thirteen."

"Thirteen?"

"You ask your father about that. I'd never even met him. But that's his story, and I was never told anything about it. That's what it was like in those days."

"And did you ever go out with him, just to see what he was like?"

"Julia, stop fishing. Things were different then. You didn't go out. You just got married, and things were better. There was no sneaking around like you girls do today. And look how happy we are."

Julia cut a wedge of lemon with shaky fingers and sucked on it until her tongue burned.

"Things were better then. We didn't get into the same trouble that the girls do today. The world has changed. Oh well, what can you do?"

"Go on with the story."

"Julia, go and stoke the wood, make sure the fire's still going."

Julia played with the coals and listened to her mother's low hum, unfamiliar with the meandering melody.

"Make sure you put the grill on top. The calamari's nearly ready."

"I'll get some more lemons." Julia plucked a lemon from the back of the tree, where nobody ever bothered to look. That's where the best ones were. They were small this year. The tree was carrying a heavy load.

She squeezed a lemon over a plate of translucent calamari.

"Pass me the plate of salt," her mother said.

"Come on!" Julia stifled a sigh at her mother's storytelling. Always meandering, telling a story within a story, forgetting her place. A book without a bookmark. That's what it was like.

Her mother flicked salt from her moist fingers and tossed some over her left shoulder. "Wait a minute. I have to get this onto the grill." She slammed the calamari onto the grill, and it shrivelled to half its size on the hot metal.

"So?" Julia sighed, regretting her decision to talk to her mother at all. She just wanted her to get to the point, so she could tell her that the whole thing with Vince was bullshit.

"Well, there he was and I thought 'Mamma mia, I hope this man hasn't got it into his head that he wants to marry me.' Oh, Julia, I was so naive. And you should have seen him. He was black as a Turk and all I could wonder was, 'Who is this black man?' But I asked him to come in. You should have seen the look on my sister's face, like a clucking mother hen. Your father, the beast, he says to me, 'Buongiorno signorina,' in perfect Italian. 'Signorina, I have come here for you.' I didn't give him any response because I was so embarrassed. He said 'Signorina, there is no hurry. We have time.' The moment he said that, there was a knock at the door. This time my sister answered it. There was his father and his brother, may he rest in peace. They were all there to discuss the wedding."

"Oh my God, I wasn't interested in him at all. This man was a farmer, completely uneducated. He was so skinny and black. But I kept my mouth closed, and he told me his intentions. He said he had a vineyard, a farm where he grew oranges and almonds, three pigs and a few cows and money in the bank. How could we refuse? Pass me that fork." Connie picked the calamari off the grill. "He was charming though. Such smooth hands for someone who worked with them every day. All the girls fancied him so, naturally, I was curious. I didn't like Peppe, his brother, so skinny like he hadn't eaten in years, his cheeks sunken like old people with no teeth. Yuck. So your father said, 'Signorina, I know we have never met, but I understand that you are not attached to anyone. I would ask that you give me the opportunity to court you.'"

"Did he really say that?" Julia laughed at the thought of her parents' first conversation. She and Robbie never strained for words. They were natural and honest, like it should be.

"Oh Julia, these peasants, when they try to put on airs and graces, they speak like Dante. And his family was there to seal the bargain. But then there was another knock at the door, and it was my mother. I thought, look at this, they all knew except for me. His father said, 'Look, the kids are interested in each other.' The kids! Like I had anything to do with it. And then he said, 'They'll get married in two months.' Then they all started talking about wedding preparations. My mother could tell that I wasn't happy so she said, 'Wait a minute. I don't know what my daughter wants yet. We'll wait and see what she has to say'. Of course, they left it up to me, but what was I going to do? Decline? All of Goldburne knew by the next day. But in the meantime, my mother asked your father not to come to our house to visit until I gave my answer."

"Why not?"

Julia admired her mother at times like these. The woman could certainly multitask-- she could tell a story, clean a calamari and cook better than anyone. She turned the calamari with a fork. "Because it wasn't right for people to see him coming over. Especially if I said no, later on. But do you think they listened? The very next day, a car full of Marconis drove up—his aunt from Melbourne, her husband, your father, your nonno and his brother."

"What were they doing there?" Julia asked, and brushed a fly from her knee.

"He was introducing his fiancée."

"But you hadn't agreed yet."

"Oh, I know! Anyway, after they all left, Zia Cecilia started asking me why I was so against the marriage. She could tell I wasn't really interested, but she said, 'He's so well spoken and nicely dressed.' I started thinking that maybe she was right. He wasn't the worst I could do. I mean, I was twenty-two. I could always leave him before we got engaged."

"You would have done that?"

"Sure, so many people become uncooked."

"Uncooked?"

"Uncooked." She laughed easily. Julia liked it when her mother was carefree like this, but just like a Melbourne summer day, it could turn to shit quickly.

"That's what we used to call it when a romance didn't stick. The only way to get to know a boy back then was to agree to something permanent. So that was that. We were engaged and started going out after a few days. Your father started to come over and visit for a few hours, and I grew to care for him."

"What did you talk about?" Art, music, movies, sex?

"Oh, the usual. He would tell me about Italy and his journey there. I do remember this one time. We were engaged about a month later, and my mother was at the grocery store. He had given me some jewellery—a necklace, a ring and some earrings—but I had taken off the earrings before he had come visiting and put them near the balcony in my room. He was so disappointed that I wasn't wearing them. He asked me if I liked them. I didn't want to upset him, so I let him put them back on for me. We were just inside the balcony, and my mother was coming back from the store. She must have seen him putting the earrings on me and started thinking all sorts of things. She came in screaming, 'You, black man. You take your hands off my daughter!' She hadn't had a man in the house for such a long time."

Julia laughed with her mother. Two friends sharing jokes about lovers.

"What did Nonna Julia think of him?"

"She was worried that he would take me away to Italy because his family was always moving around, like gypsies. They had family in Italy, in Germany and in America. People would say to my poor mother that he was planning on leaving with me, and she would say, 'If that black man thinks he can take my daughter, I'll kill him."

Julia took the charred tentacle offered by her mother.

"So, that's the romantic story of how I met your father. You know, I'll never forgive him. He didn't bring me a gift that first day. Not one single flower."

"Calamari's hot," Julia said and dipped her fingers in one of the buckets of water.

"Yes."

"Did you ever wish he had taken you away from here? To the city?" Julia was begging for the shit storm to arrive quickly.

"Julia," her mother said sympathetically. "Some of us have dreams, but we all end up with reality. Don't you think I had dreams? My parents left me a lot of money and land, but it didn't amount to anything in the hands of a farmer. Anyway, everything we need is here. Julia, always remember it is a wife's duty to accept the good with the bad. Both may come her way in marriage. Your father is not a gypsy. He doesn't want to see any old buildings in Rome or Paris. We're happy with what we've got."

Julia listened to a robin scratching around the base of the lemon tree. The calamari hissed.

"I think he brought me flowers the day you were born. Sometimes, he still buys me perfume. Not Miss Dior, but I can't complain. He's a good man, your father. He has always worked, not like some of the other men at the pub."

"Mamma, did you ever love anyone else?"

Connie Marconi turned the calamari on the grill with her fingers. "I thought I did. Once. But I was foolish. Drunk with the idea of love because I'd seen all sorts of films. It was so stupid, but when I fell in love with your father, I knew I had been wrong. I've only ever loved your father."

"Did you ever wonder if you'd made a mistake?"

A feeble smile crossed her mother's face. "What for? It's marriage that's important, sweetheart, not promises. Girls have always done the most stupid things because of a promise. If I ever learn that you're one of those girls, your father will break your legs.

"You're such a romantic though, aren't you, Julia? I don't know where you get it. You just have to forget all about that. You cannot disgrace this family. This matter with the Calvos was promised a long time ago, so don't expect that you can go and change anything now."

"It's just a joke, isn't it? That I'm supposed to marry him?"

"It's a very long story, but it's no joke, sweetheart."

"But I don't know him. How can I love him?" Julia muttered.

"Love?" Her mother laughed. "That word was made up by writers to confuse us." She took Julia's hand. "Sweetie, if we all waited for love to come knocking, we would still be sitting at our balconies, crocheting our own shrouds. Love." Connie Marconi shook her head. "Now that's something you don't need to throw into the mix."

"But I don't want to end up like--"

"Like me?" Julia's mother licked her fingers. "You should be so lucky. Your father is loyal and decent. Just be grateful that you don't have to look for a husband. A lot of girls would be happy to be in your position."

Julia sagged and touched her shoelaces.

"What girls?"

"Those with half a brain who know how hard it is to wait until you're old before you marry. Think about your cousin Susie. She'd be so lucky if she could swap places with you. Can you imagine who will ever want her with that sister taking up all her time? She's the perfect candidate for an arranged marriage. Instead, that stupid father of hers has her working like a maid and babysitter. Wasting all his money at the races."

"But what if I never want to get married?"

Julia's eyes were closed when she felt her mother's fingers caress her cheeks. "Darling, you'll learn to love Vince. Even if you married someone you wanted, it would never be perfect. Please, don't let that other boy confuse you. He's a gypsy and will come and go."

"What boy?" Julia sniffled and turned a calamari with her fingers. The charred outer membrane stuck to her skin.

"You know what boy. The Ventura boy. The one who left his mother to live in the city. Poor woman. A widow left without anyone."

Adrenaline shot to Julia's face, and she turned away before her mother could see her colour.

"Just remember that I have eyes in the back of my head, sweetheart. I see the way you've looked at each other since you were children. But it's not meant to be with him."

What was Julia thinking? That she could talk to her mother about this sort of thing. Even when she got her first period, the woman had handed her a thick pad and said, "Don't go anywhere near boys."

Connie pulled the last of the calamari from the grill and poured water over the fire.

"Look at the time," she said cheerfully. "Now, go and set the table. Be happy you don't ever need to worry about this shit."

Except Julia didn't worry. She was meant to be with Robbie. Forever.

****

"I don't want to cut my hair for him," Julia wailed. Her mother dragged her to the car and locked her into the passenger seat. Julia sobbed into her hands.

They were coming to visit the following week. Vince Calvo's family was coming to make it official. Her mother had no intention of letting her greet her future family with plaits down her back that made her look younger than necessary.

The barber was a haven for Goldburne's men from Monday to Friday, awash with cigarette smoke, sports scores and aftershave. On Saturdays, the barber brought in a proper hairdresser, George Martello, who worked only on women and only if you were prepared to wait outside in a long line for hours. George didn't take appointments.

George angled the blinds just enough to allow in plenty of natural light, but also to stop peepers from the pub across the road seeing in. The ladies didn't need anyone to know what was going on. On Saturdays, Charlie perfume and hairspray—along with Cinzano punch in the back room—replaced the stink of aftershave and beer.

George, and his apprentice from Violet Town, managed five ladies at a time in the compact room. Shuffling between curling, bleaching and setting straight Aussie hair to curly wog hair. Everyone else waited their turn outside, turning the street into a twisted Fellini spectacle, with women whistling and blowing kisses at the men who ventured past.

"Mister Rick, you sly cat. Come and give us a kiss."

"Hey, hey look at Tom Marinello, girls. Not wearing a singlet under your shirt, are you, sweetheart?"

"Go on then, Eric, bend over."

"He's 16!"

"So what?"

Grown men kept their heads low, averted their gaze and hoped to pass with little more than a glance at their rears. The women passed around the younger men as if they were kittens.

Still, the curiosity at the smelly and expensive goings on across the street compelled the men to loiter out in front of the pub, with their beers and cigarettes, to watch the platform-heeled trail of sashaying ladies from early morning to mid-afternoon. None brought such pleasure as Aurora Minuzzo, whose skirts were shorter, shirts were tighter and lipstick more dazzling than the other ladies.

"That poor woman. Twenty-five and already a widow. Someone should go and comfort her."

"Maybe I can help warm her sheets."

"Stand in line!"

The men would jostle one another through the street to catch a glimpse of the young widow whose cross-your-heart bra encouraged a healthy swell under her V-neck.

The women of Goldburne thought otherwise.

"Her husband's barely cold, and she's at the hairdresser. Slut."

Julia smiled in encouragement at the widow with the tousled blonde hair. The widow, in turn, gave her a sly wink.

To Julia, the entire affair with the hairdresser was ridiculous and hardly deserved her anger in any way. Robbie liked her hair just as it was. He played with her plaits, untied them and ran his fingers through the thick locks just to send her into a frenzy. So she couldn't give a shit what Vince Calvo and his family thought about her less-than-adult hairstyle.

Julia settled into a foldout stool next to her mother, who removed the green Thermos from her bag and poured herself a capful of black coffee before starting on some crocheting.

"May as well do some too," Connie said to Julia, thrusting a thin, silver crochet hook and a ball of white cotton to Julia. "Let's see what you've learned in those sewing classes."

Some ten or eleven women were in the line before them, studying old copies of the Women's Weekly and Cosmo, laughing, whispering of the sort of clandestine matters they never had time for. Waiting to inch their way closer to the salon.

Connie surveyed the line. "We'll be here at least three hours." She sighed. She pointed her chin at Aurora Minuzzo. "That woman thinks she's an actress. But I heard George complain that her hair's like straw." She patted her auburn tresses, which she had gathered into a neat, low bun.

"She's just like her mother," Connie continued. "You know what that woman's mother did, don't you?"

Julia turned to see her mother crocheting furiously. Her fingers quickly twirled the white cotton thread around the crochet hook and pulled it through the loop. Julia knew the story. Everyone knew the story, and her mother was going to retell it whether she said yes or no.

"Three months, we were engaged, me and your father. To think who I could have married. The things I would have. The places I would have seen. That woman and her mother would watch him, even while we walked together. The both of them! Her mother, in her forties, asked your father to dance on New Year's Eve. That was 1959. I'll never forget it. He was weak, the idiot. It's a weakness. He said yes. I've never forgiven him for it. That woman, with her tight red skirt that showed every lump in her ass. And that daughter of hers is no different. Both widowed young." She lowered her voice and moved closer to Julia. "Probably killed them, if you ask me. Look at her."

Aurora Minuzzo applied a second coat of red glitter nail polish, which matched her glossy lips. She was a cross between Gina Lolobrigida and Nancy Spungen. Clean-cut and slutty all in the same breath.

Before long, the widow towered over them with an affable grin. "Getting your daughter ready for her new love? Really Connie, I can't believe she still has plaits like a child."

Julia looked away, avoiding the glances of those who were within earshot.

"Surprising though," Aurora went on, encouraged by their grins. "You married quite old, and yet you're getting rid of your only daughter so young." She turned her head to the women who surrounded her, heeding every word.

Their laughter held the sort of meaning that Julia was familiar with, that only the girls who "knew things about men" would understand.

"Oh well," Connie said. "We don't all have the luxury of marrying a rich man and having him die so soon so we're left with money and a life."

Julia glanced back at her mother, impressed by her comeback. What she wouldn't give for them to have a fistfight, right then and there, with all those men watching from behind cigarette smoke screens.

Aurora clucked her tongue and shook her head. "Yes, luxury. Do you miss it?"

Shit. Would a fight between these old women be different from the fight she had at school when Lisa Henderson called her a scrubber? Julia couldn't imagine her mother kicking Aurora in the guts or pulling back her fingers until she screamed like a baby.

Julia dug the crochet hook deeper into her thumb, the sharp tip a welcome relief. Her face cooled as the blood drained from her finger.

"You should watch your daughter though, Connie." Aurora wagged a finger. "So many good-looking men in Goldburne. I hear she's quite the tasty dish."

"Avanti. Aurora!" came a voice from the salon's open door.

The widow tucked her bag beneath her arm and silence prevailed. A silence filled by the rise and fall of her mother's breasts pointing at Julia in accusation.

****

Her mother was almost right. They waited in line a little less than three hours, long enough for Julia to crochet the wonkiest granny square ever.

George met them at the entrance and held open the door. His white overcoat terrified Julia. She'd heard that he also pulled teeth for the really derelict people in the bush who couldn't afford a real dentist. Still, everyone said that George Martello was a master of the finger curl. He tucked curls carefully with fine hairpins, managed untamed, sun-baked locks of the wogs and even the flaccid strands of the skips. He could even straighten hair!

George's own curls were brushed and greased with pomade that didn't move even when he tossed his head to laugh.

Julia clouded her angst when George appeared from the back room with two punch glasses full of pink liquid joy.

"One for the mother, the other for the daughter. Ah-ah." He reprimanded Connie, who tried to pull the glass from Julia.

This could be fun.

"Can you make me a redhead?" Julia asked, playing with the glacé cherry stem in her glass.

George looked up, his scissors poised mid-snip.

"Who do you think you are, Lucille Ball?" He laughed into the mirror.

No, not Lucille Ball. A fiery, passionate redhead, a violent warrior queen.

She picked up a copy of Cosmo and flicked the pages irritably.

"Do you want everyone to think you're a slut?" he whispered, fingering the bruise at the top of her spine. "You girls are scandalous these days. Who are your role models? What about Doris Day, bless her heart. Or Gina Lolobrigida. Now there's a woman you could trust. And such beautiful hair."

"But they're not interesting," said Julia, watching the black strands fall away. "Or cool."

"Ah cool." George waved the scissors in a circle above her wet hair. "I was young once. I know what it feels like to be cool. I wanted to look like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and then Marlon Brando. Stellaaaaa," he growled into the mirror, amused by his own expressions.

"George." Julia's mother poked her head out from the dryer. "Stop listening to her. Just give her a nice cut and let's get on with it."

****

They arrived early, while Julia was drying her hair. She'd show them who she really was. She smiled into the mirror, half expecting the stranger staring back at her to carry on a conversation.

Her father hated red as much as he hated black. Even black socks sent him into a blind fury. But Julia was in hell, and the colour fit her fiery mood.

"Come on, they're here," her mother hissed from the kitchen, which reeked of sugar and ground almonds.

Julia's heartbeat echoed from wall to wall and thumped against her chest when she turned off the dryer.

It's too late now, she thought, and tousled her hair. Julia hesitated before stepping into the foyer, where her parents welcomed Vince Calvo and his parents. Their stupefied expressions on seeing her were enough to make her want to run from the house before her father turned around.

She didn't run. Instead, Julia held her head high and gave her best girlie smile. She even cared less about the speechless glare from her father's ashen face, with its usual forewarning, which said, you are so dead.

Connie Marconi held her hand to her chest, which rose and fell with all the drama that Julia would have expected.

Joey waltzed into the scene from out back, holding a cigarette between his fingers while reading a paperback, unaware of the group huddled near the door until he almost ran into them.

"Holy shit," he snorted. "What did you do to your hair, Sis?"

"I like it red," Vince said. His playful smile undressed Julia leisurely, and she shrugged.

Julia resisted the urge to tuck her hair behind her ears or even blow her fiery red fringe from her eyelashes.

"It's very bright," said Mrs Calvo, holding onto her husband's arm for protection.

"I'm sure it was just a mistake," Connie explained while ushering the guests into the formal lounge room.

"I guess kids like to experiment these days," Mrs Calvo said, unconvinced.

"Just a mistake," Julia's mother repeated.

Julia didn't have to look at either of them to feel the discomfort. Their voices said it all. The thing was, she was going to be in a shit heap of trouble. All for Robbie.

The two families settled into the stiff vinyl couch and velvet high back chairs for the kids.

Julia's father offered a thin cigar to their male guests, which only Vince accepted.

"Cuban," he said.

Giovanni Marconi and Vince Calvo nodded to one another when they drew back on the cigars.

"You have good taste," Vince said.

Mr Calvo drew a crystal ashtray closer and settled back with a cigarette, while Connie Marconi prepared liqueur glasses of Galliano for the ladies and Johnny Walker for the men. Even Joey stuck around, much to Julia's dismay. He was only in it for the booze and the entertainment.

Julia crossed her legs and focused on the crunch of branches on the windows. Wind whistled through the empty roof cavity, mice scurried, a huntsman spider disappeared behind the door, Joey lit a match, which sizzled before burning the end of his second cigarette. A waft of smoke tickled Julia's nostrils.

She watched Vince watching her; all the while the adults spewed a bunch of words that had little to no meaning.

Remember.

Soon.

Courting.

Grandchildren.

Happy.

Deal.

The words discharged like bullets. Just empty little pellets that stung a little, but didn't do much damage to the new Julia. The new Julia was tough as Rizzo in Grease. She could dye her hair any colour of the rainbow that pleased her and dated two boys at a time if she had to. There were worse things, right?

When Julia thought of her last letter to Robbie, she became furious with herself. What a loser. Would Debbie Harry be so stupid? Or Patti Smith? She doubted it. She regurgitated the words to drown out the conversation in the room.

I need to know what you're thinking. It hurts to not know, especially while I'm planning for next year. Or are you with some other girl, or girls? Uni girls.

Remember what we said? I wrote everything down because you promised. And I wrote them in my diary. YES, I have a diary, like a little kid. And when I read back what I wrote, my memories are like a cancer that you can't rub out (like when you see the Exorcist for the first time and Regan's head turns 360 degrees. Once you see it, you can't forget it).

Maybe I've faded from your memory like a watercolour. You're black and white to me. Light and shade. Shadows and smoke outside my window.

I'm going to dye my hair red like blood, just to freak everyone out. To remind them that they don't own me. I can marry whoever I want. Not fucking Vince. Fuck!

Yours always, Juliet

"Is the fire on?" Julia asked, fanning her face when her mother offered her a tiny glass of Galliano.

She sculled it before anyone noticed, stood and offered her hand, but Vince kissed her cheeks. They were engaged, after all; he could kiss her.

Julia scrambled for breath, like she was at the bottom of the river in winter, but remained composed for her guests.

Later, just before bed, and still a little decomposed from the swig of Galliano she'd taken when her mother was cleaning up after their guests and her back was turned, Julia challenged each and every blow to her face, her arms and her chest thrown at her by her father. He hit her with the same drunken force she had expected. He was hopeless with his fists after too much whiskey. Nothing Julia couldn't deflect if she wanted to. But they were both a little wasted from the lovely visit from her betrothed and his family, so their hearts weren't in it. Julia raised her hands to deflect each punch, but the punches were wild and weak.

Still, she took an entire cartridge of Polaroids late in the night. It ached to hold up her arms. Robbie had to see her hair just as she'd wanted it. Her father would follow through with his threat to cut it off. He was an asshole like that. Tomorrow she would be hairless. But today, she was a fierce bohemian who didn't care.

## Chapter Nine

"Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere."

Mae West

Julia's shorts were too short for the sisters. She didn't give a shit today. The fat old nuns could kick her out of sewing class for all she cared.

She pulled the scarf lower down her forehead and pulled the knot to the side. She tried on a billion before leaving the house. Off-white made her look like she had cancer or just came home from the war. Black satin made her look like she had her hair tied back, so it would do. Not that she looked any good without makeup. Her mother took all of it, every single black eyeliner she could find in Julia's room. Without it, she was nothing. Blank. Sepia-toned. Just like every other wog girl in town.

Julia scratched behind her ear, her hair beneath the fabric stiff and prickly. The girls at sewing were going to have a heart attack at first and they'd cry with laughter after that.

Bitches.

Julia's hair was always long. She tied it up for school so she wouldn't get nits from the dirty skips, but it was always luxuriant and cascaded down her back. Now, it was little more than ear-length, dyed black by her mother to eradicate any sign of her short-lived rebellion. At least she did it.

She lingered outside Maria Di Silva's house and listened for the girl's cigarette-tinged, optimistic laughter. But Maria was a mother now and pregnant again, from what Julia heard. She lived with her husband and his family within smelling distance of the tip, so anything Julia heard from the front fence was an echo of a ghost.

Julia turned off Main Street and down the laneway next to the church, stopping to soak up every single rose along the path. She arrived at the back doors of the presbytery, drunk on rose oil and knocked three times. The door swung open before she had a chance to lower her hand.

Sister Frances' myopic eyes sought her out, but rested on a spot above Julia's head.

"You're late," the nun said.

Julia hung her head and crossed the threshold. She followed Sister Frances the length of the dark hallway where the dappled autumn sun and wandering eyes of the locals failed to broach the universe of the Carmel nuns and their charges. By winter, Julia remembered, her fingers would almost bleed from every frozen stitch she made.

Marble busts of popes flanked both sides of the passageway, one of five leading to the cloistered enclosure behind the presbytery. In the middle of the building, detailed paintings of angels in wide baroque frames collected dust on the walls. Nobody dared remove the cobwebs for fear they were messing with God's own leavings. The ceiling soared high above, and Julia strained to see the weathered frescos—a fine reproduction of Fra' Angelico's Annunciation. On the southern wall, Masaccio's moving Expulsion from Paradise. The painting forced a shudder from Julia—Eve's upturned, dark eyes and the silent wail from Adam who covers his face in shame. A reminder that they were all sinners. Above the door at the end of the passageway, vivid depictions of ample, half-robed angels were said to have caused a furore when the POWs painted them, but they remained. A reminder to the girls of the pleasures they were not permitted.

Sister Frances opened the doors to the cloisters. The secreted garden, where fragrant scents and the sound of bees mingled with water trickling from moss-covered fountains, greeted them like a William Blake poem. Pairs of white and yellow butterflies flittered in front of Julia's eyes, and their wings brushed her skin. Pairs of girls, some Julia's age and others younger, whispered to one another on cement benches along the five paths in the small garden.

Whispering about her, judging by the quick glances.

Julia followed a vibrant trail of mosaicked tiles to the centre of the courtyard where a teak table and chairs, said to have come from somewhere in the Far East, rested under a magnificent olive tree dotted with bright green fruit that was far from ripening. Cascading purple bougainvillaea hung from the tree's branches. The two plants lived together harmoniously, making Julia's heart soar.

The teak table was the most sought after space, and you had to arrive early to claim it. Julia rarely felt the desire to rush to sewing class, so usually found herself on a hard concrete bench that numbed her backside and scratched her thighs. Today though-- fuck Maria Gervase and her bitches\-- Julia's mass of bruises wanted a good chair.

