But something has gnawed at me for the longest time to make this record of what happened. Maybe to honour that boy who sang silly songs and lolloped over the sands with my little dog, who showed me and Kitta his precious bundle from the sea. Who loved my sister. Aye, maybe that. And maybe because it’s only now, now that I have grown old like Jeemsie himself was old, with eyes no longer black nor white, that I can imagine another view of it, a view from Granda’s eyes. Could it be he believed himself to be doing the right thing? The only thing? The thing to protect the Lily, the family, the village, not just his wretched self, from the Witch and her curse? Was it torment to stand there, doing nothing? Did it haunt him the rest of his days? Could such a thing be true of Granda Jeemsie?

I don’t know, lambsie. I just don’t know.

And maybe I have needed to write of this to make my own peace with that shift in the world when everything changed. I look at the pattern of my life, lambsie, with its yarns of many colours—the blue stripes of my mother’s apron, the blue of the sea that took me from that place, the other blue of your granda’s eyes, the glittering greys of a herring’s back, the purple silk that loops around my Kitta, the random greens, pinks, golds that gather Clementina and Stivvy, Steven and your mother, too, into the story. The snaking silver thread that stitches it all together and joins me to you, my beautiful granddaughter. It comes from what happened on the Lily Maud, that shift in the world.

As I sit here with your mountain postcard propped up against all these bottles of pills, hoping I will see you again, it comforts me a little to think of all I have written in these books, the life that I have made from the life given to me. And to see that from the greatest shame have come these things, the greatest joys.

28

Laura

Black cockatoos cry into the night. Laura looks through the curtainless window at the shapes crossing an outline of trees. She pulls on her jumper and scarf and goes out into the cold. As she shivers, hugging her jumper close to her body, a fleet shape darts from under the diosma hedge and disappears over the fence. Too small and liquid to be Allee-Cat. Too lacking in grace and manners. A rat?

The moon slips behind cloud and she picks her way around to the side verandah, boots crunching on cold gravel. Words sound in her head like verse. Perhaps it’s true/there are some things/should never be told. Words in a voice she still remembers, even now. Perhaps it’s true.