The tears were not going to get me. I felt for my cricket bat under the table. I found its peeling rubber handle, and I brought it up to elbow height, vertically, like a sword, just above the table. Then I brought it back so I could get a good swing, and I belted my Chinotto bottle across the restaurant so it shattered against the wall. It shattered all down Rosa’s mural—a brown stain like creek water.

Then I bolted. I ran so fast, with my bag banging on my back, and my tears going backwards into my eyes where no one would ever see them. I bolted out the door and onto Collins Street where the commuters were lining the streets, waiting for their trams. I held my cricket bat aloft as I ran and everyone coming toward me, everyone, knew that I meant business.

3 JULY 1970

Dear Tilde

Did you get my last letter? I’ve been running to the letterbox for your response. Every day, such a disappointment! Now, I know you’re a busy woman, but spare me a line or two. I don’t care how short. All right? I don’t care how short. As short as this will do!

Xxx Veda

† † †

11 JULY 1970

Tilde, you’ve got me worried!

Have I said, done, intimated something that has made you cross? Do you not approve of my latest gallivants?

Have pity for me, won’t you. Let me know that, whatever I have done that has offended, it is ultimately forgivable. Go on. You’ve a lifetime of that behind you.

X Veda

† † †

18 JULY 1970

All right then, Tilde.

I apologise over and over and over. I simply do not believe you’re too busy to write to me. Please, Tilde, darling, write me a letter and let me know all is well.

I know it’s not Mother or you would have telegraphed.

Veda x

† † †

25 JULY 1970

I think I have to write to you differently now, Tilde.

Because I don’t get a response from you anymore.

And as no one cares cares cares I will speak of my despairs.

Oh, I’m sick of poetry. So fussy. Always asking to be cleaned up.

And prose: prose is full of nicety. Nice things are the only things that ought to be said in a letter, our mother advised.

Ask after the weather. Describe the view from your window.

That was the very essay topic prescribed at school all those years ago: Describe the view from your window.

Hundreds of years of women staring out of windows, describing views, imagining things on the horizon.

What did I spy with my little eye: peonies, hollyhocks; in the distance, gums. Ghost gums shimmering in the summer heat.

I must’ve dealt out poetry of some kind to impress the examination markers. Cleversticks old me.

Visited the Egyptian museum, went up and down a promenade in a big city.