"So she's finally arrived," said Maria Gervase from beneath the olive tree. Julia noticed the tense gasp from the table when they caught sight of her head.

"Are you sick?" Maria's ridicule normally infuriated Julia, but she was too sore to care today.

The past few days played like fragments, poorly cut scenes from an old, burnt-out film reel.

"I hear you can see her head in some places."

"And that her dad won't let her get it cut properly."

"I hear he cut it off with a Stanley knife."

Laughter.

At times like these, Julia pictured Robbie, and the thought buoyed her. She took a deep, silent breath. He'd be back for the race. She'd explain about her hair; they'd have a laugh at her attempt at rebellion.

It'll grow back.

She tucked a non-existent lock around her ear and felt only bare skin. "It didn't look so bad," she'd told herself in the mirror that morning. Susie even said it looked a bit punk rock.

"Looks like you thought the rules are different for you now that you're planning your wedding." Maria's strawberry curls rolled over her shoulder. "But they're not."

Julia knew what her mother thought of the likes of Maria Gervase. "Don't ever say anything to those girls,' she warned. 'They may be rich, but her mother's a whore and her father has no idea what his wife does all day while he's running that bank. But I do."

Maria thrust a fine needle into her cloth. "How does your betrothed feel about Robbie Ventura? Was he the one who did that to you?" She pushed a finger at Julia's chest, right where a bruise had turned from blue to olive.

"Yeah, Robbie the mechanic," said Gloria Marciapiede. "I can't believe you like him. Those greasy hands and dirty overalls. Ugh, I couldn't imagine anything more disgusting."

"Still, he is a spunk." Maria batted her lashes at Julia. "Bet he promised you all sorts of things, if you let him—"

Julia thrust her hand into Maria's shoulder. The look of surprise on Maria's face forced her to laugh.

"You know what? Fuck off, Maria," Julia managed. "At least I'm not a frigid tease."

She'd pay for that at school, Julia knew. She'd pay at the bus stop while everyone watched and waited for Maria to jump her, because who didn't like a fight.

Sister Frances approached the girls, fingering the leather strap linked to her waist. Julia took a white pillowcase from her basket and started on a blue flower. Sister Frances had black Sicilian eyes that followed the girls, Julia especially, as she strolled the five paths of the garden. A leather strap swished against her full black robe, which ballooned behind her and picked up the dirt from the ground.

"Those stitches are sloppy, Julia," Sister Frances warned.

Julia spread the pillowcase across the table.

"I'm sorry, Sister Frances. I'll try to keep them neat."

"You will try?"

Julia nodded at the short satin stitches.

"Pick it and start again."

Julia sighed and pulled the thread from the fabric. She pricked her finger and wiped the blood with the back of the pillowcase that was stained from so many previous accidents. Her mind wandered as she unpicked the sloppy stitches.

"I'm not a letter writer," Robbie had warned her.

She had the Polaroid to keep her company. The one they took at the river when they were lying on their backs on the damp grass. Him in his board shorts and her in a bikini. Julia didn't need the photo to see him; he was an hallucination, everywhere, even in the holy water, which she splashed away before the nuns noticed.

Maria Gervase may have been a bitch, but Sister Frances was definitely a witch who read the truth behind every sigh and wayward glance. When the nuns announced the end of class, Julia bundled her pillowcase, needles and thread into her basket, pricking her finger once more and wiping the blood on the pillowcase.

"Girls, to the chapel for prayer before you leave."

Julia ran, despite Sister Frances's threats, and skidded before the statue of the Madonna Dolorosa, robed in azure, her face stained with real red tears that nobody spoke about.

"Mother Mary," Julia prayed, her hands clasped together in prayer. "Please, please tell me he hasn't lost hope. I'll do anything. Twenty Hail Marys. Thirty."

She didn't hear Maria Gervase until she spoke behind her.

"Praying that your father doesn't beat you in the street like a dog? He doesn't listen to sluts."

And I promise not to bash the shit out of Maria Gervase at school.

Julia crossed herself and thought she saw a real tear amongst the jewels on the Madonna's cheeks. But she was in a hurry. This was no time for miracles.

She followed a solemn huddle of girls out of the convent who squealed and chattered the moment the building was out of sight.

****

Julia figured she could play the game for as long as she needed, but she was pretty happy to know she had less than four months to go until she was out of that pathetic little village. In that four months, all she had to do was dig in, enrol at university without anyone finding out, pass her HSC, get accepted into uni and find somewhere to live in Melbourne with Susie. It seemed pretty simple.

Being engaged was neither here nor there. She could roll with it because she was the best liar she knew. Robbie was prepared to go with it. Her parents and in-laws felt she was being the best girlfriend ever, since her father got rid of her stupid blood-red hair, and she learned her place. After all, Julia had turned a new leaf and forgotten all about that boy. Every cautious word in her diary gave nothing away. They had to be checking so she made it easier for everyone.

I'm falling in love with Vince, she wrote. His smiling eyes and dark Italian hair will bring us a good-looking family one day.

Julia wrote the words in fits of anguish, fiddling with the short tufts on her head that she was finally able to have properly cut by Paolo. The words fell from her pen naturally, as though she were writing about Robbie.

Just replace Robbie's name with Vince's, and it will sound genuine.

She even lied to Father Gino at confession, 'I'm so in love with my future husband. I'm so lucky.'

She waited at her window for her true love and wrote of her longing. Robbie would be back soon enough, but in the meantime, she had to contend with public appearances alongside her intended and their families in tow.

Now that Julia was someone's intended, the adults expected her to behave like an adult, too. That meant visiting sick people, going to dinner at her future in-laws house once a week and sitting next to him at church.

Was it just Julia or did everything Father Gino said lately sound like it was directed at her? He counselled persistently about the nourishment of the mind and soul. He rambled on about honesty, about building relationships based on the truth.

The Sunday before the Race for the Sacred Cross was no exception. Father Gino had to be staring at her as Julia stroked her exposed neck and scanned the crowded church.

Lots of sinners in Goldburne today, but Robbie wasn't one of them. Seeing his mother in the third row assured Julia that he wasn't home yet, or he was avoiding her.

Maria Gervase sat with her mother in the front pew. They were a family of nine girls, dressed all in black like little widows. In front of Julia, Maria Di Silva hugged a wailing baby to her chest, while her husband, his face an impassive series of creases, cracked his neck at intervals.

Julia did her best to ignore her fiancé's fingers at her thighs and studied the Stations of the Cross that lined the walls of the church. Their frames were blackened, almost burnt to a crisp in the Candle Fire of 1968. She knew them intimately, every minute brush stroke. Even Jesus, who carried a heavy cross on his shoulder, watched and judged her.

At the far end of the pew, her father tapped his crossed leg, making the seat jiggle. The muscles over his jaw danced in time until Father Gino called for the offerings. Giovanni Marconi strolled the length of the church aisle, like a bride, with Harold Fitzgerald. He stomped back, continuing past their pew and out the church. Julia turned to watch, but the sun blinded her as her father shot through the door.

Oh I would give anything to be a man!

Revolving fans hummed overhead, but the air was still except for the draught produced by hundreds of furious handkerchiefs. Almost winter, but the heat from the fervent masses thickened the air in purgatory.

They stumbled from the church and stood around the entrance, shaking hands with neighbours and school friends—a grateful cloud of worshippers in their Sunday best.

Julia walked next to Vince and kept an arm's distance between them. Their mothers chattered a few steps behind, paying no attention to them.

Main Street swelled with content parishioners. Julia averted her gaze from anyone, avoiding each and every smile of acknowledgement.

This is all bullshit, she wanted to say. But she knew they were just looking at her short hair.

"Connie!" A shrill voice startled Julia and she whipped around to see her mother present her cheek to Robbie's mum.

"Come here, bella," Carla Ventura called out to her. "I miss you."

Julia sidled up to her mother and planted a kiss on Carla's rosy cheek.

"My God, Julia, you just get more and more beautiful every day. You're gleaming!"

"It's the thrill of being engaged," her mother declared.

Julia glanced at her mother, surprised that even she could venture such a cheesy line.

"And to think I could have been your mother-in-law," Carla whispered.

"Carla!"

Julia would have liked to be Carla Ventura's daughter-in-law. The woman was loud and fiery and the colour of Monet's garden.

"I love your hair, darling." Carla patted the base of Julia's bob. "Very modern."

"Oh dear," her mother murmured, and Julia looked up to see Robbie's slow approach.

Her stomach leapt to her chest. Hold it together.

"Must be back for the race," her mother said.

Julia bit her lip and smiled. Don't look so happy!

Robbie's bloodshot eyes carried heavy black bags.

"Hello, Mrs Marconi, Julia."

"Oh my, you look tired, Robert."

"Lots of study," he said, sounding serious.

His eyes remained locked on hers, insidious, judgmental and—

Vince pushed his hand forward. "Hey mate."

Julia ached all over to be touched like that.

"You back for the race, mate?"

"Yep." Robbie nodded, still focussed on Julia.

"That's great." Vince sounded sincere.

"Yep, great," Julia heard herself say.

Julia's mother stepped forward. "You know Julia's future husband, don't you, Robert?"

Julia wished she could run away the moment her mother said the words.

"Of course. I've known her betrothed since we were in primary school."

Julia felt Vince's hand wrap itself around hers, and it took every effort not to pull away.

This isn't real, Julia wanted to scream at Robbie. I'm doing this for us so we can be together at the end of the year.

"Come on Julia," her mother said and pulled her away. "We have to look at wedding dresses in those magazines."

Julia closed her eyes and shook her head ever so slowly. Did Robbie understand? She was doing it for them.

## Chapter Ten

Clover

Finding a four leaf clover signifies that you will find your true love on that same day. By passing on the clover to somebody else, you also enhance your luck. One leaf for fame, one leaf for wealth, one leaf for a faithful lover and one leaf to bring glorious health.

Julia pinched her cheeks and came to a standstill at the approach of a dark shadow from the other end of the building laneway. She watched the doors and held up her hand, telling the figure to 'wait.' He disappeared behind the building.

Main Street was empty, just an emaciated kitten and a plastic shopping bag dragged through the air by phantom fingers.

Julia walked past the church, past the lemon orchard. She touched her head to make sure she had something on. She didn't want him to feel sorry for her. She swung the sewing basket, aware how it made her look to him, and continued to the edge of town through the ornate gate that signalled the start of the Hammond property, past the fruit packing shed and over the train tracks for another fifteen minutes. You can never be too sure.

The stationmaster's house stood empty at this time of day. Julia ventured into the dusty room and gasped when the door closed heavily behind her. A match sizzled and she inhaled the first breath of tobacco smoke in days.

Vince didn't smoke cigarettes.

Julia turned just as Robbie blew a trail of smoke rings.

"Two things," be began. "One, you smell nice. Two, being engaged suits you."

She poked his chest, and he pulled her in. His face had never felt so smooth, and the expensive smell was new.

"It's not real, you know," Julia said while his hands played with the buttons on her white shirt.

"Looked pretty real to me," he said, and licked his lips. He tugged the ring on her wedding finger.

"It's a fucking ruby," she whined, sitting back on the stationmaster's desk. "As if that's a real engagement ring."

Robbie's fingers dug at her shirt buttons until they were free. "I'll get you a real ring one day." He unhooked her bra expertly and played with her back. "Fuck, I've missed you."

"Why didn't you write to me then?"

"I told you I'm not a writer."

Robbie bit her lip and sucked away the droplet of blood that left a metallic taste on her tongue.

"Three more months." He sighed and slipped his hand under her skirt to play with the elastic lace that trimmed her panties. "Looks like he's into you."

"Who?" Julia couldn't think beyond the sensation of his fingers on the lace, pressing gently into the scar below her navel.

"Vince."

Hearing the name brought a temporary freeze to the moment.

"It's part of the game." She sighed as Robbie's fingers found their goal. "They have to believe I'm going along with it."

"How is Vince?"

Julia pursed her lips and tapped Robbie's nose. "He's terrific. A real sweetheart. We should all go out sometime."

"Maybe I can bring a date."

"Sounds peachy."

Julia leaned in and brushed his cheek with hers.

"What do you think of him?"

The question surprised Julia as it stumbled from his pouting lips. She suppressed a laugh at the sight of a quiver on Robbie's chin.

"Who, Vince?"

"Who else?"

"Don't be a dickhead."

"Why am I being a dickhead? I just wanna know what your fiancé is like."

"He isn't my fiancé. And I have no idea what he's like." Julia caught the defensive edge to her voice and took a deep breath. "I mean, we're never alone or anything. Our mums are always around, or his stupid sister, or Joe."

"What do you talk about?"

Robbie chewed his thumbnail, clearly feigning a lack of interest, as far as Julia was concerned.

"Nothing." Julia guided his gaze back to her.

"Nothing at all?"

"Do you think I'm lying?"

"Well, you have to talk about something, or he'd know you're not into him."

"He talks about work and soccer. I tell him about school."

"Riveting."

Julia turned to Robbie, catching the tail end of a mischievous grin.

"Men have mistresses all the time, you know," he said.

Julia noticed the creases around his mouth, which reminded her that she missed his optimistic laughter.

"You want to be my mistress?"

"Men do it all the time, and nobody says anything."

"That's because if anyone says anything—" Julia dragged her hand across her throat.

"I'm your mistress now."

"You're not my mistress," Julia whispered. "You're my lo-ver." She emphasised the syllables. "Men are lovers, women are mistresses. We're made to serve you, and you're made to be pleased by us."

"I agree wholeheartedly." Robbie winked and stuck out his tongue.

She pressed her lips to his. "So are you going to win this race next weekend or what?"

"Of course I'll win. Do you think I won't?"

Julia pulled his hair. "Of course not. Give me three of your hairs."

"What for?" He pulled away.

"Just trust me." She pulled three hairs from her head and managed a few more from Robbie's and placed them inside a pouch tied around her neck.

His laughter filled her head like a secret melody. He touched her lips lightly with his fingers. Smooth, fine hands for a mechanic, she thought as his fingers led her far away from Vince.

"When we're in the city, it'll be like this," he whispered.

"All the time?"

"Except for when we're at uni."

"And we can study together in the park."

"And at the pub."

"Not until next June."

"Shit, I forget how young you are."

"Jail bait, mister." Julia closed her eyes and breathed in his leather jacket.

"No, look at me," he said. "We spend enough time apart."

"And it's nice when we're together," she whimpered. "It's really fucking nice."

He shaved for her, knew she hated any amount of stubble. It reminded her of her father at the end of a long day, who shaved every morning but had a dark shadow by dinnertime.

Robbie leaned in and Julia edged her thighs closer to the edge of the desk, closer to his steady hands. She choked back a thread of saliva, and he lifted his head.

I'm okay, she sighed.

"Maybe you could come up to Melbourne for a few days. You know, for a few days over the Cup weekend."

Julia leaned on her elbows and caressed Robbie's head.

"Yeah, cause my Dad would totally go for that."

"He wouldn't need to know."

"Except he would. Come here."

He lifted her to the edge of the desk, and they peered at one another.

"Is everything okay?"

"Are you going to take off your shirt?" she asked.

Robbie grinned and slipped out of his jacket while she unbuttoned his shirt.

"So... Is everything okay?" he repeated.

"Okay, how?"

Robbie ran his hands through what was left of her hair.

"Oh, that. You mean my hair?"

"And the scar, too."

Julia removed his hands from her head. "Dad doesn't like it when I do things without asking. But I'm fine," she insisted. "I'm just getting through the days before I can leave."

"Does your dad know?"

Julia laughed. "What's wrong with you? Do you reckon I'd still be alive if he knew? I've got you, Joe and Susie working on the details, and I trust you to keep it all to yourself."

Robbie rubbed her cheek with his. "Of course we will. We're sorting it out. Applications will be in on time. You'll get into uni, and we'll find a place for you and Suse. It'll all be sorted."

"And all I have to do is—"

"Not let anyone know that the whole thing with Vince is bullshit." He rubbed the knots behind her ribs and leaned her back onto the desk.

"I promise."

"And I promise to win the St Bart medal for you."

Julia arched her back, letting him sink deeper into her.

"For me?" she wheezed. "Promise?"

"Of course I'll win. Do you think I won't?"

"Of course not." She sighed into his ear.

"I'm going to get you a real diamond ring when I win. Every time you look at it, you'll know I won it for you."

"I'll remember."

"Yeah?" He gripped her shoulders and thrust his pelvis into hers.

"Yes!"

****

Julia waited an eternity kneeling on the cool, hard wood in the dark confessional.

It was nothing like weekly confession at school, when you had to make up the most inane lies to tell the priest. "Forgive me father for I have sinned. It's been one week since my last confession: I've lied to my mother, I've called Maria Gervase a slut, and I've handed in my assignment late."

Nothing too serious that could get you into real trouble, of course. Just the sort of sins a teenager was bound to make in the course of the week.

Unlike school confession, weeknight confession was the sort that you took of your own volition, where you asked for advice. Julia realised the absurdity of asking a priest for love advice. Still, she lowered her veil and waited.

Father Gino startled her when he drew back the curtains on the other side of the wall.

"Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been five days since my last confession." That part was easy; she'd rehearsed it over and over.

Father Gino clutched the rosary beads against the mesh, tracing each bead with his thumb.

Was anybody listening, the way she often listened to catch even the slightest whiff of guilt behind the confessional door.

Julia sat close to the mesh and toyed with her engagement ring.

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Julia crossed herself.

"Julia," came the soft, measured voice.

"Yes Father."

He waited. Finally. "Yes, my child. What have you come to confess? Signora Carmelina is waiting, and I believe the widow has a great deal to confess this week."

She pressed her face to the gauze. "Father?" She breathed slowly as she heard a footstep outside the booth.

"Yes, my child."

"I don't love my betrothed."

"Well, Julia, these things happen," he said kindly. "Have you spoken to your father?"

"Father," Julia hesitated.

"Yes."

"There's someone else."

A loud sigh.

"And have you been indiscreet?"

"Maybe."

She heard a shuffle behind the screen. The priest's chair creaked remorselessly.

"And do you plan on being indiscreet again?"

"Um."

If she confessed, he would have to forgive her, right?

"Julia," Father Gino sat back until all she could see was a silhouette. "Julia, this is a confessional. People come here to release their sins. I give them penance, and they leave absolved. You can't ask for forgiveness for something that you are planning to repeat."

"I just thought you might be able to-—"

"What? Forgive you like a murderer who is determined to keep killing?"

"Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration," Julia said. "But, yes."

"You were wrong then. The only way you can save yourself is by confessing your thoughts of this transgression, and then not commit the sin again."

Julia rose to leave.

"I'm sorry, Father. I should never have—"

"When are you going to grow up, Julia? You're a woman now, and engaged to be married to a very good boy. You can't go running around the entire town after a boy who deserted his widowed mother in search of some fictional life and a mountain of women." He slouched in his chair now as if his back were weighted down. "I'm only giving you advice, against my will mind you, because I care about you. Your father is a close friend. I won't mention this to him."

"Thank you, Father."

"Say five Hail Marys and seven Our Fathers."

"Seven!"

"Seven. Now, go home."

"Thank you."

The priest turned to face her again. "Be careful, Julia. Don't be led by temptation the way so many have."

"Like my grandfather?"

"Ten Hail Marys and twelve Our Fathers."

Julia crossed herself and kissed the beads that the priest pushed into the mesh.

****

The oldies had their own version of Halloween—All Saints Day—when photos of dead relatives popped up everywhere. Thin, white candles, blessed by Father Gino, illuminated the washed out sepia pictures of grandparents with hand-painted lips and unnaturally rosy cheeks.

If you were a wog, you took the day off school. Not officially, but everyone knew you wouldn't be there.

When she was little, Julia looked forward to the day not only for the homemade cannoli and almond toffee, but also for the race for the Cross in the Manifold River. It was the final event of the year before Christmas and as they got older, Julia and Susie's motivation for watching the race changed too. They couldn't deny the thrill of seeing a group of thirteen young men, with weights strapped to their torsos, swim upstream to the greased flat boulder in the middle of the river to seize the charred cross—brought from Italy by Father Gino—said to contain a piece of the True Cross. Half-naked men were always compelling to watch.

The river's steady flow washed over the glistening rock, covered in lard, thus guaranteeing at least one injury every year. Most came for the spectacle of the race. Others, whose sons weren't chosen to participate, came for the fireworks, complete with Roman Candles that sent stars into the sky; Split Comets that produced fireburst upon fireburst. Incandescent steel and charcoal particles sent gold into the sky, up until race time.

Hidden by grass and low-hanging weeping willows, Julia draped her legs over Robbie's and handed him a daisy chain.

"I'm supposed to give you jewellery."

"I don't care," she said. "This is for luck. For your exams and the race."

Robbie played with her hair while Julia tried to forget how short it still was, concentrating instead on Robbie's touch. She'd know his scent in a packed room. Even through his cologne, he left an unmistakable trace of elation, reminiscent of rain on a particularly hot summer day.

Sunlight twinkled in his eyes. Robbie was the embodiment of summer, even this early, and not just because he was wearing a t-shirt and board shorts. Summer meant holidays, time away from school and hours alone. Summer meant freedom. Robbie was the key to her freedom this year. All Julia had to do was get through the next three months and not fuck things up.

She was startled by her brother's voice. "Hey! Come on. Ten minutes til the race."

Robbie offered her a final smile, like he was off to war and didn't expect to return, and took off after Joe towards the river.

****

Julia lingered near the starting line. The water was icy, even for November.

Her mother's unsettling reprimand forced her attention away from Robbie. "Get away from there, stupid. The men are coming. Get out of their way."

Julia stood aside, narrowly missing Don Tommasino who, at 78, was the oldest racer. No one had the heart to tell him he was too old to race and that, on this one occasion every year, a terrified collective breathe waited for him to explode into the water. They expected each race to be his last. Don Tommasino touched his hands to the ground, stretching his back and pulling up his black trunks that smelled of mothballs. A pair of red braces failed to keep them high enough on his hard belly, but at least they wouldn't fall off this time.

"Where have you been?" Susie pulled up alongside Julia.

"Shut up," Julia whispered. "I was with Robbie."

"I can't believe that you haven't ended it with him yet." Susie shook her head.

"I've told you," Julia hissed. "I'm not going to end it."

"If your parents find out—"

"And how would they find out? From your big mouth?"

"Don't be a cow." Susie raced to the riverbank. "Anna! Get away from the water."

"Look at how big they look!" Anna squealed and pointed at her submerged legs.

What Julia wouldn't give, some days, for life to be as simple as it was for Anna. At least she would never know the pleasure of seeing her boyfriend race against her intended in front of the world.

Joe and Robbie wrestled one another at the starting line, and Vince blew her a kiss. Julia clutched the pouch hanging from a leather thong around her neck and prayed for him to drown.

A whistle gave the one-minute warning, and Robbie crossed himself. The world around them stopped when their eyes met. Robbie's hand on his bare heart made Julia feel buoyant, like they were moving on a cloud of warm air. It was for her, his grand public gesture. All for her.

The racers dug their toes into the embankment, their torsos bent forward, and arms extended above their heads, ready to dive into the river. A gunshot cracked open the sky, and they plunged into the water and disappeared. John Garibaldi's blond head emerged first, further upstream.

On the riverbank, Serge Spaccafiore waved his free hand above his head and called the race into a spluttering megaphone, all the while trying not to stumble into the river. He followed alongside the swimmers who struggled against the slow current, their torsos bent with the weight around them.

Julia's nails dug into her palms as Robbie's head bobbed, his arms turning like paddles, making neat splashes when he plunged forward only to be swept back by the currents. A trail of perspiration clung to Julia's spine, tickling the fine hairs on her back.

Don Tommasino lagged at the rear, paddling slowly, his legs barely moving.

"Come on, Don Tommasino," someone yelled. "Don't let those young shitheads take you. Rip the fuzz from their chins!"

The swimmers approached the boulder, small black heads bobbing in the shimmering water. Vince swam like a frog in altogether the wrong direction. He struck the riverbank heavily with his arm and fell backwards into the water.

Julia let go of the pouch and promptly erased all previous bad thoughts towards Vince.

Shit.

"He's injured. Where's Doctor Joseph?" Vince's mother screamed, drowning out the megaphone. "Come on, quick, someone go and get him out of the water before he dies."

"Shut up, woman," Vince's father yelled at his wife. "The race isn't over yet."

Julia edged around the crowd as Doctor Joseph appeared, dressed like a mortician and carrying his satchel as always.

"His arm is broken." Julia heard the words as she followed the river. She wasn't going to miss the race.

Serge Spaccafiore's voice grew more and more excited. He coughed the names as they approached the boulder. "Cory Tirella, Joe Marconi, Robbie Ventura, Peter Giuliano, Paul Mangiapane—a fine effort for a boy with missing toes ..."

Julia ran the length of the river to catch up to the swimmers, whose lethargic arms rallied as they approached the greasy boulder.

Cory Tirella lunged at the stone, but slithered off.

Joe clung to the side of the platform with one hand and brought the other one forward, but quickly lost his grip, hitting his head.

"Oh my God," Serge called into the megaphone. "Joe Marconi's hit his head."

"Shut up!" Julia heard her father say. "He's fine. Keep going, Joey boy."

Another body flung itself onto the platform.

"Robbie has it!" shouted Julia.

"That son of a bitch." Her father bit the side of his hand.

Robbie wedged his toes into a crevice and lunged onto the platform, slithering across the flat surface towards the cross.

It's for me. He's winning it for me, she thought, all the while thinking she should have followed Vince. Shouldn't I? Isn't that what a betrothed would do? But she couldn't keep her eyes off the real prize.

She opened her eyes in time to see Robbie slide back over the boulder, with the cross aloft. The current carried him back towards the curve in the river where his mother leaned forward to welcome him back to land.

Julia's heart leapt to her throat, and she held her breath until the roots of her hair tingled. She took a long, deep breath, relieved when she didn't throw up.

"Did you see that?" Grace Ventura said to the crowd. "My son has the cross." The split at the back of her skirt revealed a cluster of blue varicose veins.

"He stole it from my Joe."

"Joe was nowhere near it," Julia mumbled.

"Wait until we're alone," said the look of resentment in her mother's eyes.

Kneeling on the riverbank, Joe held his arm out for Robbie to catch onto, and he emerged from the river holding his trophy with both hands.

Serge Spaccafiore's garbled cry led the crowd's chants of, "Robbie, Robbie, Robbie," as they carried him, their champion. Serge hung the race medal around Robbie's neck.

Julia hung back. He was lost to the crowd now. But as he turned and caught her eye, she knew she was his, despite the baker's son.

Julia ignored the tug of nails on her arm, ragged nails that dug until they met with bone and tendon. Her mother's pinch was hard to ignore, and they were particularly brutal today, but a small red cloud from the other side of the river distracted her.

Her father's loud sigh interrupted her thoughts. "Why the fuck do those animals keep coming back here? Fucking gypsies," he spat.

Susie ran up to Julia, hand in hand with Anna. "Hey, Jules, look. The carnies are back!"

Yes they were.

# PART TWO
## Chapter Eleven

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

Crosby, Stills & Nash

Julia watched the slow motion of the ferris wheel from her open window.

Everything was such a drag. Exams. Her parents. Everything. So she slipped into bed fully dressed and tucked the blankets under her chin, until she felt as if she were submerged under water, with only her face poking through. That's how she felt with Robbie away, like she was drowning but in a good way. The water cooled her heatstroke, carrying her somewhere new. She wanted new, but not without Robbie. He was her new, even if he was a link to the old. He was her beginning.

"Julia!"

Julia sat up and rubbed her eyes.

Her brother leaned over her, smelling of Southern Comfort and Marlboros.

"Come on, get up. Let's go have some fun." He removed a strand of hair from her lips, his rough fingers brushing against her, and looped it around her ear.

She slipped out of the bed, carefully applying lipstick in the dark as they sneaked from the house.

The carnies camped on the other side of the river this year, near the abandoned pub where Julia and Susie used to play hide-and-seek when they were kids. Funny how the two-storey homestead grew more frightening as they grew older, with its crumbling balcony and rusty iron fretwork.

The hum of the carnival vibrated up Julia's legs. Strings of colourful light globes stretched from tree to tree and illuminated the path from the bridge.

Julia slipped off the back of the bike as a white rabbit bounced away. She stopped and blew it a kiss. Messenger of the lady moon, grant me luck this very afternoon. She closed her eyes and thought carefully. Only one choice, one wish.

"Fucking hippy." Joe laughed and a rocket shot into the sky, exploding into a million white stars.

They hastened their steps between a row of caravans and moved into a bright circle, edged by tents and banners that announced fantastic feats. A line of wide-mouthed clowns, whose torsos moved from side to side, waited for the magic ball while a curious assortment of travellers congregated at Liliana's ancient caravan. A sign on the door read 'currently in consultation'.

She joined her brother around a bonfire, comforted by the flickering flames and foreign faces.

Joe pushed a bottle into her hand.

"American whiskey," he said, and turned to laugh at the person beside him.

Julia took the bottle with a smirk and took a deep drink without taking her eyes off her brother.

"Have some more, go on." The familiar voice was kind, fatherly, and Julia felt that she had to accept its hospitality, even if it tasted like aniseed and the bottom of an ancient river filled with corpses.

She took a deep breath to steady herself and closed her eyes. She floated on the edge of the carnival music. Its jaunty tinkle made more surreal by the crackling fire.

When Julia opened her eyes, a minute or an hour later, Joe was nowhere to be seen and she was alone, wishing that she were back in the softness of her bed.

She rubbed her hands before the flames. The air was still, but a chill passed through her. She buttoned her jacket. A young gypsy twirled before the flames, waving her skirt at the embers, forming a perfect circle.

A figure stepped from the shadows and stood beside Julia, almost skin to skin.

"Hello."

"Hello," Julia said without looking in the direction of the voice.

Julia glanced at the familiar hands. Blue ink, darker than night, decorated his knuckles and up his bare arms.

"Would you like some of this?" He offered her a large joint the size of a cigar.

"I saw you once before," Julia said, angling her head so the light played on his face. "Last time. What's your name?"

"Emilian."

"That's right. Emilian." She repeated the name, pronouncing each letter. She passed back the joint and his fingers burned when they touched hers.

"You're Julia? The old lady told me," he explained.

"Yes."

He passed a bottle to her and watched her drink slowly. The fiery anise filled her mouth and trickled from her lips. Julia raised an impossibly heavy hand to wipe her mouth, but it fell to her side as Emilian kissed her chin, licking the spilled droplets.

She sighed and the sounds of the carnival softened, a chaotic union of trumpets, guitars and rides whistling through the sky. As though a veil had lowered over her eyes, faces blurred and softened. Julia wanted to drift like a feather onto the powdery earth and dissolve into Emilian's arms.

Anise, peppermint, fennel and weed. He was truly foreign.

He took her hand and led her through a sea of indistinct faces to a marquee with covered sides. A small audience stood around the raised awning of a black wagon, similar to Liliana's.

"Have you seen a Swato before?" Emilian asked.

Julia shook her head carefully.

"It's a puppet play, but not like Punch and Judy."

A cacophony of sounds boomed, and the curtains were tugged back. A single puppet, the size of a cat, leaned against the edge of the stage.

"That's the narrator." Emilian directed her gaze at a sharp-dressed man in hat and tails with a Dali moustache.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the man began. "The story I am about to recount is true. It was narrated to a Franciscan monk who happened upon our tribe many years ago and related the tale to us."

Emilian stroked her cheek. His warm breath tickled the fine hairs of her earlobe. He whispered until she nodded, and his warm tongue played at the edges of her mouth.

What the hell was in that drink?

****

"Julia! Julia!"

A heavy hand shook her shoulder and she yanked it away, wanting only to return to her delicious dream.

"Come on!"

Julia groaned, looked around and realised with a jolt that she was not in her own bed, not in her own home. Her head throbbed with the memory.

Her brother pulled her arm, and she slipped off the bed.

"Jesus."

Julia pulled a sheet from the bed and covered herself.

"Tell me it's still night, please."

"You are so fucked, Jules."

"What time is it?"

"It's morning, and the old man's wondering where you are."

"Shit, shit, shit."

Julia scrambled to find her clothes, relieved when Joe turned around and said nothing as she got dressed.

She was so fucked.

****

Getting bashed was like a slapstick ballet. Ducking and prancing, falling and kicking. Or maybe more like an opera. Nobody knew what was happening.

If true love is like a ballet where one partner pirouettes while the other dances offstage, then the love of a family is like a slapstick silent movie with side-splitting pulls, tugs, and the dum-dum-dum of the orchestra when the bad guy appears in the scene. Family love is strong and secure. It turns you a bright shade of happiness. It is safe. Until you find yourself ripped from your own bed in the middle of the night, only to be kicked in the ribs and spat at. A reminder that family love is all you can rely on because it is protective, predictable, and you sometimes have to duck, prance and be kicked. Nobody else can understand the sort of family love that Julia was familiar with.

The whispers grew in volume from the hall outside her room. The door opened and closed. Heavy footsteps, her father's boots. Julia didn't know you could be hung over for so long, and she was too wrecked to open her eyes. Plus, she figures if she pretended to be asleep, he might leave her alone.

A blow to the back comes first. The fists to the chest were pine-scented and familiar, pausing lovingly to allow her a deep intake of air in preparation for the next round. A poorly-timed attempt to reposition herself before another punch landed inelegantly. Julia stopped a sudden gasp for air at the sound of a crack. Another rib.

He can't be blamed for this. She should know better than to recoil in the first place—he doesn't like that.

Because she was young and fit, the blood on her lip clotted quickly and pulled at the skin. Because she was chicken-shit, she lost consciousness within the first few minutes and awoke to drawn curtains, a long plaintive low of some black and white cow who'd wandered over from the next paddock. The nightmare was real—she just drifted through life with her eyes closed.

****

Joe looked away as she leaned on him to step into the bathtub, overflowing with bright white bubbles that stung like salt. He lathered his hands and rubbed her back gently, while Julia leaned her heavy head on her knees. She turned to thank him with her lifeless eyes. She didn't need to look into a mirror to know the light had expired overnight.

"Thanks," she said when he splashed hot water on her shoulders, and the water turned a pretty pink.

The house was a spinning jumble of silence. Silence and the daily visit from the cow, whose plaintive moo echoed in Julia's head until it became her cry. The house on Duke Street was never silent, and it terrified Julia to imagine what could be its cause.

Tiny geckos darted across the walls. She ignored the countless mosquitoes that drew blood from every exposed bit of skin. Warm hands drifted over her face, not quite touching the skin. The taste of antiseptic hung in the room, until someone opened the window to let in the air. The cow's low became louder and ever more plaintive.

Julia slept with nothing more than a sheet to protect her from the insects and the biting draft on her skin. Cracked dry mouth and lips screamed for water.

At least she missed the part when her dad thrashed around the house stretched tight as elastic, waiting for the right moment to tear into her or her mother. The fear of knowing what was to come made every moment a living nightmare.

A TV commercial; will he spring now?

North Melbourne's losing the game, maybe now?

The carafe of wine is empty, definitely now?

Julia stood in the tub, wrapped in a towel and stepped out with Joe's help. He helped her back into her bedroom and left her to stare into the long mirror behind the door. If it wasn't for the pain they brought, Julia's bruises had turned her into a work of art, a multihued water colour in the style of a Turner painting, fluid, ephemeral and awash with all shades that bruises were known to be. She tucked her hair behind her ears and examined her face. Indistinguishable? Or maybe she'd just forgotten what she looked like terrified.

Pretty lilac masses under each eye, almost blue but lovelier. Dark purple bruised one eyelid only—had it been both eyes, she would have looked normal. But nobody, not even David Bowie, could pull off that look. Big red lips, full of life, double their usual size below cheeks rouged by broken capillaries and blood-shot eyes. A thin, bloodied, white bandage made Julia feel like Rocky. After all, she was still alive!

Someone else's words hung to the edge of her memory.

"A lesson."

"She's been given a short leash, that one."

"What of her intended?"

"The humiliation if he finds out. Then if they call of the wedding, we're screwed."

"Hey."

Julia thought she must have hallucinated the voice, but she looked across the room to the window.

"Robbie?"

"Meet me at the chicken shed."

"I can't."

I look like a criminal, or a boxer, or a prostitute who didn't make her quota and met with her pimp's ire.

Robbie was as flawless as a Waterhouse painting, with dewy skin and eyes that smouldered with possibilities.

He pulled his leather collar up around his neck, and his hair fell over his face. He was her Lou Reed, her James Dean, and he'd never looked cooler.

Julia took geisha-like steps towards the open window and leaned on the wall. She pressed her hand to the fly screen and Robbie followed suit.

"I heard what happened; you know, your dad. Are you all right?"

"Everybody heard what happened. I must have been the night's entertainment."

"What happened, Jules? Where were you the other night?"

She laughed, and Robbie's eyes became angry slits of darkness.

"What were you doing there, Jules? With the carnies."

Julia wiped her desiccated lips.

"I mean, they're a bunch of lowlifes."

Julia didn't feel like answering. "Did you come here to argue with me?"

"No. Jules—"

She adored Robbie's lips, his gaunt cheeks, hair that was too long for a country town and a swagger that reminded her I've slept around, you know.

"Hey Robbie, you should go home," she said from the shadows. "I really don't feel like talking tonight."

"Why?"

"I dunno. I just can't get into it."

"I want to know what you were doing. I think you owe me an explanation. You were in some guy's room. Right?"

She wiped the tears from her cheeks, stinging her grazed skin.

"As though you've never done anything in the city—"

"That's totally different, Jules."

"Why?"

"Julia, sometimes you drive me crazy, and I don't know why you do things. It's like you want to hurt me on purpose."

"Maybe I do."

The red embers on the end of his cigarette glowed bright. The smoke hurt Julia's lungs.

"Why?" he whispered. "What have I done?"

"Why? Because maybe it's got nothing to do with you. Maybe it's about me."

He flicked the hair from his eyes. "Come outside. Let me hold you."

"I can't. I can't see you anymore." The words felt like razor blades on her lips.

"Why? Because of Vince." His voice stung with disgust, the sort she was used to from her father. The tone that said she was sub-human and worthy of nothing decent in the world. But it was still gentle, still Robbie's, and she wanted to be in his arms like before. She wanted to lounge between his legs on the river's edge, but she bit her nails instead.

Forget about him. Forget about the curve of his neck, just below his ear where it smells best.

Instead, she said, "It'll just be easier if we forget about it. Love and shit. It was all a mistake."

In the end, being bashed by your dad only changed you for a few weeks. Once the bruises were gone, and you had to stop lying at school, you were back to normal. But love. Well breaking up was hard, even if it didn't leave any physical scars.

****

Julia peered over the book. Unfamiliar footsteps accompanied her mother's. Indiscernible murmurs outside her door. She set aside her journal, and reached for the glass of water on her bedside table, but didn't move from the bed. The door creaked open, and her mother peered in.

"Julia," she said softly. "Your teacher, Miss Hart, is here to see you."

"What for?"

The door opened and Miss Katrina Hart stepped into the room with a gust of efficiency that upset the weeks-old dust particles in the darkened bedroom.

Julia swung her legs over the bed.

"Don't get up," Miss Hart announced, pulling back the curtains. She opened a window and marched back to the door, where Julia's mother hovered and waited. "We'll be fine now."

"Can I get you a drink? Some—"

"Nope, we're fine. I'll pop out if we need anything." Miss Hart waved and closed the door. She took a few deep breaths before approaching the bed and sat so close to Julia that their hands touched.

I'm good at masking my feelings, Julia thought. She'd avoided the mirror for the last few days, but she knew the bruises were a long way from healing. Not to mention the scratches, which didn't look so bad now that she'd removed the band aids.

Julia didn't know what to make of it when her teacher patted her hands, ignoring the swollen red knuckles.

"You've been away from school a while."

"So what?" Julia said with a tone she would never have used at school. She liked that the new Julia could be a smart-ass to her teacher and not care.

"So what? This is your HSC, Jules. It's your opportunity."

Julia flashed a broad smirk at her teacher.

Poor woman, her first year out of uni and she has to deal with this bullshit.

Katrina Hart was the talk of St Mary when she arrived at the beginning of the year to teach English.

"Is she even older than the students?" some parents complained.

"What a slut. What kind of teacher thinks she can get away with wearing that?"

"She's Aussie, that's why."

"Who is this city know-it-all, anyway?"

"You know she lives with her boyfriend?"

"I won't be going to uni, anyway. So who cares?"

"Oh, I see. You're going to get married and have babies instead?"

"Better than what some people end up with, Miss Hart."

"Don't be an idiot. There's nothing good about being married and knocked up at 18."

"How would you know?"

Miss Katrina Hart came from a nice family in Kew and went to Loreto Girls College. Nobody argued over dinner, and they didn't talk over one another. She came to Goldburne to "help small communities, so more girls went to university instead of getting knocked up and married at 18." Julia figured she had no idea what it felt like to be married and knocked up at 18.

"Fair enough," Miss Hart said. "I guess I don't know at all." She flashed a dimpled smile. "But I do know that not being married or knocked up at 18 is great."

Julia leaned back and closed her eyes as a headache cluster formed behind her eyes. "What are you here for?" she asked, despite reminding herself that Katrina Hart was one of the good guys.

The teacher crossed her denim-clad legs and took a book from her bag. "To hang out. I've got a book to read. You?"

Julia shook her head and a few stray tufts of hair fell over her eyes.

"You should always have something to read," Miss Hart said, unfolding a dog-ear. "For when there's nothing but cricket on the tele."

"I don't feel like reading." Julia sulked and longed for this awkward meeting to be over.

"I know you write sometimes. I've seen you in the schoolyard."

"I'm not writing anything interesting." Julia felt compelled to explain.

"Nobody said you had to, Jules." Miss Hart held out a pencil and pushed the journal towards her hand. "Just write."

Julia waved her hand away.

"Julia." She pressed the pencil into Julia's fist. "It's often despair that leads us to create our best work. Despair and hopelessness. Don't let it go unused." Her eyes gazed into Julia's, black and bloodshot with dark, heavy rings as though she, too, didn't sleep much. Did Miss Hart find sleep to be tedious as well? Or could she sleep forever because the world smiled at her.

Miss Hart settled in and started reading. She followed the words with her finger, like a child. She looked up at Julia when she'd read a few pages.

"When I was a baby, I had Scarlet Fever and nearly went blind."

Julia had no idea why her teacher was telling her this. "Really?"

"I still don't see very well."

"Why don't you wear glasses?" Julia asked, drawing a thick black line at the edge of her paper.

"I like the way I see things."

Her teacher's candour surprised Julia.

"I mean, I wear them to drive and check homework, but I like the soft focus. I can see these gorgeous halos around people. You know, auras. It's the energy that humans radiate. We radiate, you know." She placed her hands on Julia's head. "Jesus, Jules; yours is charcoal right now, but with a slight pink tinge. That's depression. Maybe even suicidal thoughts."

"I'm not suicidal!" That's ridiculous, isn't it?

"Well," Miss Hart said cheerfully. "Your aura's telling me something else, so let's change it."

Julia twisted the pencil in her hand until a series of bold black dots tore through the pages of her diary. Her teacher's melodic voice continued to whisper.

"There was this one time, I looked into the mirror to draw myself, and there was this mustard haze everywhere, vibrating all the way around my body. It was the most terrifying moment of my life." She drew wide arcs with her thin arms. "And then my mother walked behind me, and I thought she was an angel. She glowed an intense white, so pure that it almost blinded me. She rested her hand on my shoulders, and I closed my eyes because I couldn't see anything. When I opened them again, it was as though our colours had merged; tiny atoms of light that mingled to form a white glow. And my soul felt lighter, like she had taken some of my burden, my mustardy, baby-poo burden."

She pressed Julia's hand. As though that was all it would take to brighten her charcoal aura.

Julia examined the delicate creases around her teacher's eyes and mouth, an indication that she laughed a lot. That was the difference between the wogs and the skips; the skips laughed more. Even when they were happy, the wogs didn't always like to laugh because they knew it would all turn to shit at any minute.

"Nietzsche, you know the philosopher? Well, he said that if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you."

"What does that mean?" Julia wiped away the thick tear that fell to the empty page. "I mean, darkness follows you everywhere."

"Yep. And you can tell it to fuck off."

Julia smiled. Teachers don't swear! Do they?

"You don't have to accept something just because it's there, or because that's the way it's always been."

She gripped Julia's arm, and Julia ignored the pain. There was something important in her words. If only she could find them.

"You can do whatever you want."

"Is that what Erica Jong told you?" Julia pointed at the book cover in her teacher's hands.

"Sure; Erica and Calamity Jane, Anais Nin, Yoko Ono, Susan Cole... you name them, they've all said some sort of cool shit to me. They all have a lot to say and so do you, kiddo."

Julia leaned in. Now she was annoyed. "What the hell do you know? You're some nice Aussie girl who doesn't have to worry about anything. You can go out wherever you want with anyone. I'm a wog, Miss Hart and I do what I'm told, or—"

Miss Hart leapt from the bed and poked a firm finger into Julia's chest. "Or what? What's the worst thing that can happen to you, if you rebel? Are they going to bash you? Big fucking deal. You know what that feels like already. So what are you waiting for? Nobody is going to change the world for you, Julia. Only you can do that. Come back to school, get your HSC, then get the fuck out of here before your soul dies."

Julia stared into her eyes. There was no judgment to be found in the blue irises that shone back at her.

"You're not a victim, Jules. Don't ask me how I know. I just do."

## Chapter Twelve

A Lucky Nut: To find a nut with two kernels is thought to be lucky. Eat one nut and throw the other over the left shoulder at the same time as making a wish. The wish will be granted.

With end of year exams behind them, Julia prayed she did well enough to get into Melbourne Uni Arts. She had no aspirations to do anything grand—like medicine or law—that was for people who didn't want a life. Instead, she imagined uni life to be a series of adventures and plenty of late nights. She wouldn't be upset if her HSC scores landed her a place at Deakin or LaTrobe. Monash, though, seemed like it was in the suburbs, and she didn't want to leave one shithole for another.

Other than where she was headed for uni, everything else was mapped out with individual to-do lists.

1. Pack for summer and winter - Melbourne is unpredictable.

2. Land a job - ANYWHERE!

3. Find a flat - anything would do. Susie would cope.

4. Buy train tickets to the city.

She planned her outfit—cream blouse with the Chinese collar and her new jeans, tight and dark—and practised her wave. Bye-bye suckers.

First thing, she would change her name to Jules. None of this Julia bullshit, just straight up Jules. You could hang out with someone called Jules; she was friendly and probably an Aussie.

Julia was foreign and didn't belong.

In the meantime, she swam and caught yabbies, avoided snakes, tanned her legs and ignored her parents while she dreamed with Susie of the place they'd live in. Julia had read Monkeygrip, so she knew the best places to live were in Carlton and Northcote. Places she'd never travelled to but seemed student-friendly.

They'd have to get a flatmate for sure, maybe a few, because Julia had no savings and Susie's were limited. So they'd need someone else to move in to help cover the rent and bills.

Oh my God, Julia thought. Two chicks in a rental in Melbourne, away from home for the first time!

The girls dangled their legs in the shallow river. Julia flushed as she remembered the words on the acceptance letter.

We are pleased to inform that Julia Marconi has been accepted into...

She didn't want to think about it, just in case her parents caught wind of her joy. It was hers, her joy, and she wasn't about to share any of it with them.

What's the worst they can do? Isn't that what Miss Hart had said?

Julia found she was no longer afraid of her mother's shrill warnings or her father's outlandish punishments, "Stand in the corner of your bedroom until I tell you to move, pick every weed in the greenhouse. Every single fucking weed."

Susie brushed herself off and ran into the water after her sister. "Anna no!" Susie squealed. "We can't take you anywhere."

"Oh come on, Suse," Julia said, picturing the posters and paintings she planned to have on her bedroom walls. "Don't be such a bitch."

"I'm fucking sick of taking care of her," Susie cried. "What's going to happen when I'm gone? She's not my responsibility."

Julia hadn't thought about that. What would happen to Anna when they were gone? Would Susie's father take over when Susie went to uni? She doubted if he'd manage enough time to take care of her, what with the horse races at the TAB.

"We haven't even talked about Anna," Susie whispered once she'd returned with her sister. "I mean, who's going to deal with her?"

"I dunno." Julia shrugged. Which was the honest truth. During the countless conversations they'd had about leaving, about starting anew, the freedom and late nights in a city that didn't know their names, they never once talked about Anna. About who would take care of her. It's not like they could take her with them, so Susie's dad would have to suck it up.

"Guess your dad will—"

Susie's chuckle made Julia's hair stand on end. "As if."

"What?" Julia squeezed Susie's shoulder. She'd make her bleed until she told the truth that Julia wanted to hear—and they all lived happily ever after. "What?"

"Do you honestly think he'll let me leave her with him?"

Julia calculated the syllables that made up the words that announced a change of their big plan. "We have a fucking plan, Suse. We've been talking about it for years. We promised we'd get outta here and do something other than getting knocked up and married to the first guy."

"You're getting really obsessed with this idea of getting out of Goldburne, Jules. I mean, is it that bad, really?"

Susie's face swarmed with freckles, more stains than Julia remembered. Hundreds and thousands of dark brown spots that normally looked so cute, but now looked like mounds of fly shit on her cousin's skin.

"You think I'm getting obsessed?" Julia said. "Too-fucking-right I am. It's the only thing that keeps me alive." She took three deep breaths. One to start, another to help her refocus, the last one to chill her the fuck out.

"Well, you can't make plans like that." Susie seemed distracted by her bangle. "I mean, things don't always go the way they want, you know."

Julia's disgust at Susie ended at the tip of her tongue.

The girl had no imagination, no dreams, no drive to do more than the same shit everyone else did. All she wanted in life was to be like everyone else. Who the hell wanted that?

"And what about your dad," Susie said out of the blue. "Can you leave him knowing—"

"Knowing what?" Julia spat. "What, Suse?"

"Well, he's sick and everything, Julia. How can you leave him when he's so sick?"

Julia stood ankle deep in the river. "What?"

Susie turned away and twirled her ponytail.

"Well it's true, everyone knows."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Julia wailed, planting her hands over her ears.

Susie loves to provoke you. She loves it. No, she doesn't. That's not Susie at all.

"Yes, you do. Your dad. He's got—"

"No!" Nobody said that word. That's how you knew what they were talking about, when they didn't say what the illness was. You just left the sentence unfinished or said, "you know..."

Until they were dying in bed, it wasn't true.

"I'm counting on you, Suse," Julia said in desperation. "This whole thing depends on you getting your dad to agree, so we have money to start out with."

"Well, you're just going to have to figure out something else."

Julia's body rocked, fighting the tears that sought to undo her.

"But we've got a plan."

Susie chuckled into her hands. "You seriously reckon your parents will let you leave? They'll kill you before they let that happen. Look at you. You're covered in cuts and bruises because you stayed out late."

Julia frowned at her cousin, trying to make sense of the jumble of words that made no sense at all.

"We have a plan."

"Jules, listen. There's something I haven't told you about."

Julia closed her eyes and listened to the echo of a summer's breeze. "What now?"

"You know the woman who cleans and cooks for us?"

"The Chinese lady?"

"She's from the Philippines. Anyway, Dad is marrying her."

Julia felt beads of sweat cluster above her lip. Her heart raced until a thought occurred to her, and she turned to Susie with a wild look of excitement.

"Suse, that's great news!"

"Um, why?"

"She can take care of Anna."

Anna leaned into her sister and wrapped her arms protectively around her. Susie was her protector, not some Asian woman who washed their dishes. Susie would never leave her.

But Susie pushed her away. "Fuck off," she cried and ran back to her bike.

Julia held her breath until the wail pierced the silence left behind, the scream of a child, lonely and afraid. There was nothing more desolate sounding in the world. Julia knew how she felt. For the first time, she understood the fear and sadness.

****

Liliana swept up the pile of cards from the dirt and brushed her hands on a skirt that was stretched at the seams across her hips.

"Generally, magic can help with anything," Liliana said. "But sometimes you don't feel like being helped. For example, revenge magic heals no wounds."

She flipped through the cards and fanned them out in front of Julia, who closed her eyes and took a card.

Julia could tell that the old woman loved the game.

"The two of pentacles. You've just managed to break that long spell of wands, pardon the pun." Liliana laughed.

"What does it mean?" Julia asked with only a modicum of interest.

"Pentacles represent the element of earth—the practical or material things such as possessions or money, stability and an earthy, sensible nature."

"That would be me." Julia laughed, fingering the leather around her neck.

Liliana pointed to the card. "You see that cord there? It's in the shape of a figure eight. Eternal life. This card means that you can juggle two or three things, or men, at the same time."

Julia felt herself blush at Liliana's suggestive grin and raised eyebrow. Regardless of anything, she was still an old woman who was old enough to be, well old, and Julia did not want to broach the topic of sex with her.

Liliana shook her head. "Don't worry. It represents gaiety and harmony amidst change, and a nature that is industrious but elated one moment and melancholic the next. There will be news and messages in writing."

Julia laughed under her breath.

"Does any of this mean anything to you, Julia?"

Julia took the card and placed it back into the middle of the deck. "No. It doesn't mean anything at all."

"I think she's lying," Susie said, from behind the pages of a Mills and Boon paperback.

"Shut up," Julia muttered.

"Why do you have to take things so seriously, Julietta?" Liliana said in a tired voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Julia, you're like a chickpea in a sieve. Bouncing around in hope of getting through a tiny opening, but you can't. You can't have it all."

Julia yawned. She hated talking about herself. The conversation bored her more than long division.

"You can only be with one of them at a time, dear heart, to be happy."

"What? I'm happy enough."

Julia was eager to change the subject. "And what about you? You keep coming and going but never want to talk about yourself or that photo that's mysteriously disappeared."

"Me?" Liliana smiled, as if she knew that the years had come to this one simple question. "My story is nearly done, and I'm satisfied with its arc."

"But you weren't always."

A laugh escaped Liliana, wild and booming. "No, not always." The words were barely audible over the cackle. "Which is my lesson for you, dear."

Julia knew the lesson. "Yep. Get out before it's too late?" Julia's smile managed to capture the bittersweet regret that, until recently, had been only the stuff of literature.

"Oh it's never too late, bella. But if you can avoid the rubbish in between, I would suggest it."

"What's all the rubbish?"

"Oh, you know, cleaning, babies, cooking, cleaning."

"Sounds like fun."

"Never trust a man who doesn't bring you flowers."

Julia rummaged through her memories and could not recall a single flower from anyone. Anyway, the old woman was crazy. What did she know about real love? Flowers didn't prove a thing.

"Never trust a man without dreams or the desire to travel."

Julia nodded in agreement.

"When I was first married, we had my father's money. We went to Ortygia in Siracusa, where the streets are so narrow that you can only walk two abreast. He would take me to Sardegna, and we would soak in the Mediterranean. Oh Julia, it was so beautiful. And at night, we'd light fires on the beach and roast the fish he'd caught."

Liliana changed when she spoke of her marriage. She shifted from one extreme to another—absolute joy to abject sadness and regret. "But I left and came here, to this dry continent where even camels die from lack of water."

Julia crunched a gold leaf in her hand. Susie continued to read, as though she wasn't listening.

"Liliana," Julia asked, fingering the edge of the card until it broke her skin. "So let's say he brings you flowers, wants to travel and dreams a thousand dreams. How do you know when you're really in love?"

Liliana lifted her gaze from the cards in her hand. Her face widened into a smile that Julia was, as yet, unfamiliar with. "Oh, my dear, when you're in love, you dream with your eyes open."

They sat quietly for some time. Susie seemed to be memorising the words in the book and Julia stoked the fire, despite the day's warmth. Liliana left them to have a nap in her wagon.

"Cuz?" Susie ventured, peering over the top of the book. "Do you think you'll ever be happy with Vince?"

Julia bit the end of her thumb, already raw and tender. "I'll never have to find out, Suse," she said with assurance, as though the fire gave her renewed awareness.

No, not just the fire. This whole place.

Julia didn't bother to explain herself to her cousin, who continued to stare in confusion. She didn't want to talk about Vince, or Robbie, or their ruined plans, or the stupid tarot. None of it felt real. She simply wanted to dream and enjoy the summer without obligations now that she'd got into Melbourne Uni. Life was about to become everything Julia had hoped for, ever since she understood how to dream of the future.

Julia shifted away from the fire, which reeked of charred chicken feathers and wet dog. The greedy flames engulfed each branch before settling into the larger logs of dry wood. Julia finished her cigarette and threw the butt into the fire.

How the hell do you dream with your eyes open? She closed her eyes to make sense of it, until a young girl's scream broke the silence.

Liliana's door flung open. She stumbled towards the fire where a wet, lifeless form was placed on the ground, until someone moved her onto a patchwork blanket.

Julia waited for someone to say something. To explain the meaning of all this commotion. But for the longest time, all she heard was the blinking of eyelids and a magpie, warbling joyfully as though this was a perfect day.

Liliana dropped to her knees and brushed the hair from the girl's face. "What happened?"

The man who'd carried in the body gulped. "I s-saw her," he stammered. "She was crossing the river at the rope bridge and fell in. By the time I got to her—she's not breathing."

"Quick," Liliana shouted. "Someone has to take her to the doctor."

Julia brushed herself off and approached the growing circle of motley carnies. She leaned in to have a look at the body.

"Suse, quick!" she called to her cousin. Fucking hell.

"What?"

The crowd parted, and Susie released a desolate cry before falling to the ground beside her sister's unresponsive body.

Julia knelt side by side with Susie, gripping her arm while they waited for someone to come and take Anna to the doctor.

How the hell do you dream with your eyes open, Julia thought, when it seems that everything's a nightmare?

## Chapter Thirteen

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

Socrates

Everything was ruined all right. Every single plan that she and Susie had been making since the beginning of time, when they learned that there was life beyond the Manifold River, which separated them from the rest of the world.

The olds said the train only went to Walton Town and back again, taking rubbish to the tip. Once a year it travelled further, to the city, but nobody took the train that far. Julia had long known these stories were bullshit. She knew it would be that very train from that very station that would take her to her new destination, where she could wear whatever she wanted, say anything that sounded remotely interesting, or stupid for that matter, and read the sort of books that would get her expelled from stupid high school.

Now, freedom never looked more distant. The events of the past week were a surreal construct, like life through a Fellini lens. Snippets edited in haste.

Church bells swayed and chimed.

A hasty funeral with a small white casket the size of an ill-formed young girl.

Susie's tortured sobs and her father's restrained nods to Father Gino's eulogy echoed across the cavernous church.

Susie's plans had changed beyond recognition. They were moving to Mildura, where her uncle had a house and some land. The new woman was waiting there already to start a happy new life.

"What a load of bullshit," Julia argued. "They must have planned this all along."

"Who cares, Jules," Susie cried. "We're going and that's it."

Her cousin left within days of the funeral, after they buried Anna beside their mother. Julia held Susie's hand at the cemetery. That's how they expressed regret about the whole affair. Julia reached out for Susie's hand, and Susie let her take it.

On the day Susie left for Mildura, rain camouflaged the girls' tears as the brown Statesman pulled out of the driveway. Susie reached her hand through the open window in response to Julia's.

Julia walked beside the car, staring at the road ahead, and let go when the car's revs indicated it was time. She squeezed the pouch in her pocket and released the warming scent of cloves.

Liliana was right. She should never have taken the pouch off.

Insomnia followed Susie's abrupt departure. Night became a detour towards a hot day in which Julia dozed from time to time on the riverbank. Her grief over uncertainty made the days heavy and brutal. Julia escaped to Liliana's campsite, following the trail of crumbs below a dense forest canopy, relieved to find herself in a bright clearing like a junkie in need of a fix whose name was Emilian.

Julia ate flat bread she helped cook over flames that warmed her toes and the tip of her nose. She rubbed her hands together on the cooler nights in the middle of summer, and she would listen to the stories of the travellers as if they were her own. She marvelled at their inventions that sought to defy science, cried over their sorrows and smiled at their intimacies.

To her relief, nobody asked what she was doing so far from her bed at such an hour. Emilian stopped asking her long ago. He just seemed pleased to have her there. From the splintered steps of her wagon, Liliana kept a watchful eye as young lovers danced. Skirts flickered over strong, smooth thighs, and the young men, with faces dark as café latte, encircled Julia like matadors. Smelling of roast sausage and days-old dirt, they would urge her to dance with them. She laughed them away and pressed Robbie's locket between her thumb and forefinger, pressing it against her skin so it left a deep indentation and cut into her skin as a reminder.

Emilian persevered the longest of all the young men. He crawled to her on his knees and they danced close, heating one another's body. Julia felt the hunger in his ribs beneath a threadbare muslin shirt. Chains of silver jangled at his wrist. She would sometimes trail with her fingers the black tattoos engraved on his hands, and he would tell her how they came about.

Robbie's locket swayed against her chest as they danced, and she felt worn, unable to manage the words that would compel her back to her own bed. They made love with all the recklessness of two people who knew it wasn't forever, but wanted to take pleasure in every moment.

One night in that last summer, Julia begged her lover to tattoo something on her skin, as a memento. Emilian pierced her skin with a thick needle and coloured it with India ink, tattooing a fleur-de-lis chain around her navel to remind her of what pain really felt like—a razor scraping at sunburnt skin.

She wrote poetry like a hippy and listened to Patti Smith. It felt better than confession, more real and honest. It's what got her through the rest of it. She would sometimes watch Robbie from afar, as he worked with Joe on the car that would take him to Sydney. His pants hung low, covered in grime and a t-shirt, ragged at the neck and sleeves, with worn lettering on the back made him look like a stranger with his head deep within the belly of the car. The radio belted out a boppy disco, and he laughed with his buddy.

"Turn that shit off," he'd call out to Joe, who twirled the dial until he settled on a heavy beat.

There was a time, not that long ago, when Julia believed with all her heart that she and Robbie would be together forever. But now, with plans to head to Sydney, with or without her, he felt to her like a stranger already. Like he was already gone and Julia had begun to forget. She sensed his breath against her skin, warming her with his hands, playing with her hair. Still, she was lured by the fire, the music and the darkness of Emilian.

What about love? She mixed a handful of violets with milk, as Liliana instructed.

"Anoint the face, and there is not a young prince on earth who will not be charmed with thy beauty," Liliana said. "Be careful, it's a powerful potion."

Julia's engagement to Vince was planned for New Year's Eve.

A new decade to mark a new union.

She still wasn't sure that she'd go along with it. Maybe she could disappear right before the day. Maybe she could take off to Sydney with Robbie.

Maybe.

****

The last sewing lesson, Julia thought with the relief of someone who knows that life is about to be altered forever. One of the first in a long series of signposts.

No more sewing as long as I live, Julia thought, with only a modicum of regret, at never again seeing the paintings and the cracked walls of the old presbytery.

She closed the heavy door behind her and smoothed a red smudge of lipstick across her lips. When she rounded the corner, Vince was stretched over the length of his motorbike, sunning himself in shorts and a tank top.

"What are you doing here?" Julia asked without breaking her stride.

"I came to take you home." He rode beside her slowly, almost toppling over.

"No thanks." She hugged her sewing basket to her chest.

"Let me carry those for you."

Julia shook her head.

"Come on! Let's take a ride then."

Julia came to an abrupt standstill, forcing Vince to double back.

"Look, Vince. What do you want? I know we're supposed to be getting married, but you don't have to follow me around like a sad fucking puppy." She shook her head to clear it of thoughts. She had not intended on saying any of that.

Vince stopped walking and glanced at the dirt. "Have you changed your mind?"

Julia felt exhausted, and she wanted a cigarette to steady her trembling hands.

"No, Vince. I haven't changed my mind because it wasn't my mind to make up in the first place. I'm only doing this because—oh, forget it. Let's go and get a coke or something. Okay? Take me to the pub, and let's have a nice time."

Vince smiled and walked her back to the bike, and they zoomed to the pub.

Julia waited at the bar on the restaurant side of the pub, away from the old men who smelled of beer, cigarettes and farts.

Vince pointed the straw at her mouth, and she took it in her lips, sipping the sweet lemon squash as though it was the first time. Julia watched herself in the mirror behind the bar. Vince leaned against the bar, facing her with his hand on hers.

It would be so much easier to give in, she thought. Vince was cute, she guessed. If you were into that clean-cut, Donny Osmond look. They looked perfectly fine together. A nice couple, even, if you forgot that they didn't even really know each other.

Julia pressed her fingers to her cheeks to find relief from the pain that settled in her jaw for weeks now. The black patches under her eyes were permanent too, made blacker by the thick eyeliner that she used to rim her eyes. Her hair was shapeless and wavy, hanging below her ears, but still above her shoulders.

"What's wrong?" Vince asked.

Julia pulled away as he tried to touch her cheek.

"Still thinking of Suse?" he asked, full of concern.

She flicked her fringe from her eyes and stared. A brazen smirk formed on her lips. "Do you actually think I'm going to stop thinking of Susie?"

"Time heals—"

"Oh don't you dare fucking say that time heals all wounds," she hissed. "Don't you dare!"

"Did you hear they've been talking to the carnies, about how one of them was involved in Anna's drowning?"

Julia peered at Vince over her lemon squash. "What?"

"One of them did it, for sure."

"What?" she spat, almost knocking over her drink.

Vince chuckled. "Yeah, they reckon someone raped her and then shut her up by drowning her."

"Who said that?"

"Jesus, Jules, take it easy. Everyone's talking about it. They reckon it was one of them. Wouldn't put it past them. Raping a halfwit is pretty low, though."

Julia couldn't form words. She swallowed what remained in her lemon squash and wished it were vodka. "Are you serious?"

"Yep. They've taken the guy with all the tatts on his hands to the cop shop for questioning."

"That's bullshit," Julia muttered. Emilian wouldn't rape anyone, would he? He wouldn't drown someone. But then, what did she know about the guy. He worked for the circus and had a bunch of tattoos, maybe even from jail or something.

Julia whipped around at the sound of her brother's throaty laughter, coming from the other side of the bar. With a slim cigar perched between his lips and his arm around Robbie, he stumbled into the restaurant and out to the beer garden.

Julia followed the congregation of old mates and found a bench next to their table.

"What are you doing?" Joe mouthed at her just as Vince parked a beer on the table.

"Whatever the fuck I want," she replied and cast a smile at Robbie's unsteady approach.

"Hey Jules!" The words tumbled slowly. "The olds letting you go to the pub now, eh?"

Robbie rested his fingers on her arm and a current passed between them. She brushed his hands away like it was lint, and Robbie turned to Vince, who watched them with a guarded smile.

"Shouldn't you be baking a loaf of bread or something?" Robbie said to Vince.

"Come on Robbie. Come back over here." Joe tugged his shoulders, but Robbie didn't budge.

"I just don't know why they're still hanging out, that's all. Who are you trying to fool anyway? You're not even in love with him."

Julia blinked, as though the silent agreement was going to get through his drunken state.

"Isn't it a bit late for this?" she said instead.

Robbie curled a lock of her hair.

"Are we going to do this again?" said Vince, unveiling an intensity that Julia was not yet familiar with.

He thrust his arms at Robbie's chest.

"Are you serious?" Julia squealed, pushing him away.

"No, no, no, no, no." Joe stood between them with his arms out. "This isn't happening in here. Come on, Robbie."

"Hey don't bring your boyfriend to the party next week, okay," Robbie called back while Joe dragged him back into the bar. "It's my party, and I say who comes."

Robbie pointed a slack finger at Julia, and she gulped what was left of Vince's beer.

Everything was ruined all right and for the first time in ages, Julia had no idea what would happen next.

****

Julia waited long enough for her father to stop coughing. She waited in the kitchen, listening to the rasping fit until it eased off.

Bob Santamaria was still talking on the tele when she stormed into the lounge room.

"Juliet," her father wheezed and pulled himself up in the recliner.

"What do you know about the guy that's been arrested for Anna's drowning?" she asked, sounding a lot more accusing than she expected.

Her father spat on the floor. "Dirty gypsies. That's what they do, you know. They go around ruining things, stealing your kids—"

"Dad, this is not Sicily! And it's not the 50s."

When he didn't get up to smack her, Julia felt as though she towered over him.

Who's the weak one now, she thought with a smirk.

"Doesn't matter where you are, Juliet, those gypsies will fuck you up one way or another."

"Why would they care about any of us? They're just working to make some money."

He took a sip of water from a plastic cup. "Are you sure?"

"Well, what else are they doing?" Julia leaned against the fireplace.

"Juliet—"

"Stop calling me that!"

He continued as though she had not said anything. "Why would a carnival come to this little town if they weren't after something?"

Julia shrugged. "It's a middle town for a lot of places."

"Is that what they tell you?"

"Well, why else?"

Giovanni Marconi struggled to straighten himself up in the recliner. Julia fought the urge to help and clung instead to the mantle. For all she knew, he would leap out of the chair and rip off her head in a second.

He wiped his mouth on a folded handkerchief. "They'll ruin your life, too."

Julia considered her father's words. Too? "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Seeing how much you want to learn your own lessons, without any advice from your family, I'm sure you'll find out."

"You're just lying about them because you hate them for some reason. It doesn't mean you should accuse someone of murder." It sounded more dramatic aloud than it did in her head, as though it was some Agatha Christie movie. Who the hell says 'murder' in real life?

"You don't know what you're talking about," her father wheezed. "They'll steal everything if you let them—they'll take your chickens and eat your dogs. They would take the clothes off your back and the straw from under your sleeping body, if you give them half a chance." He slapped the armrest, but it hardly resonated. "They'll ruin your entire family..." His voice trailed off and he looked away.

When had he lost his strength? He looked so old. He even had grey patches in his hair.

"We ran them out of here years ago, but they came back last summer. Why'd they come back?" He took another sip from the cup and resumed his coughing fit. Julia's mother charged into the room, looking either angry or crazy.

"What are you doing to your father?" she cried. "Can't you see he's not well? This is your fault, you know."

Julia bit her lip and waited for her mother to busy herself with the man on the couch who no longer resembled anyone she knew.

Maybe it was her fault. She cursed him once, but she only half meant it.

She could live with that.

****

It wasn't until the day after the miracle in the chook shed, over at the Calvo house, that Julia started to notice that her dad was walking a little slower. One minute, it seemed like just yesterday that he was running after the cows to get them back into their paddock, and the next, he was stumbling when he got out of the recliner.

"Don't upset your father," her mother said, the day after the miracle.

"Did the miracle take it out of him," Julia joked.

"Don't be disrespectful."

"To who? Dad or the vision on the wall?"

"Either of them."

She noticed he was taking pills—not just Aspro Clear, but a bunch of little shiny capsules that her mother counted out onto a saucer every morning and every night.

"What's wrong with Dad?" Julia asked her mother.

"Just some indigestion."

Well he sure had a heap of indigestion, Julia thought. That's a lot of pills. She looked through the plastic bottles while he was in the toilet. Lots of words ending in –zine and –phide.

That's a lot of indigestion, she thought before stopping herself from thinking about it any further and went back to reading Hemingway on her bed.

The knock on the door was insistent and foreign. The door wasn't locked, and it was even propped open, but the rat-tat on the flyscreen sounded like it had something to say.

Julia poked her head into the hallway. Reading could wait. Who the hell knocked like that?

Her mother looked back at her from the front door. "You get back in your room," she warned Julia.

Julia swore she saw the top of a redhead from the other side of the door that her mother held part closed, making it impossible to get a proper look.

"Get back in your room!"

Julia did as she was told, but that didn't mean she couldn't listen from the next room, just that little bit closer to the front door.

Julia slid into the wardrobe and slowly slid open the cavity that opened into the wardrobe in the next room. Her side smelled of mothballs, but at least it didn't smell of whatever Joe's side smelled like.

She stepped into her brother's room and listened from behind the door. Liliana's familiar singsong voice sounded on edge, with not even the hint of a smile.

"—sick and can't come to the door."

"Let me go to him then."

"Sure. Do you want to give him a heart attack too?"

Julia's mild curiosity turned to alarm. What does she mean, too?

"I have every right to see my—"

"No. No. You don't."

Julia couldn't remember the last time her mother stood up to someone with such intensity.

"But—"

"Anyway, what makes you think he would want to see you?"

"Something, something—all the letters—something, something."

Shut up birds! Julia cursed the magpies, warbling at the window.

"—vulnerable because of the illness... doesn't know what is happening half the time."

"... sounded genuine..."

"The genuine voice of a condemned man."

The tap of a pointy finger on her shoulder startled Julia. She turned to find her brother with his arms crossed.

"Joe!" she whispered. "What the fuck?"

"Saw the wardrobe open from your room, thought I'd see what's happening. So..." he leaned in until their heads were touching. "What's happening?"

Julia glared at her brother. "Why don't you tell me?"

"What?" Joe pulled his smokes from his sleeve. "Why's the carnie coming to our house?"

"What's wrong with Dad?" Julia asked.

Joe slid onto his bed. "Dad?" he mumbled through the unlit cigarette between his lips. "There's nothing wrong with Dad. So stop asking."

Julia watched her brother fumble to light the smoke. He looked to the ceiling where a baby gecko dangled from a spider web, its tiny legs struggling to free itself.

"Dad's fine," he said.

"Then what's the carnie talking about? She says he's been writing to her. Why would Dad write to her?"

"What are you on about? Get out of my room." Joe pointed to the wardrobe. "Go on."

Julia left the room in stunned silence. So many secrets and lies.

****

Julia had to stand still to think. Did she curse her father? Maybe she poisoned him in her sleep? But she wasn't a sleepwalker—as far as she knew.

Regardless what she thought, her mother repeated the words while carrying a bowl of cold water from the kitchen to the bedroom, "This is all your fault."

"This is all her fault," Julia heard her wail at Doctor Joseph from behind the closed door.

Doctor Joseph may have said something like, "No it's not her fault. The man was already sick." But Julia doubted it, because it definitely was her fault that her father lay in bed, half paralysed. Her mother may be a drama queen, but her father's affliction was very real and had almost required an ambulance.

Julia tapped her foot beneath the kitchen table and dug her nail into the mahogany laminate.

"Do you think it's my fault?" she asked her brother the minute he walked in the house.

Joe frowned and scratched his days old stubble. "You're not a witch, Jules."

She thought about it for a minute. Despite the tarot readings, a few herbs she'd tied in calico and muttered curses, he was right. She was no witch, and she didn't have the power to give her father a stroke, heart attack or whatever it was.

"Why would you reckon it's your fault, anyway?" Joe stared into the open fridge. "You're the best daughter he's ever had." He threw her a cheeky smile.

"That's hardly saying anything. Joey, what's going on with him?"

Joe sat on the table and glared at a boiling pot of beef soup on the stove.

"He took too many pills, I think."

Julia had not expected that answer. "You mean he OD'd?"

"Better than shooting yourself in the head."

"I don't get it," Julia said. "Why would he do either?"

Joe continued to stare at the pot as though the steam held the answer. "It was that woman, the one who came 'round the other day."

Julia watched the steam in the hope that an answer might float out of the pot for her.

"Liliana?"

"I dunno her name. The one with the huge red hair."

Julia leaned in. "Did she do something?"

"Yeah, she did something all right. She fucked him over big time."

"Why do you both hate her? She's just an old tarot reader, that's all."

Joe leaned back into the chair and crossed his arms. "Yeah Jules, that's all she is. Just some old carnie who doesn't know when it's time to leave us alone."

## Chapter Fourteen

Onion to prevent the pain from a caning: By rubbing an onion on the appropriate part of the anatomy, you can prevent a cane from being felt. Rubbing the onion on the cane would ensure that the cane would split on the first blow. But one must know that the caning was imminent and act swiftly before it begins.

That year, the last of the decade, the Feast of Saint Martin would be remembered for the Catherine Wheel that spun off its axis, and the brawl that everybody claimed was incited by an overabundance of grappa and a stray bra strap.

Once the dust and the chanting had settled from the hundred-yard goat dash, the congregation spilled into the pub to fight for a place in the dinner queue. The tiered table, laid out for St Martin, featured fine, white table cloths edged in cardinal-red lace, painstakingly repaired by the nuns every year. A few children, dressed as Mary, Joseph and a young Jesus, hovered over the table and watched the food, crosses and votive candles as though it were their responsibility to guard it.

Round, square and rectangular tables dotted the closed streets, giving Goldburne the quaint appearance of an Italian village. Colourful bunting marked the perimeter of the dance floor, with the church band at one end, radiating holiness and benevolent self-righteousness.

The waxing moon greeted red cheeks and noses, and Julia made frequent trips to her father's bottle of grappa under the table, despite the statue of the Virgin that recently replaced Matt Cook at the centre of the roundabout. She looked over the feast, reminding girls of their virtues.

Julia twirled the hair at the nape of her neck. It was long enough for her to collect into a short ponytail now. She flicked some loose tufts into place and lifted the shawl back over her shoulders.

Children crawled under the tables, pinching Julia's ankles, and she stomped her feet to frighten them.

"Ai!" Julia's mother cried from across the table. "Michelina," she called to the next table. "Tell your children to sit in their seats, or I'll give them a good kick. Then you'll have them crying at your breast. The little beasts." She raised a threatening hand.

Streetlights twinkled at dusk, marking the start of the dance. Julia looked out for her brother. Where Joe was, Robbie would be too.

Of course she wanted to see him, but not like this, sitting with Vince and his family at a stinking event with the world watching.

Julia took a sip of her mother's Galliano when her mother's head disappeared under the tablecloth to give the kids another warning.

What the fuck, she thought. She swallowed the contents of the glass and refilled it before her mother noticed. The strange liqueur spread through her mouth, golden and hot like cinnamon. She watched Vince from the corner of her eye. He was polite enough, but how could she trust a guy who had no problem being fixed up to marry a girl he barely knew?

What the hell kind of guy would want that?

Julia shook her head. She was kidding herself, right? Most guys would love a free pass where they didn't have to court a girl with flowers and diamonds and whatever else other chicks expected. Not Julia, not that she wanted flowers and diamonds. But what about love?

Vince laughed at the huddle of girls who danced around a mound of bags.

"Want to go for a walk?" Julia asked, knowing what his response would be even before he scrunched his nose like a rabbit.

"Nah, let's stay here."

Julia sighed and reached across the table to light the candle with Vince's lighter, when someone collapsed with a thud in the chair to her left.

She didn't have to turn to see who it was. The familiar smell of 4711 and Southern Comfort engulfed her. A hot, bare arm enclosed what remained of her until she was out of breath.

"Don't make a scene," she whispered without turning to face the intruder.

"You know we were friends once, you and me," Robbie said with his face towards the tiered table.

"We're still friends," she said out of the corner of her mouth. "We've talked about this, Robbie. I'm nearly there."

"Except you and your boyfriend look chummier than ever."

Robbie reached his hand under the table and rubbed Julia's thigh.

"You want me to stop?" he whispered into her ear.

"I can't believe you keep coming back here for these stupid events," Julia hissed. "Isn't the city enough for you?"

"I like the stupid festivals. Reminds me where I come from."

"What are you doing here?" Vince asked, his voice barely audible.

Julia and Robbie glanced at him in unison. He was a wart in their perfect world, appearing from nowhere just when they had started to steer such a pleasant course.

"I'm just paying my respects to the bride-to-be." Robbie thrust his hand towards Vince who ignored it.

"Is that what you're doing?" Vince asked, tapping the table.

"That's exactly what I'm doing," Robbie said and smiled.

Julia didn't make an effort to pull away when Robbie planted a kiss on her cheek, but she glanced at him for the first time and gulped when the edges of their lips met, his hot and plump, hers startled but eager.

"So," Robbie said brightly. "When is the happy day?"

"Australia Day," Vince announced, making Julia whip around.

Vince grinned without a crumb of irony, and Robbie laughed.

"Aren't you the lucky one, Jules? Looks like it's been worked out for you."

I love to hate you.

Julia resented the smile on Robbie's face. She resented that he used her smile to poke fun.

That's my smile, you bastard. It's my private smile and you're using it against me. A pinch on the back of her arm whipped Julia out of her thoughts.

"Robbie!"

Julia wasn't immediately clear if her mother was overjoyed or out-of-control furious. It often looked like the same thing—the passive aggressive, mother-of-the-year affection, topped by a concerned, knitted brow. It all felt like a woman whose affection for you was not to be denied, but the pinch said otherwise.

"Mrs Marconi." Robbie cupped her hand with a tenderness that Julia understood to her core; that she longed for and missed now that she was preparing to be Mrs whoever. When Robbie kissed her mother's cheek, she wanted to take it in her hand and hold it tight until she could release it into a jam jar to hide in her wardrobe.

"I was just telling your daughter how lucky she is to have her life laid out for her."

Julia's hiccup resounded at the most inopportune time and sounded like a chuckle.

"I'm sure you were." Connie Marconi waved him impatiently from her seat, and Robbie leaned in between them.

"Such prospects."

"And in life, that's what's important."

"That's right." He sighed and lit a cigarette stub.

Is that what's important? Having a plan? Not the fullness of an earlobe, or the way the neck smells a little sour but still sweet and honest after a day's work. Wasn't it important to speed down a long, lonely road with your legs wrapped around your darling, insects slapping your face, and the sun beating on your freckled face.

Julia pulled her fringe over her eyes and sucked on the ends, relieved to be hidden by the thick bangs. Robbie stood up straight with his arms crossed and nodded his head.

"You're right," Robbie repeated with conviction.

Julia spied a bone-handled knife, wedged into a wheel of provolone on the next table. She imagined the sound it would make, whack, if she plunged into Vince's side, crunching through ribs and tendons, a twist to cement it deep and certain, unrecoverable. She wouldn't have to care about the arranged marriage if she was in jail. The conjugal visits from her lover would make the crime worthwhile.

Robbie rested his hand on Julia's shoulder and tugged the sleeve, which had dropped off her shoulder to reveal her bra strap.

"What are you doing?" Vince slapped Robbie's hand away.

"Just fixing her dress, mate." Robbie sucked the end of the cigarette and dropped the stub on the ground.

"I'm not your mate," Vince said through gritted teeth. "And if anyone's going to fix her dress, it'll be me." He lunged across Julia with such force that she flew back in her chair and lay there with her legs raised like an inverted insect. The boys scrambled to raise her but with all the pushing and shoving, she remained where she was until her mother held onto her arms, lifting her from the gravel.

Julia found herself at the painful end of a backhander from her mother.

"See what you've done?" She pulled Julia to the edge of the crowd who encircled the fight that went on all because of her. Julia felt a little proud that she could incite such fervent passion from two men.

The blows came slow and flailing, two drunks in a dream, lunging and withdrawing, slamming and pounding. The crowd parted and Father Gino entered the circle.

"What the hell is going on here?" He pointed at the crowd who'd allowed the fight to continue. "Does nobody see that these boys are about to kill each other?"

He kicked the legs closest to his feet and pulled both Vince and Robbie's hair until they stood apart, thrashing from a distance.

"You animals," he spat. "This is a holy fucking day, for God's sake."

Julia searched Robbie's face as her mother dragged her through the crowd. Did he know she was on his side, barracking for him? Did he?

****

With a burdened heart, Julia ran around Our Lady's that night, scattering hemp seeds that Liliana had given her, confident that her parents were wrong and that she would never marry Vince, the baker's son.

"I sew hemp seed. Hemp seed I sow. He that loves me best, come after me and mow." She repeated the chant into the stillness of the waning moon. Behind her, the wraith-like figure of a man appeared. With a scythe. A familiar walk, she thought. Robbie?

"What are you doing?" she asked only to peer into the lined face of the church caretaker, Toto, who chose a strange time of night to sweep the church steps.

"What?" he said with a warm smile. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

Julia followed the disappearing footsteps around the back of the pub, where Robbie waited for her on his motorbike. They raced up Mitchelton Road, over the bridge and collapsed into each other in the old cemetery behind the mansion, where they remained until just before the cows awoke. They raced back to their homes breathless and with one another's scent on their hands and breath.

## Chapter Fifteen

When all of your dreams come true, then what will you dream about?

Anonymous

Julia glared at the couple dancing next to the blue Torana.

"What are you planning, Jules?"

Joe passed the joint back to her and she stopped walking to take a long toke. The smoke hit her lungs, and she released a plume into the night, long and thick as a cloud.

She collapsed into her brother's arms and breathed a contented sigh. "Not planning anything, Joey. Nothing at all."

"Try not to cause any fights this time."

Julia frowned—it was way too soon to joke about St Martin's.

The crowd erupted when the music was turned up, and Julia let go of her brother who disappeared in a small group at the river's edge.

Maria Gervase leaned back on the hood of Robbie's car and he ran his hands up her bare thighs.

He pulled her up and kissed her like she meant something.

What the fuck!

What did you expect? She heard Joe's voice as though he was right beside her.

He's supposed to love me.

Even while you're fucking that carnie?

Shut up, Joe.

The closer the engagement date came, the more she argued with her brother about Robbie.

"I told you not to get involved with him."

"You don't choose who you fall in love with Joe!"

Julia watched the new couple openly, as they kissed and groped each other on the hood of the car.

Hope they leave a fucking dent on it and every time he sees it, he'll never forget that he dry-humped that scrubber, Maria fucking Gervase, on it.

The boot of a rusted out heap served as the bar. Julia was too stoned to drink, but she dug around the ice anyway until she found a UDL that she took to the bonfire.

"I'm glad you came tonight."

"Why, so you could be a total cunt in front of me with Maria?"

Robbie leaned in, flooding Julia with the familiar scents that she could never completely wash from her skin. "I'm just having a good time before I take off. At least I have an excuse. What's yours?" He always laughed with his eyes. Even when he was angry at her, he managed to conjure the light somewhere and they glistened.

"I'm supposed to be getting married. So I'm celebrating." She lifted the UDL.

"Where's your betrothed?"

"You told him not to come, remember."

Maria Gervase stomped across the dance floor and dug her perfect red nails into Robbie's arm. "Come on, Robbie," she pleaded. "Let's dance."

"Maybe later."

Maria pursed her lips and glared at Julia, who shrugged and rolled her eyes. Maria disappeared around the fire and found Joe, leading him to the dance floor. Joe grinned at Robbie, who shook his head.

"She thinks you're a bit of a catch," Julia said, taking a sip from the can. "She always talked about you at sewing class, you know. But her friends don't think much of you."

"Ah, you convent girls. That's what I love about you."

There it was. Love! "What?" Julia took the cigarette from Robbie's fingers.

"You're such perfect angels, sewing and praying, but you all fuck like sluts."

Julia pinched Robbie's cheeks and took a drag from the cigarette. "I'm going to forgive you right now, Robert Ventura, because you're wasted. So why don't you go and dance with Maria," said Julia. "I know she fucks like a slut."

"I hear the same thing about you."

Julia looked away and licked the sugar from her lips.

He doesn't mean it. He's upset.

It didn't matter how she justified it. It burned like glass, slicing into skin. "Asshole."

His fingers played with her forearm, up to the inner elbow where he knew it would make her liquefy and lose all function.

"Let's go for a walk." She heard herself slur the words.

"For old time's sake?"

"Yeah." She giggled, and the schoolgirl sound of it made her blush. "For old time's sake."

They floated like a pair of doves, in unison, ducking and weaving through the crowd, averting their eyes that were only for each other. Robbie pulled a bottle of something from the boot of the car. They stumbled up the river, until they could barely hear the music.

"Ugh, whiskey." Julia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, but it did nothing to get rid of the revolting flavour.

"Let me fix that for you. Close your eyes and open your mouth."

Julia crossed her arms and frowned. "I'm not an idiot, Robbie."

"Trust me," he whispered, and brushed his fingers over her eyes to close them.

Julia opened her mouth, not knowing what to expect, even though she wasn't an idiot and waited.

The rustling of paper was followed by Robbie's fingers on her lips. He placed something altogether foreign on her lips, powdery at first, then smooth and wet as it dropped into her mouth.

Lemon sherbet.

"See, isn't that better?"

"I like it," Julia agreed and let him lean in and press his tongue into her mouth to steal the lolly.

A bright red sky surrounded Robbie's head. She wanted to burn to memory the creases around his lips and the dip below his cheeks, sharp as diamonds. She wished she could bottle his scent.

"When were you going to tell me that you're leaving, Robbie?"

"What are you on about?" He frowned and pulled away from the kiss. "I was always leaving."

"You never said anything to me."

"Jules, seriously, you're full of it. I think you've lost your memory or something. I was always planning this. What was I going to do over summer?"

"I don't fucking know," Julia howled.

"Did you want me to come to your wedding? Or maybe live next door so you could come over when your husband's at work."

She pulled him back in and their bodies collided awkwardly. "It's not the worst thing is it?"

"This is not the movies, Jules." He shook his head but leaned in for a kiss, which she accepted like it was another sherbet bomb.

Julia peered behind him into the sky.

Red sky at night ...

On the other side of the river, a car blew its horn.

What would the city sound like?

Robbie pulled up her skirt, which she'd worn especially on the off chance... and pulled her stupid cotton panties past her thighs until they dropped to her ankles. Kneeling at her feet, he traced her thighs with his hands and taking a long sniff of every inch of her skin on his way. He lifted each foot in turn and removed the panties, tucking them into his pocket.

"Something to remember you by." He laughed and pulled her close, expelling every atom of air between them until their hearts melted together and their lips became soft pillows, dancing in unison.

"You said you loved me," Robbie said, parting her legs. "Then you get engaged, and you fucked some random carnie. Is that a tattoo?"

He fingered the skin surrounding her naval.

"I don't want to explain anything to you."

"I could have taken you outta here, Jules."

He leaned in and his pelvis crushed hers. She bit his sweet-sour lips, while he thrust into her again.

"I don't need you to take me outta here, Robbie." Julia realised it as suddenly as if she'd been punched in the head. "I'm going to be okay."

"I know you are. Just get out of your own way and your dad's," he added. "Definitely get out of your old man's way. My dad used to throw punches at me and my mum before he left and—"

"And you turned out okay." She giggled. "Yeah, that's what everyone keeps telling me." She looped her arms around his neck, taking in every bit of his essence. Every bit of it.

"I'm going to miss you, Robbie." The loss made more palpable by the pot, the UDL, the whiskey, the red sky at night sailor's delight, the solid union of their half-naked bodies. "I'm going to fucking miss you."

She thrust against him until the ache became unbearable and leaned into his chest, biting her lip, his earlobe, dragging her tatty nails down his chest. She didn't give a shit what evidence she left behind on his body.

Make it deep.

Touch him so he'll never forget.

Leave a scar on him, too.

Julia dug in her nails and watched his face as she continued to thrust and weep. She wanted him to hate her; this new Julia, the one that was in control, wanted to hate him, but she saw only a calm sadness. The sort that recognised loss.

****

Julia crept out of the quiet house long after they'd all gone to bed. Even Joe's room was dark and hushed. With the bucket in tow, she hid behind the hay shed and lit the first piece of paper until the orange flame leapt to meet her fingers. She burned each individual page at first, but then just dumped the contents of the paper bag into the fire and burned it all, the letters, the tapes, the cards, the journals, the drawings. Everything. Taking a heart-shaped piece of paper from her pocket, Julia wrote their names on one side.

Liliana's instructions were clear as the stars. "Tear the heart in half, place it in the flame after everything else is gone."

"As I tear and burn this heart, Julia and Robbie will forever part. Let us forever see that we are not meant to be. Let the hurt and pain of parting come to an end, burn away the sadness so that we may mend."

The smell of burnt photos assaulted her nostrils.

"Burn it all," said Liliana.

What did she say to him earlier? Her final words?

"I'm just looking for love, Robbie. Life is a song, and I just want my chorus. Is that too much to ask?"

Sometimes I feel so responsible, Julia wrote. Like if I'd been a boy or just a quiet daughter, then maybe dad wouldn't be so sick from worry. He's not good with worry. He gets really angry, but you already know that, Susie. Thing is, dad hasn't been as angry lately, but he worries a lot about the farm. A whole bunch of seedlings got burned by a weird bout of frost we had over a few mornings. Anyway, it looks like he's getting better, and Mum's giving him his pills now so he can't forget what he's taken and won't OD again.

Anyway, look at me talking about my parents. BORING. How are things in Mildura? It's probably hotter than here. Apprentice hairdresser. At least you have a job and don't have to be at home all the time. I can't leave the house unless I'm with fucking Vince, as though he's the Bishop or something and is perfect. The guy is an idiot. He tried something on me the other day, but I told him to fuck off. I don't have that long to go, so I just have to go with it all for a bit, then I'm out of here! No idea where I'm going to live yet, but I heard there are some boarding houses that take uni students. I'll go and see when I head into the city next week.

I know, I haven't even mentioned Robbie. Well I can't. I'm still too sad about it. He's probably in New York about now. He reckons he wants to look for Lou Reed. Oh my God, can you imagine? New York! It's a dream. Maybe I'll meet him there one day.

Anyway, write back soon, bitch! I miss you.

xoxo Jules

****

It took little more than a slap from her mother when she wouldn't eat the overcooked steak for Julia to bare it all.

"I'm going to uni," she screamed. "Moving to Melbourne."

"No, you're not. You're to be engaged in a week."

"No, I'm not. I don't care what sort of deals you've made with the fucking baker, I'm not going ahead with it."

"Is everything all right?" Their neighbour, Julie Williamson, peered through the fly screen. "Does anyone need anything?"

They ignored her and continued screaming.

"Who's going to tell your fiancé?"

"He's not my fiancé!"

"Well, you're going to have to tell your father that. And Vince. Go on. Go ahead and tell him."

****

Fine, I'll tell Vince.

Julia approached Vince's house and realised she was wearing thongs. That was no way to tell someone you were breaking up with him.

She'd been to his house once before, for a 'getting-to-know-you' dinner of roasts and quail stew and Pavlova. The Calvos danced between the two worlds of wogs and skips. The family settled in the area long before Julia's and the rest of them. Vince's great grandfather helped build the POW camp.

A grand sandstone staircase led to the vibrant lawn that surrounded the house, adding gravity to the arrival. A further set of steps, rotten wood along the mitred corners, and she was on the wide veranda staring at the door, wondering what the hell she was doing.

Her arm might as well have been a sledgehammer for all the energy it took to lift it to knock on the door. Relieved when it was over, Julia waited. Surrounding the house with unrestrained perfume, rows of sculpted roses melted in the summer sun. Proof that the British were a foolhardy bunch to think they could import their flowers to the sunburnt colony.

Don't get waylaid by the flowers! Stick to the script.

She had it planned out. Written out to make sure she got it all, said what she'd come to say. She had every angle covered. Frankly, she didn't give a shit what Vince, Vince's family or the entire fucking community of Goldburne had to say. She had to say it right so as not to shame her folks when they found out.

Mum says couples get uncooked all the time.

Julia turned back to the door and lifted the sledgehammer to land another thump on the door.

Vince's motorbike leaned against the balustrade, but his parents' cars were nowhere to be seen.

At least she wouldn't have them to deal with. Julia pulled down her skirt; self-conscious of the amount of tanned thigh visible below the hem. Too short for the sisters, short enough for real life. Too short for Mrs Calvo, who had no problem flaunting her red nails and pantsuits, not short enough for Robbie.

"I don't care if you wear a fucking sari," he said once. "Just as long as it's you under all the fucking fabric."

Vince would never say something like that. The nicest thing he ever said was "so you're going to be my missus soon, eh?"

Julia turned the door handle, and it gave way without a squeak. She hesitated before pulling it all the way and stepped into the foyer.

"Hello," she called up the stairs. Music wafted from one of the rooms upstairs.

"Hello?"

She climbed the stairs holding onto the cold marble balustrade.

"Hey," came Vince's voice. "In here."

She tiptoed up the stairs, reciting all the rehearsed lines in her head and waited outside Vince's room. Taking a huge breath, Julia flung open the door to find Vince at the French doors leading to the balcony.

"Vince?"

"Hey babe, good to see you."

He flicked his cigarette outside and closed the doors. The air-conditioning promptly cleared the room of any sign of tobacco and cooled the room.

"Where are your folks?" Julia asked, noticing the unmade bed and a pint-sized bong on the bedside table.

"In Melbourne. Choosing flowers for the engagement. I don't know."

"Are you stoned?" Julia asked, surprised by the revelation that she didn't know a thing about the guy.

"Why? Do you think you're the only one around here who likes to get high?"

Julia gulped. This was a new side of Vince she'd never seen, and she wasn't sure if it suited the clean cut image she was accustomed to.

"Want a hit?"

She shook her head, despite herself. Maybe this wasn't the right time. "I should go."

She turned to leave, but felt his hand on her elbow.

"What for? Stay a while."

His hair hung loose around his ears and he seemed to be growing sideburns like Robbie, and coarse stubble covered his dewy face.

"Do you want a cigarette?"

"Sure."

After three tries of the lighter, Vince passed her a cigarette.

He circled her and rested against the door.

"Do you miss him yet?"

"Who?"

"Your boyfriend. Robbie fucking Ventura."

Julia's nervous laugh came out louder than she would have liked. She had not anticipated Vince's mood. The guy was usually boring and stable. The picture of perfection. Any parent would want her daughter to bring home a boy like Vince. Except today.

He wiped his mouth and wrapped his lips around the bong.

"Fuck," he said, as the lighter burnt his fingers. He persisted until the embers burned orange and smoke wafted up the transparent chamber.

His lips released an almighty waft of smoke.

"Did I tell you my folks are gone til tomorrow?" He sat on the edge of the bed, taking slow, deliberate breaths. "Your boyfriend fucked that slut, Maria, you know."

Julia remained firmly planted, unable to reach the door, despite the urgency in her head that did not speak but pushed her to move.

Vince pushed himself from the bed and found his way to Julia's side, super-glued as she was to the spot.

"So," he circled her. "Was it Robbie or the gypsy who had you first?"

"Vince I—"

She had a plan. This wasn't part of the script. How the hell would she control this?

"I saw you. At the party the other night, you know."

Julia kept her breathing contained, despite the adrenaline that told her to run.

"I saw you take off with him at the party."

Superglue. Damn superglue.

"And I followed you."

He dug his fingers in his pocket.

Julia couldn't see what he'd removed.

He tapped it against the bedside table and stared at it for a while.

Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. What the hell is he into?

"I saw him fuck you. Then you got on top of him. You really know what you're doing, don't you, Jules."

Julia glanced at the door.

"You've been holding out on me, wifey."

His fingers dug into her arm and pulled her around to face him.

"Which is pretty embarrassing, don't you think?" Wild eyes with pupils the size of his irises. He stroked her arm. "I've been nothing but a gentleman to you. You know, on account of how we're getting married soon. I figured I'd get you to suck my dick on our wedding night. But you've got me curious now. Plus, my friends know that you're fucking everyone but me." He breathed the unyielding words into Julia's ear. "They knew before me."

"Why don't you just tell them that we've done it then?" she whispered, her loudest available voice.

"That's no fun." His melodic voice bounced along to the radio. Julia couldn't make out the song. She knew it was disco. Some sort of bassy disco that surrounded her unequivocally, fencing her off from reaching the door.

She pulled her arm away, but his grip was strong. "Vince, let go, you're hurting my arm."

"Pity you aren't trying to stop me."

The bass looped around the room. Blondie? Donna Sumer? It sounded the same.

Julia heard the sound before the pain shot from ear to ear.

Vince shook his hand as though it was on fire and laughed when she wiped her nose and blood stained the back of her hand.

He directed a backhand to the other ear and a piercing spasm forced Julia to her knees. She hit the tiles unevenly, in slow motion and watched him blanket her vision.

Vince leaned over her. His hands fluttered like wings, as they unbuttoned her shirt. Her skirt, way too short, bunched around her waist.

Rub powdered basil on your forehead for protection against those you don't trust. Frankincense to protect against nightmares and fear of the dark, quince seed for protection against physical harm, dragon's blood reed to keep love secure.

A vague echo distracted her. Vince was laughing like a maniac. No. That's me.

Julia watched the scene from the French doors, watched her body rock with laughter as he tore off her underwear, parted her shirt, and pinched her breasts.

"You dickhead." She heard herself from afar. "You want to rape me? Is that how you want to fuck me?"

His bones crushed into her, already bruised by Robbie.

"Is this the best you can do?" She laughed. She ignored the tiled floor that scratched her back. "I've given it away and you have to have me like this?" Stop talking. Yet some urge told her to keep going. Remind him that he had nothing, he didn't own a single bit of her. "You can fuck me like this, but I'll never, ever, be yours."

He pulled her legs up and pushed quickly against her in time with the music. The back of her thighs burned from the unpolished tiles, and she curled her legs around his thighs.

Vince pinched her lips and kissed them as he came. Blood mingled with salt and loathing as the DJ back-announced the song that had just played on the radio.

Blondie. Oh. She should have known.

****

She boiled herbs and waited, sitting patiently on the edge of the tub while they cooled. She sponged the strained water over her entire body. To help get rid of the evil eye. The scent of rosemary and chamomile rested like mist upon her face. She sat upright in the bath, steam condensing on the walls. A red ring had formed on her skin just below the water. She passed her hand above her arm, feeling the static beneath her fingers. Fine hairs curved at the tips like heavy palm fronds after a heavy rain. They lifted slowly as her arm dried. And she surrendered to the water, sinking deeply, shuddering as her flesh sank beneath the steaming surface and blood floated like a smoky oil slick.

## Chapter Sixteen

The Medusa Trinacria: The winged Medusa, with her snakes of transformation, emerges into awareness with her legs of energy running. She is the symbol of Sicily and its many layers of the divine feminine.

Joseph Marconi said it wasn't the right sort of day to kill a pig. It was too hot, and the meat would go off before they had a chance to mince it and make it into sausages. But Julia's mother wouldn't hear of an engagement party without sausages. Giovanni Marconi didn't argue with his wife or his father. "They were both too headstrong to argue with," he said. So to appease them both, he agreed they should kill the pig in the middle of the night when it was coolest.

Julia looked from her father to the clock.

His breath smelled of Johnny Walker and coffee. "Wake up, Julia."

She held fast to the sheets. "I don't want to go." Maybe she'd disappear beneath the sheets, and he'd forget her altogether.

"Come on, you need to learn what to do."

"I can always buy meat from the butcher, you know."

"The butcher? That man wouldn't know a pig from a pile of rotting pigeon carcasses. Between you and your brother, I don't know how you'll survive when I'm gone."

Julia tossed a windcheater over her pyjamas and changed into stiff jeans. A splash of cold water on her face, followed by a crunchy sun-dried towel was all the invigoration she was prepared to handle. She stumbled from the room, holding her father's shirt just to stay upright.

Julia climbed onto the back of the Ute where her grandfather twirled the gold hoop in his ear. He flicked his stocking hat at Julia. In the darkness of night, he could have been a pirate. A pirate with secrets.

The Ute bounced across the uneven paddock, and Julia did her best to keep last night's dinner from spewing all over Father Gino, who rested his head on Joe's shoulder.

Julia settled in beside her grandfather, and he wrapped a flannel-covered arm around her, as though he would protect her from everything.

Julia closed her eyes to avoid the insects that lashed her skin, lulled by the gentle rocking of her grandfather's body; a shrill wind in her ears kept her from falling asleep.

Francesco hummed and followed with his dreamy warble. "Quel' mazzolin di fiori, che vien dalla montagna."

Father Gino joined in. "Quel' mazzolin di fiori, che vien dalla montagna..."

Their voices echoed through Julia's slumber, into which she climbed once more, nauseous but cocooned.

****

It was the time of morning when steaming cow paddies slapped you with their earthy scent alongside the dirty stink of dying fires. The pig disappeared into the darkness. Smooth, black, and with a straight tail, it greeted them with a snort and scratched its backside against the wire fence.

"It's a good pig," said Father Gino.

"It's a good pig," Julia's father agreed.

Her grandfather agreed with a solemn nod. "It's been well fed. Look at it," he said, grinding the knife over his whetstone. "There's a lot of sausage to be strung there."

Julia's mother looked away. "The poor beast."

Father Gino disappeared in the night. "I'll start the fire," he called back.

Julia leaned on the fence and covered her eyes. Every stink imaginable rose to greet her and slap her in the face—rotten fruit, mud mixed with pig shit, eucalyptus and spruce from opposing rows of trees, Joe's aftershave and a fresh-lit cigarette.

"Do we have to kill it?" Poor thing looked so pleased to see them, with playful big eyes; it pranced around its pen like a dog waiting to go for a run.

"Quiet!" Julia's father raised his hand in warning. "Or I'll smack your mouth. This is what we do here."

"Maybe it's what you do, but I don't."

She noticed Joe turn to watch her with a puzzled expression that was hard to ignore, even under the shadow of night.

"Except you have no problem eating it when it's done," he said.

"Maybe I won't eat it then, asshole," Julia whispered.

Julia turned away from the pig and tried to block out the sound of the knife being sharpened.

There was no reason she should be there. None. She was never going to raise a pig, and she certainly would never kill one.

"Don't you reckon it's stupid they still do this? Like peasants from the old country, even though they've been here forever."

"You don't just throw away tradition because you move halfway round the world, Julia," her mother hissed. "It's all we have."

"What are you talking about?" Julia turned back to the action in the pen where her mother was ankle deep in mud. "You can have anything you want."

"Get in here, Joey." Joseph Marconi moved forward slowly, his left hand tense around the stone while his right hand moved the knife steadily on both sides. His eyes, unwavering, focussed on his prey.

"Watch how your grandfather sharpens the knife."

Julia nudged her brother. "Go on, Joey. Don't you want to learn how it's done so you can impress your future bride?"

Joe yawned and lingered beside Julia. They hung their arms over the fence.

"Have you heard from him?" she asked.

"You've got to stop asking," Joe said stiffly, surprising her with his tone.

"Why?"

"You've moved on, right? Getting married soon and all."

"Are you kidding?" She turned to him and frowned.

"No, Vince's told everyone that you made it official."

Fuck. "What did he say?"

"I'm not exactly going to ask him about the details of how he fucked my little sister, am I, Jules?"

Julia scrunched her eyes in the hope she would disappear and be back in her warm bed.

"How do you do it?" Joe asked, staring into the pen as the adults wrangled the pig.

Joe's morning breath soured when it reached her nostrils, and Julia swallowed a hiccup that could just as easily have ended badly. With no food in her stomach, the last thing she wanted was to spew bile like last time. Her mouth burned with ulcers already.

"How do I do what?"

"How can you be with so many guys and not feel bad?"

"As though you can talk."

"That's different."

"Why? Because you're a man? Shouldn't you defend me? You're my big brother."

Joe flicked his cigarette into the mud. "Defend you? All I've been doing all year is defending you."

He jumped over the gate into the enclosure and was met by a welcoming slap on the back by their grandfather. Julia couldn't imagine what she would have to do to get such a greeting. Cook a lasagne, maybe, clean the toilet or wear an apron?

Three generations of Marconi men huddled around the quivering pig.

"That's a nice ass." Her grandfather's pleasant laughter was at odds with the proceedings. "Wait until we get you home and make you into sauce."

Julia's mother glared at him. "You can't say that."

"Why not?"

"The poor animal will get scared, and the meat will be tough. We want nice, juicy flesh for the sausages."

Julia pictured a table laden with wine-stained sausages, encased in intestines and raw pink pork chops, surrounded by a black swarm of flies. She leaned her head on the fence and took slow breaths through her nose, until all she could smell was the pig's fear.

Her stomach bubbled, sounding like an empty wine barrel.

"Was that you?" her mother asked.

Julia's empty gaze was met by a mound of lines on her mother's forehead. "You look like you're going to throw up."

Julia turned her back to the pen. "I have to go to the toilet."

"Alright. Don't be long, or you'll miss it."

Oh, she wouldn't want to miss it.

Julia stumbled to the toilet, which was next to the pig's enclosure. A bag of lime sat on the floor with a cup resting beside it. Flies hovered around the hole cut on the raised wooden platform. She couldn't tell which end it was going to come from, but the burning sensation that rose to her throat soon enlightened her. Julia waved her hand over the toilet to dispel the flies and promptly deposited a belly full of acid into the opening, which splashed into the dung pit a few meters below.

She crouched on the floor and held onto the wooden platform. It was only a matter of time before it happened again. She wiped her mouth with the back of her clammy hand.

Her father's deep voice slid through the cracks in the outhouse walls. "Hold it, Joey. Papa give me the knife before you hurt yourself."

"Hurt myself," the old man yelled. "Why, I could wrestle ten of these beasts on my own, take my belt off with my spare hand and give you a hiding."

"Gino, come here and help."

Julia rocked on her heels, keeping her breaths shallow now, wrestling with the urge to throw up again, but her raw throat burned from the previous effort. Her stomach bubbled and popped like a vat of hot oil, which got her thinking of fish and chips and—

She pitched her head forward just as the pig squealed bloody murder.

Thwack. The knife plunged into its throat and sounded just like a broom whacking a rug.

Julia covered her ears, but heard it all as though her head was under water. Luckily, the sound of bile falling onto shit drowned out the pig's dying squeals.

## Chapter Seventeen

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away.

Elvis Presley

Julia didn't want to admit it, but things were off. Since when did wild blueberries taste like raw potato? She rode past pregnant briars, burdened with exploding black fruit; much of it ignored and crushed on the ground, the syrup covered by greedy ants.

Coffee smelled like white vinegar. Chicken made her skin red and blotchy. And watermelon, well she just couldn't go near watermelon. So between that and the startling realisation that she'd missed a few periods, Julia spent a lot of time alone just to avoid having to explain why she couldn't keep a thing down.

She genuflected in the aisle before turning into the pew closest to the confessional. Aurora Minuzzo adjusted her bra strap and slid her pencil skirt down her thighs. Her stilettos tick-tacked, and the cushioned chair sighed beneath her pouting ass. She closed the door to the booth with a smile.

It was better than seeing a film, and you knew who carried the most guilt by the distance they kept from the others. Some Sundays, particularly after a festival, row upon row of veiled women would wait, their heads raised in adoration at the marble Crucifix behind the altar.

Julia slid down the pew until she was outside the confessional, but the garbled conversation may as well have been water rushing from a tap. Sometimes you could hear entire confessions. Mrs Michaels from the petrol station yelled her sins as if God were deaf or something, and Julia learned all of Goldburne's gossip in minutes. That's how she heard there was something seriously wrong with her father. But you couldn't trust Mrs Michaels' gossip.

Aurora Minuzzo's laughter emerged from the confessional like an enigma. Father Gino's unrestrained cackle followed. He was a man, after all. He gambled, threw a punch when it was needed—that's what her father had told her, anyway—wasn't afraid of strong spirits and played soccer just as carelessly as the young boys. He had eyes on the front of his head, didn't he? How could he ignore that woman's tits?

That's why Julia was sure he'd understand her dilemma, because not even Dolly had any advice. She pored over the latest issue at the general store, but the magazine had nothing to say about what was going on.

Aurora exited the confessional fanning her face. She slid her skirt back down her thighs.

"I hope you haven't got too much today." She laughed. "I've tired him out." Her laughter echoed through the church, even once she was outside.

Julia waited in the dark cubby for Father Gino, who returned to his side with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He pressed his hand to the mesh window that separated them, sinner from redeemer.

"In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen."

Julia crossed herself.

"Bless me father for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last confession."

"Tell me, child."

She lowered her eyes in shame and did her best not to choke on the smoke.

"Father, I—"

Dry toast with butter and Vegemite flew from her lips as readily as a confession, coating her sneakers and the nice parquetry floor.

"Oh Father, I'm sorry."

"Julia, I think it's time to tell the truth. Don't you?"

Julia stared at the pool of vomit at her feet and reached into her pocket for a hankie. She wiped it up, while suppressing what was left in her stomach, and slipped from the confessional while Father Gino left to get a sponge.

She couldn't now. She just couldn't.

****

The last time Julia went to the doctor was when he told her she needed her tonsils out. Just being in the room was a visceral reminder of that day, ten years before. "Off to hospital you go?" Doctor Joseph had said with an unfortunate smile full of tic-tac teeth.

What was it about a medical waiting room that they all smelled the same? No matter where you went, there was the stink of musty carpet and methylated spirits, which had to be better than anything they masked, like baby shit and stuffed sinuses.

Doctor Joseph drummed his pen on the desk. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

"I have no idea what's wrong with her," Julia's mother said. "She's throwing up, can't eat and won't do anything. Even with the threat of a shoe on her ass."

Doctor Joseph asked Julia to leave the room.

Julia gazed at the cracks in the paint while her mother sobbed on the other side of the door.

Then silence. A few hushed words.

Angela Dimitrio, a cardigan draped around her shoulders, pretended to flick through documents at the open filing cabinet. Who was she kidding? She glanced at Julia, silent and judgmental. They both knew the verdict, and it wasn't the first time Angela judged some poor, unfortunate girl in trouble.

Julia bit down hard on her cuticle and pulled until a metallic taste flooded her mouth.

She was so fucked.

The door to the doctor's room opened, and her mother pushed past Doctor Joseph.

"You had better start praying for a miracle."

## Chapter Eighteen

You have to know when it's time to turn the page. Tinkerbell won't always be there.

Anonymous

"How'd you get it?" Julia stared at the unstamped white envelope.

"Just don't say I never do anything for you, Sis." Joe ground the spent cigarette into the dirt. "And just don't tell anyone I gave it to you, or I'll never do it again."

"As if! Dad would kill me."

Julia pedalled until she couldn't see her house anymore and sat straddling her bike on the side of the road and read the letter from Susie.

Dear Julia,

I heard something today and just needed to check if it's true. Is it? I mean, isn't that exactly what you've been going on about in forever—don't get caught, not ever? God Jules, what happened? Shit, maybe you should pray for a miracle.

How the hell do you pray for miracles? Even Father Gino could only suggest a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers. Julia was positive you didn't become unpregnant like that.

She pressed her fingers onto her belly, feeling around for a sign, but the facts were pretty much irrefutable now. She'd been throwing up for weeks and wanted to sleep all day, and now, Doctor Joseph confirmed every fear.

Fuck. What a dickhead. Just like all the others.

She leaned her bike on Liliana's van and pressed her temples. She felt like Dorothy approaching Oz through the opium fields.

A middle-aged man, with long, grey hair and a brown cattle dog, leaned on the van sharpening a paring knife.

"I guess you're not so different, after all," he croaked.

"What?"

He pointed the knife at Julia's stomach. "All the same."

Julia had no patience for fucking riddles. Liliana would tell her what to do. She was a witch, wasn't she? Or was that bullshit too?

The circus tent lay folded up and lifeless at the end of the row of caravans.

There was no sign of Emilian's tent under the willow.

The show had to move on, Julia supposed, and there weren't enough people in Goldburne to sustain it all summer.

Julia sat on the top step of Liliana's van and waited, sucking on the sticky cuticle and wondering where the hell the old woman had disappeared to.

Liliana brushed past Julia. "He's gone."

"Who?"

"Emilian."

Julia frowned.

Liliana took her shoulders into her hands. "It was the best thing for you."

Julia wanted to run, but Liliana held her hand and forced her into the van.

"It was the best thing for you," she repeated. "Come inside before it's too late."

Liliana no longer lived in her wagon. She had taken up residence with a man called Marco, who became lost amongst the maze of caravans the previous summer and had not left. Julia often felt the same way—lost in a labyrinth with no core and no exit.

Liliana and Marco lived in a small stone building on the edge of the quarter, and they slept on a spring mattress. "I need my comforts these days," Liliana said, for her bones had begun to creak and her neck to stiffen. Where once she spent the summers sleeping beneath the stars, now she needed a roof to conceal her from those same blazing lights.

The wagon was now little more than a shrine. A tall vase of peacock feathers greeted them inside. Hats covered in ostrich feathers sat on a stand.

"Now, what do you expect me to do?" Liliana cleared a space before her at the table. "You want a potion or something? Don't girls like you get sent away?"

Julia sat on a fold out chair and wondered how long it would hold up her growing frame. "I don't know."

"Then why are you here?"

Julia tidied a lock of hair behind her ear and closed her eyes against the interminable shadows that crept over the walls accusingly. The long silence that followed provided some comfort.

"And your father?"

"He'll find out later."

"If he doesn't know already."

Julia played with the locket around her neck, warming it with her trembling fingertips.

"Can you give me a reading?"

"What for?" Liliana laughed.

"I don't know. I guess I was hoping you would tell me that I'll live happily ever after, like in books."

"I don't know what sort of books you read."

They both smiled.

"Anyway, I told you last summer that this would not end well."

Julia sat back in the chair. "What this? Do you mean my future husband or my lovers?" She giggled at the absurdity of the words that tumbled from her lips and watched with curiosity while Liliana reached for a series of jars and removed a few dry sprigs.

She tied the herbs into a piece of cloth and pushed it into Julia's clenched hand.

"Bittersweet. Put it under your pillow tonight."

"What for?"

"It will make it easier to forget him."

Julia heard sadness in the old woman's voice. She stared at the pouch. "I don't know that I want to forget him."

"Are you still planning your exit?"

Julia noticed the red velvet wallpaper had started to peel along the top, curling back into itself.

Liliana set about shuffling the tarot deck. "You think that the world is different outside your walls?"

"I hope so," Julia whispered.

"Well, it's not. It is simply bigger, and the devil creates deeper strife. The only advantage is that you can escape from yourself in a big city. You can plunge deep into its caverns, and nobody will find you for ages."

Julia's eyes were closed, but she sensed Liliana's stare, as though her eyes shot thunderbolts into her soul.

Julia felt Liliana's hands on her arms, shaking her to open her eyes.

"Sartre was wrong. Hell isn't other people. It's yourself. You can put as much bittersweet under your pillow as you want, to help you forget, but you can never escape yourself."

"It was all just a mistake." Julia's vague tone reflected her mood. "I'm just waiting to get out of here. They helped me escape, even for a short while."

"Vince, Emilian, Robbie and who knows what others. Those poor boys could never avoid your long eyelashes and the wiggle of your behind."

"Of course," Julia said impassively. "This is all my doing. They couldn't control themselves. Blah, blah, blah."

Julia's insolence slapped her cheeks. Even she heard the shameless disrespect.

She opened her eyes to find Liliana hunched over the card table, her skin the colour of a sad day. Julia placed her hands, palms up, on the table. "What do I do?"

The sun had fallen from the sky as though by the miracle of time-lapse. The flickering candles cast eerie, incandescent reflections over Liliana's knickknacks.

"I feel like God is punishing me," Julia said into her hands. Her shoulders quivered with the little energy that remained.

Liliana patted her shoulder. "Don't blame God," she said. "You always had a choice."

It seemed to Julia that she was always forgetting about that.

"So what now? You want a nice tarot reading?"

Julia nodded and settled into the chair. A nice reading, nothing more or less.

****

Her father left her alone that night. Stayed out late and left her alone to stew in a heavy broth of panic.

"It's all mapped out." That's what Liliana said. "It's all mapped out, and all you can do is pray for a miracle."

Why was everyone talking about miracles all of a sudden? God!

Father Gino was away at some whatever somewhere, and Julia was no good at praying on her own.

"Well, aren't you a fucking idiot," Joe said as she approached the shed. Twilight filtered through the fig leaves and Julia sat on the warm banana lounge.

The apple tree buzzed with a busy hive of wasps. Julia was surprised that it didn't frighten her. She fanned herself with an old copy of New Idea and looked around for some water.

"Here," Joe said, offering her a VB stubby, which Julia accepted without hesitation. She sucked back the beer like it was her last.

Joe waited and dug at the dirt with his thong. He frowned when she handed back the empty stubby.

"Suppose you want a smoke, too."

"Like it matters." She couldn't look him in the eye. Her own stupid brother.

He dragged over a chair and straddled it, resting his chin on the back.

A gentle breeze swayed the fig tree, and Julia shivered. Joe removed an envelope from his shirt pocket.

"It's from your lover. I guess he doesn't know yet."

Julia looked up abruptly. "You mean you haven't told him, right?"

"I'm not going to tell my best friend that my dickhead sister is knocked up with who knows whose kid."

Julia rolled her eyes. "Shut up. What does it say?" She nodded at the letter.

"How would I know?" He dropped it on her legs. "I never thought you would be this dumb, Jules."

"Fuck off, Joe. I didn't plan it, you know."

"Never get caught. Isn't that what we always said?"

Julia pulled at the cuticle, making it bleed again. She looked up and found him staring at her with what looked like sadness.

"Everything is going to change now."

She covered her face with trembling fingers, her nails bitten to the quick. "What am I going to do, Joe? I've got everything planned for uni. A job, a room."

Joe laughed and shook his head. "The old man's going to beat you 'til you're blue. Maybe you'll get lucky."

"Lucky how?"

Joe leaned in closer and whispered, "Maybe he'll bash you so bad that you won't end up 18 and knocked up." His face lit up with a smile. "That's what you want, right?"

"Maybe it's a false alarm, like Rizzo in Grease." How she wished it could be true.

Joe leaned in and tapped her on the chin. "This isn't the movies, kiddo. You're actually, well-and-truly fucked in real life."

He's right. Julia sighed. There'd be no false alarm. No final scene. No fade to black. No end credits. She was, actually, well-and-truly fucked in real life. She'd become exactly the sort of girl she laughed about.

## Chapter Nineteen

And... Scene...

The punishment was never as bad as the wait. When it finally happened, it played out like some crappy ballet between two people who knew one another's moves and bodies with the awareness of old lovers.

"Wait til your father gets home." The words alone were torture. On TV, those same words just meant you'd get a talking to. Mr Cunningham was reasonable, after all.

Mr Marconi, on the other hand... well, he was no TV dad; by the time he left the pub stinking of beer and Benson & Hedges, he was far from reasonable.

Julia waited a night and a whole day. It was possible that her mother didn't tell him, but it was utterly improbable. Her mother took pleasure in seeing her punished. As long as Julia was the one being bashed, then she wasn't.

No, she definitely would tell him before word got around.

Julia stewed in her own sweat and resentment with her legs crossed and watched geckos scamper over the ceiling, while the sun climbed the sky only to sink twelve hours later. All she'd managed to do is change, throw up and watch the clock.

She knew that if she wore jeans, it'd be worse. Whenever she wore a dress, took off every lick of makeup and tied her hair into pigtails, even stumpy ones, her dad held back a little. He didn't seem to like kicking her bare legs, or to connect with her skin, which was fine by her.

The black and white cow lowed outside her open window and clearly took a shit. A pale yellow butterfly wing, just one, floated in through the window and fell to the floor.

Julia noticed that for days now she thought only in staccato words, not complete sentences, as though she no longer needed verbs—just nouns and the odd adjective.

Curtain

Breeze

Sweat

Swollen

Sweat fell from her skin onto the polyester bedspread. Her mother swept the same few meters of floor outside Julia's room, slamming the broom into the door and wall.

Julia didn't notice when she stopped making a racket until the bedroom door swung open, its hinges wailing like a siren, rising in pitch until the door slammed shut. All she could hear was the cow swooshing its tail against the house and her father pacing.

"So this is how you repay me for all these years that I have put up with you? All these years that your mother has fed you and kept you safe." He left a trail of pine scent as he walked around the bed. "Julia, what have you gone and done to us?"

She raised herself on her elbows and slowly got up. Her father's skin stretched thin over flexed knuckles. Face a field of purple. Cheeks moist with sweat, or maybe tears?

He pinned her to the bed by her throat and she slowed her breath, trying to breathe instead from her nose. He wasn't as strong as he used to be, because of the illness and the medicine, but neither was she.

"I told your mother something was going on with that boy. I knew it would come to this."

She wheezed and he loosened his hold. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the statue of Jesus, largely ignoring her.

Should have prayed.

She was losing awareness, lacking oxygen. She could reach for him, but it always made matters worse when she fought back. Still, she couldn't breathe.

He relaxed his hand briefly, to stretch his fingers and Julia slid off the bed onto the floor.

Hide under the bed.

No. It'll be worse. Just take it. Get it over with.

Julia took deep breaths and raised herself to her knees, too queasy to stand or even raise her head, so she missed the backhander until her head struck the corner of the bedside table.

"Did you think I wouldn't find out that you've been slutting around with that boy? Not even with your betrothed. Stupid girl!"

Julia wiped her face, smearing blood across her mouth, and tempted to lick her lips to taste it. Does blood taste different when you're no longer scared?

His hand smelled of fire and Pino Silvestre aftershave, for which she was grateful, because they masked the cow shit that assaulted her senses earlier.

Better to be hit with aftershave than cow patties.

"Do you think it's funny?"

He pulled her to her feet and shoved her into the wall. Her shoulders hit first.

"No," she said hoarsely.

"Then why are you laughing?"

His black, dilated pupils surrounded by bloody veins, bloodshot eyes as frightening as any horror movie killer. He turned away like a jilted lover in a soapie. "We're ruined," he whispered over his shoulder.

"After everything I've done for you, everything I've given you, and you want to throw it all away on some stupid boy who uses you. Don't you know that's what they all want. You could have lined up for any of them, and each of them would have told you how much they love you."

He turned back and scrutinised her hunched body. She regretted the flimsy dress, as though he could see right through it, through it all.

"I didn't say I wanted them to love me." The words stumbled weakly from her clenched lips, and her throat was raw from the number of times her fingers had scratched it in the hope that she could vomit it away.

"Excuse me?" He kicked her right in the ankle, and Julia suppressed a scream.

"I didn't mean for this to happen," she said when she was sure she wouldn't cry.

"You didn't mean it?" he spat, and brushed his hands through his hair. "You didn't mean to get caught? Or you didn't mean to be a slut?" He paced the room, kicking at the bed and massaging his knuckles like a fighter. "Don't think I don't know about the Turk, either. I know about all of them."

Julia inched towards the door while he wasn't looking. She didn't have the strength to care that he knew, but she was more certain than ever that she had to get out. Her little dress and pigtails were not about to deflect the rage that grew with every step her father took around the room.

"Where are you going?"

He lunged at her, trembling and sweaty. She noticed the smell of whiskey on his breath for the first time and crossed her arms over her face.

A breeze curled into the room and cooled her face. The curtains gently ballooned into the room like two bloated ghosts that twisted and waltzed across the floor, coming to rest gracefully after the frenzied dance.

Bubbles formed at the corners of her father's mouth, which was moving, but no sound seemed to emerge. Silence, as though the sound had been turned down on the television. His gestures appeared comical without sound. Outside, the clouds ground to a halt above her bedroom, and the sky became dark with an outpouring of grief. She thought that He must surely be listening to her now.

Was she praying?

She shivered in the wind that carried debris through the door. The curtains blustered into the room once more, and she feared they would be torn off their rails. Her hearing returned in a piercing wail. Somewhere in the house, glass shattered.

Her father's fists waved through the air.

"Are you listening to me?" He hastened towards her, raising his arms across her head. And she prepared herself for another strike.

"How could you ruin me like this? That boy will never want you now. No boy will." Strands of saliva coated his chin and he wiped it with the back of his hand. The veins, distended threads of blood.

Her hip hit the floor first, and it scraped along the floor as he dragged her by the hair.

Her pigtails!

"Dye your hair red, will you? Buttana." He spat at her face. Thick mucus clung to her eyelashes and cheeks, but she wasn't going to wipe it, not while he was watching. He didn't like that.

He kicked her with the bottom of his shoes and she could smell the horse manure, could feel it drag against her skin.

"How. Many. Times—" Like a hail of stones against her body.

She dragged herself towards the bed, to hide beneath it, maybe with a nice fluffy pillow for her heavy bones, but she was caught by the back of his hand across her head, then deep into her stomach where it felt like he had punched dough. He stood over her. A dull thud of his fist against her back and he turned her over to face him. "Look at me when I'm talking to you." Tears blinding his onyx eyes. He spat at her breasts and slapped her with the back of his hand, and her cheeks sang like sirens when they tore open.

"You're all the same, lying, filthy sluts, you, my mother—" He hesitated just long enough for Julia to glance at him with curiosity. "Dirty whores."

He pulled back his fist, and it beat loudly against her stomach.

He pummelled and kicked with blind inaccuracy, but with the momentum of a tightly wound elastic band with nothing to stop him. The urge to defend herself disappeared with the first well-aimed punch to the gut. The minute she took a breath, Julia knew he'd cracked the rib that was still healing. And with each blow, another crack.

She welcomed each graceful punch, knowing he would lose steam soon. A day and a half of waiting for this would end in less than ten minutes.

Thank you, Jesus.

He kicked like a true footballer—Aussie Rules, not soccer—pulled back his leg and struck her softest centre.

She expected that she didn't feel much pain from the blows on account of the broken ribs, which felt like they were about to burst through her chest with each breath.

"All life is your own, old man," Julia muttered so only her ears could hear. "All the fruit you'll dance for. Godless and hollow, you'll never feast again as long as I live."

She may not remember how to pray, but she'd read all about curses.

"I've never been more ashamed of anything in my life," her father said, as though she hadn't just condemned him forever.

"Not even of your own father?" Julia gasped when she realised the words were hers. The room became enveloped in silence. Then the switch was flicked, and everything turned to a glorious shade of black. The end of the dance.

End Scene.

# PART THREE
## Chapter Twenty

Melbourne's cluttered streets reeked of old man piss and had a glistening veneer that Julia couldn't forget.

No regrets. Not at the moment, anyway. At other times, regret rang true and clear as a church bell, and she would withdraw to her room like a hermit crab. Those were the times when Julia emptied the bottles of painkillers into the toilet, creating a floating, multi-coloured canvas that flushed away. At the last moment, in sheer desperation, she would reach into the disappearing water to recover as many capsules as she could, crying in despair, hardly able to take a breath.

Julia dreamed of dying, of keeping her head submerged below water, struggling with her own will, the desire to stay alive. Drowning felt a lot like being suffocated and that reminded her of her father. In her dream, as she drowned in a bathtub with gentle ripples on the water's surface, a bevy of spectators watched and cheered. Languid red hair floated through the water like octopus tentacles. The crowd clapped as her breathing slowed, and Julia would wake, gasping for air, and freak out whoever was in her bed that night.

Julia deferred uni in time. How lucky that the timing of her father's attack left her with enough time to apply for a deferral. She moved into the smallest room of the boarding house, just her and a suitcase, and set about looking for work once the worst of the injuries healed. The bookshop on Russell Street was a perfect fit and made it easy to remain in the city after three months in hospital. She left the house only to see the doctor for check-ups, to buy groceries and work enough shifts to get by. The comforting routine was the best she could manage for a while.

She welcomed the loneliness of the city. Being alone was effortless and natural, like a ballerina who'd been dancing all her life and wanted only to pirouette from scene to scene. Julia welcomed solitude like never before. One time, she sat on the pier in Williamstown and watched a man surrounded by dead fish and squid ink stains. She shut her eyes and a room of black squid-ink encircled her until the walls collapsed; she lost consciousness.

Barbs—the best painkillers out there.

Don't be so dramatic, Jules, at least you're not still pregnant.

In her room, Patti Smith screeched from the record player, a sweet ode to love, a shit heap of lies and nostalgia. All of them—Patti Smith, Roberta Flack, George Harrison—they all lied about love. When she heard them now, their pain and regret lunged at her like demons. How had they deceived her so easily? Joe told her long ago that music and the movies were just bullshit. How she would be so disappointed when she learned that they were just lies to sell records.

Except, Julia knew, love could be exactly like they said in the movies and in songs. She'd felt it with Robbie, maybe even with Emilian. It's just that sometimes, it didn't work out. You became uncooked.

At least in her little room, she didn't have to hide from small town whisperings. She was utterly anonymous. That's what Liliana had said. But you can't escape yourself. She'd said that, too. Julia stuck around for a day, maybe less, after what happened, so she had the luxury of avoiding every bit of small-town chatter about her.

"She's gone away to university," is all they said of her. Funny how the thing her parents rejected the most became the lie they needed to hide behind.

Every now and then, the phone she shared with nine other women was for her, and her brother's sullen voice said little from the other end of the line. She came to despise the sharp ring-ring as though the tone was different when it was for her.

Letters from home smelled of rancid fruit and Joe's aftershave. Even when he couldn't get her on the phone, he managed to invade her head with his scrawls—black and white and easily re-read.

It was after Melbourne Cup that Julia got the letter.

A snore from the bed behind her, reminded Julia to light the damp cigarette in her lips.

What the hell is his name? She went through the alphabet, hoping to remember. He wouldn't be around long, but it was still nice to remember the name of the person you fucked.

M... Matt? Mick? No, it's A... Alex.

She tore open the envelope and skimmed the page.

You never pick up the phone so I'm writing to let you know Dad's getting worse.

Julia took a sip of warm, milky tea, but it barely filled the smallest gap.

Was it too early for a drink? Exactly how sick is he?

She fingered the scar above her lip, right in the dip. She hardly gave a shit how sick her father was, and she sucked back another capsule with her tea. The pain had not entirely faded after nine months. Her hip clicked when she stretched in the morning; her ribs were fine, they healed on their own. But the scars, made worse from a total of thirty-three stitches, told the story.

Lucky an ongoing prescription for Benzos warmed her and allowed her mind to wander freely.

Illuminated sentinels loomed over half-built skyscrapers. Julia watched their progress from her window. Cranes moved like snails, but she was in no hurry to see the changing landscape as she sat beneath the open window with yet another unlit cigarette. The thought of lighting it was nothing short of exhausting.

The wind carried the sound of late night revellers toasting another day, as though it mattered.

Julia peered at her brother's letter again, but saw only black scrawls.

****

The phone rang on a Tuesday. It echoed through the house like a siren.

"How could we not know he was sick, Joe?" Her voice cracked. It was the first thing she'd said all day.

"We did know, Jules. Remember when he was in hospital for two weeks?"

"No, I don't."

"Selective memory, Sis. He's been sick for two years."

"The funeral is on Friday," he said. "We're waiting for you to come home."

She sat on the floor at the end of the single bed after the phone call.

Alex rubbed her shoulders.

"My father died today," she said. "Or maybe yesterday, I'm not sure."

Alex wrapped his tanned arms around her shoulders and buried his face in her neck.

"Oh, I'm really sorry."

Julia pulled away. "No, it's okay."

"Was he sick?"

She turned to face him and stared into his pale green eyes, as though looking at a stranger.

"Yeah. I guess so."

"We should go to see your family. I'll drive you there."

She considered him for a moment, measuring the sincerity. "You would do that?"

"Sure."

"I think I should go on my own," she said finally. "I'll catch the train."

She left by train, and she would return by train.

## Chapter Twenty-One

He got on the train near Seymour and clambered into her compartment. Hers. With its closed doors and everything. Couldn't he find somewhere else to sit?

He watched her while he ate his tub of mash potato and gravy, and with each passing minute, Julia became increasingly nauseous. Dry retching inconspicuously when the gravy dribbled into his beard. He fingered the slop, digging his fingers into the quagmire, as if it were a delicacy. In and out, his finger disappeared then reappeared only to sink into his mouth hidden by the mound of Ned Kelly hair. When he opened his mouth for a bite of fried chicken, a thick white film covered his tongue.

"Do you want some?" he grunted, slouching over his bucket. Julia turned away and shuffled towards the door to find an empty compartment.

Julia slung her bag onto the overhead luggage rack and slumped onto the squeaky vinyl. The glass was streaky-clean, so she rested her head on it and immediately felt her body cool. The bluestone walls of the metropolis eased away, and she wondered what it would give way to.

The seats of worn vinyl were the same, and yet the journey was so unlike the last time.

"Lock the door and don't answer to anybody unless it's me," said the train conductor in a fatherly tone.

Julia laughed at his words, as though anything could worry her, and slipped off to the bathroom to put on some makeup. Her hair seemed unsuitably gay. Long and thick, permanently red now. She wiped a thick, black line of kohl under her eyes. She tilted her head to watch the shapes made by the fluorescent lights dance across her skin.

Julia barely recognised the girl in the mirror. A reverse Dorian Gray with hollow cheeks and pale skin. Plus she didn't look into full mirrors so much. Mostly she saw her eyes as she applied eye shadow, cheeks for blush and lips for lipstick. She hadn't looked in a full-length mirror since... well since forever, and she was alarmed by what she saw—sticks and bones beneath a shirt and junior jeans. She flicked a cigarette into her mouth and felt transformed in an instant. She wanted them to see her as a woman who had her shit together, who was in control. If anyone felt sorry for her for even a second she'd—

It would be wetter now but still warmer than Melbourne, a welcome relief.

Death surrounded the place. She supposed it surrounded most places, but the closer the train came to her destination, the heavier it loomed. Mounds of small, fenced-off cemeteries on the side of the road were overseen by a handful of angels that hovered over the graves, a wing chipped here, a finger there.

A sudden death marked the beginning of it all, just as it now marked the end. If it wasn't for Mick Camilleri's death on that day a million years ago, Julia would never have seen Robbie like that—leaning over a motorbike, dirt-stained rag billowing from his back pocket and a smidgen of tanned skin, just above the waist, enough to make her hide around the back of the house for a while to watch.

First death. First love. Julia blamed Mick Camilleri for everything and pulled open the train door. The train approached its destination, and Julia caught a sudden onslaught of familiar smells that made her want to shut the door, stay on the train and head back to Melbourne. As the train slowed in approach, she recognised the figure on the platform, puffing elegantly on a cigarette before tossing it onto the tracks and waving.

She dropped her bag onto the platform, and they held one another in silence long after the train had disappeared.

"I'm glad you came, Sis."

****

"It is nothing to die," Julia read in Les Miserables. "It is frightful not to live."

Had her mother lived? She saw her in the city once but only by accident. She was on Grattan Street on her way to uni, when she saw her across the road. She dropped the cigarette as though it burned her fingers and stepped behind a tree to watch.

Connie Marconi didn't walk the streets of Melbourne with such assurance. She simply didn't. Yet, there she was in the navy blue suit she wore to weddings and funerals. On her feet were anything but a sensible pair of shoes, tip tapping towards Royal Parade as though the city was as familiar to her as her own kitchen.

It was a few days before Easter, so Julia had no idea why her mother would be away from home when there was so much to prepare. It was the first time she'd seen her since hospital and the last time until now. Her mother's tired skin and dark-rimmed eyes startled her more now than that chance sighting on Grattan Street.

The same navy blue suit hung over a chair in the kitchen. Her mother stood on the table to replace a light globe.

"Get down, Mum," Joe yelled when he entered the room.

"I'm not hopeless, you know, Joseph."

Julia helped her mother down from the table and into her velvet sandals.

"Is there anything you need me to do before the funeral?" she asked.

"Could you hem my skirt? A seam has come undone."

"Of course," Julia assured her mother.

Her mother smiled like the Mona Lisa. "It's funny, isn't it? You hated to sew, and now you're helping me."

Julia looked up at her mother's scrunched face. "I loved sewing." She questioned her memories, and it played on her mind.

"No, you didn't. I had to practically drag you by the hair to the nuns and now, well here you are, mending my clothes."

Her mother's smile was out of place but familiar. Julia remembered one time when she slipped down into the kitchen late one school night and heard a gentle roar from the living room. Peeking into the darkened room that lit up in flashes from the television, her mother looked up at Julia's father, her head in his lap, while he rubbed her skin, making slow, circular movements on her cheeks.

"We all knew this day would come," her mother said, while Julia travelled along the trails of the happy memory. "I just didn't think it would be so soon. Forty-three is young."

"Too young," Joe said with his head inside the fridge.

Julia rifled through the sewing box on the table and found the dark thread she needed.

"You won't see them or anything, but he's wearing his work boots in the coffin."

Julia looked up from her sewing.

"It's what he asked for," her mother went on. "I think it's disgusting, but you can't argue with sick people or the dead. It's what he wanted."

"Sure," Julia agreed.

"But we got him a new suit, you know, for the occasion. He would have liked that."

Julia strained to form the tiny stitches she'd learned, taking care not to pick up too much of the fabric so the hemline was invisible.

"He won the card tournament just last month, you know."

Julia gazed at the fridge, where Joe continued to pick at leftovers.

"They gave him a trophy. Did you see it?"

Her mother showed her the trophy before she'd dropped her luggage off in her old bedroom. Julia didn't want to deny her the pleasure of showing her again, so she looked at it as if it were the first time. A large gold coin from the traditional Masenghini deck looked like the tarot cards Liliana used. Nothing special, just the old cards that her grandfather brought with him from Sicily. All the old wogs had a deck.

"It's a nice trophy, isn't it? He was so proud."

Julia remembered that her father taught her to count cards.

"Just don't let anyone catch you and never do it at a casino," he demanded with a face as straight as she'd ever seen.

"It's not really cheating," he'd say. "Always make sure you're one step ahead of the other players."

Julia put a coffee on the stove, while her mother polished the trophy with her apron. The fabric was familiar, from a terry-towelling dress that she used to wear on the weekends. Eventually, everything in their house became an apron or a cleaning cloth, even Dad's undies.

Joe leaned against the fridge.

"Mum, why don't you go and get some rest," he said. "You look tired."

"That's all I seem to be doing at the moment, sleep. Just like your father the last few months."

She ambled from the kitchen towards her bedroom. Julia and Joe sat at the kitchen table after they were satisfied their mother was resting in her bed.

"Alone at last." Joe cut a Granny Smith apple into wedges and handed a piece to Julia. "I have to admit, I wasn't sure you'd come."

"Neither was I," she confessed.

She shook her hand at the lit cigarette he offered, feeling an unexpected tiredness. She did not want to engage in small talk. That was all it had been since her arrival—her train trip, her job, the heat. Small talk.

"Are you dating someone?" Joe held up a pair of sunglasses to the window and wiped them with his shirt.

"I guess."

Joe drew back deeply on his cigarette and blew a long stream of grey smoke. How she envied him while they were growing up. Always allowed to do the things she wasn't. He was free to roam at will.

He was free.

He rested the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, a ceramic cactus leaf.

"Must be serious. I've heard the same voice in the background for a few months."

Julia shrugged. "Have you been in my room lately? It's like a fucking shrine or something. Have you been in there?"

"Yeah. When you left. I found a diary and some letters in the wardrobe, under the floor."

Julia looked up, startled by Joe's admission and sighed. "I thought I'd burned it all."

The coffee pot hissed on the stove, ejecting a furious steam from its valve.

"I heard you got engaged to someone," Julia said as her brother poured black coffee into small ceramic cups. "That's pretty serious."

"I'm not fucking engaged."

"Who is she?" Julia smiled at her brother's discomfort.

"Just someone, asshole." Joe pushed a white cup towards her.

"Is it sugared?"

"Course it is."

Julia quickly swallowed the coffee and let the silence settle awhile, until she couldn't help herself. "What about—"

"He got married. Twenty-two and he got married to some fruit picker none of us knew or anything."

She played with the cigarette packet on the table.

"Just have one. What's the worst thing he can do now, Sis?"

They laughed, and Julia lit a cigarette. Joe was right; her father was dead, and her mother held no power without him.

"I've been gone nine fucking months," Julia cried. "He got married?"

"Did you want him to wait for you? You took off, Jules. You fucked around, got knocked up and took off. He got another chick pregnant in New York."

He laughed, and Julia took a deep drag of the cigarette until her throat felt like it was being torn by razors.

"What about you, Jules? Who was the father?"

"Well, I guess it could've been anyone, Joey. Go fuck yourself."

Joe sat examining his hands, and Julia stood to leave.

"They're in town with their kid. A little girl. Monica."

Julia looked at her brother in disbelief. "What?"

Robbie has a wife and kid, and all I have is a string of guys whose names I don't remember.

"I met him in Sydney once, and he talked about you heaps," Joe continued, still absorbed by the lines on his hands. "But then he met Bianca in New York."

Joe stubbed a half-smoked cigarette into the circular ashtray.

Julia looked at the liar who had taken the form of her brother. He was Pan or Lucifer. She pressed her fingers to her temples.

****

Giovanni Marconi was not at his home. He was at the funeral parlour being prepared with cotton wool and the sort of chemicals reminiscent of the days of the Pharaohs. While Julia, on the other hand, was at home having her cheeks pinched and arms pulled, making her feel like a kid all over again.

She stared at photo after photo, just to remind herself what he looked like. Nine months was a long time when you burned everything that reminded you of the past. Even with the permanent red hair, she was still the spitting image of her father. That's what they all said. They were right, of course. She closed the last photo album; certain she would never look at another photo again.

Her parent's bedroom smelled like a freshly opened prescription bottle. Another sweeter aroma mingled with perspiration. The odours terrified Julia. Frankincense mingled with the sweat of the living, and the food donated by neighbours created a mix of foul smells that assaulted her nostrils against her will.

Julia left the house to the mourners and walked into town. She averted her eyes as she passed the pub, the scene of way too much drama. She expected to catch fire, as she took the first step towards the church, but found herself staring at the freshly cleaned sandstone. Its door stood open and welcoming—for everyone else, not for her. She wouldn't be welcome in heaven, surely.

She stepped into the church's dark foyer, expecting the doors to slam behind her, but was greeted instead by Father Gino.

## Chapter Twenty-Two

The priest ushered her into the church, which was smaller than she remembered. Julia had spent a lifetime mumbling beneath its rafters, between its pews, and yet so much was unfamiliar now. As though it was her first time, like she was a tourist. The sun had barely risen and the candles cast shadows beneath tall arches. She had never noticed the lights hanging by long chains, old medieval chandeliers of cast iron topped with electric candles. Saint Lucy stood bent in her chapel, holding her blue eyes in a small gold dish, a reminder of her sacrifice, her purity, her strength before temptation. As a child, Julia had been moved to tears at the sight of the saint, but that was back when she thought the story was real.

She genuflected dutifully as she approached the altar. Father Gino smiled at her hesitant approach.

"It wasn't the best day to kill a pig," he said, cleaning the chalice with a soft yellow cloth, wiping around the edge where it touched his lips. It had been some time since her last confession, and Father Gino looked worn like the edges of the altar cloth.

"He'd drained the pig, but your mother tells me the blood thickened quickly. It was so hot, and she couldn't make the sanguinaccio. Blood sausages are so rare these days. Nobody bothers anymore." The priest shook his head and clicked his tongue. "He was feeding the horses later in the afternoon. It must have happened suddenly. Your father loved those horses more than anything after his father got sick." He turned his attention to the chalice that held a pile of small white wafers, a smile perched on his wide mouth.

"Joe told me he spent a lot of time there." Julia picked at a thread on her cuff, the sleeve slightly stained with rust-coloured marks, like the ones on her mother's wedding dress that sat, forlorn, in a steel trunk.

Despite his thin, grey hair, Father Gino's eyes mirrored the gold chalice. Black flecks reflected "the muddied souls of his parishioners," as he was fond of saying.

"You know what I enjoyed most about your father? I enjoyed his discomfort each time I made him bring the holy sacrament to me during mass. He'd signal his disgust to me—we had our own secret signals, your father and me, like those American baseball players." Father Gino made a series of exaggerated hand movements, like you saw in movies, and laughed. "He would scratch his nose as he approached the altar—he looked like the devil getting too close to holy water, like he would hiss at any moment." The priest wiggled his fingers over his head, like horns.

Julia wasn't sure if she should laugh. A priest could do whatever he wanted.

Father Gino locked the chalice in the marble tabernacle and closed the twisted iron doors that were covered with a gold-embroidered curtain.

"He was a good friend. What do you need from me now, Julia, that I couldn't give you before?"

Julia stared at the Stations of the Cross, expecting them to bring her close, make her feel at home, but she could not have felt more distant. She'd been absent so long.

"I just miss the solitude, Father. That's what I felt in here," she said. "I would come after school to watch the women, wonder what they had done that was so terrible that they came to confess every day, always wearing black with veils covering their faces and their shame. The thicker the veil, the deeper the sin. That's what my father would say."

"You know, your father was such a pig sometimes, may he rest in peace." Father Gino crossed himself. "Do you want to know why I kicked him out of the church in '77? You know I put up with a lot, but then he beat me at the Briscola tournament. Then in confession, he told me he'd cheated. There! I never told anyone before. Do you remember that tournament?"

Julia nodded. "Yeah, I remember."

The priest finished his housekeeping and waited with his hands on the altar.

"You know Father, I used to love sitting in the confessional booth over there, with the gauze separating the sinner from the executioner." She turned to the priest and giggled. "That's what it felt like, I'm not sure if you know that."

"I hear these things."

"It's funny, isn't it? I always felt that I could tell you anything in the confessional booth, and then my problems seemed to go away the moment I lit a candle to the Virgin and mumbled Our Fathers in front of this bleeding statue."

"You were always a good girl, Julia."

Julia lifted her face to the ceiling. The fans made a gentle sound, like a distant plane. "I just lost my way. Is that it?"

"That is not for me to judge."

She considered the hypocrisy of his downcast eyes. "But Father, I thought that was your job." She panned her arm dramatically around the empty church. "It's your job to judge all of us."

"Why do you speak like this? Aren't we friends?"

Julia sat on the cold steps in front of the altar. "Of course we are. I'm sorry."

Silence never felt more at home than it did in a church.

"Father," Julia said, after a while. "What did they say after I left?"

"What did you expect them to say?"

"I can certainly bet that it wasn't the truth."

"Then you win the bet." He slapped his palm on the altar. "Julia, nobody could ever deny that your father was a very difficult man, may he rest in peace." Father Gino walked around the altar and genuflected before sitting beside her, gathering his cassock at his knees.

"He was always so angry, though."

"Well, some would say he had reason to be angry, after what happened. We have no idea what it must feel like to be born a bastard."

Julia whipped her head around. "Excuse me?"

The priest sighed and hunched over. "I thought you would have known by now."

"Known what?"

Father Gino pinched the bridge of his nose and released another longer sigh.

"That's not my story, Julia."

"Then whose fucking story is it?" Julia thundered to the rafters.

"Everybody makes mistakes."

"What mistakes?"

The priest looked at her and seemed to consider carefully what he would say. He stood and walked back around the altar. "Talk to your grandfather. Now, let's say a few words for your father, may he rest in peace."

Julia crossed herself and stood before the priest. She listened to his whispered prayers while the wind whipped and echoed through the tombs beneath their feet.

****

Your father wrote a lot of letters to me when he found out."

Your father loved to write letters. Julia tried to let the words sink in, but they fell like blows of a hammer.

"But he hated it when I wrote to Susie," she said. "Every time he saw me writing a letter, he'd tear the paper out of my hands, slap me and tell me not to be an idiot."

Julia's grandfather adjusted himself and pulled the sheets up to his chin as though he'd met a chill. Julia never imagined how much could change in less than a year. Her brother had a serious girlfriend, her father was dead, and her grandfather had a head of grey hair; not a single black one to be seen, unlike the last time she saw him when he still looked like a gypsy with slick black hair and an earring. Julia barely recognised the emaciated figure with tubes pumping oxygen into his nostrils.

His wheeze startled her.

"I suppose you want to know what happened then, before she shows up to the funeral."

"Before who shows up to the funeral?"

"Your grandmother, sweetheart, your grandmamma."

****

Of course it all made sense. Of course it all fell into place, like a perfectly arranged Tetris puzzle.

"They wouldn't let us see our own family, but they let travellers into the compound. You know, to entertain us, the POWs."

Julia tried to picture her grandfather during the war, barely an immigrant anymore but thrown into prison because he was Italian; a potential fascist sympathiser, even though he hardly spoke the language, once he arrived in Australia. They just wanted to assimilate and forget the bullshit that was going on back home after Mussolini came to power.

"Mussolini was a first class idiot," her grandfather explained. "He denounced the Socialist Party, and that stupid King Victor Emmanuel and his paranoia gave him exactly what he needed. Fucking Blackshirts ruined Italy. Don't imagine for a second that any of that La Dolce Vita garbage that Fellini tried to make the world believe in the 50s was true. It was a bullshit fantasy," he spat and adjusted the oxygen tubes in his nose.

"I had some money saved up after the depression. I wasn't an idiot. I knew how to play the black market. We got on a ship, arrived in May of '33 and came out here. I was used to the heat, but never saw so many trees. My wife and I settled in, learned the language, bought our first farm and started to grow lemon trees. Nobody knew what was going to happen in Europe. Or maybe they just didn't pay attention. Then in '40, they decided that we were a threat. I was growing lemons and tomatoes and had some goats. What sort of threat was I?"

"Seven years in peace, that's all I got. My wife and I had a son, your Uncle Sam, remember?"

Julia nodded. He died young with no family.

"Then the fucking war broke out, and they decided we were too much of a risk, us daegos. Anyone with Italian or German background was chucked in the old mansion. So there I was, just a few miles from home, and I had to work on the POW farm. Can you imagine that?"

Julia shook her head and waited while her grandfather stared at the ceiling for an eternity and took a long breath.

"I didn't see my family from 1940 to '45. Worst years of my life."

"Nonno, Dad was born in '43, I thought."

"Well yes, that's where the problem started, you see."

"The American GIs in Europe had their NSOs. We had... well we had our own entertainers, who may not have been famous like Bob Hope, but they were definitely entertaining."

His smile was less than apologetic. Julia saw the mischievous glint in his eye that he got when he whispered to Julia behind her father's back; words she couldn't remember anymore but desperately wished she could.

"There was this woman—"

"Liliana."

"Yes, or Agata, depending on her mood and what she was wearing that day. She was a wild one. Talked about art, Paris, books, and the strange people she travelled with."

He reached out his hand and waited until Julia reluctantly gave him hers.

"My wife was a good woman, Julia. She didn't complain about leaving her family in Italy, didn't once throw up on the ship over here and was a workhorse. The woman had the shoulders of a man. But after two or three years in that POW camp, I—well there was this wild woman, with red hair and thick black eyeliner, who'd travelled the world and didn't give a damn about anything. I didn't have a chance. I fell deep and—"

Julia pulled her hand away. "Yeah, I get it."

"Julia, you can't imagine what it's like to be locked up but have all these dreams."

Julia closed her eyes and sighed. "Yep, you're completely right. I have no idea what that would be like."

"They brought her back to me when it was too late, and her belly was swollen like a watermelon, a big one. I didn't know until much later that the Calvos took your grandmother in, while I was interred in the camp. They knew about Agata, or Liliana, and planned it all. My wife, your grandmother Julia, agreed to take the baby as hers, as long as Agata stayed away and never told a soul that she was the real mother."

"Nobody suspected anything. They chalked it up to conjugal visits between a man and his wife."

He looked at Julia sheepishly, but she went on picking her nails in silence, looking up at her grandfather now and then but avoiding his eyes. She drifted in and out of the story.

"You're like her," he said with a wistful smile. "Like Agata."

Julia's stomach rumbled, and she saw that it was now dark. A thin shaft of light lingered on the floor. They sat like two ghosts, barely perceptible to one another until the small square of light disappeared.

"I guess that's why they made that deal for you to marry Vince. They kept the secret."

Julia rubbed her eyes, hardly believing the surreal story.

Joseph Marconi shrugged his shoulders. "It hardly seems to matter anymore."

"Except it did m-matter," Julia stammered. "They ruined my life because of it."

"Julia, you're young. You'll learn to forgive the past, and you'll hardly remember this in a few years."

Julia took a deep breath to hold back the scream that formed at the back of her throat. A scream that might shatter windows.

"Did Dad know I was seeing Liliana?" she ventured. "Did he think I knew?"

"I think so."

"That would explain a lot. Now."

Julia watched her grandfather a while, as he drifted in and out of sleep. The old man would be dead soon, and she would never have to look at him again.

"I was really happy before the whole Vince thing," she whispered when he opened his eyes.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure." She sighed. "I loved Robbie. He's all I wanted. We had plans, you know."

Julia sank her head into her hands and pushed back the tears.

"Then why did you go off with that other boy, the one from the circus?"

Julia's head weighed a tonne, but she lifted her eyes. "I guess it runs in the family, Pop."

Her grandfather's weak smile was all the response Julia could presume.

## Chapter Twenty-Three

Twelve O'clock or thereabouts: The sun's at the top of the world and I'm in the cold sweat of the cave's depths again. It's cool here and I don't fear it now, like a cloak of invisibility that only I can see. It hovers over me, its Virgin blue folds billow. I raise my damp face towards it, eyes rolling back and I welcome it this time, the blood.

Anonymous

She went for a swim while her mother slept off her lunch. A thick, white fog floated across Julia's memory, and she had no idea how long she'd been lying there, face down, while her lungs were squeezed like udders. Her eyes burned from the grit and fish shit of the riverbed.

Cotton had a tendency to cling like Glad Wrap when it was wet, but her dress was smoothed out over her thighs, as though she had not been dragged from the water kicking and screaming. Or maybe she was dreaming of the day that she was born as life flashed before her.

Her father told her that she tumbled into the bedroom from a hole in the ceiling. Fell so fast, he barely had time to put down his cigarette to catch her. There was no cabbage patch where she came from, just a vast black hole in the ceiling that you fell from with her eyes shut tight like she wasn't ready to face the world yet.

Julia raised her head and gasped for air. With the sun directly overhead and the twang of the guitar on the tape player, she mouthed the words to 'Polythene Pam.'

She didn't bother to brush the wet blades of grass from her cheek. You always think it will matter, the way you look when you're dying, but it doesn't.

The bush landscape shimmered, an endless mirage so arid that a camel would not have seemed out of place. Her fingers were sticky with the blood from the cut on her thigh when she plunged into the water. She wasn't as lithe as she remembered.

When she was little, she had scraped her arm from a dive, a long series of scratches below her shoulder. Her mother yelled at her for diving into the river after a heavy meal of sausages and stuffed artichokes, but Julia had blocked her ears against the nagging. She hummed to herself and kept jumping into the river again and again, until the blood made long streaks on her arm. She had rolled a long strip of gauze all the way around her arm and pretended to be seriously injured, so that Joe had to help their mother make sauce. When her father found out about her lie, he had hit her across the back, making a loud barrel-like echo.

Death is not as bad as you think, Julia reminded herself. Not when the salacious facts are buried with them. Except her father wasn't buried yet; nor were the salacious facts. What would he look like when they brought him back to the house from the mortuary? Does it matter how you look once you're dead?

She sat on the riverbank. Yellow butterflies fluttered in pairs-the souls of dead lovers. A soft mist fell on her parched skin and bounced off the powdery dirt.

An Indian shower.

Pebbles mosaicked the soles of her feet; a piece of glass, rubbed smooth by water but with sharp edges, dug at her heel. She picked it out and waded into the river to wash the blood away.

Always blood.

She remembered that her father drowned a dog near here. Julia watched the Chihuahua's legs tumble through the water after her father threw it in.

"It's funny," he said.

The dog paddled quickly and she just watched it from the water's edge, her toes sinking into mud, cool and soft. Her father slapped his knees while the dog paddled desperately.

"It's an animal," he cried with laughter. "It'll be all right. They know how to swim by instinct."

"She's little. She'll drown." Julia urged it, running along with the water before it dipped over the rocks again. She too had learned to swim by instinct. Her head low in the water, moving her arms like paddles and flapping her legs quickly.

The radio played a tune in the background. The silly transistor her father kept in his shirt pocket, so taken by its size, even though it sounded like shit, all crackles and no bass.

Julia hummed along to the imperceptible tune, or it might have been a horse race, and sobbed as the dog's paddle slowed and it disappeared over the rocks.

"Stupid dog." Her father stood behind her with his arms crossed. "It could have tried harder." He spat and phlegm trailed down the rocks beside her feet. "Stupid."

"We should follow and help her."

He gripped her arm and dug in. "Don't even think about it," he warned.

She wouldn't dare.

Was he really that bad? The passage of time helped her see events as if through a cataract veil, and Julia forgot about the dog. She remembered sitting on the back porch and singing to the Beatles while she sucked on loquats and spat their shiny brown seeds into her father's hand. They split figs with her fingers, sticky and sweet, discarding the ones that were filled with tiny black sugar ants, to find the ones that were perfect beneath their purple shrouds and sucked the pulp and her fingers. They would stop eating only when her father had to undo his top button, and they lazed around playing cards with bloated bellies.

But he was dead now, no matter what myopic vision she had of him.

Julia crossed the river and lay on the flat rock in the centre. The curves of the rock pressed against the knots in her shoulders, along her spine. Its heat soothed her back, which still ached from the train ride. The river had always appeared to be brimming and so wide, but now she thought that she could jump easily from one bank to the other.

She clutched the pendant of the blue Madonna her father gave her, an eternity ago, and the gold locket from Robbie that she never removed. The chain broke long ago after an argument with some guy who had tried to take her handbag and her heart.

It dangled in the water and floated on the surface a moment. Some days she was as listless as the blue Madonna, gazing down peacefully into the tepid water, floating on the surface momentarily but losing all momentum and plunging to the depths. Hoping to drown without any drama.

Anna drowned not far from here.

Julia thought she would die by drowning, but Alex pulled her from the depths that last time before the water weighed her down. Then he held her hand in the hospital emergency while they doused her stomach with saline and everything came out. She cursed Alex all the while for not letting her go.

Sun gleamed off the water's surface and gave her skin a cheery hue. Julia lightly touched the fleur-de-lis around her navel, still raised slightly like a scar, and wondered what had become of Emilian. She was surprised she could even remember his name, but thought of him occasionally, thought of his warm tongue against her skin and the hands, so effortlessly familiar.

She closed her eyes and let the heat of his skin surround her. When she opened her eyes, her vision sparkled as though she was looking at the world through broken glass, like a cubist painting. The sun over her dry skin felt like tiny insects, and she held her breath, letting the air fill her cheeks. She felt light-headed, but plunged into the water and slowly sank, her memory fading quickly as her head was submerged.

The river swept her along gently. It was always like that, she realised to her surprise. The current that you could never quite see except for the debris it carried along—leaves, bottles, plastic bags, and cigarette butts—miles and miles away, out to sea. Julia found herself downstream, letting the current take her wherever it wanted.

She turned around to swim against the current until she found a gentle spot where she could simply be, floating upstream. She remembered her father was being brought back to the house.

## Chapter Twenty-Four

They brought him back at night, after sunset. He smelled of hospitals and the same old aftershave, as though no amount of after-death preparation could wash the stuff from his pores.

How did someone age so much in less than a year?

His once-thick head of black hair was little more than a stiff, grey three-o'clock shadow, and his skin was yellow as a sheet that had been stored in a suitcase for decades. Death was the colour of the first layer of onionskin.

Julia wiped the corner of his mouth where fluid streaked his jaw.

She watched him; an interloper during his sleep, except his tranquil brow, only a figment of the mortician's imagination.

Julia hated the suit. He should have been in his wedding suit. He loved that thing and still wore it with pride, bragging that he still fit into it, even after 25 years.

A web of bruised purple veins covered his hands, folded together at the navel in the shape of a heart. She tucked the yellowed calico pouch into his pocket and stood back to let the other mourners through.

Her mother sat on a wooden chair, at the head of the coffin, releasing wave after wave of tears, while neighbour, friend and family member alike patted her shoulder.

"He looks the same as the day we were married," her mother said.

Julia was sure she'd heard those same words before. At some other death.

After the mourners left, Julia remained at her vigil through the night, waiting for her mother to come and recite the rosary again until morning.

The windows were blocked against the heat. It was a shitty day for a funeral. Julia wiped her damp face with a handkerchief her mother had given her earlier—the thin white cotton with her initials satin-stitched in lilac thread served as a reminder of... Of what? She thought of slipping out for a cigarette, but her lungs burned from death's stench.

She didn't think she'd be 19 and at her father's funeral. Sometimes, her fantasies sprinted towards a distant future where she was old, maybe 40 or 45, and she hovered over her father who lay in bed. He'd be alone. All alone. And she was not afraid.

Father Gino stopped by in the morning with some frankincense to freshen the air, but it only made Julia sad. She slipped a couple of Valium onto her tongue and washed them down with Johnny Walker straight from the bottle.

Her mother clutched the casket. "It was just about this hot on our wedding day," she said, her eyes wide with the panic of someone who had not slept in days. "I had to walk from my house to the church, and I was covered in sweat by the time I arrived. It's not like that now. The girls are taken by car, those fancy cars with white ribbon tied to the front." Her mother's hand swiftly worked the rosary. "But I had to walk. I got there late, of course, but your father didn't mind. He never said anything about it. A few people mentioned it at the reception, as a joke of course, but your father would tell them that he was just so happy that I had arrived at all." She smiled and pressed her hand to Julia's face. "I hope it's cold at my funeral. That's the least I can do for you."

****

They began to arrive early—women in black, their heads covered in lace veils, releasing the tears that Julia had not. The men wore black felt pins on their lapels or black armbands, like football players. Some of them greeted Julia with downcast eyes; others kissed her warmly, welcoming her back home.

"Are you studying?"

"Sort of."

"Well anyway, it's good to have you here back home."

Home, she thought as she smoked the last of her father's cigarettes while watching the chickens go about their routine—foraging, clucking and whatever chickens did.

She never got to smoke with her father like Joe did. They never got to be buddies like that. But she watched him, learned to draw back on a cigarette and cup it so the wind wouldn't waste a single puff.

Julia blew a puff of smoke and watched Liliana approach. Her grandmother. She didn't remember the other one.

"And there I thought you were dead," Liliana said. "I wasn't expecting you to come back for this."

"Did you see him when he was alive?" Julia asked, as though not a minute had passed since their last encounter.

"I did."

Liliana sat beside Julia, on the patch of grass, still green and new. "I saw him many times even before he knew," she said and twirled the long braid that reached her waist. "But I was sworn to secrecy by everyone—your grandfather, the Calvos."

"Did they pay you or something?" Julia asked, as though it would make any difference.

"A little," Liliana admitted without remorse. "Enough to see me through."

Julia glanced at the old woman, and a question formed.

"Julia, don't get any romantic ideas that your grandfather and I were in love, and the world pulled us apart at the wrong time." Liliana glanced at the distant sheds and homes. "This town reviled him and anyone who came from Italy or Germany. They were foreign radicals who couldn't be trusted. I was just a traveller with a dead horse, and I needed a horse to carry my van. They asked us to entertain the prisoners. We stayed awhile. I got hooked and—"

"He's sick, you know? My grandfather's sick."

"I know. I saw him." Liliana looped a lock of hair around her finger.

"And?"

Liliana offered a coy smile. "And he apologised."

Julia shook her head. "What for?"

Liliana stroked her hair and removed the cigarette that hung from Julia's mouth, grinding it into the dirt. Golden, dried leaves scattered like ants in the grass.

"They took my baby. Your father was my baby. My only one. They took him and pretended he was your grandmother's. I didn't see him from the day he was born, until he was seventeen."

"I'm sorry you lost your baby." Julia's feet were numb, so she stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes.

"He came to see me once, you know."

Julia turned abruptly and held her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun.

"My father?"

"No. That boy you were in love with, Robert Ventura."

Julia glanced around. "Robbie came to see you? When?"

Liliana hesitated. "Um, sometime after you started seeing the Turkish boy, Emilian."

"Oh God." Julia had almost forgotten all the drama—it felt like years ago, ancient stories that belonged to another person at another time. "What did you say to him?"

"The truth."

Julia eyed her suspiciously. "And what would that have been?"

Liliana grinned broadly. "That you were just looking for love, of course."

Julia laughed and stood to go, but Liliana grabbed her hand.

"Don't leave so soon."

Julia recognised that abject loneliness, but was powerless to console her.

"Liliana," she said. "I'm tired. I haven't slept in days, and I've said the Hail Mary so many times now that I expect the Virgin will appear any minute."

"I can help you," Liliana urged, her forehead creasing with ancient lines.

"I'm doing all right," Julia assured her. "But I have to get out of here. This place is repulsive to me. I can still see my blood stains on the floor in my bedroom. I fucking hate it."

Julia turned around only when she reached the end of the chicken coup. Liliana watched, her hand reached out, expectantly.

"But I'm super glad we met, Grandma," she muttered and turned back to the house.

****

Joe looked as though he would lose his balance as he approached the coffin. The church fans swayed above their heads but offered no respite from the heat. Julia couldn't tell what her mother was thinking, not with that thick veil over her face. Still, Julia knew she had to be crying.

Julia couldn't bring herself to wear a veil, not for confession, not now. Still, she admired each lacy filament, most of them relegated to the bottom of trunks and reserved for funerals, along with the black suits that helped them to grieve. Those unlucky enough to have seen a lot of deaths would hang their veils and mourning attire in veneer closets, so they were close at hand.

Julia's skirt barely covered her knees, and her bra was visible beneath the tight polka dot shirt. Frankincense clouded her vision. The coffin glistened, as though it too suffered the day's heat. She crossed her legs and ignored the cramp in her calf.

Six men hoisted the coffin over their shoulders once the eulogy was done, and they crossed themselves for the last time. Joe accompanied the others that Julia didn't remember, carrying her father high on their shoulders. They first steadied themselves before beginning the march down the aisle.

Julia held onto her mother's arm, and they followed the coffin at the head of a sea of mourners. Some raised their eyes at her; others smiled, happy to see her. The empty hearse led the crowd from the church to the little cemetery at the edge of Goldburne. Children cast bunches of yellow and white chrysanthemums on the road before the cars.

Julia's mother sagged heavily against her shoulder, with no more will to stand. But she walked through the cemetery gates like a woman determined to get to the end of the journey.

A familiar melody played over and over in Julia's head, but the words escaped her. She hummed it softly so nobody could hear. Feet shuffled heavily all around her. Hundreds of mourners encircled her, blocking out the sun as readily as a heavy cloud. A gust of wind ushered them along like mounds of dirt.

Julia sensed a hand on her arm. It brushed her skin with a familiarity that made her legs ache. She released a long sigh, for there was not enough air in the world to fill her lungs at that moment. Julia didn't need to look at him. She remembered him as if it were yesterday. The translucent eyes, soothing like the ocean, his skin smooth and brown from working under the sun. She took Robbie's hand, warm for all eternity and didn't give a damn who saw them—not her mother, not his wife or kid, not the entire town.

Her father would not want a show. He hated the theatre on stage and in real life. But Julia's mother wrapped her arms around the casket as it was about to be lowered into the dirt.

"Giovanni," she called. "Giovanni, my poor love. What will you do all alone? It's so dark down there."

****

Does love become more profound once it's gone? Like a book that you grieve for once it's lost, despite having never read it.

Julia bought some flowers from the petrol station. He wouldn't care if they were roses or carnations. Her father hated flowers. They made him sneeze. Flowering dandelion carpeted the cemetery, and she tiptoed to avoid trampling it.

The headstone wasn't finished yet, even though they'd known he was going to die. Still, there was a temporary stone tablet, like an open booklet, on top of the family tomb. A recent photograph of her father rested behind glass.

For so long she thought of him aging, becoming weak. He plagued her nightmares, but now he was nothing more than a soulless body nailed inside an elaborate wooden crate.

Julia waved the flies away with a handkerchief. She emptied the contents of a gauzy bag onto the tomb and opened another pouch, sprinkling fine red powder onto her hands and around her neck, leaving a handful of seeds.

"Cinnamon, curry powder and oregano for a quick and peaceful separation, sage for an emotional bond that does not break easily."

"Thanks, Nonna," she said to the clouds.

She scattered the seeds around the tomb, allowing the sun to dry the tears on her skin.

"I sew hemp seed. Hemp seed I sow. He that loves me best, come after me and mow."

She laughed away more tears that welled in her eyes and closed them tight until she saw the drawer at her flat, the one that she had never allowed Alex to see. The one filled with remnants from the fire—letters never sent, to Robbie, her father, Joe, Emilian.

Julia heard footsteps behind her. Strong steps in the dirt, kicking stones.

"Julietta?"

Julia smiled at the dimpled cheeks, and tossing the remaining seeds on the ground she silently repeated the words as he approached.

I sew hemp seed. Hemp seed I sow. He that loves me best, come after me and mow.

"Thought you might need a friend," Alex said, shading his eyes from the sun.

He took her hand and held it against his cheek.

"I do," she said. "I need you."

****

She heard his laughter coming from the back veranda, as sincere and direct as the sun. Joe would like Alex, she was sure of it.

The magenta trunk was locked. Julia tugged the padlock, but it appeared to have rusted shut. She found a hammer in a drawer and used both hands to pound at the lock. The sound resonated through the shed, and the broken lock fell to the floor. Fabric, clothing and books were neatly piled inside, and Julia gently removed each of the layers, feeling for a familiar texture, which she found nestled amongst linen tea towels and random unused objects. She pulled at the shirt box and rested it on her lap, stroking the delicate gold embossing on the lid, and wiped a tear from the surface. The box seemed to bulge more than she recalled.

Julia removed the lid to reveal yellowed parchment and hankies. She wondered when it had last been opened and by whom. Her hands were steady as she flicked through the contents—photographs and letters wedged inside the pages. Her parent's engagement, her mother's sleeveless dress, the chiffon Pucci-like print and skirt of sunray pleats. Her parents at the beach on a cloudy day. Joe blowing candles on a cake. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven," she counted and glanced at her grandfather with a surprised look. Photos of her with her parents at the orchard, her father holding her as she climbed the ladder up one of the lemon trees. And the photograph of her grandparent's wedding. Her grandmother, the one she'd always known, holding her first-born.

What did she expect to find? A family tree that explained the whole sordid mess?

She did, however, find a bunch of envelopes addressed with a familiar black script. Her own handwriting, chaotic cursive script that used to get her into trouble and that had deteriorated from lack of use. Letters to her mother, letters to her father, letters from Robbie. Letters that were sealed and addressed to her, but with no stamp affixed. She tore one open.

She remembered her father's handwriting, the looped S that was so much like her own.

My dear daughter Julia,

I have received your letter, thank you. You look lovely. Your hair has grown so much and you look well. Your grandfather is sick. I hope you have the chance to see him again. One of his horses died last week, and it was taken away. What could I do? I feed them well. Your mother says that they eat better than I do.

Maybe you will come home again soon. After school is finished.

Papà

A bulging envelope lay at the bottom of the box. It was large and yellow with her name written on it in the same looped handwriting. Julia emptied its contents onto the floor and wheezed as though she had been kicked in the stomach. Torn pages from magazines, pictures of Debra Harry and Patti Smith, pages ripped from library books, maps of places she was yet to see, a photo taken with Emilian while they danced before a bonfire, a photo of Robbie blowing her a kiss, and a lock of her hair tied with yellow string. A lock of her hair.

She held the soft tuft of hair in her fingers. Julia did not recognise herself in those old photographs. She barely recognised herself now when she walked past a mirror. The old face was round and overflowing, with the thrill of seeing the dawn each day or following her brother for a swim in the river, and still longing to find the answer to that question, what about love?

This new Julia was a shadow, a ghost with skinny arms and legs and sallow skin. She pressed her hands on her hollow belly and closed her eyes before opening another envelope and spoke each word aloud, because they were too important.

I knew it wasn't right. Something felt unreal with her. She loved Sammy but spoke to me like a stepmother. Once I learned about you, my real mother, everything made so much sense.

Your son, Giovanni.

Julia descended into an unfathomable darkness. She fell to her knees and closed the trunk.

"I'm sorry about your father."

She turned to face him. "Thanks, Robbie." Her head was filled with the melodies that had haunted her since the funeral. What was that song?

"It's been a long time."

"So long and that's all you can say?"

"I'm sorry if you expected more."

"I guess I didn't really." She closed her eyes and breathed in the familiarity. "I suppose we don't have to worry about being caught in here anymore."

He looked just like the day he left her at the bar, except his hair was shorter. He was a dad, after all.

Why couldn't he just be fat, ugly and badly dressed?

"Are you going to stay now that—"

She laughed. "What, now that my father's dead?"

"Yeah."

"He wasn't the only reason I left, you know. And anyway, you left first."

"But I came back."

Plump lips waiting to be kissed.

"And you found love," Julia said. "And a kid."

Robbie nodded and held her gaze.

He should have been embarrassed, admitting he'd moved on so quickly and completely.

"And you? Is there—"

"Someone? Yes. Alex."

"Alex?"

"Yep. He's in the house with Joe, I think."

"And are you in love?" He asked the question so effortlessly. But Julia supposed that came with the detachment that marriage afforded. They were nothing now.

"Maybe." She was surprised that it didn't feel like a lie.

Julia sat on the trunk. The hot steel warmed her legs.

"I always loved you," Robbie said kindly. "I still do."

"You told me once."

"And you just laughed at me."

"Why are you telling me this now?" Julia said irritably, looking away. "I loved you back then, Robbie. I loved everything about you."

"You had a strange way of showing it. I heard all the stories, Jules, and I was so stupid mad in love with you that I didn't complain."

He stood too close, and Julia wanted to collapse into his arms.

She pressed her hands into his ribs. To touch him and to keep him at a distance.

"I guess I couldn't give you the wild romance you needed," he continued. "I could never be that guy, and that's why I was never enough for you."

She lowered her eyes.

"Jules, I loved the way you closed your eyes when you caught the first summer breeze. The way you liked to smell the air after a storm, and how you squirmed when I tickled those fine hairs under your belly button. I loved that."

His fingers on her waist, brushing her lips, kissing her thighs with his eyelashes. Butterfly kisses he called them.

He pulled her in and locked his arms around her waist.

"You're married." Julia pulled away slowly, and Robbie didn't resist.

"Yeah. With a kid. But I don't want to fuck you, Jules."

They looked out to the ink-stained sky, and it felt as though each was waiting for the other to break the silence. She was surprised that it didn't feel awkward at all.

"Do you wish that things had turned out different?" Robbie asked.

"What?" She looked at him like it was the last time, but she was no longer sad. "Do you?"

"Maybe."

It could have been remorse she heard in his voice or just the attempt to make her feel good on a shitty day.

He whispered into her ear, and she was transported by the familiar scents, which were now mingled with cheerful domesticity.

She moved away from him awkwardly. "Do you have photos of your daughter?"

"What?"

"Men," Julia said distantly. "They always have photos of their kids in their wallets."

He fumbled with his pockets. "I didn't bring it," he said sadly.

Julia took his hand. "It's all right. I'm sure she's beautiful."

"She mostly just lies there right now. Not a lot of stuff happening yet."

Married or not, Robbie Ventura was still a spunk, and Julia would never forget him.

"Julia," he said. "Do you ever regret leaving here? Do you miss it?"

It was the second time in as many days that she had thought of regret.

"No." She shook her head. "I have no regrets, Robbie. But I do miss it sometimes, you know?" She draped her arm over his shoulders and rested her head against his. In the distance, Golbourne shimmered like a tiny mirage with a milk bar, a pub, a pool and a petrol station.

"There's a smell here that I miss."

"Maybe it's the tip at Walton." He laughed easily.

"Maybe," Julia agreed. "I miss the sun. It's not sunny like this in Melbourne. I miss the way the road steamed after a summer shower. I miss the way the heat dried out my hair quickly after I'd been swimming in the river. I miss the way it made me run for the ice cream truck in bare feet that got scorched and tough by the end of summer, as tough as pig skin. I miss that."

"And this?" He turned to face her, dimples and messy hair just like the boy she used to meet in the hayshed, who picked her up from sewing class, knocked on her window late at night and, maybe, got her pregnant. "How about us?"

"Us?" She watched his eyes that still danced. "You know, my grandfather once told me that love only comes once in a lifetime and that when you found it, it would be a great love that would sweep you up. You would feel as though you were flying without wings."

She turned to face him, to check if he thought she was crazy, but he smiled into his hands.

"He told me to always be on the lookout, just in case I missed it. Then I found you, and you were it. Everything."

"And now? What do you believe?"

She heard Joe's voice, followed by Alex's laughter, untroubled and safe.

Julia smiled gently at Robbie and kissed his tanned cheek. Things weren't quite the way she had expected and yet she felt buoyant, a short dip on a shaky rollercoaster with the stars shooting past. It wasn't altogether unpleasant.

"Well, I'm not sure." She smiled at the street below. "I think my grandad might just have been wrong after all."

# **Thank you!**

Thanks for reading Floating Upstream. I hope you enjoy it!

Would you like to know when my next book is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list.

Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews. Please leave yours on Goodreads when you have a moment. Look for Jo Vraca

This book is also available in paperback ISBN: 978-0-9941984-2-6

Also available: Girls – A Collection of Short Stories

